The Last Lie

by Stephen White

  It’s how she rolls.

  E-mail and Diane had been acquainted for years, but they had never become friends. She had gone far out of her way to make certain she was never formally introduced to the convenience of texting. The cell phone she carried was a vintage brick with large buttons. She maintained she liked the big numbers and the substantial feel of the thing in her hand. Any lack of modern features was irrelevant to her.

  Her office answering machine was exactly that—a machine. It took up almost a square foot of real estate on her desk. To pick up messages from home she called her office number and punched codes into the phone she was using, codes that would cause the device to erupt from slumber and then to begin to beep incessantly. And nonmelodically. That beeping, in turn, resulted—if things went well—in convincing the black box to start playing back her recorded messages from afar.

  Despite copious soundproofing between our offices, I could always hear the infernal beeping whenever Diane would communicate with her machine and it would begin its responsive mating chirps.

  Ironic as the thought sounded to my children—keeping up with the two of them was solely responsible for my recent transition to twenty-first-century digital life—I was Diane’s resident IT guy. The previous week, Diane had cornered me after she finished a psychotherapy session with a young woman she was treating. She said she had an urgent tech question for me. She didn’t actually say she had a tech question. She said, “You need to explain something to me about the Internet.”

  It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence; my IT role meant that I did curbside tech supervision on the fly with Diane with some regularity. I could reliably count on the fact that whatever Diane wanted to know was entry-level stuff. Which, fortunately, was my tech area of specialty.

  Recently, since she adores Christopher Walken—were she sufficiently inebriated, I actually think she’d risk all the glorious aspects of her marriage with Raoul for a single night of bliss with the god Walken—I had tracked down a YouTube video of the man preparing a dinner of, well, salt supported on the framework of a vertically roasting chicken.

  As I suspected she might be, Diane was enamored with C. Walken, chef. “Wouldn’t you like to be able to find videos like that yourself, whenever you want, on your own phone?” I asked.

  “Nice try,” she’d said. “You know I don’t play video games.” Everything online that Diane didn’t understand was a “video game.” One, of course, she didn’t play.

  THE OLD-SCHOOL NOTE I’d left taped to Diane’s door listed the breaks I had in my afternoon followed by “Free to chat?”

  She marched into my office shortly after three thirty. She plopped on the sofa, put her feet up on the coffee table, and pushed her skirt down between her spread legs. To my dismay, she asked me how Twitter worked. Despite my better judgment, I began to explain what I knew. She put a quick end to my soliloquy at the moment she was convinced I had moved into deadpan ridicule—she thought I was actually saying retreating instead of retweeting and accused me of speaking in cartoon voices in an attempt to mock her.

  It took me a few moments to clarify my intent. And to convince her that I was not talking in Tweety Bird tones. She recovered quickly, which is one of her strengths. “So what’s up? You ready to talk about you and me selling this pop stand for a whole mess of money so that I can start designing my penthouse in the sky? I’ll give you fifty-one percent. My final offer.”

  She was talking about selling the building in which we sat, so that she and Raoul could buy the prime condo on top of the yet-to-be-built structure on the Daily Camera site. I did indeed want to talk about those things with Diane, but not urgently. I had already decided that in order to get what I really wanted from Diane, I would employ a give-a-little, get-a-little strategy.

  I said, “Did you hear that the Boulder police and the county sheriff were out at your friend’s new house on Saturday morning? After the housewarming? The one we weren’t invited to.”

  Diane winced. “I know. I know.”

  “And?”

  “Don’t worry. It’s going to go away.”

  “You know that for sure?”

  “It doesn’t involve you. Believe me, you want no part of it. Forget you know anything, forget what you saw. Everything, anything.” She lowered her face so that she was looking down. Then she shook her head again, frantically, like her face was the screen of an Etch A Sketch that she was urgently trying to erase. “God, I was so wishing you didn’t know about any of this. You saw the cops?”

