Kitabı oku: «The Liar’s Lullaby»
The Liar’s Lullaby
Meg Gardiner
For Eleanor
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise
Also by Meg Gardiner
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
HACK SHIRAZI BRACED HIMSELF IN THE OPEN DOOR OF THE HELICOPTER and gazed across San Francisco Bay at the crowded ballpark. Wind and engine noise buffeted him. The evening sun bisected his field of vision. The check had cleared, so he was going to deliver the Rambo. But they were running late, which put the failing gold light square in his eyes.
He shoved the banana clip into the Kalashnikov. “On my mark.”
In the helicopter flying alongside them, the second team positioned themselves in the doorway. They swept over the bay toward the city. Whitecaps foamed on the surface of the water, five hundred feet below. In the pilot’s seat, Andreyev held tight to the controls.
The Giants’ ballpark was filled to capacity. People jammed the stands and covered the field from home plate to the centerfield stage. The two Bell 212 choppers would fly beyond it, circle back, and make their run at the target from out of the sun.
Andreyev radioed their man on the ground. “Rock and roll.”
IN THE STANDS BELOW, Rez Shirazi put a hand to his radio earpiece. “I hear you.”
Rock and roll was just about all he could hear. It echoed from the bleachers along the foul line, where beer-marinated rednecks whooped to the beat. From the teeming field, where sunburned college girls sang along with the saccharine lyrics. From the corporate hospitality suites on either side of him, where venture capitalists sipped mojitos and dipped five-dollar tortilla chips in mango chutney salsa.
Shirazi shook his head. Ersatz rock and roll—drowned in country-western cheese sauce. Tasteless, drippy American cheese.
Through his earpiece, he heard his brother Hack. “Four minutes. Mark.”
Rez clicked the timer on his watch. “Mark.”
On the stage, near towering speakers that amplified their cornpone accent, a choir of backup patriots was woo-wooing, while a singer in two-thousand-dollar cowboy boots wailed about the trials of the common man.
You can take my work, you can take my cash…but if you won’t shake my hand, I’ll light a fire up your—
“Ass,” Shirazi said.
The surrounding suites were jammed. People crowded the interiors and filled rows of seats on the balcony. But Rez’s suite was empty: no food, absolutely no drink, no loiterers. He stepped onto the balcony and checked their gear. The CO2 canisters were in place. The zip line was secure. It was a stainless steel aircraft cable, clamped through a forged eyebolt and anchored to the girders that supported the upper deck of the stadium. He glanced at the video camera, then over the edge of the balcony. The drop was substantial.
Andreyev’s voice crackled through the radio. “I can’t see her on video. Is she there?”
ON CUE, the door to the suite opened. Noise flowed in from the hallway outside. Tasia McFarland stormed in.
“Rez, they’re following me. Get rid of them. I can’t do this with all these people harassing me.”
His nerves fired at the sight of her. “She’s here.” For a millisecond his skin itched and his ears thundered. “Oh, brother.”
In his ear, Hack sounded sharp. “What’s wrong?”
Tasia already had the climbing harness cinched around her hips. That was no mean feat. She was wearing a magenta corset, which trailed back into ruffles that dragged on the floor. Beneath it she wore ripped jeans and turquoise cowboy boots. The top half of her looked like Scarlett O’Hara halfway through a striptease. The bottom half looked like she’d escaped a cage fight with a rabid badger.
Behind her, people streamed through the door. Stadium security men. A makeup artist. A wardrobe assistant. The soundman.
She spun on them. “Stop hounding me. You’re turning my head into a beehive. I can’t think. Get out. Rez, get them out.”
Rez put up his hands. “Okay. Chill.”
Her eyes gleamed, jade bright. “Chill? This is an event. This is a supernova. I’m at the shore of the Rubicon. And these”—she waved at the entourage—“these vampires are filling my head with static. They’re filling the score with noise and I won’t be able to hear what I need to hear to protect myself out there. Get them out.”
In his ear, Rez heard the director in the control booth. “Crap. Is she melting down?”
“You got it.” Rez gestured the entourage back. “You heard the lady. Everybody out.”
The makeup girl pointed at Tasia in dismay. “Look at her. She’s been playing in the crayon box.”
Rez pushed the girl toward the door.
The security men glowered. “This breaches protocol.”
“It’s not a problem,” Rez said. “We’ve done the stunt a dozen times.”
The soundman shook his head. “Her radio mike, she—”
“I got this.” Rez ushered the last of the crowd from the suite.
The soundman shouted over his shoulder. “It’s on your head, man.”
“I’m the stunt coordinator. It’s always on my head.” Rez shut the door.
“Lock it,” Tasia said.
Rez flipped the bolt. Tasia stalked around the room, glancing at corners and the ceiling, examining the shadows. Her ruffles trailed behind her like a peacock’s plumage.
