The Man Who Lied To Women

by Carol O’Connell

  She wore the clothes she died in, the blazer, the blue jeans and running shoes. His memory had faithfully recreated the stain on the material and the uglier stain of the golden hair where the wound matted it to wisps of red strings.

  How did Malakhai begin? Oh yes. So simple.

  ‘Good evening, Amanda.’

  She gave him a shy smile as she sat down in the chair opposite his own. There was a moment of relief when he realized his creation did not have the substance to make an impression in the plush upholstery. She rested her hands on the arms of the chair. He looked to the wall, further relieved because she cast no shadow to sit with his own.

  ‘Good evening, Charles.’

  Her voice might be borrowed from Mallory, but in Amanda’s throat, the words were gentled. And gentle were her eyes.

  ‘Amanda, when I saw you this morning, standing over the little boy – ’

  ‘He was in pain,’ she said, looking down at the soft white hands folded in her lap. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’

  ‘You only wanted to comfort him.’

  ‘Yes. Such a troubled little boy. I love children.’

  ‘I know. It’s difficult for me to understand why you changed your mind about the child you were carrying.’

  She looked down to the floor for words, and not finding them there, she looked up with tears that were all too real to him. Her hands raised in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘You wanted that baby very much, didn’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I planned my life around that child. The baby was the world to me, all that meant anything at all.’

  ‘Then why? Why did you do it? You asked the doctor to cut the child out of you. What was it about this man that was so horrible it made you abort his child?’

  She rose gracefully and walked away from him, back into the shadows. Her gait was listless, tired. It had been hard work cutting a much-wanted baby from her womb, her life, her future – when she had one. Too hard on her.

  CHAPTER 5

  24 December

  Angel Kipling scanned the bulletin board, her bright eyes rocketing across the scrolling lines, seeking out the evidence of fresh lies and wondering how much it would cost her this time. Perhaps it would cost her one husband in addition to the fees for keeping her name out of the press.

  Each time he kissed her cheek, she recoiled, wondering where he might have been, wondering what he might have done, had to wonder, couldn’t stop herself. His lies were unnerving, and her logic was relentless in puzzling out each one.

  Early morning sun obscured only a few of the lines which repeated endlessly. Angel glared, but the lines would not go away.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ she whispered. ‘You always panic.’

  It was probably a shakedown. If it wasn’t a shakedown, it would have exploded all over the media.

  So, nothing’s going to happen for a while. We wait for a connection.

  She looked to her reflection in the glass of the monitor. ‘See how simple things can be, if you only let them be?’

  She wished sometimes that he would die. As long as he lived he would be within harming distance. Would that he might die, and she could be done with him instead of always listening to his lies and his excuses and his endless apologies. He had apologized very nicely for illegally putting up the condo as loan collateral. But then he apologized for clearing his throat. He apologized to the dog, and then he apologized to her in the same tone.

  The concierge surveyed his world, the lobby of the Coventry Arms, and found nothing amiss. Perfectly attired people went to and fro in their designer dresses, tailored suits and handmade shoes. He paid more attention to the clothes than to the faces, and the faces of the occasional children registered not at all.

  His toe tapped to the quick, bright notes of a Vivaldi mandolin concerto which played throughout the lobby at a tasteful level of background music.

  Less tuneful, downright disruptive music of high-pitched barks and guttural growls was coming from the elevator in its descent to the ground floor. The doors opened and the dog fight overflowed from the elevator and into the lobby.

  The concierge waved his hands at the porter, but the porter was hanging back a safe distance from the fray. Of course, no job description required the man to be torn to shreds by a pit bull and a mastiff. The owners were displaying the same common sense. And now the doorman had abandoned his post and entered the lobby to cheer on the mastiff. The porter displayed a five dollar bill and placed a silent bet with the doorman, his money on the pit bull.

  Well, something had to be done.

  The concierge, who had never been invited to a dog fight before and didn’t understand the rules, found himself standing too close, and now he was wincing with a bite from the mastiff, his own scream chiming in with the barks.

  All comings and goings had stopped, and twelve people gathered to watch. Between the blood flow and the betting, not one of them noticed the key being taken from the rack behind the desk, and then being replaced with a key similar to Mallory’s.

  ‘Did you like the CD player?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. And the recording of Louisa’s Concerto was a nice touch.’

  ‘You have to change to CDs, Charles. You might be able to transfer most of your records. They’re in good shape.’

  ‘For artifacts, you mean? I like the records. I like the turntable.’ He did not want any more technology invading the house.

  ‘Your record collection can’t grow with obsolete technology. And you can’t replace worn out records any more. I noticed you didn’t have a copy of Louisa’s Concerto in your collection.’

  ‘I wore it out ages ago. There was another one in Max’s collection downstairs, but I’m afraid I ruined that one. The timing of your gift was perfect.’

  ‘Whatever happened to Max’s friend, crazy Malakhai?’

  ‘Oh, he’s living a quieter life these days.’

  ‘I suppose he is pretty old.’