  “Lauren did.”

  “I want to curse.”

  “Then curse.”

  “I’m trying not to. Self-improvement.”

  “What’s the big deal, Diane? The cops came, they left. They haven’t been back. How big a deal can it be?”

  I was being disingenuous of course. I knew what the big deal was. I just didn’t know the details or the truth. I was determined to learn the details, under the assumption that they would reveal the truth, and I was determined to understand why there was so much secrecy.

  My personal stake in the mess was clear, at least to me: if there was someone capable of committing acquaintance rape living or visiting across the lane from my children and my wife, I wanted to know the details.

  “I can’t tell you why. It’d be the same as telling you what. And if I told you what, you would immediately wish I hadn’t told you. Trust me.”

  I didn’t get it. I knew enough to know that I wished what I knew wasn’t true, but I wasn’t feeling at all as though I wished I didn’t know. I said, “You’re sure I wouldn’t want to know?”

  “What I’m sure about is that even if you thought you wanted to know, after you knew, you would immediately see the error of your ways, and you would agree with me about it being better not to know. But then it would be too late. I’m doing my part to save you from all that regret.”

  Diane smiled. At rare times, she could be as charming as her husband. Most other times it wasn’t a contest.

  She knew me well. I have more than my share of anxieties and other garden-variety mental health vulnerabilities. She also knew that regret isn’t one of the psychological albatrosses I typically lug around. I’m not someone who wastes hours gazing longingly at water that has passed beneath the bridge. I said, “If what happened was insignificant, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I assume the opposite is true. What you’re telling me is that what happened is extremely serious.”

  The game we were playing felt awkward. She thought she was keeping a confidence, I assumed, for a friend. She didn’t know that I already knew the critical letters in her Scrabble tray. All I was trying to ascertain was what word she was planning to construct with those letters. I was continuing to hope it wasn’t R-A-P-I-S-T.

  Diane chose her next words with atypical care. She seemed to be examining each one for bruises, as though she were selecting Palisade peaches for a tart and wanted to be certain each was unblemished. “There is a dispute, a serious dispute—a conflict of opinion, really—between . . . friends. These things happen.”

  Acquaintance rape is a dispute? A conflict of opinion between friends? In what universe? I had an uncomfortable thought. Has Diane taken sides? Does she believe that Burning Man Lady is making a false accusation? She said. He said. And he’s right?

  I wondered why Diane would come down on that side of the fence. If I knew no other facts, I would guess that Diane’s instinctual inclination would be to support the woman’s point of view in a rape allegation.

  I went fishing. “These ‘friends’? They’re all old friends of yours and Raoul’s?”

  “Kinda . . . sorta. It was a big party, but there’s a core group of couples who have been friends forever, one couple and us go all the way back to Storage Tech. Long time. Mimi and her ex-husband divorced five or six years ago. Nasty, nasty. Tough on Mimi and the kids. Terrence is now living with a trophy on Grand Cayman. Mimi and Hake have been married . . . eighteen months or so. One of the other couples ha
s been part of the group for a . . . much shorter time. He is, was, a golf pro in Denver. He died not too long ago. His widow was at the party alone.”

  That, I figured, was Hella’s patient. It sounded as though Diane’s true friendship allegiance was with Mimi, Hake’s wife. Perhaps Diane’s defense of Hake had been reflexive. It also seemed likely that Hella’s patient, the recent widow, sat at the newest place setting at the table. It was possible Diane hadn’t connected with her. Or had a reason to doubt her honesty. I put a lot of weight in Diane’s judgment. She had a good eye, little narcissism to color her impressions, and she kept her scales of personal justice in reasonable balance.

  “A conflict of opinion? Like an argument?” I said. “What’s the big deal? Why would an argument between friends involve a police visit? And all this secrecy?”

