Lies She Told

by Cate Holahan

  “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” Spittle hits my face as he screams the question. My bare heels leave the hardwood. He’s lifting me to his level so that there’s no escape, no choice but to witness the pain twisting his features. “Did you think I wouldn’t read it?”

  I feel my lips part, my jaw drop, but his sheer volume silences me. My tongue fails to swell into any discernible syllable. The thick muscle hides behind my teeth, a snail cowering in its shell. His grip loosens enough for my feet to again feel the floor. “Answer me.” He whispers this time, the hiss of a kettle before the boil.

  His question doesn’t make sense. What is he accusing me of? Has his guilt-riddled brain erased his memory of the murder? Has he convinced himself that I’m somehow to blame?

  “I didn’t do anything.” Tears drown my words.

  His blue eyes burn with an insane intensity, like the hottest part of a flame. His crime has driven him mad. In his warped mind, I’m the villain. My denial is expected. Criminals don’t confess to the executioner. They invent alibis. Plead for mercy. I should be begging. I made a grave mistake coming here.

  “Why, Liza? Tell me why he had to die.” His speech is measured. I wish he would swear, call me names. This focused fury is worse than a fit of anger. If he were out of control, I could calm him down, negotiate, maybe even convince him that everything has been a misunderstanding. He is the murderer, not me. But he’s resolved. His questions are rhetorical. The gun is on the dining table.

  “Please.” Sobs fold me in half. I press my hand to the wall, seeking leverage to stand.

  He yanks my arm, forcing me from the corner. My knee slams against the jutting edge of the bed as he pulls me toward the oak writing desk and open laptop. The offending document lies on the screen. I’m pushed down into the desk chair and rolled forward.

  “You expect me to believe this is a coincidence?” His index finger jabs at the monitor.

  I recognize the structure of the paragraphs. Sentence-filled scenes followed by short bits of spaced dialogue. This is my book. David must have searched through my e-mail and found my story. He has my passwords. He knows I send myself copies. But why would he care about my novel?

  The realization hits me like a gut punch. He’s read my story and convinced himself that it’s a retelling of my crime.

  “It’s a story,” I plead. “It’s only a story.”

  Though I catch the hand in my peripheral vision, I can’t calculate the trajectory fast enough. It lands on his laptop, flinging it across the desk and onto the floor. Metal parts rattle. The bottom panel breaks off and skitters across the hardwood with the screech of an oncoming subway car.

  “Liar.” He turns my chair, wresting my attention from the ruined computer. A fist rises toward my face. He’s been building up to this. I shut my eyes. “You’re a fucking liar.”

  I don’t protest. He’s right. Blurring fact and fantasy is my trade. I am a con artist. A prevaricator. I make up stories. So why does he think this one is real?

  The chair careens backward, smashing into the side of the bed. “You’re going to pay for what you did to him.” Tears tracks stain his cheeks. He wipes them away with the back of his arm. “I’m going straight to the cops.”

  He storms from the room. My gun is out there. He will tell police that I brought him the murder weapon, intending to admit to my crime. He may even believe it.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I shout as I follow him. “Please, just wait a minute. Let’s talk about this. Why would I kill Nick?”

  He stops in the hall, right before it opens up into the main space. Dining area on the left, kitchen on the right. He can get to the front door through either the kitchen or the living room. He can only get to my gun if he chooses left.

  “Why?” He whirls to face me. “To keep me! You thought I’d stay closeted if he was gone.”

  “That’s not true. I didn’t know you were gay. I didn’t even know Nick was gay.” I approach him and touch his arm. “Please. Think for a moment.”

  He recoils from my hand as though it’s coated in Nick’s blood. “Why are you still lying? I read the book. You saw us at the restaurant. I know—”

  “It was just dinner, David. Just a made-up dinner at a made-up restaurant. I never saw you and Nick.” I slip past him, stride into the dining room, and stand in front of the glass table, positioning my body to block the gun. I wasn’t expecting David to be in denial. I can’t show him the murder weapon until he is ready to accept responsibility.

