The Liar's Lullaby (19 page)

“The president, no question. But I don’t know whether somebody who’s obsessed with him might also want to harm his former wife.”

But she knew something Lecroix most likely did not. Stalkers fit no definable personality profile. But she’d met one in San Quentin, a man who had killed his estranged wife. He had a peculiar historical obsession that, Jo learned afterward, he shared with a strikingly large number of violent stalkers: He was fascinated with presidential assassins.

“Anything else you can tell me?” she said.

He hesitated. “Yeah. At the concert, I thought for a second Tasia was aiming the gun at me. That tells you everything. I didn’t know her at all.”

Jo nodded, and stood up. “Thanks.”

“You going to go call the Secret Service now?”

“Among others.”

“Best make it quick. The president’s coming to the funeral. He’s gonna be here tomorrow.”

A
S SHE TROOPED DOWN THE STAIRS AT THE ST. FRANCIS, JO CALLED and left a message for Amy Tang.

“I just interviewed Searle Lecroix, and I’m worried. Tasia may have been only part of the stalker’s focus. I think the SFPD should alert the Secret Service.” She explained, adding, “It’s a stretch. But better safe than sorry.”

Next she phoned Vienna Hicks. “Is what I’m hearing about the memorial service for your sister accurate?”

“Grace Cathedral, tomorrow afternoon. Searle’s going to sing. Bless the guy, he’s actually kind of sweet and awkward,” Vienna said. “And it’s true—
he
is coming.”

“Robert McFarland.”

“I spoke to him. I got it from the horse’s mouth.” Vienna sounded both snarky and amazed. “I’m sure his people vetted it. The idea of the president attending his ex-wife’s funeral must have polled well.”

“So he’ll be in San Francisco tomorrow?” Jo said.

“What’s that tone I hear in your voice?”

Jo reached the ground floor, opened the fire door, and headed for the lobby. “I need to talk to him.”

Vienna guffawed, an honest-to-God barking laugh. “And I want to grow wings and fly like Tinkerbell, sprinkling pixie dust on the city.”

“Do you have a direct number for him?”

“No.” She laughed again, but let it fade. “I do have the direct number for his chief of staff.” She paused. “Who sent me a condolence card, believe it or not.”

Jo got out a pen. “K. T. Lewicki has a heart?”

“We know each other from the old days. He had a soft spot for Tasia. I think he understood, even before Rob did, how mentally fragile she was. After the divorce we stayed in touch, and he’d always check with me that she was doing all right.” Her tone turned cautious. “What would you talk to Rob about?”

“His meeting with Tasia in Virginia. Why he lied about it. Tasia’s mental state at the beginning, middle, and end of their marriage. Whether he knew of any threats to her.”

“Did you get hit on the head when you were a kid, or are you just unaware that asking those kinds of questions can have consequences?”

“My sister says I’m an adrenaline junkie. Could you give me the number?”

Vienna gave her several numbers.

“Thanks,” Jo said.

She walked into the lobby. The information she’d gathered was giving her the heebie-jeebies.

Tasia had received fourteen hundred e-mails from Archangel X. They indicated a pattern of increasing intensity, obsession, and threat—though never explicit. Yet Tasia had never responded to, or even opened, most of those e- mails. As far as Jo could discern, she’d never mentioned them to her agent, manager, family, or boyfriend. She may not have been aware of the most recent spate.

The vandalism was highly disturbing, and a warning sign of a personality headed toward violence. And Tasia, according to Searle Lecroix, had been afraid. According to the stunt coordinator, Rez Shirazi, she had believed that an assassin lurked among the crowd at the concert. She had talked of sacrifice and martyrdom.

It may have been the ramblings of a woman gripped by grandiose paranoia. But there were too many pieces of information, rolling around like marbles, for Jo to dismiss it.

Her gaze fell on a newspaper. The front-page photo showed President McFarland and his staff huddled in conversation in the Oval Office.

She walked to a quiet corner, as far from the echoing noise of the lobby as she could get, and she phoned the White House.

The phone was answered briskly. “Sylvia Obote.”

“Jo Beckett.”

