The Last Lie She Told

by K. J. McGillick

  “Yeah, you could say that.” Lee smiled.

  The officer turned to his landline and punched in some numbers. His conversation was brief, and he handed us each a laminated visitor’s badge to sector five. He leaned over and pointed down the hall, telling us to take the first turn and follow the yellow line.

  Lee pushed his way through a set of green doors with peeling paint showing decades of use. We entered a small room with old plastic chairs. Detective Annabelle Hughes, a petite, brown-haired woman with a gold shield on her waistband, stepped our way and offered an outstretched hand. We each introduced ourselves, and Lee’s eyes focused on her in an assessing manner from the top of her head to her feet. His cop eyes searched and challenged hers, sizing her up as a police officer and as a woman. Interesting.

  She directed us into a room with a metal table and five well-used chairs. She closed the door to the windowless room. Detective Hughes sat first, and Lee sat across from her. I sat at the end of the table to watch their interaction.

  Lee gave a concise explanation why we’d planned a meet with Mahir and left out about 98 percent of the reason. The fact we knew a significant amount of information about Mahir took Detective Hughes by surprise. Her facial expression suggested she wasn’t pleased we were ahead of the curve on what she knew in the ten hours since his death.

  “How did you come by your information?” she asked, slouching back and tapping her pad. She didn’t even try to hide her disapproval.

  “Mahir’s mother gave us access to the information gathered during the investigation of his arrest in LA,” I answered. The situation was turning confrontational, and we would come out on the losing end. “Detective, may I call you Annabelle?”

  She nodded but kept her eyes turned toward Lee.

  “Annabelle, we have no intention of inserting ourselves into your investigation,” I said. “Our interest is in finding the missing intellectual property.”

  Annabelle turned toward Lee and leaned forward. Was she trying to invade his personal space?

  “I understand you were a homicide detective in Chicago?”

  “Twenty-two years on the job.”

  She nodded her approval, and he leaned forward toward her, their faces about a foot apart.

  “Why would you think Mahir had any information to help you find Ms. O’Dell?” she asked, licking her lips.

  Was that a habit, a nervous tell, or sexual attraction?

  “I didn’t. We’re gathering facts, and it led us to Mahir,” Lee replied, maintaining an investigator’s stare.

  “And what have you found out about her?” Annabelle asked.

  “If she’s not a suspect in the case, why the interest?”

  “I like to keep an open mind.”

  “We’ve just started our investigation. Well, in a nutshell, she has no friends, a loner. She enjoys being part of a crowd for the attention, and she’s a fan of kink. We have a lead she’s either in or heading to the Boston area, and that’s where we’re heading next.”

  They both took a moment to reflect on the information, and Annabelle spoke next.

  “Do you have any reason to believe there’s a connection between Mahir’s death and Fiona?”

  “That’s impossible to say based on the limited information available. I don’t know where you found Mahir’s body, why he was there, what murder weapon was used, or what was going on in his life. Hell, I don’t even know if Fiona was anywhere near Manhattan in the last few days,” Lee said, avoiding overreach.

  “I can tell you she was in New York as of two days ago, and she reached out to him by phone. The two had a short conversation, and we can place her in the vicinity of his death at the time of death. Since then, she may have shut her phone down.” Although guarded in what information she shared, we knew Fiona was on her radar and a person of interest.

  “Annabelle—” I started.

  “Belle,” she returned with a smile. “Please, Mary, call me Belle.”

  “That information is very helpful. Would I be overstepping if I asked if you’ve been able to pick up any activity on her phone? She has a meet set up in Boston with a person she thinks is interested in being her sugar daddy. If she’s not pinging off your towers, it’s a waste of time for us to stay.”

  “We’re waiting for the judge to sign the search warrant to let us comb through her data. But that’s all I can give you,” she said.

  Lee sat back, tipped his head to the side, and raised his eyebrows in my direction. A small smile played on Annabelle’s lips, as she understood from his nonverbal cues I had said more than I should have.