  He is watching my face, scowling at me rather than looking at the table.

  “It was Italian.”

  “Half of the restaurants in the city are Italian.”

  “No!” David screams the word. “The river? The fact that he was shot? Bludgeoned? You . . . you did it. You . . . It can’t all be coincidence.”

  A warm breeze brushes my back. The French doors are cracked to circulate the air in the stuffy apartment. I debate throwing them open, screaming for help. I can’t trust David to listen to reason in this state, to not hurt me.

  “I knew that you were looking for Nick and that the police were searching the river,” I explain. “That was in my head while I was writing. That’s why the body ended up in there in my story.”

  “No.” David shakes his head as he advances toward me. I see the doubt in his eyes, though. He wants me to convince him of my innocence as much as I’d wanted him to tell me he hadn’t meant to frame me.

  “What about your gun?” he asks.

  I step to the side, revealing the weapon on the table. “I found it buried at the house.” I speak slowly, watching David’s eyes open wider with every word. “You hid it in the same place that I got rid of the weapon in Drowned Secrets.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “David, I didn’t kill Nick. Don’t you see? You must have done it.”

  “No. You’re crazy.”

  “I guess you took my gun because you were concerned going into Nick’s bad neighborhood and—”

  “No.” His voice is louder now.

  “You and Nick got into a fight and you were already conflicted about coming out. Maybe he threatened to tell me or he said he’d leave if you didn’t choose him. I don’t know. Maybe he broke up with you for not asking for a divorce fast enough.”

  His lips pull in and press together. He shakes his head.

  “You must have shot him, David. It’s the only explanation.”

  “No.” He lunges at me and grasps my arms. “Stop it.” A vein pops from between his eyebrows. His face is red with blood and fury. “I am not crazy. I did not kill Nick. I loved him. I loved him! I did not kill Nick.”

  Every word feels like a punch to the back of my head. He keeps holding my arms, screaming into my face. “I loved Nick. I loved him!” Suddenly, he releases me and grabs the gun off the table. He aims it, point blank, at my chest. “You lying bitch. You did it. You!”

  The sight of the gun barrel between my breasts spurs an animalistic flight response. Before I realize it, I am running. Blood rushes to my extremities as I round the table and backtrack from David toward the balcony doors. My hand flails as I reach for the knob and throw it open.

  I step onto the one-foot balcony. Wind takes my hair and twirls it around my neck, whips it in my face. For a moment, I consider letting it take me, falling backward and floating on air, far away from this mess of a life.

  “You could have left us,” David shouts over the rush of the wind and traffic below. “We would have been happy.”

  He flings open the other French door so it crashes against the apartment wall with a bang. The gun is in his right hand, braced by his left. He raises it at my head.

  “Please, David. I didn’t know anything about you and Nick,” I scream. “You buried the gun. But I won’t tell anyone. I didn’t come here to urge you to turn yourself in. I came for the tru—”

  A click interrupts my pleading. David stands in front of me in the doorway, finger on the
trigger. He takes another step out onto the balcony and raises the gun to my eye level. Again, he aims and presses. Blood rushes to my head, sharp and painful as a brain freeze. I wince and hear another click, like snapped fingers only softer.

  In my mind’s eye, I see myself throwing the magazine into the hole. I remember clearing the chamber and tossing the round into the dirt. I had brought an empty gun to confront David. Not a loaded weapon.

  “You tried to shoot me.” A hot rage rushes through my veins, burning through my muscles and shaking my limbs. “You tried to kill me.”

  David’s blinks at me, shocked that I am still breathing, that the gun in his hands is as deadly as a toy. “You’re a murderer,” he says.

  Fight replaces my flight instinct. I fling myself at him, determined to rip the gun from his fingers, to tear the flesh off his body. After everything that I was willing to forgive, he tried to kill me.

