Liar Liar

by James Patterson

“Well, it’s not every day you get to harbor a wanted woman,” Melina said. “I’ll see you off, and then I’m taking Janna and heading for a hotel. I got a call from one of your colleagues.”

  I warmed slightly at the knowledge that someone was warning victims from my past cases that Regan was interested in them. I grabbed the bag and prepared to leave, but before I could, Melina hugged me. I held on, not realizing how much I’d needed the physical contact until that moment. Melina was leaner and stronger now than she had been when I first met her, sitting with a couple of family members in the station interview room. I remembered her elbows and knees had been grazed from being thrown on the floor of the public toilet where she was attacked. She’d been a good witness, strong and practical. She’d come to the interview with a notepad, scribbled with notes of everything she could remember about her attacker. Now here she was, aiding and abetting a dangerous vigilante, packing my bag for me like a mother sending her kid off to camp.

  “I’ve gotta go,” I said when she broke away from me.

  “One more thing,” she said, handing me her phone. “This has been running all morning.” Another press conference, this one with a very familiar face sitting wedged between a decidedly smug-looking Detective Nigel Spader and Deputy Commissioner Joe Woods. My mother had dolled herself up for the interview, but she was dressed inappropriately as always in a denim miniskirt and low-cut singlet top that showed off her upper-chest tattoos.

  “I’m asking you, Harriet, to please make contact with the police,” Julia was saying. She was reading from a prepared statement, her finger moving slowly across the page. “I am concerned about your welfare, as are your…coll…”

  Woods leaned in and whispered in her ear.

  “Colleagues,” Julia said.

  As the press conference ended, Julia picked up an orange-and-white coffee cup that had been sitting by her microphone and held it at chest height. Nigel and Woods boxed her in as the cameras flashed around them, talking over her shoulder. She was captured on the screen for a good five or six seconds, simply standing there holding the coffee cup. I recognized the distinct orange-and-white pattern from the Bristol Gardens hotel chain, the big letter “B” on the side of the cup confirming it as the trio eventually moved off the screen. The old honeypot ruse. Woods and Nigel would have put Julia up at the Bristol Gardens Hotel in the CBD and jammed the place up with undercover police, hoping Regan would see the press conference, take the bait, and make an appearance. It wasn’t a bad move, but my faith in the plan was slight.

  “Do you think your mother’s in danger?” Melina asked.

  “No.” I handed back the phone. “He knows me better than that. Regan hates my mother, and he expects me to as well. He’ll go after people who mean something to me.”

  “That’s why you thought he’d come here,” Melina said. “Because of us. My case.”

  I struggled to find the words. “Melina, being there for you…for people like you in my job…It’s the only thing I’ve ever really been proud of. I’m a cop. That’s all I am. There’s nothing else to me. I don’t have a life outside this, I…”

  This was pathetic. I straightened, took my cap from the counter beside me, where it had been sitting, freshly washed and dried. I tried to move away, but Melina had my arm.

  “You know that’s bullshit, right?” Melina said. “Harry, you should be proud of so many things in your life. You’re a good woman. I can tell.”

  I didn’t look at Melina as she spoke. She didn’t know what was inside me. She didn’t know the furious hatred that burned there, the vengeful fantasies, the dark memories of what I had endured in my childhood.

  She couldn’t be so sure of what I was.

  Even I didn’t know.

  As I retrieved the bike from the bushes behind the house, the boy I’d almost killed appeared, head down, hands in his pockets, making like he’d been freed from the house and just happened to have decided to go the back way only seconds after I’d left Melina and her daughter. I swung my leg over the bike and waited for him to tell me whatever he wanted to tell me, but he just stood there admiring the Harley, nodding appreciatively.

  “I really, um…” the boy said, staring off at the suburban horizon, his chest filled with air but his teenage brain empty of words. I sighed, dragged my pistol out of my back pocket, ejected the clip and the chamber round, and handed it to him.