“I used to think fame was a shield. But it won’t protect me. It’s only made me a target,” she said.
Rez glanced at his watch. “Celebrity’s tough.”
“Tough? It’s a life sentence. And life’s a bitch, and I’m a bitch, and then you die. Like Princess Di.”
Over the radio, Andreyev said, “Three minutes. We are inbound, beginning our run.”
“Roger,” Rez said.
In three minutes a computer program would set the special effects sequence in motion, and Tasia would make her grand entrance as the helicopters overflew the ballpark. And she was blowing a damned cylinder.
“And I’m not camera shy. But there’s an eye in the sky, watching me. Satellites, NSA, paparazzi. On TV, online, whenever I turn my back. I’m in their sights. Fawn in the headlights. Doe in the brights. Do, re, mi, fa, so long, suckers.”
She stalked out the plate-glass doors onto the balcony and stared down at the forty thousand people who filled the ballpark. The music bounced off the glass, distorted echoes of the Star-Spangled chorus.
Rez followed her outside. “Let’s get you rigged. It’s going to be fine. It’s just a stunt.”
The breeze off the bay lifted her hair from her neck like swirls of caramel smoke. “It was a stunt in the movie. But in the movie, the star didn’t do this. You know why?”
Because she’s sane. “Because she’s not you.”
Because the star wasn’t as ravenous for stage time as Tasia McFarland. Because the star wasn’t brave or wild enough to hook herself to a zip line and fly forty feet over the heads of the crowd as fireworks went off from the scoreboard, singing the title song from the movie.
Bull’s-eye was the latest in a series of action films that featured guns and slinky women. Long Barrel. Pump Action. The stuntmen had their own names for these movies. Handguns and Hand Jobs. Planes, Trains, and Blown Brains.
But the flick was a hit, and so was “Bull’s-eye,” the song. Tasia McFarland was top of the charts. And she wanted to stay there.
“Movie stars don’t do their own stunts because they don’t know jack about life and death,” she said.
Her eyes shone. Her makeup looked like an overstimulated six-year-old had applied it after peeping at Maxim.
“Stop staring at me like that,” she said. “I’m sober. I’m clean.”
Too clean? Rez thought, and his face must have shown it, because Tasia shook her head.
“And I’m not off my meds. I’m just wound up. Let’s go.”
“Great.” Rez forced encouragement into his voice. “It’ll be a breeze. Like Denver. Like Washington.”
“You’re a lousy liar.” She smiled. It looked unhappy. “I like that, Rez. It’s the good liars who get you.”
In his ear, Andreyev’s voice rose in pitch. “Two minutes.”
Tasia’s gaze veered from the empty suite to the heaving field. She squirmed against the tight fit of her jeans.
“The harness feels wrong.” She pulled on it. “I have to adjust it.”
A carabiner was already clipped to the harness. Rez reached for it. She slapped his hand. “Go inside and turn around. Don’t look.”
He glared, but she pushed him back. “I can’t sing if my crotch is pinched by this damned chastity belt. Go.”
And she thought that adjusting her panties in full view of a stadium crowd was the modest option? But he remembered rule number one: Humor the talent. Reluctantly he went inside and turned his back.
Behind him the plate-glass doors slammed shut. He spun and saw Tasia lock the doors.
“Hey.” Rez shook the door handles. “What are you doing?”
She grabbed a chair and jammed it under the handles.
“This isn’t a stunt, Rez. He’s after me. This is life and death.”
ON THE FIELD, sunburned, thirsty, crammed on a plastic chair surrounded by thousands of happy people, Jo Beckett sank lower in her seat.
The band was blasting out enough decibels to blow up the sonar on submarines in the Pacific. The song, “Banner of Fire,” was hard on the downbeat and on folks who didn’t love buckshot, monster trucks, and freedom. The singer, Searle Lecroix, was a pulsing figure: guitar slung low, lips nearly kissing the mike. A black Stetson tipped down across his forehead, putting his eyes in shadow. The guitar in his hands was painted in stars and stripes, and probably tuned to the key of U.S.A.
The young woman beside Jo climbed on her chair, shot her fists in the air, and cried, “Woo!”
Jo grabbed the hem of the woman’s T-shirt. “Tina, save it for the Second Coming.”
Tina laughed and flicked Jo’s fingers away. “Snob.”
Jo rolled her eyes. When she’d offered her little sister concert tickets for her birthday, she figured Tina would pick death metal or Aida, not Searle Lecroix and the Bad Dogs and Bullets tour.
Despite her taste in music, Tina looked like a junior version of Jo: long brown curls, lively eyes, compact, athletic physique. But Jo wore her combats and Doc Martens and had her UCSF Medical Center ID in her backpack and her seen-it-all, early thirties attitude in her hip pocket. Tina wore a straw cowboy hat, a nose ring, and enough silver bangles to stock the U.S. Mint. She was the human version of caffeine.
