Gathering Lies

by Meg O'Brien

  Not likely, I thought. And in cold, hard point of fact, I was worried sick about Kim. I hoped that wherever she was, she was not with Gabe.

  17

  “So, what the hell happened here?” Luke asked me, after a moment.

  “I told you, I don’t know. I didn’t even know Angel was here.”

  “Not that. What were you doing out here in the woods? Timmy said you were checking out Gabe’s cabin.”

  “I did.”

  “Then, I repeat—what were you doing out here? This was the wrong direction to go in if you were heading back to Thornberry.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it!” I snapped. “Not right now. For God’s sake, Luke, Angel was my friend. I still can’t even believe that’s her down there.”

  “Well, then, let’s think about it. Maybe she came here because she wanted to talk to you?”

  “No. She could have called me. At least, before the quake.”

  “Maybe what she had to say to you was too important to say over the phone.”

  “I guess that’s possible. If her own phone was tapped, maybe, or—”

  “Or what?”

  “If she suspected the Thornberry phone might be tapped.”

  I looked at Luke. Why should I figure this out with him? Why should I trust him any more now than I had before all this happened?

  Because you saw Gabe that way with Kim. And you can’t trust him, now. You can’t even trust what he told you about Luke.

  The whole world was at a tilt. Angel was lying in a cold, damp grave on Esme Island, and I didn’t know where to turn next. Or who it was safe to turn to. I wanted to exonerate myself from the guilt I felt over her death, but couldn’t.

  “I need to get her buried,” I said. “I don’t want her there in the open, like…like Jane.”

  With that, I couldn’t help it. I burst into tears.

  Luke said, “Oh, God, Sarah,” and put his arms around me. “I’m so sorry.” He held me until I regained some control, then patted my shoulders and wiped my tears away with his thumb.

  “C’mon, let’s get started,” he said. “It won’t take long.”

  Kneeling, we shoveled the loose dirt back onto Angel with our bare hands. This, I believe, is the moment when I lost all hope. Tears streamed down my cheeks, and though I tried to murmur prayers, I no longer believed they would be answered. There was an evil on this island, a madman—or woman—walking amongst us, and nothing made sense anymore.

  Halfway through, I sat back on my heels and faced Luke. “Did you do this?” I asked, my voice harsh and unnatural, my hands hanging loosely at my sides.

  “If you did, you have to tell me. Just tell me, for God’s sake! Don’t leave me wondering. And if I’m next, get it over with. You can bury me right here, bury me with Angel—”

  Tears filled my eyes again, and I let them run down my face unchecked. There had been too much. Too many deaths, too many quakes and aftershocks—so many that all the shocks, both physical and emotional, seemed to blend together now.

  Luke’s eyes met mine, and I did my best to see if he lied, but found nothing but sympathy there.

  “I swear to you, Sarah, I did not kill your friend. And I didn’t kill Jane. I don’t know how to make you believe that.”

  “Well, I do,” I said angrily. “Tell me what you and Grace have been up to. If you won’t tell me, how can I believe anything you say? Look, I know you’re here because of me. That’s obvious. All those questions about what evidence I’ve got against the Five, the fact that your father is involved—”

  I stopped myself midsentence, wondering belatedly if I’d said too much.

  Luke sighed. “Okay, Sarah. You’ve figured us out. And you’re absolutely right. My father did send us here. Further, I wish to hell it didn’t, but the truth is—this has everything to do with you.”

  “We thought we were protecting you,” he said as we sat on the ground over Angel’s grave—he on one side, I on the other. “I’m sorry, Sarah. We thought we were doing the right thing.”

  “You and your father. And Grace. You were all doing the right thing. For me.” If there was skepticism in my tone, it was nearly overwhelmed with exhaustion. I no longer had the energy to do much except listen, and it was a measure of the state I was in that I didn’t care what happened at that point.

  Angel was dead. One of the best friends I’d ever had was dead.

  The many times I hadn’t made the effort to see her or talk with her ran through my head. The Friday night she’d called me a few months ago, and pleaded with me to make the rounds of a few bars with her. She was lonely, she said, and hoping to meet a man. “It’s this damn work of mine, Sarah. It doesn’t leave me any time to do all those things they tell single women to do. Like join a church, you know? Anyway, who’d want me in their church?”

  She was wrong about that. Oh, Angel was unconventional. She liked to drink at the end of a job, and she was tough and gritty beneath that blond, blue-eyed exterior. In appropriate moments she would cuss, raise hell and, in general, let everyone within hearing know she was around. But her heart was good, and everyone who took the time to know her, loved her. They’d have been happy to have Angel in their church.

  The problem was Angel herself. She would never have been happy with the kind of man she might meet in a church, and she knew it. Her thought processes would simply never work the same way as his.

  So I could have been more of a friend. I could have gone with her that night. But I didn’t like bars—I saw them as dead ends where meeting men was concerned. Not only that, but it was dangerous to leave a bar with a man these days.

  Oh, Sarah. It was more than that. Admit it.

  So, okay. The truth is, I was too involved with Ian at the time. And Ian didn’t like me having friends. He wanted me all to himself.

