The Liar’s Lullaby - Meg Gardiner

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      His expression fissured.

      “…protect her.” A glaring light seemed to shear across his face. “Offer a prayer for her. Thank you.”

      He turned and left the podium. He couldn’t have left faster if the room had been burning. A reporter said, “Mr. President, had you spoken to her recently?”

      McFarland raised a hand as he walked away. “No.”

      Another reporter called, “Do you know why she brought your gun to the concert? Mr. President, did she ever speak about suicide?”

      He shook his head and strode out the door.

      In the hospitality suite, people wandered away from the television. Behind Jo, a man said, “Conscience has him by the throat.”

      Tang turned. “Mr. Lecroix.”

      Searle Lecroix stood at the back of the room, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, staring at the TV from under the brim of his black Stetson. “That man’s just one more person who let her down. But at least he seems to know it.”

      His smoky drawl sounded hoarse. His face was drained. Tasia’s baby boy, her Mister Blue Eyes with the silver tongue, looked like he’d had the stuffing pounded out of him.

      Tang walked over. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

      “I couldn’t leave while Tasia’s out there,” he said. “Leave her lying on the field with people picking her over—I couldn’t. She deserves to have somebody nearby who cares.” His timbre dropped. “What happened to her?”

      “We don’t know yet,” Tang said. She motioned Jo over. “This is Dr. Beckett.”

      Tang explained what Jo did, and asked Lecroix to let Jo interview him.

      “You want to talk about Tasia from a psychological perspective? Now?”

      Jo shook her head. “Tomorrow or the day after.”

      He agreed, and gave her his cell phone number. “You going to find out who let this happen?”

      “Maybe you can help us figure that out.”

      He nodded. “They’re taking her to the morgue. I need to go.” He touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “Lieutenant. Doctor.”

      They watched him walk down the hall, shoulders slumped. After a moment, Jo said, “I was going to tell you Possibility Number Three.”

      “Please.”

      “Tasia planned to shoot somebody besides herself. But an unknown person in that swarm of fans got hold of the trigger and shot her first.”

      “Now you believe somebody was out to get her?”

      “Now you don’t?” Jo said.

      “I don’t know. I mean, you heard her. ‘Liar’s words all end in pain.’”

       9

      TANG DROPPED JO AT HER HOUSE ON RUSSIAN HILL. SHE HANDED over a thick manila envelope.

      “The concert video, photos of the scene, witness statements from the stuntman and stage crew. And Tasia’s ‘in the event of my assassination’ recording.”

      Jo paused. “Using her ex-husband’s gun is a huge statement.”

      “No kidding, Sigmund.” Tang pointed at the envelope. “Figure out what she was saying.”

      The car grumbled away.

      The night air was cool. The cable car tracks hummed with the sound of gears and cables ringing beneath the road. Jo climbed her front steps.

      Her small house sat across from a park, surrounded by grander, brighter homes painted building-block colors. Hers was a fine San Francisco Victorian with iron-red gables. The front yard was a spot of grass the size of a paperback book, bordered by gardenias and white lilacs. Inside, her Doc Martens sounded heavy on the hardwood floor. Her keys echoed when she dropped them on the hallway table.

      Jo never would have chosen the house for herself. She would have struggled to afford it. But her husband had inherited the home from his grandparents. He and Jo had redone the place. Knocked out walls, sanded the floors, installed skylights.

      When Daniel died, his absence from the house had been excruciating. Early on, Jo had moments when she was overcome with an urge to shatter the windows and shout, Come back to me. Daniel’s parents would have loved for her to sell it to them. But she’d made it her home, and now couldn’t bear the thought of giving it up.

      She went to the kitchen and fixed coffee. The magnolia in the backyard was laden with flowers. Under the moon they shone like white fists. Music from a neighbor’s house floated to her, a Latin tune with sinuous horns. She felt jacked up, like she’d spent the evening strapped to a rocket sled.

      She heard a sharp knock on the front door.

      She answered it to find Gabe Quintana standing on the porch, hands in the pockets of his jeans. One look at her and his eyes turned wary.

      “Maybe I should have called first, ” he said.

      “The concert ended with the star and a stunt pilot dead, fans trampled, and me signing up for a case from one of the more exotic rings of hell.”

      “Want me to come back another time?”

      His black hair was close-cropped. His eyes had a low-burning glow. Right, Jo thought. He didn’t believe for a second that she’d kick him out.

      “Some day I’ll actually say yes. Just to keep your self-confidence under control,” she said.

      His smile was offhanded. “No, you won’t.”

      Laugh lines etched his bronze skin. He leaned against the door frame, his gaze rakish.

      Jo grabbed him by the collar of his Bay to Breakers T-shirt and yanked him through the doorway. She kicked the door closed and thrust him against the wall.

      “Watch it. I can push your buttons and bring you to your knees”—she snapped her fingers—“like that.”

      “Promise?”

      She held him to the wall. “I haven’t seen you for twenty-four hours, and it’s your fault that twenty-four hours feels like a long time.”

      He wrapped his arms around her waist. “My buttons. Yeah, I’m the one whose control panel is blowing up here.”

      He kissed her.

      Sometimes he seemed as still as a pool of water. Sometimes he seemed reserved to the point of invisibility. She knew that the surface reflected little of the turbulence beneath, that it hid his intensity and resolve. He was an illusionist, a master of emotional sleight of hand.

      His cool served him perfectly as a PJ, a search and rescue expert for the Air National Guard. He came off as affable and reassuring. But sometimes, when he was challenged or threatened, his attitude changed, and Jo glimpsed the warrior he had been.

      And was about to be again.

      One day gone, eighty-seven left. Gabe had been called up to active duty. At the end of the summer, he and others from the 129th Rescue Wing had orders for a four-month deployment to Djibouti, to provide combat search and rescue support for the U.S. military’s Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa. He’d be back at the end of January. After that he’d remain on active duty for another eight months, but thought it possible he would serve much of that time at the Wing’s headquarters, Moffett Field in Mountain View.

      But as always when reservists were called up, Gabe’s life was getting blown to the wind. He wasn’t just a pararescueman; thanks to the G.I. Bill, he was also a graduate student

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