Jo couldn’t help but smile at her. “You’re a pawn of the Military-Nashville complex.”
“Sicko. Next you’ll say you don’t love puppies, or the baby Jesus.”
Jo stood up. “I’m going to the snack bar. Want anything?”
Tina pointed at Lecroix. “Him. Hot and buttered.”
Jo laughed. “Be right back.”
She worked her way to the aisle and headed for the stands. Overhead, sunlight glinted off metal. She looked up and saw a steel cable, running from a luxury suite to the stage. It looked like a zip line. She slowed, estimating the distance from the balcony to the touchdown point. It was a long way.
A second later, she heard helicopters.
ANDREYEV PUT THE BELL 212 through a banking turn and lined up for the pass above the ballpark. The second helicopter flanked him. The sunset flared against his visor.
“Ninety seconds,” he said. “Rez, is Tasia ready to go?”
He got no reply. “Rez?”
He glanced at the video monitor. It showed the balcony of the luxury suite.
He did a double take. The doors to the suite were jammed shut with a chair. Rez was inside, rattling the doorknob.
On the balcony Tasia stood with her back to him. She reached around to her back pocket, beneath the extravagant ruffles that trailed from her corset.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” Andreyev said.
From the door of the chopper, Hack Shirazi shouted, “What’s going on?”
Andreyev yelled into the radio. “Rez, she’s got a gun.”
2
REZ POUNDED ON THE PLATE-GLASS DOOR. “TASIA, OPEN IT. FOR God’s sake, nobody’s after you.”
In his ear Andreyev shouted at him. “…a gun. Rez, stop her.”
Rez put his hand over his earpiece. Tasia turned around. In her right hand she held a pistol.
“What are you doing with that?” he said.
The gun was a big mutha. It was a goddamned Colt .45 automatic.
“Is that from Props?”
“It’s from the department of authenticity,” she said. “With a grand finale, it always comes down to a gun.”
“On-screen, not in real life. Put it down.”
“You keep thinking this is a show. So call this a solo with high-caliber backup.”
“That thing drops on somebody’s head and we’re sued up the wazoo. Don’t get me fired.” He rattled the door again. “You can’t take a weapon out there.”
She smiled angrily. “Everybody else involved in this stunt has a gun.”
“But theirs are fake.”
“Exactly.” She held up the pistol. “Fame can’t protect me. Just Samuel Colt. And my music, ‘cause the voice is mightier than the sword. Melody, harmony, counterpoint, lyrics. Remember that—if they get me, remember. The truth is in my music. Number one with a bullet, glory, halle-lu-jah.”
“Nothing’s going to happen, Tasia.” Rez raised his hands placatingly. “Please put it down.”
“Do you think I’m an asshole? I won’t drop it.” Her eyes swam with a feverish heat. “God, you actually think it’s loaded.”
For a moment her swirling hair took on the look of snakes. But the snakes were only in her head.
From the chopper, Andreyev said, “Is the gun a prop? Rez?”
“I don’t know.”
Tasia’s voice hit him low and sharp, like a blade. “No, you don’t. You have no idea what’s out there. What’s waiting. I’m talking about violence. I’m talking about propaganda of the deed. I’m talkin’ ‘bout a revolution—yeah, you know, we all want to change the world.”
In his ear, Rez heard the director. “What’s happening? Shirazi, for the love of Christ, what’s she doing?”
“Tasia, put down the weapon.”
She shook her head. “I put it down, and he gets me. Then it’s open season. Car bombs in cities. Death squads cutting down women and children.” She held the gun up, and turned it, seemingly checking that it had all its working pieces. “I used to think they wouldn’t dare. But I was naïve. I was a child. A freaking child, playing around. Round, round, get around.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Martyrdom.”
Rez felt faint.
“It ain’t always religious. Sometimes it’s ungodly, and sometimes it’s at the hands of the angels, not the devil. And this gun is from the source, the alpha and omega.”
She grabbed her carabiner and clipped it to the trolley cable that hung from the zip line.
Into his radio, Rez said, “Get security. Send them through the luxury suites on either side of us and grab her.”
Tasia turned abruptly and stared at him. “I told him. Warned him. So he’s heard me. But he’s going to hear me again, right now, a whole lot louder.”
Jesus. “Come on, T—”
She waved the gun haphazardly in his direction. He flinched. She turned back to the crowd.
“Secret Service would have scoped it out beforehand.”
Oh, crap.
“But they won’t protect me. Au contraire. Loose cannon, loose lips, loose woman. I am on my own and in their sights. So it’s just me and my music and the peacemaker here.”
Onstage, the band segued into the intro to “Bull’s-eye.” On cue, the CO2 canisters rigged around the balcony began discharging. Clouds of white smoke swirled around Tasia.
