The King of Lies

  “Under the wet bar,” I replied, climbing to my feet.

  “Sit down, Work. You look whipped.” He returned to the table and poured bourbon over ice. “You like ginger ale with bourbon?” he asked.

  “Sure. Yes.” I remained standing. He was so matter-of-fact that nothing felt quite real. He studied me again as he finished making the drinks.

  “Gonna burn your insides out, drinking it straight from the bottle like that.” He handed me a glass. “Why don’t we try the study?”

  We walked through the long foyer and into the study, a small room with dark wood trim, green walls, and twin leather chairs flanking the cold fireplace. I turned on several lamps so that it would not appear so gloomy. Dr. Stokes sat opposite me and sipped his bourbon and ginger.

  “I wouldn’t have come over had Barbara been here,” he said. He turned one palm up. “But . . .”

  “She’s gone,” I said.

  “So it would seem.”

  We drank in silence for a moment or two.

  “How’s your wife?” I asked, knowing how absurd it sounded under the circumstances.

  “She’s fine,” he answered. “She’s playing bridge down the street.”

  I looked down into the depths of the cold brown liquid that filled my glass. “Was she home when the police were here?”

  “Oh yes. She saw the whole thing. Hard to miss, actually. There being so many of them and here for so long.” He sipped. “I saw you in your truck, down by the lake. My heart went out to you, boy. I feel bad that I didn’t come down, but at the time it seemed like the wrong thing to do.”

  I smiled at the old gentleman and at his understatement. “I would have been bad company, yes.”

  “I’m sorry that this is happening, Work. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that you did it, not for a second. And I want you to know that if we can do anything to help, all you have to do is ask.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “We’re your friends. We will always be your friends.”

  I nodded, thankful for the words, and we were silent for a moment.

  “Have you ever met my son, William?” Dr. Stokes asked unexpectedly.

  “He’s a cardiologist in Charlotte. I’ve met him. But it’s been four or five years since I saw him last.”

  Dr. Stokes looked at me and then down to his own glass. “I love that boy, Work, more than life itself. He is, quite literally, my pride and joy.”

  “Okay.”

  “Bear with me, now. I haven’t gone senile just yet. There’s a story coming, and there’s a message in it.”

  “Okay,” I said again, no less puzzled.

  “When Marion and I first moved to Salisbury, I was right out of residency at Johns Hopkins, younger than you are now. In many ways, I was a damn idiot, not that I knew it at the time. But I loved medicine. I loved everything about it. And I was eager, you understand, ready to build a practice. All Marion wanted was to start a family. She’d been patient through my residency, but she was as eager for that as I was for my career, and eventually we had our son.”

  “William,” I stated into a sudden silence.

  “No,” Dr. Stokes finally said. “Not William.” He took another sip, draining the glass down to a pale liquid, more melted ice than anything else. “Michael was born on a Friday, at four in the morning.” He looked at me. “You never knew Michael. He was way before you were born. We loved that boy. He was a beautiful child.” He laughed a bitter laugh. “Of course, I only saw Michael in small increments of time. Dinner a few times a week. An occasional bedtime story. Saturday afternoons in the park down there.” He gestured with his head, through the wall, down the hill, to the park we both knew so well. “I was working hard, putting in the hours. I loved him, you know, but I was busy. I had a thriving surgery practice. Responsibilities.”

  “I understand that,” I said, but he may not have heard me. He continued as if he’d not.

  “Marion wanted other children, of course, but I said no. I was still paying off med-school debt and barely had time enough for one child as it was. I was just too busy. That’s a hard thing for me to say, but there it is. She didn’t like it, mind you. But she accepted it.”

  I watched shadows move on one side of the old man’s face as he looked back down, and the way he tilted the glass in his seamed and heavy fingers. How he watched light move through the shifting ice.

