In the Company of Liars (6 page)

T
hey just got this last night,” says Special Agent Owen Harrick. He pops a stick of cinnamon gum into his mouth and offers one to Jane McCoy.

McCoy refuses the gum and works on her milkshake. There's fast food all around the federal building downtown, irresistible temptations to Jane. Harrick is more of a health-food nut, but he's also junior to her. Choice of restaurants, when they're working late—which is most of the time—is one of the few arenas in which Jane McCoy pulls rank. Harrick had settled for a chicken sandwich and a side salad. Jane, in a halfhearted nod to dietary considerations, skipped the entrees altogether and just got a large chocolate milkshake.

Harrick lifts the remote and points it at the VCR in the corner of the conference room. “Ready?”

McCoy sucks the last of the shake, then slurps through the empty straw. Harrick looks at her with bemusement.

“Relax,” she says. “So I've had my dinner, gimme my movie.”

“Dinner,”
he chides. “Two scoops of ice cream with milk.” He points the remote at the screen. “Lights, camera . . . action.”

The picture is grainy black-and-white. No surprise there. The Bureau has always focused more on discretion than quality in their surveillance equipment. You want a camcorder that fits into your pocket with a zoom lens that can pick up the wink of an eye from a hundred yards away, no problem. But you want a picture that could compete with the quality of a summer vacation video by grandpa, call Miramax, not the federal government.

“The Countryside Grocery Store,” McCoy says. “Corner of Riordan and—what's that?”

“Apple,” Harrick says. “Riordan and Apple.”

The running time in the corner of the video shows that it was taken last night, just before midnight. The video shows a car parking at a bank, across the street from the grocery store, and the trunk popping. A man emerges from the car, goes to the trunk, then walks up to the store carrying a gym bag. The man on the screen leaves the camera's vision, disappearing into the back of the store.

McCoy blows out a nervous sigh.

Owen Harrick fast-forwards through a good amount of dead space. Jane watches the seconds then minutes fly by in the corner of the screen.

“Here,” says Harrick, returning the tape to “play” mode. The tape shows the man reemerging from behind the grocery store with his gym bag and walking quickly back to his car. “That's it. He was out there for less than fifteen minutes.”

Jane stares at the empty screen, feels the adrenaline pump through her. She rubs her hands together nervously. “Okay,” she murmurs. She tosses the empty milkshake container into the trash. “I'm going to go see Allison Pagone,”
she says. “Tomorrow morning. A nice, early Saturday-morning meeting.”

“You think she's in danger?”

McCoy shrugs. She will no longer give predictions on that subject.

Countryside. Apple. Riordan. Yellow.

Countryside Grocery Store. Corner of Apple and Riordan. Delivery entrance in back. Yellow post.

Ram Haroon is vaguely aware of this grocery chain in the Midwest, and he knows Riordan Avenue. But he doesn't know Apple Street. He has to stop and ask for directions. He would prefer not to make a point of asking anyone, but he's out of options. Riordan Avenue extends from the lake to the suburbs. Apple Street could intersect anywhere along that route. The store is probably close to Allison Pagone's home but he simply doesn't know. He thought of going on the internet to find all the Countryside locations, or even to use MapQuest, but that leaves a trail. Sloppy. There is not even a single piece of paper with this information, because he has memorized it.

Countryside. Apple. Riordan. Yellow.

But now, having avoided all paper trails, he is forced to ask a convenience-store clerk for the information. Not
ideal, especially when it turns out he's only a couple of blocks away from his destination.

So he finds it, finally. There is a small bank across the street from it. He chooses to park in that empty lot, in a position where he is facing the grocery store. He takes a while, a good five minutes, and looks over the store. The lights are out. The parking lot is empty. It's half past eleven, and the store has presumably long been closed.

After another five minutes have passed, he pops the trunk and gets out of the car. Inside the trunk, in a gym bag, are a small hand-shovel and two plastic freezer bags. He puts on his brown gardening gloves, which will serve a dual purpose here.

Delivery entrance. Yellow.

Haroon goes to the back of the store, the delivery entrance as promised. Large double doors, a metal ramp running up to an elevated dock, level with the back doors. The rear of the building is spacious and well lit, two characteristics that he would prefer were otherwise. An old wire fence runs along the border of the property, propped up by several posts.

One of them, not far from the ramp, is the only one painted yellow.

He walks over to that spot and feels around with his hands to no avail. He places his shovel cautiously into the ground and digs softly until he hits something solid.