Shirazi stared at the barrel of the Colt. He had no way to determine whether the gun was loaded.
“Tasia, if there’s a problem, come inside and let security handle it. You can’t take a gun onstage. You’ll terrify the crowd.”
“No, I won’t.” She smiled again, darkly. “Watch me.”
The director shouted in his ear. “Grab her.”
“I’m trying. Did you call security?” Rez shook the plate-glass door one last time. He ran across the suite, opened the main door, and leaned into the hall. The corridor was crowded. A guard was loitering nearby.
Rez waved at him. “Tasia’s locked on the balcony, freaking out. Go through the suite next door and grab her.”
Behind him, she called, “Rez, you idiot. He’ll get in.”
The security guard hustled to the adjoining suite and pounded on the door. Rez ran back to the plate-glass windows. Tasia looked manic and distraught, her face blurred by the swirling CO2.
“I can’t let this happen.” She turned on her headset mike and began gesturing to the people sitting along the balcony in the adjoining suites. “Hey, everybody. Join the party.”
People looked up, surprised. As if she were hosting a street party, she waved everybody toward her. They held back, unsure.
“Come on!”
“What the hell?” the director said.
First one person, then another, stood up and climbed over the low barriers from the balconies of adjoining boxes. Then they all came. They swarmed over the barriers and mobbed her.
“Damn,” Rez shouted into his radio. “She’s surrounding herself with people so the security guards can’t get to her.”
More CO2 canisters lit off. Dozens of fans, hundreds, crowded around Tasia before they were lost in the white mist of carbon dioxide.
And understanding swept through Shirazi. “Tasia, no.”
He grabbed a chair and swung it into the plate glass. It bounced off. The pane was ultra-thick safety glass, and the blow left barely a mark.
The first round of fireworks ignited. Tasia faced the stage and raised the Colt.
3
STANDING CENTER STAGE, GUITAR IN HIS HANDS, SEARLE LECROIX HIT the high note at the end of the verse. The crowd reached toward him, swept up in his performance like wheat pulled forward by a prairie wind. He grinned and pushed the cowboy hat down on his forehead.
In the stands behind home plate, carbon dioxide swirled around Tasia. Lecroix hit the downbeat. On cue, she began to sing.
“Give me a shot of whiskey with a chaser of tears…”
Her soprano filled the air like silver. The crowd cheered. Lecroix felt a rush.
He hit the chord change to G major. Tasia’s voice gained power.
“Give me a shot of courage, blow away all my fears…”
Her magenta corset swam in and out of view through the smoke. The crowd was spilling onto the balcony around her. What on earth? And she had something in her hand. It caught the light.
A gun.
He lost the beat. The bass player glanced at him.
Theatrically, like she was a gunfighter practicing a quick draw, she swung the gun up, aimed at the stage, and pretended to pull the trigger. The second round of fireworks whizzed into the air from the stage scaffolding. Tasia jerked her hand up, miming recoil. The fireworks burst with a crackle and poured red light on the crowd.
It looked like Tasia had set them off. She raised the gun to her lips and blew on the barrel.
Wow. The girl wanted to tie the crowd in knots. Indulging herself in some fake gunplay—Drive the guys crazy, why don’t you?
More fireworks lit off, green and white. Again Tasia raised the gun, fake-fired, and blew on the barrel.
“Fire away, hit me straight in the heart…”
Lecroix’s own heart beat in double time. Above the stadium, two helicopters flew into view. The third round of fireworks burst, red, white, and blue. Tasia’s voice rocketed above them.
“Baby, give me a shot.”
She raised the gun again. Smoke obscured her.
A sound cracked through the ballpark like cannon fire.
BELOW THE BELL 212, the ballpark swept into view. Andreyev heard Rez yelling at him over the radio.
“The weapon’s not a prop and—”
A colossal bang cracked through Andreyev’s headphones.
“Christ.” Ears ringing, he called to the pilot of the other helicopter. “Break off.”
Was Tasia Goddamned McFarland firing at him? The second chopper veered right. Andreyev banked sharply, following it.
Hack shouted, “Too close!”
He’d banked too hard. He jerked the controls, but it was too late. His tail rotor hit the second chopper’s skids.
The noise was sudden, loud, everywhere. The chopper shook like it had been hit with a wrecking ball. The tail rotor sheared off.
Hack yelled, “Andreyev—”
The chopper instantly spun, losing height. Andreyev fought with the controls. “Hang on.”
The engines screamed. The view spun past Andreyev. Bay Bridge, downtown, sunset, scoreboard. God, clear the scoreboard, get past it and ditch in the bay and don’t auger into the crowd—
“Hang, on, Hack.”
