Familiar Lies (20 page)

Max shook his head. “I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around it.”

“I’m sorry. It must be tough for you. I’m a mom now. I can understand how terrible this must be for you.”

“I never raised him that way.”

Julie smiled. “I know.” Randy returned with a fresh drink for Julie and one for himself. “I knew I needed to disappear. Between Josh and Gabe, I thought I might end up in the river before it was all said and done. I couldn’t allow that to happen to my baby. I might be a piece of shit, I might be a slut, or whatever, but he’s an angel.”

“You’re not a piece of shit,” Randy said. “Stop that.”

Max looked at Julie. “It’s a boy?”

She nodded.

“What did you name him?”

“Clive.”

“Nice name. A strong name. He’s lucky to have someone who cares so much about him.”

“He’s everything to me.”

Max motioned to the letter. “Josh mentioned a ‘little one’ in his letter.”

“He knew I was pregnant. After he found out his tone changed. He thought Clive might be his. But I couldn’t go back to that. I knew that it would happen again, eventually. Once a guy hits you, they never stop.”

“Josh mentioned money in the letter,” Max said. “And girls. You don’t know anything about that?”

“No. Maybe that had something to do with whatever he and Gabe were doing on the side. He never mentioned anything about it to me. He didn’t want me to know what they were doing, but I got the feeling that whatever it was couldn’t be good.”

“What makes you think that?” Max asked.

“If it wasn’t something bad then why wouldn’t he tell me?”

Max didn’t have an answer for that.

The conversation wrapped up with nothing else revealed. Liz and Max thanked Julie for her time and for the information. As they walked to the door, Randy returned Max’s pistol and Liz’s purse.

“Sorry I had to do that,” he said as he handed the items back. “You can understand why we’re jumpy.”

“Gabe is dead,” Max said. “Caldwell probably doesn’t know who you are. Probably doesn’t care. I hope you can sleep a little easier now.”

“Please don’t tell anyone about me,” Julie said. “I’d feel safer that way, just in case.”

“I promise.”

Julie went to the door and unlocked the three deadbolts before opening it. Mad and Liz stepped into the hallway.

“I’m sorry he hit you,” Max said. “I truly am.”

Julie gave him a weak smile. “Take care of yourself, Mr. Williamson.”

“You too.”

Julie closed the door behind them. Max didn’t ask to see the baby. It might be his grandson, or it might not. Some things, he thought, might just have to remain a mystery.

* * *

After leaving Julie’s apartment, Max and Liz rented a room at a no-name motel. After receiving the room key (an actual metal key and not a more modern key card) they let themselves into the room, locking the door behind them. Max propped a chair against the doorknob again, something that had become a habit by now. Funny, he thought, the kinds of things a person could learn to live with.

The room had two twin beds, each with their own nightstand. Max removed his phone from his pocket, along with the charger. He plugged it in and placed it on one of the nightstands before sitting down on the bed.

Liz took a seat on the opposite bed, facing him. “What are you thinking?”

“I think my son was a monster.”

“Max…”

“You heard her. Did you think she was lying?”

Liz paused.

“Honesty, remember?”

“No, I didn’t think she was lying.”

“I created a monster, Liz. What’s worse is I didn’t even know it. Katie was right about everything.”

Liz sighed. “None of us are perfect, Max.”

“But this isn’t about being perfect. I wasn’t even adequate.”

“What can you do about that now? I don’t want to sound cold, but right now we need to figure out just what in the hell we do next.”

“You’re right.” He thought about it. “So what do we know so far?”

“We know that despite what Gabe told us, he and your son were involved in some kind of business together on the side.”

Max shook his head. “What do you think the odds are it was the porn videos?”

“I think the odds are stacked solidly in favor of that theory.”

“How much of what Smith said do you think was true?”

“Well, he said that maybe Gabe had something going under Caldwell’s nose, that Caldwell kept his distance from the business in order to stay clean. What if Gabe was filming those BDSM movies on the side, like the one you saw Amanda in? It’s entirely possible that Caldwell might not have even known about it.”

“So maybe Gabe was using Caldwell’s teen porn operation to make his own stuff?” Max said.

