The Liar's Lullaby (14 page)

For months, NMP had refused to believe it. NMP had stayed
loyal.
Tabloid gossip, stage- managed lies, boiled up for publicity—that’s what Tasia’s alleged “affair” had to be. Had to. But it wasn’t fiction. It was true.

A cry escaped his throat.

The dog kept barking. NMP tramped to the truck and barked back. The dog went berserk, claws scrabbling, slobber flecking the pickup’s window. NMP grabbed the truck’s radio antenna. He sawed it back and forth until it broke off. He stuck it through the crack at the top of the window and jabbed it at the dog. Over and over again.

“Hey.”

He rattled the glass and whipped the antenna and hit the mutt until it cowered.

“Hey, motherfucker, stop it.”

The men by the trash can were shouting. NMP pulled the antenna out, turned, and slashed the air with it. The men stopped shouting. Like that.

NMP stepped back, panting. Holding on to the antenna, ready to whip anybody who approached him, he ran. At the corner, the lights of the hotel marquee fizzed, spastic red neon. THE BALMORAL. Three letters were out, so it looked like THEMORAL. Yeah, the moral of the story was, never trust Tasia McFarland. NMP shoved through the door, huge hands flat on the glass, face burning. The clerk looked up, barely, and back down at his lap. A TV on the desk showed the rictus grin of Robert McFarland, Tasia-humper. NMP rushed past and up the creaking stairs.

Tasia the slut. Tasia the crazy whore. Taking Searle Lecroix into her bed. Like she’d taken other men, like a trail of slime back to her teens. The greedy bitch. Having the president of the United States wasn’t enough for her?

What kind of insatiable succubus nymphomaniac had to take the president, throw him aside, and then go after the rest of the men of America? What kind of empty hole had to take Searle Lecroix at the end?

When NMP was waiting?

The hotel room was stuffy and dispirited. Petty shut the door and pounded his head against it. No fair. No fair.

NMP was finished waiting. If he couldn’t hover, he could strike.

 

 

J
O HIKED UPParnassus Avenue toward the UC San Francisco Medical Center. The sun was casting a hallucinogenic red light across the Pacific. She hitched her satchel higher on her shoulder and leaned into the hill. Outside the med center entrance, men and women with cameras and microphones were clustered on the sidewalk. The press was waiting for news on Ace Chennault.

In the lobby Tang was pacing, phone to her ear. When Jo walked in, she waved her toward the elevator. “We have five minutes to talk to Chennault.”

Jo accompanied her across the lobby. “How’s he doing?”

“Good condition. They’re keeping him overnight for observation. He’s lucky.” She pushed the elevator call button. “And don’t even think of asking me to walk up the stairs. Clock’s ticking.”

Jo’s claustrophobia hissed
tiny space
. They stepped into the elevator and Tang pushed the button like she was grinding out a cigarette butt. On somebody’s face. The doors closed.

Jo’s palms were sweating, but she gave Tang a sickly grin. “Let me guess. You just won the lottery.”

“This case is holding together like a carnival ride that just broke loose from its moorings. Get ready to careen across the fairground.”

Tang’s phone bleated. She looked at the display, exhaled, and ignored it.

“Amy?”

“You first. What’s got your back up?”

“Somebody may have been stalking Tasia.”

Tang turned sharply. “How’d you find that out?”

“She had a cell phone we didn’t know about.”

She told Tang about the messages she’d found. “Cyberstalker at a minimum.”

The elevator stopped and Tang marched out with Jo behind her.

“What’s your news, Amy?”

“A new twist in the case. Unfortunately, it comes via tabloid television.”

She headed for the nurses’ station, badge out. Jo fished her UCSF ID from her satchel and slipped it around her neck.

At the desk Tang said, “Here to speak to Mr. Chennault. I called up.”

Her phone beeped again. The nurse behind the desk pointed to it, but Tang raised a hand. “I’m turning it off.”

The nurse directed them to Chennault’s room, reiterating, “Five minutes.”

They found Chennault propped up in bed, face sallow, eyes reflecting the light from the television. His left arm was encased in a blue cast and immobilized in a sling. A patch of his blond hair had been shaved. Stitches ran across his scalp, Frankenstein- style. He muted the television.