The 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 husband had been killed in the crash of a medevac helicopter. But she couldn’t avoid discussing aircraft accidents, any more than she could rewind her life three years and get a second swing at the day Daniel died.
“Keep talking,” she said. But as they walked, she sent a text message to Gabriel Quintana. Am OK. With Tang, will call.
“The second chopper managed to crash-land at McCovey Point with no fatalities,” Tang said.
They passed through a tunnel and emerged onto the bottom deck of the stands. The ballpark’s jeweled views, of San Francisco and the bay, were the greatest in Major League Baseball, and Jo usually met her parents at the stadium for a Giants game at least once a summer. Now forensic teams, photographers, and the medical examiner were working the scene. The yellow tarp stood out, as bright as a warning sign.
“I saw her drop,” Jo said. “Debris hit the stanchion where the zip line was anchored. It collapsed and she fell like…” A ribbon of nausea slid through her. “She fell.”
“The fall didn’t kill her,” Tang said. “She had a gunshot wound to the head.”
Jo turned, lips parting. “Somebody shot her? She shot herself? What’s confusing about her death?”
Tang walked down the aisle toward the field. “Aside from the fact that she slid down the zip line with half her throat blown away?”
“Aside from that.”
“And that at least seventy-five people in the crowd were hit by falling debris or trampled in the stampede?”
“And that.”
“And the fact that Fawn Tasia McFarland, age forty-two, born and bred in San Francisco, was the ex-wife of the president of the United States?”
Jo slowed to a stop. “No, that, without a doubt, most definitely covers it.”
5
TANG TURNED TO JO. “TASIA’S DEATH COULD BE AN ACCIDENT. COULD be suicide.”
“Could be murder?” Jo said. “Somebody may have just shot the president’s ex to death?”
Tang nodded.
Jo felt an electric tremor of excitement. “You want me to perform a psychological autopsy on Ms. McFarland?”
“This is going to be an alphabet soup investigation. SFPD, NTSB, DA’s office. Join the lineup. I want you to turn on your radar and cut through the clutter. Will you?”
Jo thought of reasons a fast-rising lieutenant might want the assistance of a forensic psychiatrist: ass covering, running up the score on the opposition, positioning a scapegoat to take the arrows. But Amy Tang had always played straight with her.
The cops called Jo when they could identify how a person had died—a fall, an overdose, a collision—but could not determine why. Jo investigated a victim’s state of mind, and retraced his final hours, to pinpoint whether he had tripped from the roof or jumped; overdosed on barbiturates accidentally or deliberately; stepped carelessly in front of the bus, or been pushed.
Some police officers dealt reluctantly with Jo, seeing her as a sorceress who cast bones to divine a victim’s fate. Some, like Tang, treated her as an investigative teammate who could uncover the emotional and psychological factors that led to victims’ deaths. Working with Tang was like holding a cactus-covered live grenade. But Tang cared about putting the good guys first, and bad guys behind bars. She didn’t play games.
“My sister could have been sliced in two by a helicopter blade. I will,” Jo said. “But I don’t want to end up in a meat slicer myself.”
“I want your perspective and insight. This will be a backstage role, not a star turn.”
“Did you know that when you lie, your cheek twitches?”
Tang huffed. “All right. This case has enough celebrity, politics, and carnage to feed the world. But you’ll be a consultant, not the lead investigator.”
“Great. Tell me about the case.”
“Tasia McFarland apparently bled to death when her carotid artery was severed at the jaw line by a forty-five caliber bullet.”
“Did she pull the trigger?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a hell of an admission.”
“It certainly is.” Tang’s shoulders tightened, as though somebody had turned a knob. “We need to slam the door on this case. You saw the media outside. The networks, cable, the BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, and some camera crew from, I swear, the Garden Gnome Channel. And they all want to eat us for lunch.”
“Again, I refer you to the image of the meat slicer.”
“As thrill rides go, this’ll be cheaper than Disneyland.” Tang gazed at the field. “Fawn Tasia McFarland died in front of forty-one thousand witnesses. Cameras caught it from three angles. And we can’t see the shooting on any of them.”
The breeze swirled through the ballpark, blowing Jo’s curls around her face. “Who claims Tasia was murdered?”
Tang nodded at the shiny yellow tarp. “Tasia does.”
“TASIA LEFT A message,” Tang said.
“But not a suicide note. What did she say?” Jo said.
“I’ll get to that, but first let me explain how we got to this.” Tang nodded grimly at the yellow tarp on the baseball field. “She was supposed to slide down the zip line, singing the song from that action movie. Guns ‘n’ poses. All butch-and-big-hair, patriotism and sexual innuendo. She turned up with a real gun. A Colt forty-five.”
Jo raised an eyebrow. “Classic weapon. And a hell of a choice.”
“She liked big statements.”
“Was she known to carry?”