  ‘Yes, he’s getting on in years.’ Since when did Mallory make small talk?

  ‘And Louisa? She’s really still with him?’

  ‘Oh, yes. But Louisa would still be young, just nineteen, forever.’

  Charles watched her pinning more printouts to the cork board which spanned the wall of her private office. ‘Are you quite sure you’re on to something with the business of the lie?’

  Mallory tapped the printout from the real estate agency computer, and he did not ask if the real estate agency had donated this material by consent or by a hijack on the midnight rail of the electronic superhighway.

  ‘Four days before the abortion, she made an offer on a small house upstate. According to her agency file, she was concerned with local school systems and area playgrounds. During the next four days, according to the doctor, she hardly ate or slept. I’m guessing this is where he told her the lie. So it worked on her and then she had it out with him.’

  ‘The outburst at the keyboard was just before her death, wasn’t it? Could we have this wrong? Might that be the day she caught him in the lie?’

  ‘No. The lie made her abort the child. It worked on her. Maybe she just couldn’t take it any more. She snapped late.’

  ‘There’s a flaw in the logic here.’

  ‘You can’t always go by logic. You have to get into the perp’s skin. When you know him, you know how and why. All I’m missing now is who.’ She turned to him. ‘How well do you think you know Amanda?’

  There was only a subtle shadow across his mind. She couldn’t know what he was doing with Malakhai’s magic madness. But the timing of her gift of music was entirely too perfect. Had she made a trip to the basement and seen the ruined record? No, of course not. That was paranoid.

  ‘Based on the manuscript, I might know Amanda well enough to guess her reactions to events, but not the events themselves, not the lie that was told to her. I can only tell you it had to be something monstrous. She had a gentle personality, a wry sense of the ridiculous. I rather liked – ’
/>   ‘Nothing in the monster category in the background checks. But she had to turn it up with the usual research avenues. If she found it, I can find it.’

  ‘Not necessarily. And you have to consider that this might not have been his first kill, that he’s done it before and gotten away with it. That might be what she uncovered. It’s better logic – ’

  ‘If there was no record of it, how did she find it?’

  ‘Mallory, these two people had very intimate knowledge of one another. This was no great love story – but they shared a bed; there was conversation. If he lied to her, she may have caught it in the untechnological way the rest of us catch lies. When you tell the truth, it’s always the same truth. When you lie, you must have a superb memory, or it will be a different lie in every telling.’

  And now his eyes took on some pain as he clearly understood their separate roles in this business: Mallory could crawl into the mind of a killer with disturbing ease. She had left the difficult job to him, the job of identifying with a frail human being who had no pathology or defenses in a brutal landscape peopled with those whom Mallory identified with best.

  He wished he could wire Mallory into his delusion of Amanda and remove himself from the game. And a game it was to Mallory. Murder was the best game.

  Now she was unloading a pack of tapes from the morning’s scavenging. ‘Something on television could have tipped her. The judge had a lot of air time in the past two weeks.’

  Could it be that simple? A clue in Amanda’s last days? They were spent in the upheaval of the lie: lack of sleep, anxiety and guilt from the abortion.

  He walked the length of the cork wall at the back of the office. This was not Louis Markowitz’s style. All the tiny little detailing was missing. Mallory’s quick brain could not stop for the minutiae which had been Louis’s obsession. He had to keep reminding himself that she was not obliged to be a copy of her father. Now he read the interview with the doorman.

  ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘It looks like that’s the day she finally snapped. The doorman said she was agitated. Then she went home, obsessed about it, and that same night she logged on to her computer. Maybe she was working late to get her mind off it. But the book was about him, wasn’t it? That’s when the YOU LIAR outburst occurred.’

  She fed one tape to the VCR. ‘These are all the broadcast cuts from the past two weeks.’

  The first tape was a press conference. Judge Heart’s stage presence was commanding, and he seemed to know it. He singled out women reporters for questions, and looked into the eyes of each one as though she might be the center of his universe.

  Even more entertaining were the tapes on the Senate hearings for Judge Heart’s nomination to the highest court in the land. Mallory’s candidate for wife beating was rambling on and on about his concern over sexual harassment in the workplace. The senator from Maine was nodding in approval of each lie he fed her on his empathy for women and the need to protect them.

  Charles was wondering what might draw Amanda to this man. Power had its attractions, he supposed, and fame. And Heart’s intelligence was undisputed.

  ‘The judge is always in the paper. Pretty dry stuff -coverage on the hearings, pictures of candidate and family. Did I mention that I think he killed his elderly mother?’

  ‘Slope ran that by me at the poker game. He’s not convinced. There’s no evidence. It’s pure speculation.’

  ‘Sometimes speculation is all you ever get to work with, Charles. And you did ask me to keep an open mind about the possibility that he had killed before. A mother killer. You think that might put a woman off having a baby, just on the off chance that matricide was genetic?’

  ‘Perhaps. By your description, Harry Kipling seems harmless enough.’

  ‘And he’s just the type to panic. All the testosterone in his marriage is Angel’s.’