  “Michael was three and a half years old when he died. It took the cancer seven months to kill him.” He looked up at me then, and I saw that his eyes were dry. That didn’t prevent the pain from showing through. “You don’t need the details of those months, Work. Suffice it to say, they were about as bad as a man could imagine. No one should live through times like that.” He shook his head and paused. When he spoke again his voice had waned. “But if Michael had not died, we never would have had William. That’s another hard thing to say, and most times I can’t look at it straight on, not like it was a trade. Michael is a memory now, an unfulfilled promise; but William is real and he’s been that way for almost fifty years. I can’t picture what my life would have been. Maybe it would have been better. I’ll never know. What I do know is the son I have, and I can’t separate that out.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re telling me this, Dr. Stokes.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not thinking very clearly right now.”

  He leaned forward and placed a hand on my shoulder. I felt the heat of it, and the pull of his weathered, knowing eyes.

  “Hell is not eternal, Work. Nor is it devoid of all hope. That’s what his death taught me, that you never know what’s waiting on the other side. For me, it was William. There’ll be something for you, too. All you need is faith.”

  I considered his words. “I haven’t been to church in a long time,” I said, and felt the firm grip of his practiced hand as he climbed to his feet and leaned on my shoulder. The light was full on his face when he spoke.

  “It doesn’t have to be that kind of faith, son.”

  I walked behind him as we moved back through the house, and I stopped him at the door. “What kind of faith, then?” I asked.

  He turned and patted me on the chest, above the heart. “Whatever gets you through,” he said.

  CHAPTER 20

  It was four in the morning, cold and damp. I stared at the hole, a rip in the earth, and a blacker black I’d never seen. Around it the world paled to gray, and I felt naked in that pallid light. I was squatting in weeds at the edge of the parking lot. A steep bracken-covered bank led down to the glint of water, and I heard it gurgle thickly around the storm-swept litter that had collected at the tunnel’s mouth. What remained of the mall was a hundred yards away. Like everything, it felt alien in the skeletal light, a crumbled fortress surrounded by dozers and trucks, hard-edged and immovable. I heard distant noise, but here it was hushed. Only the water spoke, and it did so in the tongue of twelve-year-old boys. It said, Come, enter, be afraid.

  I’d parked behind the tire store that bordered the mall property. It was closed, of course, but other vehicles were parked there and the truck would arouse no suspicion. I’d dressed for the job, in dark clothes and rubber boots. I carried a bat, and if I’d owned a gun, I’d have been carrying that, too. I also had a heavy flashlight, but the batteries weren’t great. I hadn’t checked them until I’d gotten there, and I knew that if I left now for new ones, I might not return. Ever.

  From my position, the creek ran diagonally under the parking lot. It passed within a hundred feet of the mall before angling away to Innes Street. The first storm drain was the one I wanted. It was opposite the entrance where Ezra had been found. It was where the gun had been tossed. I knew what was beneath that drain: a concrete shelf that rose like an altar, and a red-eyed memory waiting to unman me.

  “Fuck it,” I said. “That was a long time ago.”

  I blundered through the brush, my feet loose and dangerous beneath me. I fell once but wa
s quickly back on my feet, and then I hit the water with a splash that sounded too loud. My face was scratched from the brambles, but I still had the flashlight, still had the bat.

  I was committed. I had to move soon. Slim chance or not, a cop could come by at any second. If I was found there, it would be over. Too many questions and not enough answers. So this time the blackness and the tunnel were my friends, a sanctuary, but my breath was loud in the windless space between the high banks.

  I’d sworn I’d never go back.

  I turned on the light and stooped into the low entrance. It was smaller than I remembered, lower, more narrow. The water came to mid-shin, and the bottom felt the same, a mixture of rock and deep muck. I shone the light down the length of the tunnel; it stretched away, square and wet, then faded to gloom. There was a lot of old trash and dead branches, and in places I saw narrow tracks of mud that rose from the water like alligator backs. I ran my fingers along the wall. The concrete was slick and wet. I remembered it vividly, and thought of blood, tears, and screams. I tapped the bat against the wall and walked on.