Tang shook her head. “No. I’ve spoken to her agent and manager, plus the tour manager and the concert promoter. Nobody had ever seen her with firearms. But she wasn’t the most reliable person—which we’ll also get to.”
High above the stands the American flag snapped in the wind, vivid under the stadium lights. Jo brushed her hair from her eyes.
“Ballistics?” she said.
“Don’t count on it. The shot was through and through. We haven’t found the round or the brass. We’re bringing in metal detectors, but I’m not hopeful.”
The field was churned to bits. The scene was hopelessly contaminated.
“How many cartridges were loaded?” Jo said.
“That’s part of the problem. After the fatal shot, the weapon fell into the crowd and a bunch of idiots fought for possession of it.”
Jo almost guffawed. It seemed preposterous, yet unsurprising.
“They grappled like bridesmaids fighting for the bouquet at a wedding. One guy finally got it and ran off, then had second thoughts about selling it online. He turned it over. Unloaded—says that’s the way he got it.”
“You’re sure it’s the weapon?” Jo said.
“There’s DNA on it. Of types I have no doubt will prove to come from the victim.”
Tang didn’t need to say blood, bone, brain matter. Her face said it for her.
“Tasia told the stunt coordinator the weapon was unloaded,” she said. “But he didn’t know if she was lying, teasing him, or serious. And the Colt’s capacity is seven-plus-one.”
Seven rounds in the cylinder plus one in the chamber. “You think she checked the cylinder but not the chamber—and actually believed the weapon was empty?”
“It’s possible. The gun’s twenty years old. The round that killed her could have been in there for decades. But without the bullet and the casing, we can’t tell.”
“You think it was an accident?” Jo said.
“You think it wasn’t?”
Jo stated it as clearly as she could. “Self-inflicted, contact gunshot wounds to the head are presumptive evidence of suicide.”
Tang grumbled. It was as close as she came to sighing.
But Jo knew the statistics. The majority of gunshot deaths in the United States were suicide. Almost as many were homicide. Only a small percentage were accidental.
“If a victim has a history of depression, the presumption of suicide is even stronger,” she said. “Did Tasia?”
“Yes.”
“But you think it was a prank? Stupidity?”
“It’s been known to happen. Brandon Lee died filming The Crow.”
“That was an accident. Unequivocally. Fatal error on the movie set. Nobody noticed that a bullet had jammed in the barrel of the gun. When the weapon was reloaded with blanks and fired again, the jammed round discharged and hit Lee in the chest.”
“That actor on a Hollywood TV set shot himself with blanks.”
“Jon-Erik Hexum. Also unequivocally an accident. Hexum didn’t realize that blanks can discharge with enough force to kill. He put a stunt gun to his temple, apparently as a joke, and pulled the trigger.” Jo stuck her hands in her pockets. “On the other hand, there’ve been televised suicides. A reporter in Florida sat down at the news desk, made a crack about bringing viewers blood and guts in living color, put a revolver to her head, and fired.”
Tang’s mouth pursed. “Never challenge a forensic shrink on death trivia.”
“I’ll take Onstage Fatalities for two thousand, Alex.”
Tang looked like she had a burr under her shirt. “We’re checking whether Tasia purchased ammunition recently.”
“What’s gnawing at you?”
“The wing nuts are out there, the political banshees, and you can bet they’re getting ready to fly. I need to shut down any talk that dark forces are at work here.”
My superiors want me to shut it down was the undertone.
“You’re talking about murder,” Jo said.
“If somebody killed Tasia, I need to know it. And to know if her death is a fuse that’s been lit.”
Jo’s hair blew across her face. “You’d better tell me about the message she left.”
“It’s a recording. It’s her playing two songs she wrote last night. Plus a rambling statement, saying, ‘Publish this in the event of my assassination.’”
“She used that word?”
“Hear for yourself.”
Tang took an audio player from her pocket. “The tracks are called ‘After Me’ and ‘The Liar’s Lullaby.’ She left it for her boyfriend.”
They each put in an earbud and Tang pushed Play. Jo heard a piano, spare and melancholy, and Tasia McFarland’s shimmering soprano.
“After me, what’ll you do?”
The melody was mournful, Tasia’s voice bright and riven with cracks. She hit a hard minor chord and let it fade. Then she spoke.
“I’m in danger of being silenced. If that happens, I won’t be the last.”
Her speaking voice was bold, ringing, and rushed. “Searle, my love, my baby boy, Mister Blue Eyes with the silver tongue, listen close. Turn your ear, turn your heart, turn your head. Because I might not make it.”
Jo glanced at Tang. “Lecroix?”
Tang nodded.
“Things have gone haywire,” Tasia said. “I can’t tell you more than that. Telling you more would kill me. But if I die, it means the countdown’s on.”
A chill inched up Jo’s neck. She glanced at the tarp on the field.