  “Oh, man,” he whispered, weighing the gun in his hand. He pointed it at a nearby tree, looked down the sight, pulled the trigger a couple of times, listening to its impotent click. “Oh, this is fucking sweet.”

  “You’re fucking sweet.” I laughed, taking the weapon back.

  I tightened the straps of my bag and prepared to go. I glanced at my phone as it buzzed.

  A single word. Bombala. A town an hour and a half south.

  Chapter 61

  POPS EXITED THE elevators on the third floor of the command building, jangling his car keys in his hand as he moved between the desks. It was uncharacteristically quiet on the floor. Usually almost every desk would be manned by detectives, heads down, phones to ears, chasing up leads or tapping away at computers. Instead, many of the officers were hanging around the central conference room, where a series of screens showed live streamed footage from the Bristol Gardens Hotel.

  Detective Nigel Spader was seated at a bank of computers, his attention fixed on the screens. It was just like Woods to be at the hotel somewhere standing by, ready to jump in front of the cameras if Regan was captured, leading the killer to a car and posing just outside the door. Pops had seen such a photograph in Woods’s office once, framed, the demoralized suspect staring bewildered into the camera’s flash.

  Nigel Spader looked right at home manning the command side of the operation, coffee at his elbow and a healthy audience of enraptured junior detectives at his back. On the screens, Pops could see the grand hotel hallways and the sprawling barroom were stocked with undercover officers talking, laughing, pretending to drink. A select crew of very nervous hotel staff appeared on screens showing a view over the concierge desk.

  “No sign of the quarry?” Pops asked as he approached. Nigel turned toward him, his face inked with contempt.

  “Chief Morris.” Detective Spader smiled without warmth. “This is a surprise. I thought you were taking leave, sir.”

  “Oh, believe me”—Pops held his hands up—“I want nothing to do with such an egregious waste of police time and resources.”

  “What do you want, then?” Nigel bristled.

  “Banks’s Care Initiation Report, the file from the Department of Community Services detailing why he was taken into foster care as a child. It was sealed back when Regan was seven and the state took custody of him. Did Deputy Commissioner Woods apply to have that information unsealed?”

  “He did.”

  Pops waited. Spader watched the screens, his thick arms folded.

  “I’m sure you, as Woods’s acting 2IC, would have been privy to the contents of that report?” Pops stifled an irritated sigh.

  “As a matter of fact, I was.”

  “And what did it tell you about Banks’s parents?”

  “That they’re deceased.”

  Pops drew and released a slow breath.

  “And the circumstances under which Banks was taken into care?”

  “Chief Morris.” Nigel Spader’s eyes wandered back to the chief’s, exhausted. “With all due respect, we’re trying to catch a very dangerous fugitive here. We’re not researching him for an episode of This Is Your Life.”

  Someone from the group of officers nearby snorted a laugh.

  “Was there anything at all relevant in the file?” Pops asked.

  “Like what, exactly?”

  “Any important locations or dates?” Pops said. “Anything emotionally meaningful to Banks? We know that fugitives are very family-focused when they’re under the pressure of pursuit.”

  “His parents are dead,” Nigel said. “His family home, the
one they owned when he was born, is a factory site now.” Pops noted Nigel’s contemptuous tone had softened. Behind his eyes, Pops could almost see wheels turning.

  “Maybe there was somewhere else,” Pops offered. “Somewhere farther south. We know Regan went out of the city for a reason.”

  “He went out of the city to target one of Harriet Blue’s past victims,” Nigel said. “We believe it’s likely he chose somewhere nonmetropolitan because he could access Bonnie Risdale easily. She lived alone. Her property was in a rural location. We’ve now provided Regan with a plum target here in Harriet’s mother. He’s going to double back to the city, and we’re going to catch him.”

  Pops didn’t answer. Detective Spader cleared his throat and spoke louder, as though Pops couldn’t hear him.