  She stomped her right foot. She didn’t pound it; the move was theatrical. In another circumstance, I might have considered it cute. “See, there you go. Alan, you’ve proven a dozen times—a hundred dozen times—that you can’t leave stuff alone. I’m right, aren’t I? You’ll stick your nose—I don’t need to tell you this—in anything. But this time has to be different. You have to leave this alone.”

  She took a moment to examine my face for signs of my acquiescence. I was pretty sure that she didn’t see what she was hoping to see. “Promise me you won’t talk to anyone—I mean anyone, Alan—about this.”

  “About what?”

  “About the cops visiting. About what you think.”

  “I think I have a right to know if there is something going on with my neighbors that might impact my family’s well-being.”

  “See? Exactly. You’ll just keep fishing and fishing and fishing. I know you will. The cops were there. So don’t talk about that. To anyone, okay? Is that so much to ask?”

  “Are you and Raoul involved?”

  “Alan.” Diane brought her hands together in front of her chest in schoolgirl prayer position. The posture looked as foreign on her as would a tattoo of dripping blood on the side of her neck.

  “This isn’t like you, Diane. You love telling me shit. Especially shit no one else knows. And you know better than anyone that I can be trusted to keep my mouth shut. When I say I won’t say anything, I don’t say anything.”

  She stood up. “The stakes are too high. I am protecting people I care about. Okay? This time, trust me. And, just so you know, one of the people I’m protecting is you.” She stepped toward the door. Spun back to face me. “Hake played pro football. Big-time. When he was younger. He was a kicker for, like, four games or something at the end of one season for . . . Buffalo, or Cleveland, or Milwaukee—someplace really cold.”

  “Milwaukee doesn’t have a team. You must be thinking Green Bay.”

  She glared. “Don’t correct me. You wanted gossip. I’m giving you gossip.”

  “That’s not gossip,” I said. “You’re leaving?”

  She smiled over her shoulder. “I have to pee.”

  “I’ve already talked to people,” I said to her back.

  She spun again. “You what? About what? With whom?”

  “Sam. Lauren.”

  “I don’t know what either of them knows, really. They’re not going to tell you anything. They’ve both already had the fear of God put in them.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I really have to pee. And then I have a three forty-five. Listen to Mama, Alan.”

  I thought it was likely Diane really did have to pee. Her bladder was the size of a plum. I decided to take advantage of the fact.

  I asked, “What happened to Mattin’s hand? His missing finger?”

  She lifted her chin so she could look down her nose at me, just a little. “Years ago he drove up to an accident where a car had flipped. He was helping to pull a kid from the backseat when another man yanked the door open. The metal pinched his finger. Crushed it. There was a fire. He was burned.”

  “Heroic,” I said. “The kid?”

  “They saved the kid. Is that enough gossip to shut you up?”

  I knew I’d pushed Diane as far as I could. I said, “I talked to Raoul about selling the building. He never got around to telling me why it was necessary.”

  She rolled her eyes at one of us. Or both of us. “One of the partners,” she said, shifting her weight, “who shall remain nameless, has his eye on my penthouse. The one I . . . will have. Raoul says the man is open to an alternative. His wife would prefer to own a duplex downtown, with some yard. Something urban and central but with just a little . . . more of a residential feel.”

  I saw where she was heading. “This building? Really?”

  “Hardly,” she said. “This location. The idea is that they would scrape and build a duplex—the wife’s sister is a single mom and would take the smaller unit. They would end up with an urban town house with incredible views from the top floors and the rooftop deck, and they would also have two things the condo on Pearl would never have: a private garage, and a yard.”

  “If we sell,” I said.

  She frowned. “We’re not in the business of spoiling dreams, Alan. Anyway, the city is insisting the partnership have control of some nearby land for construction parking and for staging materials for the project. Our land would be perfect.”

  “You’ve thought this all through?”

  “Uh . . . yeah. We’re talking about my dream home.”

  “I thought Lee Hill was your dream home.”

  “A girl’s only allowed one dream?”