“It means time’s running out like a train headed for a wreck. My death will be the evidence.” Tasia inhaled, like a swimmer coming up for air before plowing on. “I was confused, but not anymore. I thought I got away without being followed. But they’re after me. Robert McFarland makes that inevitable.” She paused. “Publish this in the event of my assassination.”
She played a heavy chord on the piano, and began to sing.
You say you love our land, you liar Who dreams its end in blood and fire Said you wanted me to be your choir Help you build the funeral pyre.
The chill crept across Jo’s shoulders.
But Robby T is not the One
All that’s needed is the gun
Load the weapon, call his name
Unlock the door, he dies in shame.
The melody changed up and went into the refrain.
Look and see the way it ends
Who’s the liar, where’s the game
Love and death, it’s all the same
Liar’s words all end in pain.
Tang stopped the playback. “There’s another verse, but you get the gist.”
“That’s the creepiest song I’ve ever heard.”
They stood above the field, silent under the harsh lights and the wind.
“ ‘They,’” Jo said.
“Unfortunately. And no, I don’t know whether it was just a paranoid rant.”
“Did she have a psych history?”
“Manic-depression. But that’s not my point.”
“She was bipolar? That’s huge. It’s—”
Tang raised a hand. “It’s not my point.”
Jo thought about it. “If she genuinely feared for her life and brought the gun for self-protection, it argues against an intent to commit suicide.”
“The stuntman claims she said, ‘He’s out there,’ and ‘It’s life or death.’ Maybe she was acting. Maybe she was delusional. But maybe not.”
“Are you suggesting somebody really wanted her dead? Why—because she was once married to Robert McFarland?”
Tang turned to her. “Will you perform the psychological autopsy? Are you in?”
“You bet I’m in.”
“Good. I need you to find out why Tasia McFarland was carrying a pistol that, according to California firearms records, is registered to the commander in chief of the United States.”
6
You can take my cash, but if you won’t shake my hand, I’ll light a fire up your ass…
THE MUSIC RAGED THROUGH THE PARKED TRUCK. IVORY TURNED IT UP. “You tell it, Searle.”
The man sang about the hardest life around, Ivory thought—being a white American. Work yourself into the grave, while the government confiscates your wages and an ungrateful world demands handouts or tries to blow you up.
She stared across the street at the ballpark. “It’s time to launch a rocket up somebody’s crack.”
Behind the wheel, Keyes chewed on a toothpick. “Unbunch your panties.”
“Searle Lecroix’s woman just got shot down like a dog. Two choppers got taken out—you think that wasn’t to cover the shooter escaping? You should put on a pair of tighty-whiteys yourself, and bunch them so tight you squeal.”
“Like you know how to fire a rocket launcher?” he said.
“You’ll teach me.”
That finally earned her a look from him.
“Tasia dying wasn’t any accident. It was a government hit, no joke.” Government came out “gubmint.” “Government brought down the twin towers, Keyes—they wouldn’t think twice about killing McFarland’s first wife.”
Keyes looked away again. He watched the police and media spectacle outside the ballpark with a cool eye. People took that look for boredom, Ivory thought, when really he was scanning the scene for threats, soft targets, weak points in the police cordon. Years of experience, it came as a reflex to him.
“Question isn’t what the government does. It’s what we do about the government.” He turned off Lecroix’s music. “And entertainers don’t have the answer.”
He took out his phone and went online. His face, pale and pocked, looked vivid. His anger didn’t run hot; it was reptile anger—cold and submerged and liable to erupt in ruthless bursts. Being near it made Ivory feel confident. She was in the vanguard, with a man who would be the teeth and claws of the fightback.
She leaned close and saw him load the Tree of Liberty home page. On-screen was a message to the faithful.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.—Thomas Paine
“When did this post?” she said.
“Ten minutes ago.”
Tree of Liberty was the cyberdomain of True America. It was the online outpost of people like Keyes and Ivory, who saw the nightmare of government tyranny darkening the horizon. Tom Paine was their voice crying in the wilderness.
His post began, like all his essays, with a quote from the original Thomas Paine, the American revolutionary. Then it launched.
And so it begins.
Today, in front of a stadium crowd, the Enemy and his legions struck down Fawn Tasia McFarland. And they murdered her in such an audacious fashion because they knew what they’d pull off: a charade.
The circus monkeys of the mainstream media are already spinning Tasia’s death to suit Robert McFarland. It was an accident. Stunt calamity. Boo hoo.
Bullshit. The White House killed her because of what she knew, which was plenty.
The traitor who has seized the Oval Office is a smooth-talking jackal, but he can’t put the rumors to rest. Because, despite his lies, the truth is the truth: He was born in Cuba. Castro did finance his education. Despite the cover story concocted by the Pentagon, he called in the air strike that killed seven men in his platoon, and he did so because they were about to blow the whistle on his sexual deviancy and treason.
