David Ellis - In the Company of Liars

Except this envelope. He opens it and reads:

Sorry for the short notice. We have had a tremendous break. The FBI is pressing her for information about Operation Public Trust. They want her to provide information that she very much does not want to provide. She is tough but not when it comes to her family. She is at the breaking point. No need to give too many details. The FBI has put her in a corner. I believe she is contemplating this herself. She will do anything to protect her family. I am sure of this. But we cannot assume she will save us the trouble and take her own life.

Do it Tuesday night. The FBI is coming back to her on Wednesday. MUST BE TUESDAY NIGHT. I have included two scripts. She should make these two phone calls. I leave it to you whether you can force her to do this. Your decision. If you can get her to cooperate, you will convince the whole world that she did this to herself. I think she will make these calls willingly, because she will want to say these things, anyway. I leave that to you.

I assume you have the trophy now. It might make sense for you to leave it at her house. People would see her guilt.

This has always been your idea, not mine. I still believe it is too risky. But if you insist on doing this, now is the time.

I must warn you, if there is the slightest hint that this has not worked out to our satisfaction, WE will be the ones who walk away.

Ram Haroon rereads the note, then looks at the other sheet of paper. It is a script of what Allison Pagone is supposed to say. The first phone call will be to Mateo, her ex-husband.Don’t say a word to the FBI and words to that effect.

The second phone call will be to an FBI agent named Jane McCoy. Haroon does not know all the details, but he can gather enough from the script:Your plan didn’t work. Live with that. Vague without more context, but Haroon understands well enough. The FBI is trying to make the ex-husband talk to save the ex-wife, and the ex-wife, by taking her own life, removes the FBI’s leverage.

Excellent. Better than a suicide note, especially the call to the agent, McCoy-blaming her for placing Allison in this corner. A plausible explanation for why Allison Pagone would choose to take her own life.

Yes. This is the perfect cross of the final t, the final jagged piece of a difficult puzzle. It must be a part of this plan.

And he has no doubt that he will be able to persuade Allison Pagone to go along.

I’ve never known anyone like you,” he told her, and she wanted to say the same thing to him. He came up behind her, cupped a hand around her throat, ran the other hand lazily up the side of her body, caressed her stomach. She felt a chill, a welcome chill, closed her eyes and let him unbutton her blouse, bring his lips to the back of her neck, bring his hands to her breasts.

“There are things you don’t know, Allison,” he told her later.

And The Look. The single defining moment, at that cocktail party only days before his death. The expression of utter wanting on his face, fixating on her, imagining unspeakable acts, as he stood among others at the party, unable to move his eyes off her-

“Shit,” Allison says, looking down at her hand. The wineglass has shattered in her grip. She looks at the pieces before taking note of the two shards stuck into her palm. Searing pain as she pulls the glass out, unable to look, wincing, cursing herself. She walks, palm up, to the sink and runs cold water over her hand. It’s everywhere, blood on her nightshirt, the floor, but it’s all she can do to wrap a towel around her hand. Then she loses her balance and falls to the floor hard.

“Get a grip, Allison,” she mumbles. She sits up, rests her head against the cabinet below the sink, and holds her breath.

Bring Sam to me just one more time. Defy logic, the laws of nature, and bring him back to me just this once.

She hears her alarm clock going off upstairs. It automatically resets, and she forgot to deactivate it, for the second day in a row. Her mind has been like that recently, uncannily sharp and focused on the minutiae of her case, even the big picture, but inattentive to many of the general details of everyday living.

She didn’t sleep. Only about four hours over the last two days. She’s been in the kitchen since midnight, nursing a glass of wine and staring into the emptiness of her backyard. She watched the sky lighten, watched the first rays of the day skitter across the yard, furious at how casually everything was passing her by.

She gets back to her feet and heads outside. She walks through the living room, opens the back door, and the house alarm goes off, blending with the sounds of the clock alarm upstairs.

She finds the alarm pad, deactivates it, and fights a bout of nausea. She heads outside and is unprepared for the cold air but takes it in, embraces the discomfort, wraps her arms around herself and watches the day begin.

“You should see this,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

Maybe hecan see it. Maybe he’s looking down on her, smiling with that assurance, winking at her, blowing her a kiss. She is religious, but it’s been a while. Mat was never much for church so she fell out of practice. She feels hypocritical but she finds herself pleading.

Just let me hear your voice. Just once.

Tell me you forgive me.

Tell me you love me.

Today is Mother’s Day, a holiday that will not be celebrated by the Pagone family this year. There are obvious reasons. Having the family to this home is out of the question. The house is like a prison both literally and figuratively. Nor is there any conceivable reason for celebrating anything today.

Good reasons, both of them. But the truth is that Allison can’t summon the strength for a faзade, anyway. Not another one.

In a little while she finds that the grocery store is not as busy as it typically would be on a Sunday. Before the recent turn of events, Allison had frequented an upscale grocer, not because of its exclusivity, but because it was the only store in this part of the city with some of the exotic ingredients she often sought. And they knew her, because she shopped often, preferring fresh food. But since her arrest, she has noticed the discomfort in virtually every acquaintance. The averted glances, the awkward silences. It’s gotten to the point where she avoids them as much as they avoid her. So now she shops at a chain store, where she is relatively unknown. Say that much for the city. One in a million is actually an understatement. It provides her relative freedom.

Very relative. She has to stay within five miles of her home at all times, a condition of her bond. She had to get permission to get a tire changed last week.

She carries a small basket and places a few vegetables in it. She eats meat, used to love it, but these days the idea of being a carnivore seems ironic. She walks past the bakery, past the butcher, toward the drugstore. There is a small coffee shop in the corner, the grocery chain’s attempt at modernization. She finds Larry Evans reading a newspaper at a small table. Two steaming paper cups of black coffee sit on the table. He looks over his glasses at her and smiles. She recognizes it for what it is, not a happy-go-lucky grin but an attempt at warmth. Not very many people smile at Allison Pagone these days.

“How you holding up?” he asks.

She puts down the groceries and sits across from him. “How do I look like I’m holding up?”

He sets down the newspaper. “Honestly?”

She sighs. “Don’t start lying to me now, Larry. You’re the only one I can trust.”

“You look tired. Did you sleep at all?”

He’s being honest, if not entirely forthcoming; he is omitting a few other adjectives. Allison has forced herself to look in the mirror lately. She has seen the damage.