The Liar

by Steve Cavanagh

  “And you don’t know if Julie and Rebecca had a fight, or a falling out?”

  “I’m not sure. Becca told me Scott was Emily’s father. But even so, she didn’t want him around. Maybe they fought over that? I don’t know for sure. She didn’t like to talk about it. Is Scott the man who took Caroline?” said Howell.

  “I think so. We’re working on it. Scott Barker seems to think you need to confess something to him. Any idea what that might be?”

  He shook his head.

  We talked for a couple more minutes, until the drowsiness overcame him. And then, quietly, we left the room.

  “We’re due back to court in an hour,” said Harper, as we left the hospital, headed for the car.

  Something was eating at the back of my mind. I was so close to this, I thought that now and again I caught glimpses of the truth, but then those ideas drifted away. Time was almost up.

  The drive to the courthouse took no time at all. I could tell Harper and Harry were just as tired as I felt; their feet dragged along the sidewalk as we made for the courthouse entrance. Most of the building was in darkness and the lobby lights were only half lit. Lynch waited at the doors, his arms folded and a scowl on his face.

  I stopped dead. Harry and Harper shuffled on another few feet before they both realized I was no longer keeping in time with their steps.

  They turned toward me.

  Something Howell had said was somersaulting through my brain on a loop.

  The cloud in my mind was beginning to clear, at last. I had a theory. One that made sense of all of this. But I needed evidence – something to show Scott Barker.

  “I think I know what’s happened. Caroline is alive. I can find out exactly where she is but I need a few things first,” I said, tossing my car keys to Harper.

  “Get your best tech to go and find my car. Hopefully they can do something with that shirt.”

  “What shirt?” said Harper.

  “My shirt. The one in my trunk that’s covered in Lenny Howell’s blood. But that’s not all. I’m going need some paperwork and time alone with the tech.”

  “What is it?” said Harry.

  “I don’t know exactly – it’s just a theory, for now.”

  “And how is all of that going to tell you where Caroline is being held?” said Harper.

  “It won’t. It’s ammunition. Once I have those documents, and the results back on my shirt, I’m going to question Scott Barker. If he wants a confession, I’ll give him one. Then I’m going to hear his.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  I folded the pages away in a manila file. Rebecca’s medical records contained very little in relation to mental illness, or depression. She’d changed physicians in 2002, and her new doctor thought she might have post-natal depression. Rebecca told the doc, some years later, there were “bonding issues” between her daughter and her. There were no further records on this – just a prescription for anti-anxiety meds that was not repeated. I’d read the file in twenty minutes, cover to cover. I took it to the defense table in court one, and sat quietly reading it again before anyone came in. Only when I closed it, placed my hands on top and shut my eyes did I know for certain what had happened all those years ago. There weren’t many pages in the file that were relevant. It felt thin and insubstantial. Yet it would have to do. I kept telling myself I had enough. There were bullets in that file that I could shoot at Barker. Some would miss. Some would hurt. But none of them were enough on their own.

  Over the last ten minutes, as the judge, jury, and the witness came into court, I’d been trying to order my questions. What would I open with? What should I hold back?

  I became conscious of my breathing. Deliberately, I slowed everything down. Let my heart rate drop, my chest slow, in the hope it would help to stop the tornado of information and questions in my mind.

  It helped. For about two seconds.

  My eyes snapped open and I saw that every single person in the courtroom was silent and looking at me. Judge Schultz was tapping a pen on her desk. My opponent, Michelle King, mouthed “Good luck” silently. In that moment, we almost ceased to be opposing counsel. King had let a wrecking machine into the courtroom, and somehow, if Caroline Howell was found alive, at least King would know that this mess had amounted to something good. This was beyond a case now.

  This was life or death.

  The others wore worried faces. Captain Powers, Lieutenant Groves and Harry looked at me like I was about to take control of a plane locked in a terrible nosedive toward the ocean. Only Harper held up her chin and had hope in her eyes.

  I thought I would have more ammunition. Something to break Scott Barker.

  Standing, I told myself that I would have to make do with the cards I’d been dealt. Someone on the jury coughed, but I didn’t look at them. The jury didn’t matter now – they were just props for show. There was no one else in the courtroom apart from the key players and King’s assistant. No press, no audience. Just us.

  The room felt strangely empty.

  I looked at Scott Barker, silent and still in the witness stand, and I thought about my father. He played cards on an amateur level. He never won big, but he never lost either. One night, sitting on a bar stool in MacGonegal’s I asked him how he always got so lucky at poker.

  “Luck has no part in it. It’s not about the high cards, son. Any hand can be a winning hand. Doesn’t matter if it’s the best hand at the table or the worst. It’s all about how you play it.”

  My father thought card cheats were the lowest of the low. He never cheated at cards his whole life. Not once. He played the game.

  Now it was my turn. Except I didn’t have a full deck.

  So I figured it was okay to cheat.

  Before I opened my mouth, I paused and looked again at Harper sitting in the row behind me, right beside Harry.

  Harper whispered, “A chopper’s standing by. Good luck.”