  I was reminded of a book by Merle Shain. She wrote that she would never give up her friends again for a man, and the next time she married she’d take her friends along with her as a dowry.

  Why didn’t I give Angel more time? I hired her, I took the best efforts she had to offer. She was always there, ready to help. Where was I?

  I knew Luke was talking to me but I had trouble connecting. Finally his words began to filter through.

  “…This thing is much larger than my father, me or Grace,” he was saying. “Sarah, we’ve reached a point in this country where something has to be done. Everywhere you look, there’s so much rage. Road rage, on-the-job rage, people going into a rage over standing in line—whether it’s the Department of Motor Vehicles, the supermarket, the banks or college registration lines. People in the cities, at least a lot I’ve known, have come to dread going out to run errands. They know there will be lines and traffic everywhere, and they won’t be home for hours. Not only that, but you can’t get through to real people on the phone. You have to punch numbers for this, numbers for that. God, Sarah, I’ve experienced that kind of anger myself. I nearly broke my phone once, throwing it across the room.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?” I said, not really caring except to wonder, Why are you telling me this? What are you trying to convince me of?

  “I’m just saying that in a world where there are violent athletes, violent entertainers and violent rock musicians—in a world where people are hitting other people on the streets for no reason at all and children are shooting each other in schools—it’s just not surprising that there are cops who aren’t much different. There was a show on 60 Minutes that said forty percent of all police officers are guilty of violence in their own homes. Part of the problem is that applicants aren’t always screened well enough, especially when there’s a push to beef up a department with more men. Remember what happened when the World Trade Organization met in Seattle? All hell broke loose.”

  He reached down to pick up a small rock, absently brushing wet mud from it as we talked. “Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of police who are not violent at home or on the street. Most of th
em live good lives. But the rest have been worming their way into the departments, and they’re the ones who are scary. They’re the ones we have to try to stop.”

  He looked at me. “Sarah, the bad ones, no matter where they are, come out of the same milieu as the Seattle Five. They’re hired to stop crime, and they decide for themselves that it’s not important how they stop it. They make up evidence that wasn’t there, and they cover up evidence that was there. The thing is, the city leaders want the streets cleaned up, and in some cases the cops are given silent authority to do that, in whatever way they can.”

  “I wasn’t a criminal,” I said angrily. “They had no right to plant those drugs in my house.”

  “You think I don’t know that? It’s because of you, and people like you, Sarah, that my father’s trying to do something about it. He and the FBI have been working together to root out problem cops for several months now. So when you were set up—and he never for a minute believed you hadn’t been set up—it was only natural he’d want to help you.”

  This was beginning to sound all too familiar. Wasn’t it basically the same story line Gabe had fed me?

  Except that in his version, he and Ian had been the white hats, and Luke, his father and Grace were on the black hat side.

  “I seem to remember your father being tough on crime,” I said. “Seems to me he’d be on the cops’ side, Luke—not mine.”

  “Not when those cops are committing crimes,” he argued.

  “And as a matter of fact,” I went on, “Gabe told me he was working against the Five. He said he was a Seattle cop and that he was sent here to protect me. He also told me that you and your father were on the criminal side.”

  Luke shook his head. “And why doesn’t that surprise me? Don’t you see, Sarah? Gabe must be one of them. He’s stuck closely enough to the truth to be convincing, but the fact is, if he was who he said he was, I’d know about it. My father would have told me. Sarah, Gabe must be tied in with the Seattle Five somehow, and I’m willing to bet that from the moment he showed up at Thornberry, he’s been out to get his hands on your evidence against them.”

  I almost laughed. “And you, Luke? You haven’t been doing the same?”

  “Dammit, it’s different with me! My father was certain the Five set you up, and he wasted no time asking me to fly out here to help.”

  “You and Grace, you mean.”

  “Yes, me and Grace. But not Grace, at first. He asked me to come keep an eye on you, but I couldn’t come right away. I was in the Bahamas wrapping up that job I told you about. If I had known you were in this much danger, I would have left, anyway, but at the time I didn’t know it was this serious.”

  He sighed. “All right, look. I’ll tell you the whole thing. Grace and I knew each other in New York. We…dated, but only for a while. She and her brother were both on the NYPD, and one night a few months ago Grace’s brother was out on patrol with another cop. The other cop shot a black man in Harlem, claiming he thought the guy was pulling a gun. When the victim turned out to be unarmed, the cop planted a gun on him to make it look like self-defense.”

  “I think I remember that.”

  “You probably heard of something similar on the news. But, Sarah, these things happen more than the public is aware of. Not all of them make the news. In this case, Grace’s brother knew the other cop had lied. In fact, he’d tried to stop him but couldn’t. Ramon—Grace’s brother—finally threatened to testify against the guy if he didn’t turn himself in, and the next day Ramon was murdered. It was made to look like a street shooting, and Grace couldn’t prove Ramon’s partner had murdered either him or the Harlem victim. But Ramon had told her the way the Harlem shooting had gone down, and she believed him. She kept digging around, trying to prove her brother’s innocence, and the rest of the department started harassing her for it. Eventually, when she was unsuccessful at proving anything, she quit out of disgust.”