  After two dozen steps, the tunnel mouth was a dull metal square, like a quarter I’d put on the tracks as a kid and pulled from the gravel after the train had passed. Twenty more and even that was gone. I was deep in the throat, but my breathing sounded steady and my heart rate was normal. I felt strong, and realized that I should have done this years ago. It was free therapy, and part of me wanted to find the bastard that had damn near ruined me. But he was gone. He had to be.

  I pushed on, and each step took me farther from those childhood terrors. But when I reached the shelf beneath the drain, it was bare. No gun. For a moment, I didn’t care. In the cone of weak yellow light, the shelf was stained, as if by blood, and I stared, seeing a past that rose like an apparition, sudden, vicious, and so real, I could touch it. And I lived it again—the fear, the pain, all of it. But this time it wasn’t about me. It was about her, and that’s what I saw—the sticky blood that had looked black on her thighs, her battered eyes, and the brief blue glimmer as she’d thanked me.

  Dear God. Thanked me.

  I grew dizzy, and then my hands were on the concrete, my fingers clawing as if to gouge out the past. But it was just concrete, and my fingers merely flesh. I thought of a child on a playground, yelling for a do-over. But this wasn’t childhood, and there were no do-overs. So I put it behind me, shoved it. Done is done.

  I set the flashlight on the shelf and wiped at my mouth with the back of my sleeve. I plunged my hands into the water and felt along the bottom, my search becoming increasingly frantic. I found lots of mud and plenty of rocks, but no gun. The light flickered. I saw movement in the line where light met dark, a rat. Two of them, one crouched against the wall, one swimming against the current.

  I dropped to my knees and widened the search. It had to be there! If it had entered the water, it shouldn’t have gone far. There wasn’t much current. But I thought about storms, and the heavy runoff that carried trash and dead branches so far into the tunnel. Could it carry a gun, too? Sweep it away?

  I rocked back on my heels, shone the light down the tunnel; it ran for half a mile before exiting on the other side of the lot. A long way.

  I looked for the rats. One was gone. The other seemed to watch me with something like contempt.

  Maybe Max was wrong. Maybe this wasn’t the right storm drain. Maybe the gun wasn’t here at all. Someone might have found it. If I were looking for a place to smoke crack, this would be as good as any. People must find their way into this place from time to time.

  I shone the light into the water, searched all around the concrete slab.

  Nothing.

  I sat on the slab, beaten, breathing hard, and the light flickered again. I didn’t care. Let it go out. Leave me blind. The tunnel held no terror for me now. My demons were in the past and needed no substance to harm me. I leaned against the cold wet wall and splayed my fingers where Vanessa had lain. Did this place remember?

  I shone the light on the walls around me, doubting it. It was just a place and had no need for memory. Then I looked up. It took a second for it to register, but when it did, I felt new hope. The storm drain did not empty straight into the tunnel; there was another ledge, three feet wide and half again as high, near the roof of the tunnel. It looked deep.

  I clambered onto the slab, dirty, dripping, bent almost double. It was more than a ledge. It was another small tunnel. It ran back from the wall for three or four feet. I saw light from the storm drain at the end of it. The space was choked with debris: twigs, dried vegetation, litter. I reached in and began to pull it out; it rained around my legs, onto the slab and into the creek. I pulled out more and more. Faster. Frantically. I could not quite reach the very back. I strained harder, my face crushed into the concrete, tendons stretched. My mouth opened as I pushed. Then I felt something hard. My fingers scraped it, drew it closer. They seized it, knew it for what it was and ripped it out. It was a gun. Max was right.

  I hunkered down onto the slab, a primitive man. I put the light onto the gun, knew right away that it was the gun, Ezra’s gun. He’d never allowed me to handle it, not even to touch it, but I’d known it since childhood. Having seen it shoved into my mother’s face, how could I ever forget it? It was a stainless-steel Smith & Wesson, with a custom pearl grip. Set into the pearl was a silver medallion, my father’s initials carved into the metal. He’d been very proud of it, a rich man’s gun, and it confirmed what I’d known for so long.