  I nodded. Everything we’d discussed was ready. I just hoped I got something out of Barker that we could use.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Scott Barker had loosened his tie and lost the suit jacket, but other than that he looked well. No fear. No doubt. His face was a marble god in a museum; solid stone. Motionless. Dead. And yet his eyes were full of life and hate, and they reflected the inferno inside him. He didn’t look at me. Just stared straight ahead.

  “I have some questions for you,” I said.

  Still without making eye contact, Barker said, “It was your client I wanted to see. Not you. Bring him to me and I’ll hear his confession. It’s the only way to save his daughter.”

  I didn’t acknowledge him. The first move was key. Whoever came out on top would likely dominate and determine the outcome. I needed that person to be me, but I couldn’t show it.

  “My client tried to take his own life. He’s in the hospital. Stable but critical. And he’s in a coma. There is no way to talk to him. You have to talk to me,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “Can I ask you some questions?” I said.

  His face became empty again. Shutting down. He had said his piece. There would be no more talk.

  “I can give you my client’s confession,” I said.

  Nothing.

  “The way I see it, we can help each other. I want to know where you’re holding Caroline Howell. You want to know, for sure, what happened all those years ago with Julie and the baby. And the man in black.”

  His eyes remained still. Like twin pearls of glass in a doll’s face.

  “You have other questions too. I can help you,” I said.

  A flicker at the corner of his mouth.

  “You’re probably thinking that I’m bluffing. You’re wrong. I’ll play. How’s this to start?”

  I removed a single page from the file. It came in via FBI request. Old records from the Department of Corrections.

  Holding up the page I said, “The last time you saw Julie Rosen alive was Augus
t 2nd, 2011. Not long before she passed away.”

  Instantly his head came up and those blue orbs of his locked on to my face.

  “The visitors log for Julie Rosen, patient of East Brother Island Hospital, only has one entry. Two names. Two visitors. Two false identities – Alan Marsh and Tom Bell. One of them was you, wasn’t it?”

  He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

  “Julie wrote to you. You came to see her. During her trial, you watched from the sidelines. You didn’t support her when she was facing a murder charge because you thought she’d murdered her child. Your child. But she wrote to you in 2011 and told you otherwise. This letter was recorded. One piece of correspondence mailed to Scott Barker, at a PO Box in Jersey?”

  No answer. But this was no longer a criminal trial. Judge Schultz was giving me any kind of leverage I needed. I could see it in the way she leaned forward – she wasn’t going to interrupt, neither was King – they were both willing the truth to emerge by any means.

  “You came to see Julie under a false name. You came because something in that letter changed your mind about Julie’s guilt?”

  He nodded.

  “Julie’s memory was shot to hell from a head injury. She didn’t just suddenly remember exactly what had really happened, did she?”

  Barker had one thing going for him – his patience. He’d sat in his web for years before he’d struck. Caroline didn’t have time.

  “You don’t want a confession. You want to know the truth because Julie couldn’t give it to you,” I said.

  “No,” he said. The answers were coming and I didn’t dare stop. I needed this man to open up and talk.

  “You want answers, Scott. I’ve got them all. You just need to talk to me about Julie. She got a letter from her sister, Rebecca Howell. Right before Rebecca drove through a crash barrier on a mountain road, right?”

  He hesitated. This was not what he’d planned. He wanted Howell on his knees. He wanted to enjoy that power. I couldn’t give it to him. So I had to sell him something else.

  “The letter, it was Rebecca’s confession, wasn’t it?”

  Barker’s breathing quickened. He’d been planning this for so long. I knew he wanted to talk, he needed to talk.

  “Let’s give the court Howell’s confession together,” I said.

  “It was all Rebecca’s fault,” he said. “She admitted that she thought Julie was an unfit mother. And she wanted to take the child, my child, away.”

  I removed a photocopy of the letter that was found in Barker’s apartment and read it aloud.

  “Julie,

  I made a mistake. I thought I could trust you. You promised me and you lied. But you were right, I’m not a good mother. I’m sorry for what I did. I hope you are too.

  Goodbye,

  Becca.”

  “Julie wasn’t lying about the man in black, was she?”

  “No, she wasn’t. It was Howell. He murdered my child. Burned her to death as she slept. I want him to know what that feels like,” said Barker.

  “You’re wrong. Julie got it wrong too. Or haven’t you figured that out yet?” I said.

  He was on the line: hooked into this story. He leaned forward slightly.

  “Julie got a blow to the head, she was high, disoriented – fighting for her life. It wasn’t a man in black – it was a woman,” I said.

  Barker’s jawline tightened, his eyes narrowed.

  “Rebecca dressed in black and came into the house with her spare key. She was going to take Emily and burn down the house, so no one would know the child had been taken. People would believe that junkie Julie got high and torched the house. No witnesses, no one would come looking for the baby. That was the plan,” I said.

  Barker’s cheeks reddened, and he gave his response fast. “She was in on it with her husband. Howell has to pay for what he did. Julie disturbed him, and my daughter paid for it with her life. He kept silent when Julie was convicted. He knew his wife had caused all of this and he did nothing.”

