David Ellis: In the Company of Liars

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. Theexigent circumstance is an FBI agent’s best friend, right up there withplain view.

Anyone listening to the voice mail Allison Pagone left on McCoy’s cell phone last night would find thesecircumstances to be plentyexigent.

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 nameAllison 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.