After a pause, Obote said, “Yes, Dr. Beckett. I’ve forwarded your questions. I’m sure the president will respond in due course.”

Obote didn’t sound impatient, but her smooth efficiency had an edge to it.

“Thank you. I hear that the president is coming to California for Tasia McFarland’s memorial service. I—”

“The president is attending the memorial as a private citizen and friend of the family. I’m afraid he’ll have no time in his schedule to speak to you.”

“That’s not what I was going to ask.” Not anymore, at least. “I’ve received some disturbing information. Someone may have been stalking Ms. McFarland. I think the Secret Service should be aware of the situation.”

This time Obote’s pause was briefer. “Give me the information. And I’ll put you through to the presidential protection detail.”

Jo heard Obote typing notes as they talked, though she presumed their conversation was being recorded, and perhaps relayed to NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, and from there to a polar-orbiting spy satellite that was even now turning its mirrored eyes toward Union Square in San Francisco.

“Thank you for the information, Doctor,” Obote said. “I’ll transfer you.”

There was a series of clicks and silences and eventually the phone was picked up again. A brisk, southern male voice answered and took down all the information as Jo repeated it.

“This may be nothing, but I didn’t want to let it lie,” Jo said.

“And you were right to do so.”

“Good. I presume you’re part of the president’s detail, Special Agent . . .”

“Zuniga. Yes, ma’am. And we appreciate the information.”

She thanked him and said good-bye. And she looked again at the newspaper. Noise echoed in the vaulting lobby. She dialed a new number. She stared at the photo: a bullet-headed man conferring with President McFarland, leaning close, eyes intense.

“K. T. Lewicki’s office.”

If she couldn’t talk to the president, she’d talk to his chief of staff.

 

 

K
ELVIN TYCHO LEWICKI was known as the Point Man. Gatekeeper and guard dog, he was tied to Robert McFarland by long-standing friendship. He controlled the president’s schedule and controlled access to the Oval Office and the man himself.

Lewicki had gone to high school with Rob McFarland. At the University of Montana, he wrestled on the college’s Division I NCAA squad. He was renowned for winning matches in which his opponents withdrew with dislocated joints. Later, as a lieutenant in the army, he served with McFarland overseas. After a decade in the House of Representatives, he’d been picked by McFarland as his right- hand man.

Whereas McFarland was as smooth and cool as Gary Cooper, Lewicki was blunt and funny, and known to go for an opponent’s knees. He and McFarland had scrapped politically for years. His own aspirations for higher office had been bested by his friend, and then coopted when McFarland brought him into the White House as chief of staff—a move seen by pundits as a “team of rivals” tactic.

But Lewicki had been the best man at Rob and Tasia McFarland’s wedding. He had devoted his entire adult life to public service. And he had shown enough humanity, and connection, even after all these years, to send Vienna Hicks a condolence card.

A minion answered Lewicki’s office phone. Jo repeated her list of qualifications and requirements and alarming possibilities, intoning them like a spell. She gazed at Lewicki’s photo on the front page of the newspaper. He was built like a coil of steel cable. Sinewy, gray-eyed, built to take the tension, or to whiplash an enemy.

“Connecting you,” the minion said.

The connection clicked through. “K. T. Lewicki. How can I help you, Doctor Beckett?”

His voice was clipped and nasal. He spoke like a man used to attacking in powerful bursts—wrestling opponents, Taliban strongholds, the Speaker of the House.

Jo’s intake of breath was involuntary. “Yes. Thank you for taking my call, Mr. Lewicki.”

“I’m working with the SFPD to ascertain—”

“Tasia McFarland’s cause of death. I know.”

Ping
, like a BB, hitting her in the side of the head. “I know it’s bold of me to ask, but it’s vital that I speak with President McFarland about his ex-wife’s state of mind.”

“Bold? No, it’s ballsy. Obviously you’ve decided to go through me.”

“You are the Point Man.”

“So I’ll point out that the SFPD’s investigation into a tragic mishap at a concert is snuffling so exhaustively through minutiae that it’s becoming neurotic.”

“It’s far from clear that Ms. McFarland’s death was an accident.”

“Even so, whatever the circumstances, the president was three thousand miles away when it happened.”

