In the Company of Liars (3 page)

But it's almost over. They will make their arrests soon, and her part in this operation will be completed. She can't
worry about things she can't control. She can only do her part.

Sam Dillon's death started it. Allison Pagone's death ended it.

She shakes her head in resignation, still unable to believe how this began.

T
he crowd is small, which is surprising in a way. The family wanted a small service; it is a tribute to their planning that only two reporters managed to figure out the time and place. The family's success in eluding the media is probably due to their decision to forgo a church service. The media probably had its eye on the church Allison Pagone had attended her entire life. They would have no way of knowing which cemetery had been chosen for her burial.

It's a nice place. Three acres of beautiful land, manicured lawn, well-kept plots. A new two-story granite mausoleum is secluded in a shady area to the northwest. A nicer place than Jane McCoy expects to end up in when her ticket is punched, on her government salary.

From her position in the driver's seat of the limousine, McCoy looks through the one-way tinted windows at her surroundings. First, for the exits. Technically, there is only
one. A road that leads from the main gate, snakes through the cemetery, and leads back out.

It's a beautiful day for a service, if there is such a thing, owing primarily to the sun. One of those days when it's hard to keep your eyes open. You won't hear complaints anywhere across the city, though, after the permanent gray sky that prevailed from January through April. With the blinding rays and the temperature close to sixty, people are dressed optimistically, praying that today is a harbinger and not a tease.

It reminds McCoy of the first time she approached her mother's grave after her memorial service. She was thirteen then, hardly able to comprehend the loss, offended at the strong sunlight cast over the headstone, as if someone, somewhere, were trying to make the world beautiful on a day that was anything but.

The limousine is parked on the narrow road only about ten yards from the service. Jane McCoy cracks her window and listens to the pastor.

“Allison Pagone.” The minister stops on the words. Jane assumes that the reverend has known Allison over the years.

“Allison Pagone was a woman of substance. A woman of faith.” The reverend, an older, pudgy man with a thin beard, looks up at the sky a moment, then collects himself. “Do we judge a woman based on the last year of her life, or on the first thirty-seven? Do we remember only the mistakes she made in a difficult moment, or do we recall all the giving and sacrifice and love she provided for her family and friends? Can we forgive?”

That's a good question. Forgiveness is not something in which an agent of the FBI specializes. Her job is apprehension, sometimes prevention; she is never asked for, and never offers, absolution. She finds the concept overwhelming. She never liked her classes in philosophy—the study
of questions that can't be answered—or religion—the study of answers that can't be questioned. She preferred her undergrad classes on criminal justice.
This is right. This is wrong
. And she never understood how one moment of repentance can absolve years of sin. One expression of regret erasing countless misdeeds? It's just not how she's wired.

“I hate these places.” A voice through her earpiece; it's Owen Harrick, who is driving the hearse parked in front of the limousine.

Jane McCoy looks over at the service. Allison Pagone's ex-husband, Mateo Pagone, and their twenty-year-old daughter, Jessica Pagone, are the only ones seated. Allison's parents are deceased and she was an only child, so the family is small. The rest of the tiny crowd is mostly neighbors, some friends from the church, someone from the publishing house in New York. That woman from the publishing house is probably mourning the most. Allison Pagone was a best-selling novelist.

McCoy looks at the ex-husband, Mat Pagone, again. He is in a well-tailored black suit with a silver tie. He is staring straight ahead in concentration. His right hand is locked in the hands of his daughter, Jessica, who is also staring forward with red, numb eyes.

McCoy speaks into the mike on her collar. “See the hubby?”

Owen Harrick answers back. “Yeah.”

“He doesn't do a very good job of looking broken up about the whole thing. His wife just kicked it?”

“Ex-wife,” Owen clarifies.

“That's cold, Harrick,” she says, but she chuckles.

“He looks more bored than sad,” her partner agrees. “So what do we do?”

The service is breaking up. The whole thing didn't last more than fifteen minutes. A closed-casket affair, the coffin already in the ground when the attendees arrived. Mat
Pagone rises with his daughter, holding her hand. Together, they scoop a piece of dirt and drop it onto the coffin.

“We do what we do best,” Jane McCoy says into her collar. “We wait.”

M
cCoy is out of the vehicle before her partner has even stopped the sedan in Allison Pagone's driveway. McCoy jogs up the steps to the home, glancing at windows as she passes. She rings the doorbell and knocks urgently on the door.

“Mrs. Pagone,” she says. “It's Special Agent McCoy.”

She looks at Harrick. He has stepped around to the passenger side of their Mercury, around to the side of Allison's garage.

McCoy knocks again. “Allison,” she calls out. She looks at her watch. It is close to seven o'clock in the morning. People are walking their dogs and going for their pre-work jogs. McCoy likes to run in the morning, too, but today she did not have that luxury.

“Her car's here,” says Harrick.

They look at each other for a long moment. For this kind of decision, there is no strict protocol.

“Back door,” says McCoy.