“Yeah.”

“If what Julie said was true then that means Josh might have been involved.”

“Maybe Josh was helping with Caldwell’s movies and somehow found out about Gabe’s side business. Or Gabe made him an offer to get in.”

“That would explain what Josh said in the letter about Gabe lying to Caldwell about him.”

“Caldwell could still be responsible for what happened to your son,” Liz said.

“What about this third person or group that Smith mentioned?”

“That could all be bullshit. It’s possible Caldwell killed Ruby. Or maybe Smith killed her because she knew he was dirty.”

“Smith could have been working for Caldwell the whole time. We know Smith killed Gabe, right? Maybe, Caldwell had Smith do that dirty work for him.”

“But Caldwell didn’t have any love for Smith.”

“Smith could have killed Gabe for his own benefit. Who knows what kind of dirt Gabe had on him. Being exposed as a dirty cop would have ruined him. Smith could have been tying up his own loose ends.”

“But Smith was working for somebody and that somebody wanted us dead. We know that from the texts on Smith’s phone. If that someone was Caldwell then why didn’t he kill us when he had us at that warehouse?”

“If Smith was a thorn in Caldwell’s side, it’s possible we really did do him a favor. With Smith gone and us sufficiently scared he could go back to his business.”

“But we’re loose ends, Max. He’s going to want to tie those up.”

“You think he’s still gunning for us?”

“Possibly. Maybe he’ll try for us later, making it look more random. Picking us up in a car and taking us to a crime scene isn’t the best way to get away with murder.”

Max stood and paced the room. “We don’t know anything more than we did before.”

“What we have are more pieces to the puzzle. We just don’t know how they fit yet.”

“How do we figure that out? We don’t have any more leads. Ruby’s dead. Smith is dead. Julie told us everything she knows.”

“So she says.”

“You think she’s holding out?”

“Probably not. But there are so many lies floating around here it’s hard to know what’s up or down.”

Max looked out the window, thinking. He turned back to Liz. “I think Gabe is our lynchpin.”

“How so?”

“He was at the center of it all. Smith killed him, either for his own gain or as a job for Caldwell. If we can tie Smith to the murder and then tie Smith to Caldwell we might have what we need to put Caldwell down for good. If we figure out what Gabe was up to then we can maybe find out what happened to Amanda.”

“You think he had something to do with it, don’t you?”

“I do. I think he lied through his teeth to us. Think about it, if the parents of the two teenagers you fucked over have you tied to a chair what would you do?”

“Lie my way out of it, if I was a piece of shit scumbag like Gabe Harris.”

“Exactly. We find out what Gabe knew and I think we start to make some of these puzzle pieces fit.”

“How do we do that?”

“We backtrack.”

“The cops have surely cleaned up the mess Smith left back at the flophouse, don’t you think?”

“If Smith called it in. My gut tells me that he’s unlikely to implicate himself in the murder.”

“Wouldn’t somebody have found the body already?”

“Not necessarily. We last saw Gabe Saturday night. He was dead by yesterday morning. A body doesn’t even begin to smell until about three days in. Hardly anybody lives in that neighborhood. It’s a dump. It’s entirely possible that nobody’s been there since we left.”

“What about Caldwell?”

“Caldwell had that place cleaned out before Smith killed Gabe. He had all the evidence that linked him to the porn movies removed. He won’t be back there; he’s broken ties with the place.”

“Then what makes you think we’re going to find anything useful there?”

“Not in the house. On Gabe’s body.”

“Gross.”

“Think about it; Caldwell wants Gabe dead, right? So he has Smith kill him. Caldwell’s already cleaned the house, so the only loose end left is Gabe. Smith stumbles upon Gabe tied to a chair in a clean house and sees the perfect opportunity. He doesn’t even have to find the guy. Smith kills Gabe, but now he has to pretend he didn’t do it because of you and me. That is until he can get rid of us.”

“After which he planned to go back and tie up his own loose ends and ditch Gabe’s body. But he never made it that far.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s possible he already picked over Gabe’s body,” Liz said. “Right after he killed him.”