  “We’re taking a two-pronged approach. One of the mothers of the Georges River victims has agreed to speak publicly, addressing Harriet, asking her to come in. That was my initiative. Harriet can’t possibly justify her vigilante mission if the mother of one of the victims doesn’t support her. She has to understand she’s not the only person grieving for someone Regan killed, and not all of the other victims’ families want to see Regan dead. Some of them want him to languish behind bars. It’s not her choice alone to make. When Blue hears the message and turns up, Regan will follow, if we haven’t already got him in custody from the hotel sting. Deputy Commissioner Woods and I are very confident in our plan.”

  Pops chewed the inside of his lip. The detective’s eyes were following an officer across the hotel lobby on the screen. Pops hadn’t wanted to be put into the position he was in now, having to ask a junior officer in front of all the officers present something he already knew the answer to. But he was left with no other choice.

  “You sound like you have everything under control,” Pops said. “My viewing of the Banks file shouldn’t disrupt your plans.”

  Spader didn’t even look at him.

  “You may not view the file,” Spader said after a long, humiliating moment of silence.

  “Detective Spader,” Pops managed, “do I need to remind you of the rank structure in the New South Wales Police Force?”

  “Apologies.” Spader looked at the chief. “You may not view the file, sir. Deputy Commissioner Woods has it with him. He considers the information in it of the utmost confidentiality.”

  Pops glanced around the audience of officers near them.

  “Detective Spader,” he said carefully, “have you ever heard the expression ‘switching horses midstream’?”

  “Of course,” Nigel said, a little too fast. Pops waited, but Nigel gave no indication of knowing why Pops had mentioned the old proverb. The chief turned on his heel, giving Nigel a look that he hoped communicated a promise that he would not forget the exchange they’d just shared.

  The old man jangled his keys to the rhythm of his steps as he made his way down to the reception area of the command-center office and over to the front desk, where a young woman in a patrol officer’s uniform was waiting for him.

  “I couldn’t get a phone number, but here’s the address,” the young officer said, handing Pops a folded slip of paper. “Judge Edgar Boscke.”

  Chapter 62

  THE PHONE IN my pocket buzzed. Regan. He had called a dozen times while I slept at Melina’s house, and twice more since I hit the road. I could almost feel his rage through the phone, a pulsing heat that seemed to make the phone hot to the touch. I took a breath and waited for the ringing to stop.

  Before me, the dense bushland bordering the Bombala River, wet grass leading to reeds at the edge of the water.

  I had pulled the bike over and entered the park after miles of fast, dangerous riding, the highways clear now of roadblocks looking for us. My face and neck were spattered with cold rain, and my socks were damp. Maybe by bringing the bike to death-defying speeds, taking corners at suicidal angles, I had been trying to tempt God, or fate, or whatever the hell was in control, to shut down my pursuit of Regan. If I was taken out of the game in an accident, I wouldn’t have to face that terrible act, the one I knew was coming. The moment I would cross over and deliberately, with coldhearted planning, end a life.

  I don’t know what made me finally give in. But I picked up the phone as it started buzzing again and pushed the answer button.

  “When I call, you answer,” he said. His voice was smooth, quiet. But the danger was there. He sounded tired, slightly puffed, as though being unable to contact me had drained his physical strength.

  “Or what?” I laughed. “You don’t have any leverage over me left. You don’t get to make demands when you’re killing off the people who mean something to me. I don’t have to participate in your bullshit.”

  “You could have made it easier on some people by cooperating,” he said.

  I crouched by the bike as my knees became weak. Who were these people, and what had Regan done to them? Or was he talking about something he was about to do, a plan now set in place that I could have talked him out of if I’d answered my phone? Across the river, a couple were taking a lunchtime stroll along the riverbank. I took my gun from my bag and actioned it, hardly daring to look in case I saw the inevitable shape of him appearing from the tree line, heading toward them. There would be nothing I could do but scream for help, fire aimlessly, hoping to scare him off. My breath caught in my chest even as I tried to sound calm.

  “I’m outside the Bombala Town Hall,” I lied. “Come get me.”

  “No, not yet, Harry.”