  There is no control. No rational voice cautioning me to go back inside, to call the police. There are only fists and flailing. Fury, as powerful as a mother’s hormonal instincts, ignites inside me, incinerating all the feelings I have or ever had for my husband. I am blind with it. I barely see David’s forearms rise to his face to block my blows or his back press against the railing as I slam my weight into his chest. I see his mouth make shapes of yelling, but I can’t make out the words. It is as though a bomb went off beside me. I hear a high-pitched whine and my own internal monologue: He cannot pin Nick’s murder on me. He will not do this to me. I would rather die. I would rather them both die, Beth says.

  I shove both my fists into David’s neck. His head snaps back, then his torso. I step back and watch his upper body disappear over the side of the railing as though he were a gymnast executing a back bend. His legs rise. His feet kick out toward me, threatening my stomach. I jump back to protect my belly.

  There is a scream, too high to be David’s voice, followed by a crunching sound. A car alarm. Shouts to call 9-1-1.

  I lean forward from the doorway to peer down to the street below. David lies atop a parked car, below our balcony. His legs and arms are spread away from his body. His face looks up at me, forehead sunken from his skull exploding against the SUV below.

  I stumble from the doorway and fall to my knees. I did that to my husband. David was right. I am a murderer.

  Within minutes, the doorman is outside, announcing that the police will be coming in. I am ready for them, sitting on the couch, twisting a tissue between my hands. The tears I expect haven’t come. A cool detachment has descended over me.

  The police demand that I stand up, raise my hands. I tell them that my missing gun is on the balcony. My husband, I explain, murdered his boyfriend and hid the weapon at my mother’s house. When I stumbled upon it and confronted him, he tried to shoot me and then throw me off the balcony. We fought. He fell.

  They take me to the police station, where I sit on a gray metal stool beside a gray table in a windowless gray room and repeat my story a dozen times. Detective Campos and his buddies want every detail. When did David tell me about the affair? (After his arrest.) How long had he and Nick been seeing each other? (At least since Nick sent that note that the police found, maybe longer.) What was their relationship like? (Best friends turned lovers, apparently.) Did David want to be with Nick? (Yes.) Did Nick want to be with David? (I don’t know.) Was I upset about the affair? (Of course. Wouldn’t you be?)

  On and on for hours, I provide monotonous responses to their questions. They take impressions of my fingerprints and pictures of my bruised arms where David had grabbed me in the bedroom. Everything is done “to rule me out.” I’m no fool. I know David’s death has made me even more of a suspect in Nick’s murder. I don’t care. My head hurts. I want to go home.

  “When can I leave?” I ask.

  Detective Campos brushes a hand over his thick dark hair. It’s so black that it’s nearly reflective under the bright fluorescent bulbs in the airless interrogation room. I’ve had so long to take in the details of the detective that I’ve committed his face to memory. He could be a character in my next book.

  His lips press into a condescending smile. I’m frustrating him. All this questioning and my story hasn’t changed. It’s almost as if I’m telling the truth.

  “Just a few more facts to nail down,” he says. “What was Nick’s note to David written on again?”

  He is trying to trick me by implying that I told him already. “I don’t know. I never saw it.”

  “Care to venture a guess?” He shrugs, as though the prize for the right answer isn’t a life sentence. “Legal stationary. Parchment paper.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “A receipt?” he asks.

  The memory floods my mind as though I’ve been plunged under water. Suddenly, it’s all around me, all I can see: a small piece of paper in my palm, dog eared and crumpled like it has been read, folded, and reread many times. On the front is a bill for $150 from an Italian restaurant where David took me on an anniversary. On the back is Nick’s tight cursive: “David, I love you. I always have. I admit that now. —Yours always, Nicholas.”

  I hear the detective call my name, but he sounds far away as though he’s shouting for me on the surface and I am a diver, observing the depths. There is no going back for me now.