“Not quite the writer’s normal day, was it?” he said.

Jo smiled. “Glad you’re going to be all right. How do you feel?”

“As lousy as I look. The SS matrons at the nursing station won’t give me anything stronger than Tylenol.”

Tang crossed her arms and hunched into herself. “Can you can tell us anything about the person who attacked you?”

“Packed a punch like a rock. Actually, it was a rock, wasn’t it?”

“Did he say anything?” Tang said.

“Not a word. And I didn’t see his face, just his back. Big bugger. Hauled ass, and I mean that literally. He had a butt like a rhino.”

He tried to look wry, but beneath the pudgy, boyish features, his smile seemed exhausted.

“Anything else?” Tang said. “Any logos on the clothes?”

Chennault shook his head.

“Anything unusual in the way he ran? His stride?”

Another shake of the head. He swiped at the thermal blanket that had slid off his leg. He had a tattoo running around his ankle. In italic script, Jo saw SEMPER T—Chennault pulled the blanket up.

Tang nodded. “What did he smell like?”

Fabric softener and Right Guard deodorant,
Jo thought.

“Clean clothes. And—aftershave, maybe,” Chennault said. Tang said, “Did you go with the tour to Washington, D.C., last week?”

“No.” The smile seemed ever more forced. “The publisher wouldn’t spring for me to tag along.”

“Did you talk to Tasia about the time she spent in D.C.?”

“A bit. Why, Lieutenant?”

The television flickered blue on the wall. Chennault glanced at it. His bonhomie fell away like a dropped towel. A banner headline read, NEW TASIA SHOCKER.

The door opened and a nurse bustled in. “Time’s up.”

Jo tried to watch the screen but the nurse hustled her toward the door.

Chennault said, “Wait.” His smile seemed pathetic. “Can I give you a call tomorrow?”

“Of course.” Jo gave him her card.

Back at the elevator, Tang turned on her phone. Within seconds it began beeping. She hissed like an angry cat.

“What’s going on?” Jo said. “What’s the New Tasia Shocker?”

The phone rang. Tang glared at it. “Sorry. Got to take this.”

She answered, and spoke in monosyllables all the way down to the lobby. Outside, backlit by a crimson sunset, the press had clotted around a man in a suit the color of bone. The reporters, camera people, and sound- folk looked like iron filings pulled toward a magnet on an Etch A Sketch. The man raised his hands as if urging caution.

“What’s this?” Jo said.

She and Tang went through the automatic doors.

“. . . yet again remind you that the police department is doing everything in its power to bring this investigation to a conclusion.”

Beneath her breath, Tang said, “We’re screwed.”

The speaker’s dark hair and mustache were neatly clipped, as though by a gardener prepping the grass at Wimbledon. His aviator shades reflected the fiery sunset.

A reporter said, “Has the FBI been brought into the investigation?”

The man shook his head. “No. There’s no indication that a federal investigation is warranted. The San Francisco Police Department is fully engaged in resolving the matter of Ms. McFarland’s death.”

Tang nudged Jo around the fringes of the press pack. “Donald Dart. Departmental spokesman. If he’s here it means the brass is covering themselves with grease and trying to slide out from inside this case as slick and fast as they can.”

Another reporter said, “But what about the attack today?”

“That’s suspected burglary and assault. We’re searching for the assailant.”

Behind Dart another man stood at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back. His bald skull was sunburned. He was chewing gum, trying to look intimidating.

His gaze lit on Tang. He walked toward her.

“Give me a minute,” she said to Jo.

The bald man led her aside.

Jo didn’t consider Lieutenant Amy Tang to be combative. She was dogged and unyielding, but didn’t lash out in anger. When challenged or cornered, she drew in on herself, like a porcupine flashing its quills.

That’s how she looked talking to Baldy.

He towered over her. Jo couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he articulated each word with toothy care. Tang’s face had emptied into blankness.

In front of the microphones, Dart wrapped up his remarks. “That’s all for now. Thank you.” He turned and walked away from the press. A few reporters shouted questions after him, but none followed. The lights shut down and microphones retreated. He strode toward Baldy and Tang.