“It’s also possible he didn’t.”

“We’re going back to that house, aren’t we?”

“I don’t think we have any other choice.”

Max and Liz went to bed early, each choosing one of the twin beds. Max listened to her breathe in the darkness. He wanted to go to her, to slide into the bed and hold her. He needed the feeling of having someone close. He wrestled with the decision until he finally just got up and went to her. “Mind if I join you?”

“Max…”

“Not that. I just don’t want to sleep alone.”

Liz turned back the covers and Max slipped in beside her. She put an arm around him and fell asleep inside of a few minutes.

Max followed a few minutes later, slipping into unconsciousness with the soft warmth of Liz’s body by his side.

* * *

They slept until two o’clock a.m., after which they checked out of the hotel and headed back to the house where they’d left Gabe’s body. Max couldn’t shake the bad feeling he had about going back to that place. Caldwell could be watching the house, waiting for someone who shouldn’t be there to show up. It was also very possible that the police had already been there and cleared the place out. Maybe they even had officers there on a stakeout. If the police got them, they would have to come clean on everything and hope like hell that the cop taking their statement wasn’t getting a kickback from Caldwell.

But through it all one theme kept recurring in all the scenarios racing through Max’s mind: he and Liz shouldn’t be there. But their children had put them in this situation. As hesitant as Max was about returning to the scene of yet another murder, he also knew they had few other options. They were simply out of leads. Without something to go on, he and Liz would remain in a stasis, a sort of purgatory where they had little choice but to sit and wait for something to happen to them.

Max hated the idea of doing nothing even more than the danger of doing
something
.

They stopped at Walgreens and picked up a box of rubber gloves. Revisiting a crime scene was risky enough; leaving behind prints was downright insane. They made the rest of the drive in just under a couple of hours, the empty roads and a tailwind affording them better travel time on the return trip. By the time they pulled into the dilapidated and forgotten subdivision the clock read four thirty a.m. Liz pulled the Honda to within a few houses away and killed the engine. The headlights died with it, allowing the moonlight to illuminate the scene around them.

“There’s no police tape or anything,” Liz said. “Looks like nobody’s been here.”

Max looked around. One porch light remained on behind them, near the end of the street. A few cars were parked outside of houses, a few more parked in driveways. All the cars appeared to be empty. “I think this is as clear as it’s going to go get. Are you sure you want to go with me? You can wait in the car.”

“Not a chance,” Liz said. She picked up her purse and opened the driver’s side door.

Max followed.

Entering the house proved as easy this time as it had the last couple of times, the lock merely an inconvenience rather than a deterrent. The first thing Max noticed was the smell; not the smell of a rotting corpse, but the smell of old blood and hot, stagnant air. It smelled the way Max thought a slaughterhouse might.

Gabe’s body sat where they’d left it, the blood pooled beneath him a congealed, brown mass that looked like thick syrup. Gabe’s cloudy eyes remained opened, staring at nothing and into oblivion at the same time.

“Jesus,” Liz whispered as she gently closed and locked the door behind them.

“Let’s get this over with.” Max walked to the body and stood beside it for a few moments, preparing himself. A couple of years ago he’d been obsessed with meetings and sales figures. Back then his biggest risks were that his fly was down or maybe bad breath that would put off a potential client.

Now he was standing next to a dead man with a slit throat tied to a chair in a drug den used to make exploitative teen sex films. If someone would have told him back then where he’d be in a two years, Max would have laughed in their face. How quickly things change.

Max took a deep breath to calm himself, immediately regretting it as the smell of old blood and impending rot filled his nasal cavity. He felt his stomach do a little flip and for a moment he thought he might puke. Thankfully it subsided quickly enough.

He started with Gabe’s pockets, first the front and then the back. He appreciated the gloves for more than just their ability to hide his fingerprints. The cloth had been saturated with blood from the deep slash in his throat and had now dried stiff. Max held his breath as much as he could as he searched, breathing only when he had to. The smell of bleach from the basement wafted up, mixing with the rest of the odors permeating the room, creating a hellish ffconcoction from which he couldn’t wait to escape.