  Energy passed between them. Lee had more years and experience than she did, but her confident attitude said she had this under control and didn’t need his input. Nor did she want it. Conflict was written all over this encounter.

  “It seems we’re doing all the giving, and you’re doing all the taking in this conversation,” Lee said, swiping his hand in a semicircle on the table.

  “Were you expecting something different?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. “You’re a civilian now.”

  “What Lee hoped,” I interjected before he snapped back a harsh retort, “was to determine if we needed to stay here to follow up on leads. As you said, she was here at some point. If we can find her and determine if she has what we’re looking for, that would end our case.”

  “I see. All right, Mary, call me about four this afternoon, and once we dump her phone, I’ll tell you if she’s here. That’s the best I can do,” she said with her eyes still boring into Lee’s.

  “You get breaks, don’t you, Belle? The reason I ask is I saw Starbucks two doors down. How about I buy you a cup of coffee and pastry at four instead of calling you? I know you’re busy, but I’d love to hear in person whatever information you can share,” I said, hoping to defuse the tension and regain our footing.

  She looked at me, and I suppose the mention of real coffee tipped her my way. She accepted the offer.

  I patted her arm. I knew it. She, like me, was a caffeine fiend. We were compadres.

  She offered her card, accepted mine, and then escorted us to the desk to turn in our visitor badges.

  From the way he walked out of the building, I could tell Lee was about to unload on me for interfering. I shot him my stern look and advised him to zip it, and surprisingly he complied.

  Lee

  We hailed a cab and headed back to the hotel in a silence neither of us wanted to break. We were thinking about Mahir. Death could do that to you—take you into yourself. I remember those awful days after Debby died. Cancer had ravaged her body the same way it had destroyed my mind and heart. I should have spent more time with her when she was healthy, but I’d put my work ahead of everything. Why had I been so obsessed with making detective? It had never given me the satisfaction I needed; it wound up being different faces, same scenarios. I’d never effectuated any change in people; they’d effectuated a change in me as I’d sunk deeper into a black hole of hopelessness. Some of my colleagues had abused alcohol to medicate their pain and loneliness. I’d opted for too many nights at the gym, beating on the bag, as if it was a perp, or running on the treadmill as if I was running away from my life. At the end, when Debby had died, I’d felt relief and guilt, and the emotions, over the years, had led to numbness.

  With everything Fiona had put the Abajians through, they hadn’t deserved to lose their son. The death of someone is bad enough. But what about the people left behind who have to adjust their minds and hearts to the reality that there will never again be that laughter or hug at night? I’d had time to prepare for Debby’s death, even down to making funeral arrangements together. Is it better not to invest yourself in love? Is it better not to care? This wound inflicted on Mahir’s parents would never heal.

  I glanced over and caught Mary studying me.

  “I don’t like New York,” she said. “Everyone’s in a rush. Where’s everyone going? Look over there.” She pointed at a park. “There’s a little p
ark there. Let’s slip in for a few minutes. I need to settle my mind around what we just learned.”

  She got no argument from me. We exited the cab and ambled into the well-maintained area where mothers and nannies chased after children who had too much energy and made too much noise. But all the chaos reminded me these people had a future; unlike Mahir, who was dead because of a split second in time when one person crossed his timeline.

  “I don’t like this case,” Mary said. “If it were just recovering a lost or stolen object, I’d feel satisfaction that, at the end, I’d recovered something of value, and there would be a happy ending. But this case, Lee, this case is dark, and I’m afraid the outcome will leave a mark on us.”

  I remained silent. I didn’t need to affirm I understood what she meant. Because yes, this case was filled with ugly.

  “Mary, it depends on how much of it you let into your mind and heart. Fiona is a damaged human being, and we can’t fix her; that’s not our job. You can sympathize with her because of the life she had as a child, but if she committed murder…” I stopped because what I wanted to say was she deserved an eye for an eye.