Tang raised her voice. “Because it’s an open investigation.”

Baldy continued chewing his gum.

Tang shook her head and walked away from him. “I’ll speak to my captain. Take it up with him.”

“We already have,” Baldy said. “Don’t march off, Lieutenant.”

Tang swept past Jo. “Let’s go.”

“Lieutenant. This is out of your hands,” Baldy called.

Jo glanced at him. Baldy propped his hands on his hips. She could swear he looked pleased.

She jogged to catch up with Tang. “Amy.”

Tang walked down the drive, face splashed with the dying sun. “Cowards.”

“What’s going on?”

“That’s Captain Chuck Bohr, one of my superiors. He’s taking charge.”

Jo glanced back. Bohr and Dart were chatting. Dart stroked his mustache. He looked like an extra from
Reno 911!

“I’m being sidelined,” Tang said.

“You’re off the case?”

“No, but I might as well be. They’re taking official charge of it, because it needs massaging at a higher level. They think they can massage the case out of existence.” She pulled out her cigarettes. “They can’t.”

“What’s going on? What’s the new Tasia shocker?”

“Last week, the
Bad Dogs and Bullets
tour played a concert in Washington,” Tang said. “Tasia and the band stayed at the Four Seasons in downtown D.C. But the tabloids just published a cell phone photo somebody snapped in the bar at the Hyatt, in Reston, Virginia. Tasia’s telling the bartender to hand her the entire bottle of Stolichnaya.”

“That’s not a shocker,” Jo said.

“Shortly afterward, the same citizen snapped a man leaving the Hyatt via the loading dock.”

They walked down the hill. Jo spread her hands.
And?

“It was nighttime. But the tabloids enhanced the photo. There’s no question. It’s Robert McFarland.” Tang lit her smoke. “Hail to the Chief.”

C
AN YOU PROVE THEY MET?” JO SAID. “I was afraid you were going to ask.”

“But you don’t think Tasia and the president were both at the Hyatt for a quilting bee.”

“No. They were having a private summit.”

Jo’s pulse beat like a conga. “Last night at the White House press conference, a reporter asked McFarland if he’d spoken to Tasia recently. He said no.” She reran it in her head. “I’m sure he said no.”

“He lied.”

“That means—”

“Don’t say it,” Tang said. “I know what it means. It means you’re going to stick your finger in an electric socket.”

Tang was right. The implications washed over her like a wall of water. They filled her with trepidation and excitement.

“So do I call the White House switchboard, or can you get me the number for the president’s private secretary?” she said.

 

 

W
HEN JO HAD asked Searle Lecroix for an interview, it had been a piece of cake. It had been a piece of pecan pie. Reaching the president of the United States was another matter. Getting a chance to ask him, directly, about meeting his first wife three days before she was killed with his gun, would be like lassoing an ICBM in flight.

Tang left Jo outside UCSF Medical Center, with a list of names and phone numbers at the White House. Jo gazed across Parnassus and down the hill, past the pale stone of Saint Ignatius Church and the University of San Francisco, across the forested hills of The Presidio, to the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pacific and the bay shone in the sun like mercury.

She took out her phone. She couldn’t Facebook McFarland, or leave a comment on the First Lady’s Twitter feed, or crash through the White House Rose Garden and knock on the window of the Oval Office.

She cleared her throat. She was a professional. She had the duty and the authority to do this. She punched in the switchboard number.

“White House.”

She stifled a whimper and the urge to squeal,
Omigod, omigod.
She asked to speak to Sylvia Obote, the president’s secretary. When Obote answered, “Office of the president,” Jo heard her own voice wobble like an unbalanced bicycle tire.

“This is Dr. Johanna Beckett calling from San Francisco.”

“How may I help you?”

Just speak. The woman is not going to ban you from the White House tour for daring to call.
“I’m conducting a psychological autopsy on Fawn Tasia McFarland for the San Francisco Police Department.”

Silence.

“I’m reconstructing Ms. McFarland’s final days. It’s important that I speak to the president about his meeting with her.”

Obote must have been expecting something like this call. “If you’ll e-mail me your bona fides and attach a list of questions, I’ll forward them to the White House counsel.”