The back door is an easy decision. There are neighbors outside now—people who have undoubtedly grown curious at the sight of the two serious-looking people in blue coats with the FBI insignia in yellow on their backs who have run up to the front doorstep of the Pagone residence. Better to decelerate the attention by going in the back way. Plus, McCoy knows the back door will be easier to get through.

McCoy pops the trunk of her Mercury Sable and removes her Mag-Lite, a wide, black flashlight. She could call a federal magistrate and get a warrant. That would make some sense. But technically, McCoy has only speculation to support her fears that something bad has happened inside the house. And you have to be careful what you tell a judge in an application for a warrant. To say nothing of the fact that the news could leak and the media could jump on it. It's a small miracle, frankly, that there are no reporters parked along the street right now.

No. No time for legal niceties. This is what is known as an “exigent circumstance,” meaning action must be taken immediately to prevent something irreversible from happening, be it destruction of evidence, grave bodily harm, or death. The courts, in their roles as guardians of the constitution and as law-enforcement tutors, have pronounced that warrants are not required in such instances. The
exigent circumstance
is an FBI agent's best friend, right up there with
plain view.

Anyone listening to the voice mail Allison Pagone left on McCoy's cell phone last night would find these
circumstances
to be plenty
exigent.

Standing on the back patio, Jane McCoy flicks her Mag-Lite against the glass window of the back door. The glass shatters and falls into the small curtain covering it. McCoy scrapes the edges of the window clean of glass and carefully reaches through to unlock the back door.

She opens it and waits. No alarm. She had noticed an intruder alarm last time she was here. Allison Pagone would be foolish not to have one. McCoy finds the alarm pad on the wall. Nothing. No silent, or audible, alarm. It is disarmed. She walks through the kitchen into the den. She sees the burgundy couch where Allison Pagone was sitting the last time they spoke.

“Allison Pagone!” she calls out. “Federal agents in the house!”

McCoy listens but hears nothing.

“Special Agents McCoy and Harrick, FBI,” she calls.

“Maybe she's not home,” Harrick offers.

McCoy shakes her head. “No. Her car's here. She's here. You didn't hear that phone message. You didn't—I didn't mean to—to—”

“Nothing's even happened yet, Jane. There's nothing to worry about until there's something to worry about.” Harrick looks around, calls out Allison Pagone's name.

“I've got a bad feeling.” McCoy walks through the downstairs, then meets Harrick back in the den. “I'm going upstairs.”

McCoy calls out the name
Allison Pagone
several times as she takes the stairs.
Jane McCoy, FBI. Federal agents in the house
. No response. The lights are on, all the lights you would expect to be on if someone were home.

She walks into the master bedroom. The bed is made. The overhead light is off. The bedside lamp is off. But there is illumination from the master bathroom.

“Allison Pagone.” Jane McCoy braces herself. “Special Agent McCoy, FBI,” she says with increased urgency. “Are you in there?”

She takes a few steps toward the bathroom and pauses. She looks around. Then she sticks her head into the bathroom. Allison Pagone is lying motionless in the bathtub, her head tucked into her chest, wearing her pajamas. A
handgun dangles from Allison's left hand, resting on her chest precariously. Behind Pagone's head the tile on the wall is covered with a splatter of crimson.

“Oh, no.” McCoy stumbles several steps back and sits on the bed. “What did I do?”

Her partner, Owen Harrick, makes his way in and makes eye contact with McCoy.

“She's in there.” McCoy's voice is lifeless. She nods in the direction of the master bath. She watches Harrick walk up to the bathroom, then in. She hears his reaction, similar to hers. He stays in there a while, presumably checking the body.

McCoy looks around the room, at the bedside table holding an oversized, antique brass telephone, an alarm clock, and a lamp. The room has a ceiling like a cathedral's, about twenty feet high. The walk-in closet is about the size of McCoy's bedroom. She thinks of the voice mail Allison Pagone left on her cell phone last night—about nine hours ago.

Harrick walks back out and looks at McCoy. For a moment he is silent. “She's been dead for hours,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Revolver in her hand.” Harrick looks back at the bathroom. “No footprints on the tile. Towels are neatly hung. There's a bandage on her right hand but it looks a few days old. Far as I can see, there's no sign of struggle or force—”

“Oh, for God's sake, Owen, she shot herself.” McCoy shakes her head. “There's no mystery here.” She throws up a hand helplessly. “I screwed up, Owen. I fucked this up.”

Harrick blows out a breath, takes a seat on the bed next to McCoy. “She killed a guy,” he says. “And she was covering up, too. We know that. She did this to herself.”

“Literally, maybe.”

“Not just literally. In every way. She put herself in the soup. You were doing your job, Jane. She killed a man. You and I both know it.”

McCoy goes to the window opposite the bed, opens it, and takes in some fresh air.

“They were going to convict her and give her the needle,” Harrick adds. “Don't make this your fault.”