  14

  In Colorado, it’s hard to lose track of the sun. It rarely goes into hiding for more than two or three days. On most days, I am blessed with the view of the pastel wonders of sunrise as I drive to my office. A half cycle later, the sunset from our Spanish Hills perch is a predictable glory that feels more gorgeous every time I see it.

  But the moon? Sometimes I lose the moon for the longest time. I don’t know how that happens. I’m either too ignorant about lunar phases to know where in the sky to look, or the thing plays lunar peekaboo during times of the day or night that I don’t expect it.

  In the nights before and after the damn housewarming, I’d managed to completely lose the moon.

  I WAS OUT with the dogs for their Monday evening constitutional. A lovely pattern of interlocking lenticular clouds was beginning to rip apart under the insistent force of invisible shearing winds. As I watched the celestial shredding, a telltale light emerged behind the clouds. I waited for the high-level winds to finish turning the clouds to ribbons. Sure enough, behind them was the damn moon. Or at least about a third of it.

  My universe felt more ordered. My cell phone vibrated.

  Hella Zoet. She had texted me over the lunch hour, while I was at Salt with Lauren, to let me know she didn’t have any time she could meet that afternoon. In the text, she said she’d call to try to find some free time to continue the supervision so that I didn’t have to wait until the next week’s appointment to be brought up to speed on Burning Man Lady. I assumed this was that call.

  “Hella,” I said. “Hi.”

  “Is this an okay time?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’m out with the dogs. Be warned, I have only two bars. Now . . . one bar. But my calendar is on my phone. Let’s see what we can do.”

  “Somebody broke into my patient’s house today.”

  “Which patient?” I asked. But I knew.

  “Burning Man Lady.”

  “Was she home? Is she okay?”

  “She was at work; she wasn’t home. She’s okay, but she’s nuts about it.”

  I fell back on my favorite all-purpose therapeutic prompt. I said, “Tell me.”

  THE EVIDENCE FOR THE BURGLARY WAS, I thought, less than compelling.

  Hella knew a lot about her patient’s coping style. She’d watched her efforts to manage intense loss in times of intense crisis. In those times of emotional upset and potential chaos, Burning Man Lady had shown a predilection for findin
g some peace by creating order wherever she could create it. After her husband’s death, she had reorganized their home, cleaned every nook and cranny—she used a toothbrush on the cabinet hinges—and come up with a new filing system for her financial records.

  Before work that Monday—after a third consecutive night with too little sleep—she’d cleaned and vacuumed all the floors in the house, even raking the shag carpet her husband had installed in the master bedroom because he thought it would be romantic.

  It was to a completely clean, reordered environment that Burning Man Lady had expected to return home from work a few minutes after six that evening. And with one exception, that is what she found.

  The exception was a short series of indentations in the freshly raked shag that she was convinced were footprints. Three to be exact. Two of the footprints led from the honey oak floor that surrounds the rug toward the side of the bed that she still thought of as her husband’s. The third of the three footprints led in the other direction, back toward the hardwood floor on the room’s perimeter.

  Someone, she thought immediately, had stepped toward the bed, pivoted, and stepped away. She thought that the person must have stepped closer in order to open the drawer on the nightstand on that side of the bed.

  The footprints on the shag were large. She had no doubt that they’d been made by a man’s shoe. She told Hella that she’d squealed in panic, and terror, and rage when she saw the footprints. Certain of an intruder, and fearing that he might still be inside, she had, literally, run back out of the house. She called 911 from the sidewalk in front of her next-door neighbor’s home.

  Two Boulder police officers responded to the emergency call. She explained about the shag, and the rake, and the footprints.

  They searched her home. They found no signs of forced entry on doors or windows. The officers saw no indication that anything had been stolen or disturbed.

  The officers escorted her back inside to try to determine if anything was missing. They had her check for missing prescription drugs or personal papers. Burning Man Lady saw nothing absent from her home.