  Instead I said, “If these are the kinds of cases Jackson’s going to take, I’m not sure this is the job for me. I left the force for a reason, and I don’t want to be sucked into getting into a psycho’s mind. And, Mary, this girl is a psycho who might evade us for months.”

  “In a perfect world, what would you do as a job to make you happy or fulfilled?” she asked.

  I took a few minutes to answer. I’d thought about it a lot, but options always seemed limited. “I’d own a carpentry business where I’d carve tables and sculpt wood.”

  She looked genuinely surprised. “That was the last thing I expected you to say.”

  “I like creating stuff, but as kids, none of us were ever encouraged to do things like that. We used our hands for fighting. I came from an aggressive family,” I said, not happy to revisit my past.

  Just then my phone buzzed, and the name Salvo Martucci, Lucine’s PI, appeared on the screen. After a brief conversation, Mary and I were in a cab and on our way to meet him. We entered a building that had to be a hundred years old. The lighting and flooring were updated, but the ancient, slick plaster walls gave away the age.

  On the third floor, we entered an office that had seen better days. The battered furniture and well-worn carpet suited the office’s occupant. No secretary was in the waiting area to greet us, but Mr. Martucci, a stout, older man with worn shoes, was waiting for us and emerged from his small office. He introduced himself. When we thanked him for his time, he waved us off, as if we weren’t disturbing him.

  Once settled in a red leather captain’s chair, I reached for my note pad to jot down notes. Mary, however, did something unusual; she sat with nothing to record our meeting. She just listened.

  “Lucine called me and gave me the go-ahead to talk to you,” Mr. Martucci said, tapping two files, each about three inches thick with papers and photos. “Tragic about Mahir. I liked that boy. I’ve known the family for about three years and watched him emerge from a shy teenager to a man. It infuriated me that someone would accuse him of such malicious behavior. Mahir is the kind of boy who made sure stray cats had food. The person who inflicted such violence on Ms. O’Dell had a sick, twisted mind, and that wasn’t Mahir.”

  “I eyeballed the file Lucine gave us but will study it tonight. Looking at what you’ve got there, I’d say Lucine got an abridged copy. What’s missing from hers?” I asked.

  “I gave her the summary and highlights. There was no reason to give her every scrap of paper. My job was to gather the information, then filter through it. And to be honest, she didn’t need to see some of the trash I uncovered. You can take these files when you leave, but at some point, I’ll need them back. I scanned everything into my computer, but I’m a paper man. I like highlighting, and post-noting information by color codes, so don’t mess that up.” He looked at the file and then at Mary.

  “What’s your story?” he asked her.

  “Not your concern, so don’t go flirting with me and get your hopes up. We need to get cracking on the information; I’m not getting any younger,” Mary snapped, and he chuckled as he leaned back in his chair.

  “Fair enough. There’s a lot of psychobabble from the shrink they hired. I always take that with a grain of salt. But considering the time my partner and I put into talking to people from her past and up to the time of the incident, I’d say the shrink was dead on.

  “The girl had a rough start in life. Her mom was a drunk, and Fiona went into foster care at seven. The family services department shrinks said she was highly intelligent, but she had what they called oppositional defiance disorder. She must have been a handful, and none of her foster parents were equipped to handle that big a problem long-term. By the time she was sixteen and had passed through several foster homes, her diagnosis expanded to the label malignant narcissist. The next to last foster family she was with, I think her eighth, asked for her immediate removal. They found her having sex with their son, and condoms weren’t a priority for her. It’s in the expanded report. They put her in a group home—”

  “Wait,” Mary interrupted, “we talked to her roommate, Claire, and she said Fiona’s parents visited. How’s that possible if she was in a group home?”

  “If you’d hold your horses,” he said with a quick raised hand, “Fiona was in the group home about a month when some do-gooders came along and took her in, as if she was some project. They homeschooled her and kept her on a tight leash. That mother was a control freak, and the father had a perv vibe, but surprisingly she didn’t run off.