“You didn't hear her message,” McCoy says. She looks out through the window at the backyard. For living in the city, Allison has a relatively big lot. This is a neighborhood on the northwest side, which is more residential, more kids running in the streets, lawnmowers and barbecues. More like a suburb. You could probably hit a baseball from her backyard to the nearest suburb. This is where people come who need to stay in the city—teachers, cops, firemen, civil servants with residency requirements. No one would confuse the color of the Pagones' collars for blue, but the ex-husband, Mat, is on a couple of municipal boards that require him to stay within city limits. McCoy has heard that it was Allison who wanted this neighborhood, who simply thought the people were nicer than in some of the trendier parts of the city or than the old money by the lake. The Pagones had purchased two adjacent lots and built a large house, but what they really wanted was the backyard. There's a huge garden, a fancy play area with slides and jungle gyms for their daughter, who probably hasn't touched it for ten years.

You look at someone's possessions, her family, her background, you look at her as a person. Some of McCoy's colleagues don't dig so deep, just focus on the misdeeds and don't judge, don't want to see the human side because it gets in the way. Jane McCoy has never understood that. You focus only on the black, ignore the white, you miss the gray.

“She was going to die one way or the other,” she hears Harrick call to her. “She spared herself eight to ten on death row, then a public execution. She did it on her terms.”

McCoy moans, turns back from the window. “You find anything else upstairs, Owen?”

“I found the trophy.”

“The tro—”

“The murder weapon, Jane. That statuette. It's sitting in her office.”

“That statuette—from that association? Dillon's award?”

Harrick nods. “Looks like it had been buried. She went and brought it back. She wanted us to find it. You get it? You see what happened? She wanted it settled. She confessed her sins before she killed herself. She's telling us she killed Sam Dillon.”

McCoy sighs. “Call this in, Owen?”

“Sure.”

Her team shows up quietly, parking their dark sedans the next street over and coming through the backyard. This kind of crime scene isn't their typical protocol; the feds don't often investigate homicides. But this one doesn't require much detail, anyway. They photograph the scene, dust for prints, gather hairs and fibers, test for residue on Allison's gun hand, finally carry the body out in a covered stretcher. McCoy holds off on calling the locals for an hour, because with the local cops comes the local media. She knows they'll make it here eventually but she wants to give it some time.

She stands outside two hours later, at nine in the morning. The air is cool and crisp; she prefers spring mornings to any other, even under these circumstances. By now the reporters have arrived and are lining the crime-scene tape, shouting questions to anyone who appears to resemble law enforcement.
Was this a suicide? Where was she found? Did she leave a note?

McCoy peers at them, silent, through her sunglasses.
Something like that
, she does not say to them.

Four sedans are lined up along the curb now. Neighbors have gathered around the home as well. This is not the first news of something amiss at the Pagone residence, but
there's been nothing this public, at least not since the search warrant was executed months ago.

Jane McCoy appreciates her anonymity. Like many agents, she is relatively unknown to reporters. She is unaccustomed to scenes like this. Most of what the agents do is under the radar, and here she is, being photographed and taped standing outside the home. It is a matter of courtesy more than anything. She is waiting for someone.

She sees a steel-blue Mercedes pull up quickly to the curb. Roger Ogren, an assistant county attorney, pops out. From what she knows of him, which isn't much, she wouldn't expect the flashy ride. Not his personality and quite the fat price tag for his government salary. But every boy needs a toy.

Ogren uses the remote on his keychain to lock up the car and walks up toward the house. He walks under the tape, stops on the front lawn, looks around, finally focuses on Jane.

“Agent McCoy,” he says.

“It's Jane, Roger.”

He puts his hands on his hips, wets his lips. “Suicide?”

She nods. “Bullet in the mouth.”

He sighs deeply, seems to deflate. Hurry up and stop—he was in the full heat of trial mode, and now the defendant is dead.

“No sign of forced entry,” McCoy elaborates. “No sign of foul play at all. GSR on her hand and wrist.”

Ogren does not take the news well. The woman he was prosecuting, driven to suicide.

“You were going for the death penalty, anyway,” McCoy says.

He runs his hands through his hair. “She was a killer. I was about two trial days away from proving that.”

“I know. I was following it. You were doing very well.”

“Suicide.” Roger Ogren stands helplessly a moment. He is in a suit, but his shirt is open at the neck. He got ready in a hurry. He sighs and seems to deflate.

“It's not your fault,” McCoy offers, in case he needs to hear it. “If anything, it's mine. This lady was up to some bad stuff. Not just this murder.”

“Not just this murder,” Ogren repeats. “But you won't tell me what.”

“You know I can't.”

She tries to read his expression. Really, how upset can he be? Like she said, he was seeking the death penalty, after all. If the defendant killed herself because she couldn't face prison, and ultimately a lethal injection, she just saved everyone the trouble.

He wanted the conviction, she assumes. He's not feeling guilt. He wanted the “w,” the pats on the back, the victory lap at the prosecutor's office, the press coverage.

“Everyone knew she was going down,” McCoy adds. “Everyone knew you had her.”

Ogren stretches, arches his back, extends his arms. Full trial mode, probably hasn't had much sleep. And now this. Like the whole prosecution was just a false start.

“She's not up there anymore,” McCoy says. “You want to go see the body?”

Ogren looks over the house wistfully. He is suddenly a man without a place. This is not his crime scene.

“As long as you're sure she's dead,” he deadpans, an attempt at dark humor that falls flat.