And then he smiles.

R
am Haroon sits at the counter of the diner and rotates the coffee cup on its saucer. He steals a look at his watch, sees that it's eight on the dot. By now, most of the families have left the restaurant, most of the little kiddies. There are some couples lining the booths, mostly older folks, one pair of teenagers on a cheap date.

He gets up and heads to the men's room at the back. It's a bigger room than he would have thought. There are two urinals and two stalls with red doors. One of them is occupied. He sees the gym shoes. Normally, one would expect to see pants bunched up at the ankles while someone sits in a bathroom stall. Which means his contact is good, but not that good.

A men's room
, he thinks to himself.
Of all places.

Haroon enters the neighboring stall, puts down the toilet seat, and sits on it. There is probably no point in going through the motions of dropping his pants. It seems a little odd, in fact, given the familiarity with his neighbor.

He hears paper unwrapping in the neighboring stall. A moment later, a single piece of stationery creeps along the floor into his stall. He picks it up and reads it.

Countryside Grocery Store. Corner of Apple Drive and Riordan. Back. Delivery entrance. You will see a yellow post against the fence. Look right there. You are not keeping this so write it down.

Ram doesn't write it down; instead he commits it to memory.

Countryside Grocery Store. Apple and Riordan. Yellow post in back.

Countryside. Apple. Riordan. Yellow.

Ram takes the message and, with his pen, writes a single word on it and hands it back under the stall.

When?

The answer comes back in less than a minute.

Get it now. It will need to happen soon. Wait for my call.

Ram Haroon gets to his feet and flushes an unused toilet. He walks back to the counter of the restaurant, where his dinner awaits him. He keeps his eyes on the Cobb salad before him.

Countryside. Apple. Riordan. Yellow
. He says the words over and over in his head, paying no attention to anyone who might happen to pass by on the way out of the restaurant.

This shouldn't be happening.

“This shouldn't be happening,” Allison says, removing her fingernail from her mouth. The nails are reduced to nubs now. She's never had long nails, not since she began writing, but now they have been chewed into nonexistence. “I'm sitting there all day, listening to my lawyer plot strategy, and the whole time, I'm thinking, ‘This shouldn't be happening.' ”

Mat Pagone drops his briefcase in the living room. He has come in with Allison, after picking her up at her lawyer's office and driving her home—to what was once his home, too.

Allison watches her ex-husband disappear into the kitchen.

What do you mean?

What do you mean, this shouldn't be happening?

Mat returns with two glasses of wine from a bottle already opened. “Drink,” he says. “Your head still hurt?”

She accepts the glass. “Only when I think. Did you call Jessica?”

“She's studying, Ally. You know she has that paper. She turned her cell phone off, is all. She's fine.”

“She had to testify in a murder trial against her own mother. She is not
fine.
”

She doesn't see Mat “off-camera” much these days. He has played the dutiful-supporter part, picking her up for court and taking her home, but that's a public appearance. Up close and personal, he looks tired. Worry and regret have cast a shadow across his face. His career is in tatters, his reputation probably shot. He is lucky but probably can't see that. He never could.

“What I meant before,” she says finally, “is I should have pleaded guilty. I should have spared Jessica having to testify.”

“Pleading is giving up,” Mat says. “That's not you. That would have torn up Jess just as much. She thinks you're innocent, Ally.”

“She thinks I'm innocent. Wonderful.” Allison rubs her face.

“That's a good thing, I would think. You prefer she thinks you killed Sam?”

“Mat.” Allison looks at him directly. “She can't think I'm innocent. Because she's going to blame herself, either way, when I'm convicted.”

“You aren't going to be—”

“I am. I am and you know it. Jessica needs to understand that I was convicted because I'm guilty. Not because of her. She has to believe I'm guilty.”

Mat opens his arms, the wine bobbing in the glass and almost spilling on the carpet. “You want me to tell her you're guilty? You want me to tell her you confessed to me?”

“That's exactly what I want you to do.”

“Won't play, Allison. She'll need more than that.”

“Tell her I used that trophy to kill him.”

“Ah.” Mat says it like a negative, like a grunt.