  I am on a dark street in Brooklyn, gazing up at a lit multipaned window. Nick stands naked in front of it, flaunting his petite frame to the empty street. My senses are heightened. I smell the fetid river behind me. The disturbed earth of the construction site. I feel the hard metal of my gun through the leather bag pressed against my sternum. One thought races through my head: David is my husband and the future father of my child. I will not let Nicholas take him from me.

  “Liza? Liza!”

  The detective stands over me. I am no longer in the chair but on the cold tile floor. My brain feels as though I’ve been in a head-on collision. The world around me is painted in chiaroscuro, highlighted by shadows.

  The detective helps me sit up and scoot back against the wall. “Are you all right?”

  “The hormones.” My voice sounds robotic.

  “What?”

  The needles pulse beneath my skin, pumping their poison into my blood stream, into my brain. Suppressing my impulse control. Sublimating my frustrated desire to procreate into violent action. Stripping me of empathy, of love.

  I dig my nails into the implant site and start scratching, tearing, screaming in pain as I try to cut deeper into my flesh with my blunt claws. “The hormones. I need them out. Get them out of me. Get them out of me. Out. Out!”

  Blood and flesh mix with the dirt beneath my nails. They are just a little farther down. I need a knife. I have my teeth.

  As I bend my mouth to my arm, hands wrap around me. They yank my limbs back, hold my head. I think someone calls for a medic. The number 10-96 is shouted over and over. I barely hear it above my screaming as I try to wrest away from the officers and go for my bicep.

  I am lifted and strapped onto a gurney. Belts restrain my arms and tie down my legs. As I writhe on the bed, begging for someone to remove the needles, a doctor jams something sharp into my thigh. My eyelashes descend, a fuzzy screen that blurs the images of the uniforms around me. Then everything goes black.

  *

  I wake in a hospital bed in a strange room barely big enough for the bed and the person slumped in the chair beside it. My vision is hazy from the dimmed fluorescents and whatever drugs I’ve been given. Painkillers, probably. I don’t feel a raw burning in my scraped arm or throbbing in my head. I don’t feel sad or anxious, despite the stranger in the chair.

  I squint at my visitor’s arm, expecting to see a blue shirt and a policeman’s badge. Instead, I see a fuzzy navy pullover and a lock of long red hair.

  “Chris?” My voice crackles like it’s coming from an ancient two-way radio.

  She murmurs something, still asleep. I’ve no idea of the time. The window to my right is covered wit
h a blue film that turns day into evening. It could be five. Could be eight. I scoot up to see better and am surprised to find that I can use my hands for leverage. They are not tied to the bed post as they had been when I got here. I remember how I got here.

  “Chris.” My voice cracks as I increase my volume.

  She opens her eyes slowly and turns to me. “Hey, Lizzie.” Her mouth curls in a sad smile. “You’re up.”

  “How long was I out?”

  She glances behind her at the window and then, realizing it doesn’t hold any clues, looks at a phone on her lap. “It’s four. I guess about a day.”

  She points to my left arm. My bicep is wrapped in thick gauze. I wince as I recall clawing my skin. “You would have been up sooner, but the doctors decided that the hormones were making you hysterical so they removed them. I think the painkillers coupled with whatever they gave you at the police station made you sleep longer.”

  “Have you been here the whole time?”

  She gives me a weak smile. “David’s death made the news. I came as soon as I heard. The freaking police didn’t want to tell me which hospital you were sent to at first. But I called George. My ex is good for something. He phoned one of the prosecutors he used to work with when he was here, and that guy must have lit a fire under someone, because next thing I knew, the police were offering me a ride.”

  “Thanks.” I force a smile. “Calling George was going above and beyond.”

  She wrinkles her nose. “He’s not all bad, I guess. Emma’s having a great time in the wilderness. Apparently, there’s cell service.” She stands and glances at the open door and the light on in the hallway. Soft voices and monitors whir beyond. “They won’t let me close it.”

  Chris walks toward the top of my bed, squeezing her body in the small space between the mattress and the wall. I press the button to raise the back so I can see her at a better angle. Bags weigh down her eyes. I’m better rested than she is at the moment.