“And she met with him three days before being shot to death with a pistol he owns.”

Lewicki was quiet a beat. Jo heard papers rustling on his end. “I’ve heard you’re tenacious, Doctor Beckett. But sometimes there’s a fine line between tenacity and obsession.”

Now it was Jo’s turn to pause. “This is a matter of being thorough. This is due diligence, and it’s what I owe the criminal justice system, Ms. McFarland, and her family. And given the media attention, reaching a dispositive conclusion is vital, to quash rumor and misinformation.”

“You know there’s no such thing as dispositive with the infotainment industry. And after a certain point, the investigation becomes less a thorough examination and more a fishing expedition with dynamite. That fine line? Sometimes it’s between tenacity and recklessness.”

“I don’t want to harm the president. I want to determine the truth,” Jo said.

There was another, longer pause, and she realized she’d stepped onto Lewicki’s turf. She’d played straight into his hands, like a wrestling opponent maneuvered for a crushing fall.

“You do like to take chances, don’t you?” he said. “You raced BMX and mountain bikes in high school, I hear. Won some—is this correct, ‘bouldering’ competitions?—as Johanna Tahari. There’s a nice photo of you climbing in Yosemite, from
Outside
magazine. Glad you take advantage of our National Park system, Doctor.”

The
ping
turned into a hail of BBs.

“And I know you’ve been willing to risk yourself in aid of others. I’m sorry about your unfortunate loss a few years ago,” Lewicki said.

The lobby of the hotel seemed to fill with a sound like rain pounding a tin roof. “I need to speak to the president,” she said. “If that’s a risk, I’m shocked.”

Unfortunate loss.
The bastard, bringing Daniel into this. Risk? What was he implying?

“So convince me,” Lewicki said.

“Before her death Tasia was being stalked.”

Quiet on the line.

“It appears that an obsessed fan was cyberstalking her, at the least. Maybe in person. What worries me is that this person’s messages occasionally mention the president.”

“You need to speak to the police and the Secret Service.”

“Done. I spoke to Agent Zuniga,” Jo said. “This investigation is now working on two levels. One, to ascertain the manner of Ms. McFarland’s death. To do that I need to reconstruct her last few weeks. And to determine her state of mind, I need to talk to the president.”

“Why?”

“She left a recorded message. In it, she expresses a fear for her life. She mentions the president. It made no sense until the photos surfaced from the hotel in Reston. Now it makes only partial sense. The only person who can clarify and explain is Mr. McFarland.”

Another long pause. “I’ll get back to you.”

“Thank you.”

The click on Lewicki’s end sounded final, like a nail being hammered into her chances.

The noisy echoes in the hotel lobby filled the silence. Jo put away the phone. She felt the marble floor shift beneath her feet. She had a strange feeling that she’d just undermined herself.

She walked to the door. The doorman opened it before she could touch the handle.

Outside, she put on her sunglasses. A brisk breeze lifted her hair. Strands of mist skirted across the blue sky. A cable car rolled by, crowded with office workers and tourists, brakeman pulling on the lever. When it had passed, she saw the photographer across the street in the square. His camera was lifted to his face, aimed at the door of the St. Francis, catching her.

After a second he lowered the camera. Stared. When she didn’t look away, he took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and turned his back to light up.

People swept past Jo on the sidewalk. Traffic jangled and sunlight bounced off car windshields. Jo turned and walked south toward Market Street. She kept her eyes on the photographer. He glanced over his shoulder at the door of the St. Francis, took out his phone, and made a call.

She kept walking. The photographer looked up and down the street, as though searching to see where she’d gone.

Maybe paranoia was infectious.

At the corner she stopped and waited with the crowd for the light to change. The buildings around the square rose above her. The city was a buzzing hive. Within half a mile were Chinatown, Financial District skyscrapers, and the soup kitchens of the Tenderloin. Protecting the president in such a dense urban area had to be a nightmare.

K. T. Lewicki’s creepy recital of her own history had caused her fingertips to tingle, like she’d stuck a pin in a wall socket. She couldn’t call it a threat. Nothing was overt. But the warning had been in every syllable Lewicki spoke.