The Liar

by Steve Cavanagh

  “So while you were running into burning buildings last night, I thought about Max Copeland and our subpoenas. The original file is in your storage facility in DUMBO, along with the other dead cases. I went over there and paid a fortune to let the storage security guy give me access to the boxed files. Took me an hour to find the damn thing; didn’t you ever think of having a filing system?” he said.

  “Remind me to change my storage company,” I said.

  “Anyway, I looked over the file this morning before I came to get you; refreshed my memory. I made copies and left the original in your office this morning. You can deliver it to Copeland when this thing with Howell dies down.”

  “You get anything from the file?”

  “Not really. Few things came back to me. Details about the fire, mostly. Julie was an addict. She’d been smoking crack. Fire marshal found a smoked bowl in a room, but that wasn’t the source of the fire. The nursery was soaked in gasoline. The prosecution argued she got high and was going to burn down the nursery to make her daughter’s death look like an accident, but somewhere along the line she couldn’t go through with it and the fire got out of hand. Then she invented the story about the masked man to cover up her own crime.”

  “Sounds a little off, doesn’t it?”

  “The jury didn’t think so. They took twenty-three minutes to return a guilty verdict,” he said.

  His voice dropped low. Those last words were nothing more than a whisper. This was still a painful case for Harry. Prior to taking up judicial office, Harry had practiced civil and criminal law. And he took me under his wing – helped me through law school, got me a job clerking for him, and when I wanted to open my own firm with Jack Halloran, Harry and his old partner gave us a start by finally winding down their practice, and handing us their few remaining clients. I owed him everything. One piece of advice that I’d always remembered from Harry: the victories are sweet and soon forgotten, but the mistakes stay with you forever.

  He shook his head, and I saw him swallowing down a burst of emotion.

  “Thinking about it now, we were beaten before we started. She had sustained a blow to the head. A severe one. Almost died herself. But she couldn’t remember what had happened. Not all of it. She remembered seeing a man dressed in black. She maintained he was the killer. Only trouble was, nobody saw him. Police interviewed all of the locals – everyone they could find who might have been on the road that day and passed her house. She lived in a cottage, way upstate. Isolated, rural kind of place. No reports of an unfamiliar vehicle, or any non-locals. It came down to her word. And nobody took it.”

  “Except you,” I said.

  “Except me.”

  Both of us were silent for a mile or two. I didn’t want to bombard Harry with questions. Talking about this case was difficult for him, but there were things I needed to know.

  “Any idea why the appeal is suddenly happening now?” I said.

  “No clue. Maybe new evidence? I don’t know.”

  “You still haven’t told me what convinced you she was innocent?”

  He grew quiet, wrung his hands on the steering wheel.

  “I’ll let you read the file,” he said, finally. Some things were too painful to be spoken aloud.

  On the road to Howell’s place, I told Harry a little of my involvement. There were some things I kept to myself. It made it easier for Harry – he was still a judge, after all, and telling him I’d helped my client obtain ten million dollars from the handcuffed wrist of an FBI agent seemed like the kind of thing I shouldn’t mention.

  Even if I’d told Harry everything – I knew in the back of my head that he wouldn’t rat me out. He was the best friend I had. The age gap didn’t seem to bother either of us – Harry could still drink me under the table when I was in the mood to hit the bottle. Thankfully those moods were few and far between these days.

  Two or three miles from Premier Point, we could see the plume of smoke on the horizon.

  My cell phone rang.

  Howell.

  “Are you all right? Did you get Caroline?” I said.

  “No. Is Susan okay? The feds won’t tell me anything. Are you still in the hospital?” he said.

  His voice was raw, filled with tears and panic.

  “Susan is okay, far as I know. Still in the hospital. I’m out, I’m on my way to your house. The rail station drop was more of a set-up than you bargained for, you know you called Lynch on a phone that had been stashed in a locker for the drop. There was a shirt in there too. Looked like the one Caroline was wearing on the day she disappeared. It had a message on it – ‘Howell murdered her in the basement.’ What the hell happened at the cemetery?”

  He was silent. His breath quivered and buzzed down the line.

  “We got to the graveyard. I was supposed to give the money to a man inside the Chrysler Memorial. McAuley was supposed to be watching my back and Marlon scouting ahead. There was no one around, no one in the memorial. Just two phone numbers written on a page and taped to the memorial wall. I called the first number and must’ve got Lynch. Second call just rang once then disconnected. I tried it again and the line was dead. That’s all I remember. I woke up with the sun in my face. Somebody hit me from behind. McAuley and Marlon are gone. So was the page with the cell phone numbers, and so was the money.”

  “What! You think McAuley or Marlon set you up?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. I’m at the house. The feds are here. They’re watching me close. They’re thinking about arresting me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Harry complained for the entire length of the single-lane road that led to Howell’s property. The bumps from Harry’s small tires leaping in and out of the holes in the asphalt sent hot shards of pain into my knees and my burned hand. He tried to avoid the holes but they were too many. It took a long time to make that drive. Beside us, in the field, I could see the heavy tracks made by Harper’s Charger not that many hours ago. And up ahead, the fence lay in ruins where we’d busted through onto the driveway.