  They sat in silence throughout an hour of Mallory fastforwarding tapes and stopping the action to have a closer look. Over the two weeks of tape, he noted a growing tension in Heart.

  ‘Now watch the judge lie to this reporter.’

  A young woman approached him, smiling brightly, and the judge beamed down on her with his most avuncular smile. He was the man every boy and girl wanted for a daddy.

  ‘I’m going to wrap this up on the twenty-sixth,’ said Mallory. ‘And this conversation is between us, not us and Coffey and Riker.’

  ‘How can you orchestrate the day? You don’t even know which one it is.’

  ‘Oh, not just the day. I can even plot the moment roughly.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I was always in charge of him, Charles. When I get him on camera, I start pushing his buttons. I’ve got the usual buttons for Franz and Kipling. I’m going to get the judge in motion by telling him that I’m going to get the paperwork to dig up his mother.’

  ‘Slope won’t support – ’

  ‘I don’t need Slope’s permission to dig up a dead mother.’

  Indeed, she didn’t seem to need anyone. ‘You have a favorite, don’t you?’

  She ignored this.

  ‘I’m going to wrap him up for the DA on the day after Christmas.’

  ‘Is it me you’re wrapping up?’ asked a small voice behind them.

  Justin Riccalo stood in the doorway. The boy was staring from one to the other. ‘Is it me?’

  ‘Does that worry you?’ asked Mallory. She didn’t wait on his answer, but turned her back on the boy. ‘Charles, when little kids can just walk into the building, I’d say we had a security problem.’

  Charles looked down at the boy. ‘How did you get in, Justin? Why didn’t you use the intercom?’

  ‘I walked in with an old man on crutches. He dropped his package, so I carried it in for him. It seemed kind of silly to go back outdoors and use the intercom. It’s cold out there.’

  ‘Mugridge let you in?’ Mallory seemed skeptical – and with good reason. The elderly Mugridge was the most security conscious person in the building.

  ‘Yes, ma’am. I did knock on the office door. You probably didn’t hear me.’

  ‘There’s a buzzer on the door,’ said Mallory.

  In an effort to ward off any further interrogation by Mallory, Charles ushered the boy into his own office and pulled the door shut.

  ‘Mallory hates me, doesn’t she, Mr Butler?’

  ‘She’s suspicious of everyone, even me. Don’t take it personally. What can I do for you, Justin?’

  ‘I wondered if we could go back to the cellar.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would want to. Not after – ’

  ‘Yes, I would. I think I do like magic after all.’

  ‘Your parents don’t mind you missing a morning of school?’

  ‘School’s out. It’s Christmas vacation.’

  Of course. It was Christmas Eve. Where was his mind?

  ‘Well, I’ll just give them a call to let them know where you are.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that. I’m supposed to be at the Tanner School right now.’

  ‘But you just – ’

  ‘I am on Christmas vacation. The Tanner School is warehousing me for the day. It’s a holiday program for working parents. My parents are doing the cocktail circuit this afternoon. Every corporation in town is having their Christmas parties. So they think I’m at school.’

  The boy sat on the edge of the straight-back chair, his wriggling feet not quite touching the carpet. His hands gripped either side of the wooden seat, as though unsure of the chair’s intention to remain stationary.

  ‘I see.’ How would Robert Riccalo react to his son’s truancy? Not well. ‘You know, I did want another chance to talk to you alone. I have an idea that your parents make you a little nervous.’

  ‘You have a gift for understatement, Mr Butler. They both drive me right up the wall. Your partner makes me nervous, too. She thinks I’m doing it. You don’t believe in this levitation crap, do you?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t believe anyone
is levitating anything. Humanity has enough bizarre problems without dragging in the occult. Parapsychology is a non-science as far as I’m concerned. But I do think one of you is rather good at illusion.’ Or maybe not. Even if it was a slipshod job, who looks for the obvious thread when a sharp object is flying toward them?

  ‘I’m betting on my stepmother.’

  ‘But she seems to be the target.’

  ‘I think she’s using this to turn my father against me. He doesn’t even like me any more. He avoids looking at me. And she’s already gotten to your partner. One day, I saw Sally talking to her on the street. I know she turned Mallory against me.’

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘In front of her apartment house, the Coventry Arms.’

  ‘Your stepmother followed her there?’

  ‘Yes. She made me wait in the car down the block, but I followed her. I know what she’s trying to do to me, and no one will believe me.’

  ‘Justin, I really am on your side.’ The boy seemed unconvinced. ‘I know something that will cheer you up.’ He gathered up his house keys from the drawer of the desk. ‘Let’s go down the basement. But no music this time – only magic.’

  As they walked into the hallway, Mallory was disappearing into the elevator with no goodbye, no I’ll see you this evening. She was not usually inclined to unnecessary words. But, she never missed appointments. The sun might not come up in the morning, but Mallory would come back at eight of the clock for dinner.

  Now, in some part of his brain, he was recalling each bit of small talk on the subject of Malakhai, and wondering what to make of this deviation in her.