David Ellis - In the Company of Liars

“Okay, okay.” Harrick waves his hands. “Let’s get out of here, everyone.”

McCoy is the first to walk out. A voice comes through her earpiece.

“Agent McCoy?” It’s one of her team, watching the perimeter of the property.

“Yeah,” McCoy says into her collar.

“Someone’s driving down the street. A Mazda two-door coupe. I’ll run the plates.”

“How close?” McCoy asks.

“Very. You guys better clear out. Looks like it’s stopping at Dillon’s house.”

“JessicaPagone?” McCoy says into her collar microphone. “The daughter?”

“Affirmative,” the voice comes back through her earpiece. “Allison Pagone’s daughter was just in his house. Less than three minutes. Just drove away.”

McCoy looks at Harrick, who is also listening through an earpiece.

“Go back in there in one minute,” McCoy says into her microphone. “Rear entry. Look around. Out.”

“Out.”

McCoy looks at her partner. “What the hell isthat about?”

Harrick shakes his head. “Allison’s daughter? She knows Dillon?”

“Shit,I don’t know.” McCoy’s legs squirm in the car. McCoy and Harrick are parked the next street over from the street on which Sam Dillon lives, orlived, past tense.

“She was only there two minutes,” Harrick says. “She saw him lying there on the carpet and flipped out, presumably. But where’s she going now?”

“Who knows?”

“Do we do anything?” Harrick asks. “I’m not sure we do.”

“There’s nothingto do,” McCoy agrees, trying to calm herself. “So she found him dead. Someone was going to. It’s not like we’re going to hand Larry Evans over to the police or anything.”

“I wonder if Jessica called the cops.” Harrick pats the steering wheel.

McCoy shrugs. “Probably. Who knows? I’m sending our team back in, just to look over the place. I doubt Jessica did anything in there. She didn’t have the time. She probably saw him, wigged out, and got the hell out of Dodge.”

“That’s whatI’d do,” Harrick agrees.

“Let’s just sit tight and wait a while. We’ll keep our guys in position after they look the place over. Sooner or later, the police will be coming, and you and I will have to get out.”

“We don’t tell them anything?”

“There’s nothing to tell them, Owen.” The windows in their car are fogging up. McCoy recalls a time, years ago, when the windows fogged up for a much more enjoyable reason. “We can’t let them in on this.”

“They won’t come up with Larry Evans as a suspect,” Harrick says. “His prints aren’t on any database, and I’m sure he was smart enough not to leave any, anyway.”

“Yeah, he’s smart. A clock? A trophy? This thing looks like anythingbut a professional hit.”

“But what I’m wondering,” Harrick says, “is whether the police will come up with someoneelse as a suspect.”

“I don’t know,” says McCoy, her voice trailing off.

“We can’t let someone else go down for this, Jane. Like Jessica Pagone, for one. She could have left ten different clues in there, pointing back to her.”

McCoy pats her partner’s arm. “Let’s jump off that bridge when we come to it, okay?”

Yes. She will call Jessica, Allison decides. She will meet with her and explain all of this. She will admit that it was she who demanded that Sam make that phone call and fire her. She will apologize for her misbehavior and use the apology as a segue, a bridge to fixing things between them. Telling Jessica about Sam will be a way of reintroducing herself as the same woman she’s always been, the same mother who loves her daughter dearly, but who now is single and has a new man in her life.

Jessica’s an adult now. She has to be ready for this. She has to accept that people-even her own mother and father-sometimes drift apart, and it’s not one person’s fault. It’s not a question of fault at all.

She hears the doorknob rattling and pops out of her chair, moves into the hallway. This is a relatively safe part of the city, but it’s still the city. And she lives alone now. The creaks and groans in the middle of the night take on a frighteningly new dimension, now that she doesn’t have a former middle linebacker sleeping next to her. No, it’s not exactly the middle of the night. It’s only a little after eight in the evening-

She hears another noise-a key working the knob-and the door opens. Jessica rushes in and closes the door behind her quickly. She turns and sees Allison. Jessica’s face is washed-out, her mascara streaked down her cheeks. She is trembling, on the verge of collapse.

Allison reaches her in an instant, takes her in her arms and eases her to the floor.

“What happened?” Allison asks, holding Jessica’s head, inventorying her body for injuries out of instinct. “God, sweetheart, what happened?”

McCoy turns off her cell phone and plugs it into the charger, attached to the cigarette lighter in the car. The team that reentered Sam Dillon’s home, after Jessica Pagone’s unexpected visit, has just reported back.

“Well, at least she didn’t mess with anything,” McCoy says.

“But she didn’t leave it clean, either,” Harrick says. He is referring to the single platinum earring on the carpet near Sam’s body.

“She probably bent over the body.” McCoy shrugs. “Earrings fall off.”

“We should retrieve it, Jane.”

McCoy shakes her head. “I’m not going to have them tamper with a crime scene.”

“It wouldn’t be tampering, Jane. The crime scene didn’t include an earring. And we know she didn’t kill him. She came in afterward. Hell, we have Larry Evans on video.”

McCoy looks at Harrick.

“I’m saying, this could put this girl in the soup,” he says forcefully.

McCoy chews on her lip.

“That’s a bad thing, by the way,” Harrick adds.

“Maybe so, maybe not.”

“Janey, listen to me. This has been a crazy night. I know that. Lot of things happening we didn’t expect, a lot of on-the-spot decisions. But we can’t let this girl get in trouble.”

“Oh, we won’t,” she says absently.

“Then tell them to get back in there and remove the damn earring.”

McCoy shakes her head slowly.

“Jane-”

“Jessica Pagone is Allison Pagone’s daughter,” she says. “And Allison Pagone may be a part of this now, like it or not.”

“What are you thinking here, Agent?”

“Just thinking,” she says. “Thinking that Larry Evans must have been pretty worried about Sam Dillon, right? Enough to kill him. He’s got to be worried about Allison, too. He’s already monitoring her, right? So he’s worried about her, too.”

“The point being,” Harrick takes it, “that we might need her help.”

“Yeah,” McCoy mumbles, thinking it through.

Her cell phone rings. McCoy almost jumps out of her seat.

“McCoy. Okay? Okay.” She looks at her partner. “Don’t do anything. Just make sure that house is safe. Whatever it takes.”

She punches off, raises her eyebrows. “Jessica just arrived at her mother’s house.”

“Allison’s house.” Harrick moans. “Okay. Jesus Christ, okay.”

McCoy falls back in her seat.

“She’s telling her mom that she just found Sam Dillon dead,” Harrick envisions. “She’s hysterical. Scared. Freaked out.”

“All of those,” McCoy agrees. “And Allison is worried.”

“Worried?” Harrick seems doubtful. “Grief-stricken, maybe.”

“No,” McCoy says. “Worried.”

Harrick touches Jane’s arm. “You think she’s wondering whether her daughter killed Dillon?”