  We came to the end of the road and Harry circled around, stopped and let me out behind the police cordon. An area of fifty feet around the perimeter of the house had been taped off as a crime scene. Two fire trucks waited patiently beside the property, one truck pouring the last of its water onto the charred ruins of the house. More cop and FBI cars had appeared overnight. SWAT was gone. Harper’s Dodge Charger was still there. All attention was on the house. A man in a yellow hard hat walked slowly and carefully through the front door. I took a long look at the mansion I’d marveled at the night before. Black staining on the brickwork around the empty windows, the roof was partially collapsed on the right side, and the smell of smoke was still thick and all-consuming.

  Sitting on a piece of broken fence, twenty feet away, I saw Howell. He watched me come closer. I saw one agent, keeping an eye on Howell from a distance.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  His eyes told me everything. There was loss, confusion, and a raw, nerve-shredding pain in that face. He swallowed, wiped away the tears streaking his face and ran his hands through his hair.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  “The feds won’t let me near the house. I called the hospital. Susan is going to be fine. George too. Nurse told me it was you who pulled them out of the house. Thank you.”

  “No need. In the end some firemen saved me and the female FBI agent, Harper, who got to Susan first. Why did the ransom drop go bad? What do you think?”

  “Whoever took her … they’re punishing me, Eddie. These bastards want me to live in hell. Why didn’t they just shoot me? Why didn’t they leave my daughter out of it?”

  His shoulders hunched and shook as he broke down. I put a hand on his back, turned him and put my other hand on his shoulder. He didn’t care about the money, didn’t care about going to jail, or his house, or even his wife; Caroline was everything to this man. He’d been so close to getting her back – and now he
had nothing. There were no words I could say to this guy. I made my living with language, and I had nothing to say – nothing that could give even a moment’s comfort. Gently, he pushed me away and put his head between his knees. Howell had come to the conclusion that Caroline was definitely dead. I could see it on him like a black, misshapen creature clawing at his back.

  I turned, something had caught my attention. An FBI agent, up at the house, running toward the front door. A shout rang out from the house and more agents and cops came up. I saw Lynch at the back of the pack, sprinting forward, pushing people out of the way. In a small group of feds, I saw the tall figure of Washington, and right beside him – Harper. Washington leaned on the hood of a dark sedan, his arms folded as he traded words with Harper. She had changed her shirt and looked to be in a lot better shape than me. They were both watching the front entrance to the house.

  The man in the yellow hard hat was just visible at the threshold of the house. He was kneeling, and pointing downwards. He was soon lost to my view when the first few cops and feds surrounded him.

  I ducked beneath the crime scene tape and walked past two other men in the same yellow hard hats and high-vis vests as the man at the front door of the house. As I passed the men I saw a logo on the vest – Gurley’s Structural Engineers.

  Nobody stopped me approaching the house. They were all too busy peering into the dark interior from the entrance hall. Politely, I elbowed through the crowd of agents and cops, until I could see a little way inside. I glanced back and saw Harper give me a wave. I nodded and turned back to the house.

  Hard hat aimed a torch beam downwards. Lynch was on his radio, and listening intently at the mic in his ear.

  “Are you sure it’s blood?” said Lynch.

  He listened. Waited.

  The marble floor had collapsed. I could see right into the basement. Amidst the rubble and the white dust swirling in the torch light, I thought I saw something. Then, two crime scene techs in white hazmat suits and hard hats climbed out of the basement. They held a line and scrabbled up the rubble, right through the hole in the ground floor. One of them carried a large, clear plastic evidence bag. Inside I saw what looked like a long knife.

  “That’s it,” said Lynch as he walked past me.

  I held out a hand for one of the crime scene techs, he took it and I helped pull him up the last few feet of bricks until he came back to ground level.

  “What did you see down there? Lynch said something about blood,” I said.

  The tech was sweating in his suit, and I’d turned away from him. I was within the crime scene boundary and nobody was throwing me out, not yet. My best guess was they were all too excited and probably got me mixed up with some of the engineers who were making sure what areas of the scene were safe to enter.

  I could feel the tech looking at me, and I handed him a half-full bottle of water.

  “Thanks,” he said. “No body, but we got the next best thing – blood spatter on the walls. Looks like a lot of blood, probably from a major artery. She died down there. Nobody could’ve survived. We got enough blood from the wall for a field test. It tested positive for Caroline’s blood type. And we’ve got what looks like the murder weapon,” said the tech.

  “Since when did this become a murder investigation?” I said.

  “Since Howell faked the drop, stole ten million and tried to blow up the crime scene to hide the evidence,” said the tech.

  I spun around and began sprinting toward Howell.

  Agent Lynch, and a couple of feds who I didn’t know by name had almost reached the broken fence that Howell sat upon. They broke the news, and caught him as he doubled over, the scream tearing out of his lungs. He went wild, arms flailing and his face a horrific contortion. His mind and body were in shock, in freefall, and panic and pain were fighting to get control over him.

  Agent Lynch didn’t give a shit. He knew Howell couldn’t hear him. The man was lost in a thick shroud of grief. It didn’t deter Lynch. I knew what was coming.