Nobody was better positioned than Tasia to know Robert McFarland’s lies. She was once his consort. And she was a patriot. Read her interviews. She didn’t shrink from speaking truth to power.
Now power has shut her up.
Before tyrants launch a crackdown, they assassinate their most dangerous foes: the people who could expose or stop them. Tasia’s murder is like a flare fired into the sky. It’s a signal that McFarland’s troops are moving into position. Time is short.
Robert Titus McFarland must be stopped. Who will do that? The dumb populace, grown soporific on junk food and reality TV? Never. When the government opens its internment camps, they’ll slouch through the gates without complaint, like cattle.
Patriots must stop McFarland. And it’s pucker time, because he has us in his sights. But we refuse to shrink from the coming fight.
His name is Legion, people. Stand up. Rip off his mask.
Rise.
Keyes and Ivory stared at the screen. Nobody knew who Tom Paine was. Tree of Liberty skipped around the Net, changing host sites to prevent the feds from tracing it. Paine was a specter.
“Fuckin’ A,” Keyes said.
Ivory drew a breath. She had chills. “We’re at ground zero. We need to send him photos.”
Nobody had met Paine, but Keyes and Ivory volunteered as his scouts. Keyes got out of the truck and crossed the street toward the ballpark. Ivory put on a ball cap and followed.
The cap said BLUE EAGLE SECURITY. She was clocked in for work, so she covered her hair, which she dyed as snowy as a swan’s wing. She covered her tattoos with long sleeves. And at the depot, she kept her opinions to herself. She worked in San Fran-freak-show, where whack jobs could parade bare-butt naked, chanting about diversity, but an Aryan woman had to hide her Valkyrie Sisterhood tattoos and apologize for the crime of being born white.
Outside the ballpark, it was a scene. News trucks, reporters with microphones. And police cars lined up for a hundred yards, lights shrill, a bigfoot presence that made her skin creep.
Keyes tapped his watch. “Sixty seconds, max.”
They were on a late run, one of Blue Eagle’s night pickups in the city. The truck’s onboard computer automatically tracked their route. It had logged them taking a detour to the ballpark, and if they loitered there too long, their jobs would be toast.
“Do you care?” Ivory said. “When the fightback comes, these jobs won’t matter.”
“When the fightback comes, I want access to the truck and everything in it. So I stay on the payroll until shots are fired.”
The Blue Eagle uniform shirt stretched across his sloping shoulders. Years in the army, Ivory thought; a decade spent working as a security contractor on behalf of the government, earning three hundred thousand dollars a year, and for what? To get fired. To end up sitting on his butt behind the wheel of a courier truck, wearing that cheap-ass shirt. The “gubmint” had reduced a warrior to a delivery boy.
Ahead, barricades were set up. Behind them people huddled, lighting candles, laying flowers, crying. A TV crew was interviewing a Mexican woman and her little girl. The woman wiped her eyes. “Tasia grew up here—it’s like losing a member of our family. How could an accident like this happen?”
Ivory kept her voice low. “The lie’s taking root.”
Keyes’s face flattened, like a club. “Soon enough we’ll give her something to cry over.”
They kept moving. Being near so many cops gave Ivory the willies. She had a record. She’d been caught patrolling the border. Illegals infested America like lice, but hunt them, take their drugs, and you got called a criminal.
Keyes snapped photos with his phone. “Didn’t I tell you, Frisco is at the heart of the government’s plans?”
Ivory nodded. He certainly had told her San Francisco would be a staging center during the government crackdown.
“Killing Tasia here proves it,” he said.
He sent his photos to Tree of Liberty. Nearby, the little Mexican girl laid a spray of white carnations by the barricade.
“God have mercy on their souls,” Ivory said.
“Mercy, on lice?”
Keyes eyed her with what felt like disgust. True America, the realm of freedom and power where they lived—in their hearts—was a hard-core place.
“Don’t hurt my feelings. I meant God better, ‘cause we won’t.”
He should know how serious she took it. She risked everything for True America. This job, her whole life in San Francisco, was a front. And if the cops found out, she’d take a hard fall.
Then Keyes put a hand on her shoulder. “The rocket launcher rests right here. I’ll teach you.”
She lifted her chin, thrilled. Around them, gawkers and weepers continued to gather. Cops came out of the ballpark, and a few stragglers who had been at the concert. Some wore bloody clothing. One, silhouetted by the white light of television cameras, was a lumbering figure in fatigues, a—no motherloving way—a Goliath holding a chunk of the turf from the field as a souvenir.
Ivory turned and pulled Keyes toward the truck. “Freak alert. The night crawlers are coming out.”
Keyes didn’t linger. When you drove an armored car for a living, you couldn’t afford to be late to the bank.
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