The police have believed, almost from the outset, that the instrument that delivered the fatal blows to Sam Dillon's head was an award given to him two years earlier by the Midwest Manufacturers' Association for excellency in advocacy. They saw the spot on the mantel of Sam's fireplace, from the pattern of dust, where it had rested for the last two years. The award, they quickly learned, had a solid marble base that would serve nicely as the head of a hammer. On the base, in gold, was a miniaturized version of an old industrial machine with a gear and sprocket. It was determined by looking at other such awards given out by the MMA that this trophy was sufficiently sturdy—indeed, it would be ironic if it were not—to be used as a weapon, bringing the marble base down on someone's head. Assault with a deadly statuette.

Anyone who has followed the suffocating account of this case in the papers, on television, and online would know of this trophy, currently missing and the subject of a rather feverish manhunt by police. Thus, Mat's objection.

“She wouldn't accept that as proof,” Mat says.

“No.” Allison wets her lips. “I suppose she wouldn't.” She goes to the window next to the side table, looks out at the backyard and her neighbors' as well. They built a fence, about four feet high, around the property when Jessica got old enough to wander. She once tried to clear it, like an Olympic high-jumper, using the old Western-roll technique and requiring five stitches on her lip for her trouble.

“Y'know,” Mat starts.

She turns to him.

“Never mind.” He waves his hand. “Never mind.”

“No, tell me,” Allison says.

“I was just thinking.” Mat averts his eyes, strolls aimlessly through the living room. “There is probably something I could tell Jessica. There is proof.”

“What?”

Mat takes a drink of his wine, sets his jaw. “The murder weapon,” he says. “You could tell me where it is. I could tell Jessica. If it came to that.”

“I haven't even told my lawyer that. Nobody knows that.”

But that, clearly, is Mat's point. It would be irrefutable proof to Jessica, a fact unknown to everyone.

“There's no spousal privilege,” Allison says. “We're not married. You could be forced to divulge this.”

Mat makes a face. The prosecution has already rested its case, and no one is looking at Mateo Pagone to help convict his ex-wife.

“You think so little of me?” he asks.

This again. Always falling back on self-pity. But he has a point. If she can't trust Mat, there is no one left.

She takes a breath as the adrenaline kicks in, her heart races, the memories of that night flood back. She turns again and places her hand on the window. It is colder than she expected.

“The Countryside Grocery Store,” she says. “The one on Apple and Riordan?”

“Okay.”

“When Jess was five,” she continues. “She got away from me at the store. I was beside myself. I was looking everywhere for her. I had the store manager ready to call the police.”

She can faintly see Mat in the reflection of the glass. He is captivated, listening intently, but she detects a frown. It only underscores the distance that has always been between them, even then. He doesn't remember this incident. She probably never even told him. He was at the capital, as this happened during the legislative session; this was back when Mat was a legislative aide, before he traded up to lobbying his former employers. It was one of countless episodes in their lives that passed right by him unnoticed.

She returns her eyes to the window. “I found Jessica out back,” she continues. “She had wandered through the delivery area in the back of the store. She had gone down that little ramp they have for deliveries and she was standing outside by the fence. She was pointing at this post that was supporting the fence. It was yellow. This was during that ‘lemon' thing she had.”

Mat, she assumes, again does not get the reference. When Jessica was very young, she had great difficulty pronouncing the word
yellow
, so she used the word
lemon
instead. Even a banana was the color
lemon
. Even after she matured a bit and was able to say the word, she continued for many years to qualify it with the phrase—

“Yellow like lemon,” Mat says.

Allison squeezes her eyes shut. It is these little things that always move her. She takes a moment, swallows hard, before continuing.

“That's where I put it.” She raises her chin and keeps her voice strong, as she faces the window. “It's still there, that post. The paint has chipped away some but it's still the only yellow post out there. I—I can't say why I went there. I—we hadn't shopped there for years. I didn't think anyone would ever connect me to it.”

She takes a deep breath and faces him. His eyes retreat again.

“You buried the trophy from the manufacturers' association next to a yellow post behind the Countryside?” Mat asks. “The one on Apple and Riordan?”

“I did. So if I'm convicted, you tell this to Jessica. But only then.”

Mat's gaze moves about the room, anywhere but at her. He is lost in thought for a long moment, blinking rapidly, eyes narrowing. “Okay. If it ever comes to it, I can tell her about that. I'm—let's find something to eat.”

Allison takes a step toward him. “You're the only person
who knows this,” she says. “I haven't even told my lawyer. If this got out—if anyone found out—”

“Allison.” He stops on his way to the kitchen but does not look at her. She senses a tightening in his posture.

“I won't tell a soul,” he assures her.