  Lynch raised his voice, almost shouting over Howell’s cries. Loud enough for me to hear.

  “Mr Howell, we made a call to your insurers after last night. The ransom was ten million dollars. We only got two. Mr Howell, I have no choice, you’re under arrest for the murder of your daughter, Caroline Howell. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney …”

  I was ten feet away when it happened. One of the FBI men spun Howell to cuff him. Lynch and the other fed stood a few feet away, watching, with Lynch rhyming off Howell’s Miranda rights.

  Howell kept turning, he leaned into the spin and caught the fed with an elbow, sending him sprawling to the dirt. He came a full 360 and faced Lynch and the other agent.

  Five feet away, and my lungs were drowning in gunk, my breath gone.

  Somehow, I knew what Howell was going to do. I could see him spiraling.

  A noise escaped from his throat; a raw, primal howl.

  He reached behind his back.

  Three feet away.

  His hand came away with a gun. Lynch and the other fed dropped a little in their stance and made a move for their weapons.

  But Howell was no threat to them.

  The gun in Howell’s right hand arced sideways, and then up, his bicep curling, his wrist turning the barrel toward the side of his head.

  My shoulder hit him in the stomach and a shot rang out.

  We both went sprawling to the dirt.

  His gun landed beside me.

  I scrambled to my knees, and saw him lying in the dirt, crying. Alive and unharmed. The shot went over his head. He was immediately flipped over by strong hands. His arms pinned behind his back and cuffed.

  There are many ways to spot a liar. Emotion is real, it can’t be faked. Love is real. Hate is real. Pain is more real than any of them. I knew what it was to be in pain. And I could taste that in the air around Howell. Losing a child is the wound that can never heal – that remains open and bleeding – always.

  Pain was truth.

  And that was good enough for me.

  “My client has no comment to make at this time,” I said.

  Time.

  Howell needed time to calm down. To think. To figure this out.

  But time could be cruel. Time, it seemed, remembered all of your promises, even if you didn’t. If the FBI was right, Caroline Howell was murdered in the basement of her own home.

  Standing twenty feet away, I saw Agent Harper. We held each other’s eyes, and then she turned away. No glory in this arrest. No victory. Right then I had a feeling Agent Harper and I believed the same thing: whatever happened to Caroline Howell was not at the hands of her father.

  Knowing that and proving it were two very different things.

  PART

  II

  August 2nd, 2011

  East Brother Island Hospital for the Criminally Insane, New York

  Julie Rosen never had a visitor before that day. Now two men had come to see her. The orderly took her arm and led her to the visitor’s rooms while Julie shuffled slowly beside him, holding on to her drip for support.

  Two guests waiting for her. Today was a good day.

  They sat together, all three, in the family room overlooking the adjacent Rikers Island. For a long time Julie sat in silence. She wished she’d brought her hair clip. Every time a lock of hair fell over the left side of her face she carefully and quickly brushed it behind her ear. People didn’t like seeing the scar tissue on the side of her head and she was careful to hide it with her long brown hair. Similarly, Julie always wore long-sleeve tops, to hide the burns. The tall man got up and stood at the window – watching the patterns of geese in the pale sky.

  She was glad he’d moved away. The tall one frightened her. She thought his face was somehow wrong.

  The other man sucked at a popsicle and said nothing. He’d brought one for Julie. Cherry flavor. Her favorite. He told her they sold candy bars, slushies and ice creams in the visitor�
��s center. She thanked him and said she would save it for later. They sat, Julie talked. This man, this soft man, this gentle man. Julie liked him but she did not know why. Her medicine made her mind a little muddled sometimes. She told the man many things. She spoke of her fear that the hospital would close before she died. That would be the worst thing that could happen. Julie might not like her room in the new hospital. It would be different. It wouldn’t be the same. This new room would have new corners, new shadows. And old things might grow in those shadows.

  Merely thinking of it frightened her. The doctor had told Julie she should not dwell on anything that frightened her, or upset her. When she did, the orderlies came and tied her down, then pricked her skin to make her sleep.

  The man removed the last of the frozen ice from the stick with his pale lips.

  He took her hand in his and whispered to her.

  “You sent me the letter,” he said.

  And she remembered. Two months ago, a letter had arrived for Julie. At first, she thought it strange, meaningless. But slowly, the words trickled into her mind. The dense, elegant, black script had woven itself through the damaged neural pathways, unlocking doors, and releasing dark misshapen figures. Demons that haunted Julie in her sleep. Only then did Julie realize these figures were not imagined – they were remembered.

  And then, in the cold silence of her room, with the letter in her hands, she remembered it all. She had sent the letter to the gentle man. And now he had come.

  And he had brought the memory roaring back, again. At once she knew all that she had lost. It was too much. Too much for anyone to lose, all over again, in the space of a breath. She saw the dark man in the nursery, smelled the gasoline, and felt heat from those terrible flames. But she’d learned not to trust memory. There were ghosts in her head and they made some things – strange. She had just taken a hit before it all happened. At least she remembered that much. What images of the day that remained were foggy. Misted in the smoke from a crack pipe, and the cloud of blood from a head wound.