  Jean had known where he kept the gun.

  I cracked the cylinder: six shells, two of them spent. I saw the tiny divots made by the firing pin. Such small marks, I thought, touching them, to make such an enormous hole in my universe. I turned the pistol over. It was heavy, dull, and dirty. I didn’t doubt that it would fire if I pulled the trigger. For a moment, I held the image in my mind, unable to deny the simple elegance of such an act, of my suicide, here of all places.

  I snapped the cylinder closed, and for an instant the reality of my discovery overwhelmed me. This was the instrument of my father’s death, the last thing he’d seen on earth. My fingers ached around the hard metal as I tried to picture my father’s eyes. Had they begged? Held contempt? Or had they finally shown some kind of love? What had he made of the fate that brought his daughter to use his own gun against him? Had he accepted responsibility, or had he been dismissive even at the very end? I ran my fingers over the cylinder. I knew the answer and it pained me. Jean lived with his contempt; it was all he’d ever had for her—her birthright and her dark inheritance.

  What a shame. What a horrible, fucking shame.

  Suddenly, I needed to get the hell out, away from the rats, the smells, and the memories. I had to get rid of the gun and figure out my next step. But first I used a bandanna to wipe the gun down. I opened it up again and wiped down the inner workings. I extracted every shell and wiped them down, too. I’d known people to fry for failing to do that. Then I reloaded it and wrapped it in the bandanna.

  If the cops found me with the gun, Jean would be clear. In that, at least, I’d achieved something, but it wasn’t enough, not yet.

  I took one last look around that dismal place, then turned my back on it. I expected to feel something as I left, but there was nothing, just the echo of footsteps that carried me back to fresh air and to the moon, which made the world seem more than what it was. And in that silver place, between high banks that felt like walls, I wanted to kneel and give some kind of thanks, but did not. Instead, I climbed up, through the thorns, until I stood on top of the tunnel, above it, and the water’s voice was a whisper I could barely hear.

  CHAPTER 21

  So it had come to this. I had the murder weapon in my hand, an accomplice after the fact. I was dirty, wet, and bloody, scared that the cops would find me before I did what I had to do. It was a bad place to be. I wasn’t a wanted man yet, but I felt the noose and knew that it was only a matter of time. Five days had passed since they’d f
ound my father’s body, a lifetime in which I’d learned a few things about living, stuff the old man should have taught me. He used to say that everybody’s got snakes to kill, and I thought I knew what he meant. But a man can’t kill his snakes without opening his eyes to see them, a truth he forgot to mention.

  I was alone on the bridge, five miles outside of town. The sun was almost up, and I could hear the river. It sounded resolute, and I leaned over the guardrail as if I could draw upon its strength. My fingers explored the pistol, and I thought of Jean, of what it must have been like for her to pull the trigger, to walk away, to try to go on. I finally understood her suicide attempts, and I wished I could tell her that. For in my own way, I’d traveled the same sad road. What before had seemed insane now made perfect sense. Oblivion. Release. I got it, the seduction and tender mercy embodied in those words. After all, what did I have to lose? A career I cared about? Family? The love of a woman I loved in return? Only the unbearable nearness of Vanessa, and the belief that it could have been something great.

  If I had anything, it was Jean. She was the last of my family, and in this alone could I do something good for her. If I killed myself, here with this gun, they would blame me for Ezra’s death. Case closed. Maybe then she could find some kind of peace; leave Salisbury and go to a place where the ghosts of loved ones lost haunted others but not her. Would that I could do the same with Vanessa.

  But that would never happen. She had moved on, and rightly so. So to hell with it. One moment of courage.

  I cocked the pistol, and there was finality in the sound of it.

  Did I come here to do this thing? No. I’d come to ditch the gun, make sure that it was never found and used against Jean. But it felt right, the thought of an ending. A single moment, a flash of pain perhaps, and Jean would be free of everything. Mills would have her pound of flesh, and my life, at the end, would serve some kind of purpose.