  “When it came time for college, they must have known someone in the higher ranks. They were able to get her into a faith-based college, even though she just had a GED, and the college required a regular high school diploma. Her SATs were almost perfect, and her sad story about multiple foster care placements resonated with the school’s mission.

  “She appeared to keep out of trouble, nothing glaring stuck out on the undergrad level, and she graduated with honors. Fiona was a loner, but a loner who liked to party. She wasn’t arrested for anything and maintained a low profile. Considering her background, I’d say she was smart and cunning enough to avoid the consequences of any mess she got involved in. The real trouble began when she hit graduate school, but by then she was an adult. She found a crowd heavy into that kinky shit, and she embraced it,” he said with a judgmental tone.

  “How’d she find her tribe?” Mary asked. “I’m sure it wasn’t an activity offered by the school.”

  Mr. Martucci’s lips parted a bit, and then he responded, “I don’t know for sure; it wasn’t relevant. In the early part of her graduate program, a similar incident as the one with Mahir, but not as brutal, occurred. She accused another student, Chuck Evans, who admitted to laying hands on her, but his spin was that she’d asked him to do it as part of a neurobehavioral experiment. That’s when the gates of hell opened, and the school investigation team found she was a practicing member of a BDSM ring in Boston. The school didn’t want state law enforcement brought in, so they asked them both to leave at the end of the semester, which was a month away. That was when she found her way to Los Angeles where the hedonism of its culture fed into her abnormal personality,” he said, clasping his hands in front of him.

  “So, no arrests made in Boston?” I asked.

  “Oh, hell no. The school could never take that chance. Even a whiff of that could open a can of worms they couldn’t contain. The school counselor played it off as Fiona was suffering from issues of rejection and abandonment, and that this made her feel unworthy and caused her to seek inappropriate attention. The boy said it was consensual and stuck to his story about it being part of an experiment. I couldn’t get hold of the school records, but that’s what the guy she accused said when I spoke to him. He wouldn’t elaborate, and I let it go, but if we needed his testimony, I’d dig in a lot further,” he
said.

  “So unresolved mental health issues?” Mary stated more than asked.

  “I suppose, but don’t we all suffer from that in one form or another? Anyway, bottom line, she was social with men but steered clear of women. The shrink Lucine hired went into a bunch of gibber-gabber about Myers-Briggs testing, which I snoozed through, and based on her reported behavior, made some assumptions. The words I grabbed onto were ‘angry, self-centered, emotionally abusive behavior, greedy, and no empathy.’ His report wouldn’t hold water in court. If the case moved forward, he’d have to do actual testing, but he concluded that she was a sociopath, based on the available information. Although well on her way to behaviors that led to criminal actions, she hadn’t hit there yet. Like I said, all psychobabble. She liked attention and knew how to get it; she also liked to play with people to see what it would take to break them. She’s an evil person who needs to be locked away for life,” he said, hitting his hand on the desk.

  “I think that’s a bit extreme,” Mary said. “She’s not a serial killer—”

  “Yet. Give her time. That girl is unhinged. Is it nature or nurture? I don’t give a crap. Why she targeted Mahir, I don’t know. But he wasn’t her first victim, and he won’t be her last. Take the files, but get them back to me,” he said, moving his eyes away from Mary to me. “You’re a man. If you met this little cock tease, you’d understand the hold she could have over men desperate for her to choose them. She exploited men for sport, and any woman who got in her way? She tore their egos to shit. If she killed Mahir, there will be hell to pay. Lucine will not let this sit.”

  We thanked him for his time and took the files. As we left, he yelled from his office, “You mark my words, that bitch had something to do with Mahir’s death. She broke that boy in LA, and she came here to finish the job.”

  We spent the afternoon combing the file. It was a treasure trove of information about Fiona but didn’t give us any real leads about where she was now. It didn’t really help our case. So, we closed the files and headed back to meet Annabelle to see what she’d turned up. Her information would be more helpful than Mr. Martucci’s.