  “Leonard Howell didn’t know anything about the fire. Records show he was on active duty at the time in Afghanistan. You’ve got this all wrong, Scott,” I said.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  The air smelled stale. I knew there were around twenty other people in the courtroom; ADAs, cops, feds, all watching and listening with great intensity, but it didn’t feel like it.

  It was just me and him.

  There was something new about Barker. Ever since he’d thrown off the act, I found it hard to look at his face. Occasionally, I thought I could see George, but then the cold, hard edge drew itself back into his features. But since I’d mentioned Julie, there was some kind of tension and anxiety at work deep inside Barker. His fingers seemed to tremble slightly, until he noticed and corrected the problem by locking them together; and the dead stare had an aspect of hope in its lost, lingering shine.

  I shook my head and said, “You’ve been playing a game for five years. Plotting out the perfect kidnap, the perfect frame-up. Rebecca Howell was already dead, so you wanted Leonard Howell to go through exactly what Julie went through – a murder trial for a child they did not kill. But you don’t know the whole truth. You tell me where Caroline is, who is holding her and how we get her out, and I’ll tell you what Julie kept from you.”

  “She kept nothing from me. She told me she remembered. When she hit her head, it all became twisted, but the letter made her remember the way it really happened. I need your client to admit it. Otherwise, all of his suffering, all of Caroline’s pain, all of this was for nothing.”

  “That girl has suffered enough. We don’t have time for—”

  “Trust me, there’s time. Time still to save her,” said Barker.

  “I’m not saying Julie lied to you. Julie has been acquitted. Her memory has no stain upon it now. But there are things that Rebecca and Julie kept secret and which I’m sure Julie forgot. I can tell you but you have to tell me where Caroline is. What do you say?”

  “Julie told me everything,” he said.

  “She didn’t tell you it was her sister in her house, dressed in black. She didn’t tell you Emily’s secret,” I said.

  He gripped the armrest, turned away from me and looked at the ceiling. The anger, the pain running through Barker was clear on every inch of his face.

  “Tell me where Caroline is, and I’ll tell you about Emily,” I said.

  Barker hadn’t planned for this. His eyes darted around the room, his face contorted in indecision. For a long time, he said nothing. He wrestled with it. I didn’t dare push him.

  He finally turned toward me, “Tell me about Emily first,” he said.

  I stayed quiet for a long minute. As did Barker. I needed to make it look like I was sizing him up – making my judgment call. The truth was that I needed him to believe that I was reluctant to tell the story. That he’d made a small victory.

  It was time to play the first card. I leaned over, flipped open the file and brought out a single document. I placed it on the table, swiveled it around and slid it toward Barker. He glanced at it. He’d seen it before. He knew exactly what it was and what it said. Emily Rosen’s birth certificate.

  “Your name is not recorded beside the entry for ‘Father’, why not?”

  “Julie and I discussed it. My line of work at the time was – risky. I wouldn’t have wanted it recorded that I was a father. Certain people could use that against me.”

  “Sounds as if keeping your name off the record was a good decision. But it wasn’t your decision, right?”

  “Julie wanted it blank. Said she needed time to think. I had to go away on a long job and thanks to Howell we never got around to it.”

  “So I’m right. It was Julie’s idea in the first place.”

  I got no reaction to this. Cold, detached, Barker listened with no expression on his face. That was okay. For now, all I needed was him to believe that I knew what I was talking about. Layering fact upon fact. He knew it all to be true. />
  My one hope of finding Caroline alive rested on this man believing every word I said.

  Picking the file up off the floor, I put it on the desk, selected the next single page and handed it over. As he read it, I readied another document. This one was three pages long. I couldn’t show this to him yet. I needed him to read the first page. Study it. Then hit him with the second document.

  He looked at the first page closely. I knew this was something he hadn’t seen before. The skin around his eyes curled into deep wrinkles.

  “This is Julie’s last bank statement. The FBI got it for me a few minutes ago. This records deposits into Julie’s account. August 2001 – ten thousand dollars. June 2002, same week that Emily is born – another ten thousand.”

  “So?”

  “The deposits were made by Rebecca Howell.”

  “I met up with Julie again in around June 2001. A couple months later she moved upstate into a cottage her sister rented for her. She mentioned Rebecca helped set her up after rehab. What has this got to do with anything?”

  Another card. Another single page document – this time from Rebecca Howell’s records.

  He read it with a confused expression, threw it aside.

  “This is a report from Rebecca Howell’s obstetrician. It confirms that due to cell damage – Rebecca Howell could not conceive naturally.”

  “I think I remember this. Julie talked about her sister’s miracle pregnancy. Her sister had been trying for a child for a long time. Guess they got lucky,” he said.

  “No, they didn’t,” I said and handed him a two-page report and attached photograph. The report had been prepared by the FBI lab in Manhattan within the last hour.

  “Leonard Howell is no angel, Scott. But he loves Caroline. Loves her more than you will ever know. His devotion to his child is something that you could never have.”

  His nostrils flared. I was standing on a nerve here. Deliberately. It was Barker’s messed up emotions of loss, love, revenge and hate that had driven him to these extremes. This was a man who would kill for love. These were the emotions I needed to play upon.