The Liar’s Lullaby - Meg Gardiner

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bay swelled in his windshield.

      

      ONSTAGE, LECROIX HEARD metal shearing. He glanced up. In the sky above the stadium, debris spewed from one of the stunt helicopters. The crowd gasped. The chopper spun in circles, engine whining. It keeled at a sharp angle and dropped behind the scoreboard toward the bay.

      The security guards waved at the band. “Get down. Look out.”

      A slice of rotor blade buried itself in the stage like a hatchet.

      The drummer leaped up, knocked over his kit, and hit the stage with his hands over his head. Lecroix threw down his guitar and jumped into the crowd.

      A chunk of the chopper’s tail plunged like a meteor into the front row seats. Screaming, the crowd fled. Lecroix fought against the tide, aiming for the stands where CO2 canisters continued to spew white smoke.

      Lightning seemed to run through him. He knew where the first God-awful banging noise had come from. And why it was deafening, infinitely louder than the pyrotechnics or guitar solo.

      The gun had fired, next to Tasia’s headset mike.

      A gearbox slammed into the field. The flight of the crowd became a stampede. Lecroix struggled to stay upright. And from out of the smoke Tasia came sliding toward the stage on the zip line. She twirled, slow as a lariat, hanging by the harness around her hips. Her head was back, arms flung wide, as if offering herself to heaven. Blood saturated her hair. It dripped like fat tears onto the fleeing crowd. Lecroix tried to scream, but his voice was gone.

      

      JO RAN FROM the snack bar toward the shouts and wailing. She heard metal slicing metal. She rounded a corner and saw mayhem.

      People were racing away from the stage. Debris was raining from the sky like bright metallic confetti. Beyond the right field wall, smoke rose from the bay.

      “Oh Jesus.”

      A chopper had gone down. Nausea spiked her stomach. She dropped her popcorn and ran toward the field.

      “Tina,” she said.

      A chunk of debris smashed into the stanchion at the back of the stage that anchored the zip line. With a twanging sound, the steel cable snapped loose. It dropped like a heavy whip into the crowd.

      “Dear God.”

      A woman was on the zip line. Jo saw her plunge helplessly into the crowd.

      People poured toward her. They pushed, stumbled, fell, piled on top of one another. She tried to fight her way through them. Then, like a top note, she heard her name being called.

      “Jo, here.”

      Tina was running in her direction. Jo pushed through the surging crowd and grabbed her.

      “The helicopters collided,” Tina said.

      Jo pulled Tina against a pillar and watched, eyes stinging. The stampede flowed toward the right field stands. People poured over the railings and fell into the dugout.

      A stadium official took the microphone and begged for calm. The screams turned into wailing and an eerie quiet in the upper reaches of the ballpark.

      “What just happened?” Tina said.

      “The worst stunt catastrophe in entertainment history,” Jo said.

      She wasn’t even close.

       4

      TWILIGHT VEILED THE SKY, BLUE AND STARRY, WHEN JO AND TINA walked from the ballpark onto Willie Mays Plaza. But the stadium lights blazed. Police cruisers lined the street. On the bay, searchlights on a salvage barge illuminated the rough waters where the helicopter had crashed. Third Street was lit by television spotlights. The night was whiter than a starlet’s red-carpet smile.

      Jo hung her arm across Tina’s shoulder. Exhausted and numb, they headed toward her truck.

      Ahead, leaning against an unmarked SFPD car, was Amy Tang.

      The young police lieutenant had a phone to her ear and a cigarette pinched between her thumb and forefinger. A uniformed officer stood before her, getting instructions. Her coal-colored suit matched her hair, her glasses, and, it seemed, her mood. Barely five feet tall, she was tiny against the Crown Vic. She looked like a disgruntled hood ornament.

      Jo veered toward her. Tang looked up. Surprise brushed her face. She ended her call and dismissed the uniformed officer.

      “You were at the concert?” Tang said.

      “Tina was on the field.”

      Tang’s mouth thinned. She glanced at her watch. Two hours had passed since the stunt disaster.

      “Fire Department and paramedics were swamped. We stuck around,” Jo said.

      Tang nodded slowly. “Lucky thing you love country rock so much.”

      Tina pulled off her straw cowboy hat. Her curls were lank. “Yeah, every stadium should have a barista and a shrink on emergency standby.”

      “Brewing coffee and listening to people’s problems—I’m sure that’s what you did, and well,” Tang said.

      Jo and Tina had helped ferry supplies and comfort distraught concertgoers. But Jo didn’t want to talk about that.

      “Congratulations on your transfer to the Homicide Detail, Amy. Why are you here?”

      Tang’s sea-urchin hair spiked in the breeze. She didn’t answer.

      Jo stepped closer. “A body’s lying on the field, covered by a tarp. And tonight came close to being a remake of the Twilight Zone disaster, starring my sister as Woman Hit by Crashing Chopper. I want to know what happened.”

      “It’s Tasia McFarland.” Tang’s face turned pensive. “And I want you to know what happened. I think I want your professional opinion on it.”

      Jo felt a frisson. “Her death is equivocal?”

      “Fifty points for the deadshrinker.”

      Jo was a forensic psychiatrist who consulted for the SFPD. She performed psychological autopsies in cases of equivocal death—cases in which the authorities couldn’t establish whether a death was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide.

      She analyzed victims’ lives to discover why they had died. She shrank the souls of the departed.

      But the cops normally requested Jo’s expertise only when a death remained indecipherable even after a long investigation. If the SFPD already considered the death of Tasia McFarland—notorious, splashy, icon-of-Americana Tasia McFarland—to be equivocal, this case was going to be tricky, as well as inconceivably high profile. Jo had a brief image of her professional life igniting like a matchstick.

      And she saw her sister beside her: tired, lovely, lucky to be breathing.

      She handed Tina the keys to her truck. “I’ll catch up with you.”

      Tina kissed her cheek and whispered, “I’m fine. There was no instant replay. Don’t dwell on it.”

      Jo blinked. Tina squeezed her hand and headed off.

      Tang flicked her cigarette away. “Come on.”

      They headed back into the ballpark. Tang said, “Pilot of the first helicopter’s missing, presumed dead. Stuntman who was in the back of the chopper survived, barely.”

      Jo ran her fingers across her forehead. Her face was stinging. Tang glanced at her, and hesitated.

      “Sorry, Beckett. This must hit close to home.”

      “That score’s already on the board. I can’t take it down.”

      Her

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