  “Well, if that’s true, I feel bad for her. But it doesn’t explain why she’s here.”

  “She’s here because my father asked her to come. My father had met Grace in New York, back when we were still dating. They had numerous conversations about the NYPD and what had happened to her brother. He knew she had quit the force and needed money. He also thought it would be helpful to have someone near you that nobody knew. Someone he could trust to help look after you. When Grace heard about what had happened to you, she was more than ready. It was too much like what had happened to her brother. She couldn’t turn him down.”

  “Funny, I haven’t exactly seen Grace Lopez as being my guardian angel.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s true Grace has been mean as hell lately. But trust me, she’s only been that way since she lost her brother. Also, it was part of her cover here to not act too friendly with anyone.”

  “Well, I must say, she certainly succeeded at that. But how did your father get Timmy to go along with this?”

  “My father’s very wealthy, as you know. He’s always liked Timmy and respected what she’s been trying to do here. In fact, when he learned recently that finances were getting thin for her, he gave her enough to keep things going. He’s never asked for anything in return, until this past month. He told her you were in danger, and explained that Grace was an under-cover policewoman he wanted her to invite here, to keep an eye on you and ensure your safety. Timmy wasn’t crazy about the idea. She had to cancel an invitation to a writer she was looking forward to meeting—but she felt obligated to go along with it.”

  No wonder Timmy had been so irritable. I couldn’t imagine her letting someone else tell her who should stay, or not stay, at her beloved retreat. She must have severely regretted her decision to invite me, and the trouble I had brought along.

  “So you and Grace came here to protect me,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “You, your father, and a former New York City policewoman—who also happens to be your very young ex-girlfriend—all came here to help little old me.”

  “Yes. And it’s true she was my girlfriend, but that was over a long time ago.” Luke shifted uneasily. “After her brother was killed, she didn’t have any interest in romance.”

  “She dumped you?”

  “It…was mutual,” he said. “I travel a lot. I couldn’t give her the support she needed—not that she asked for it. Truth is, although I consider our relationship a thing of the past, I’m hoping it will help her come to terms with her brother’s death, her helping us put the Seattle Five behind bars. In any event, she’s highly motivated to see this through. Grace might not be the most cordial person in the world right now, but she’s probably the best friend you have.” He met my eyes. “Other than me, that is.”

  “Well, that’s a fine story, Luke. It all fits together nicely. But—out with the rest of it.”

  He sighed and threw up his hands. “Why do I keep forgetting I’m dealing with a lawyer? Okay, look, my father wasn’t making much progress in Seattle until the Seattle Five went after you. When that happened, he saw that he could use your trouble to throw a net around them.”

  “So the truth is, he’s been using me. You, too.”

  “If you want to look at it that way. Personally, I thought we were helping you.”

  “I’d have been okay on my own,” I said, though I frankly doubted that. Something in me just had to say it. I didn’t much like things going on behind my back, even if people were well-meaning.

  “You might have been okay on your own,” Luke said. “But the truth is, I wanted to help you.”

  “Why?” I asked, standing.

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  He stood, too, and we both brushed our hands off on our pants.

  “Sarah,” he said irritably, “you are an obstinate wench. You always were.”

  “I am not a wench.”

  “Sure you are, and what’s more, you used to be my wench.”

  “Yeah, well, I used to not have any mol
ars, either. We all grow up, Luke.”

  “I really do care about you, though,” he said.

  “You do, huh?”

  He gripped my shoulders. “You don’t believe me? Even now?”

  The truth was, I did believe him. After all that had happened, he was the only person on Esme Island I did believe. And I wanted it back—that feeling from the old days, when he and I were the only people in the world, when we were all that mattered.

  There was still a missing link somewhere, though.

  “There are a few things that don’t fit,” I said. “How did your father know I had some sort of evidence I was holding over the Five’s heads?”

  Gabe had told me Mike Murty reported my threats to Judge Ford. Orders went out from Luke’s father, Gabe had said, to get that evidence—at any cost.

  “My father had Mike Murty’s phone tapped,” Luke said, “long before Lonnie Mae Brown’s rape. He’d suspected the Five of other crimes, but hadn’t been able to get anything solid on them. Unfortunately, they were careful enough not to say anything incriminating on their home phones—until the night you called Mike Murty, that is.”

  “So he heard me threaten Murty with a piece of evidence, and sent you here looking for it? To do what with it, Luke?”

  “To keep someone like Gabe Rossi from getting his hands on it, in the first place. And then to bring it, and you, back to Seattle safely, so it could be used in court against them.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me why you were here, then?”

  “Well…we were afraid you’d tell the wrong person.”

  “Meaning Gabe?”

  “And anyone he might be in contact with.”

  I fell silent, thinking. At last I said, “Do you know who Gabe really is?”

  “We think he could be some sort of corrupt cop hired by the Five. Or maybe he’s just a criminal they have something on and he’s doing this to keep out of jail. It could be anything. I asked my father to check him out, but he hasn’t come up with anything yet.”