  “When, motherfucker?” I snapped. “How long do you think I’m going to keep playing this game? What if I just stop answering? What if I hand myself in?”

  “You won’t.”

  “You really sure about that?”

  “I know you, Harry.”

  “You don’t know jack shit. You’re a disease. You only know how to infect and consume things.”

  “I know you’re frustrated. But the time is coming. This is all a process. You need to just let go.” He gave a small laugh, casual, like a man trying to convince a friend to try a new type of dessert. “It was easy for me. I had no choice. I went to prison. There were bars and cuffs and big walls to teach me who was in control. Harry, I’m in control of you. I’ll give you your gift when it’s time.”

  I said nothing. The couple across the river strolled safely out of sight.

  “I’m going to send you another address,” Regan said.

  Chapter 63

  THIS WAS BAD. Whitt was putting everyone in danger now, his colleagues, members of the public, Vada in the car beside him. She was in command, and had been all day, feeding him the pills seemingly whenever he asked for them, and sometimes when she said she thought he looked strung out. She was giving him more than he needed, but he didn’t say anything. It wasn’t her job to know the dose. And the boost he got when he tucked the pill into the space between his lips and gums, not just chemical but emotional, had become essential to his life. Three days high, and he was already a slave again.

  Whitt was sure no one had noticed yet, but there were signs. He kept checking the safety on his weapon. Over and over, pushing that already pushed-down switch harder, until the grooves bit into his thumb. He kept hearing his phone ring, but it wasn’t ringing. Kept spacing out when Vada was talking to him. And now he was climbing out of the car in a heady rush, the street blocked by patrol cars, the blue lights painful and blinding. Locked and loaded. Whitt pulled his weapon just as everyone else did, ready to go in, a walking time bomb unable to defuse himself.

  An anonymous tip to the Bombala police station fifteen minutes earlier had brought much-needed energy to a mindless day of checking roadblocks, coordinating air searches, responding to possible sightings, the most recent in Bega, south of Nowra. Whitt and Vada were going to be there with the first responders. He was trembling with tension. Was it Regan again? They had an address. They were on.

  Whitt followed the responders to the front door now, trying to be just a face in the c
rowd. He half-listened to the commands coming from the men in front of him.

  “Who is it?” he asked Vada, who was there at his shoulder. Zinging memories of her body on top of his every time he looked at her, making his stomach clench. “Do we have any intel?”

  “An old couple,” Vada said. “That’s all I know.”

  Whitt and Vada followed two huge men in tactical gear leading the charge. The door went down in a thump. All of a sudden he was inside, on his own, turning left and sweeping his torch and gun over darkened rooms. He could almost feel himself accidentally shooting someone. The gun bucking in his hands, an old woman falling as his bullet tore through her.

  The front rooms were empty, painfully neat. Books on shelves, hand-stitched pillows sitting on antique furniture. Through the lace curtains, Whitt could see officers running down the sides of the house, doing a sweep of the perimeter. He backed out of the front rooms and called out the clearance, heard a heavy gasp toward the back of the house.

  The victims were in the dining room. Whitt caught a glimpse of two people sitting in ornate wooden chairs before one of the tactical officers pushed past him, heading for the front door, a gloved hand up against his mouth.

  Chapter 64

  RED. BRIGHT, ALMOST luminescent, a halo of it on the wall above their heads, blood sprayed as the killer worked. Their bodies were both drenched in it, sitting tied in the chairs back-to-back, his woolen slippers soaked in blood. Their deaths had been a drawn-out affair, maybe hours long. There were already flies, and a glass of water sat on the circular table, fingerprinted with pink, the killer having become thirsty midway through his task. Her robe was in a pile on the floor, boot-printed. She had been the focus of the attack. The old man was slumped forward, a necklace of dark blood running from a neat slit in his throat. Whitt couldn’t see much of her from where he stood, but he knew she’d been worked on. Her angles weren’t right. The foot nearest him was turned outward, the bare toes curled.