Carol O’Connell - The Man Who Lied To Women

‘I don’t know. I’ve got enough problems right now.’

‘Kathy, sometimes I think you’re growing into a real human being, and then you exasperate me this way. You got her this far, that’s good. But after the detox – what then? You can’t just dump off a little girl like she was a sack of potatoes.’

‘Doris does all the cooking in your house – that’s her job, right?’

‘What?’

Mallory’s hands went to her hips. Her words had a cautioning edge. ‘If you’d ever tried to prepare a meal, you’d know what an art form it really is, making every dish come out at the same time.’ Her voice was on the rise now, and angry. ‘Well, I’m cooking! I’ve got six dishes going at six different speeds, and they all have to be done at exactly the same time or the whole thing falls apart on me.’ One long fingernail jabbed at his chest. ‘You go do your own damn job! Get off my back!’

And the cook with a gun walked through the lobby and out the front door.

Today Mallory had only one message for each of her suspects. She blocked out the bulletin board they would access on their screens and tapped in the code to call up the dummy board. It displayed only one sentence repeated over and over again: I HAVE A WITNESS. And that was no lie if cats counted.

Though the hallway was generous in width, Pansy Heart pressed her body to the wall as her husband walked by. His face was red, his eyes hard, and he walked heavy on his feet, sending one fist to the wall a scant few inches from where she stood. In the room he had left, the computer screen was blank once more. What had been the message this time?

A door slammed at the other end of the hall. She jumped as though she had trod on a live wire. She gripped the edge of the hall table, feeling empty and airy inside, believing that she might fly upward without this solid anchor of oak. Her heart was knocking on the wall of her chest.

It was natural to be thinking of her mother-in-law on that last day of the old woman’s life, in that moment when the organs were shutting down one by one. There had been an inner knowledge of impending death in the ancient eyes. Only minutes before, terror had lived in that deeply lined face. Then the lines had smoothed out, and in the eyes was, not peace, but triumph. And then her mother-in-law had died – escaped.

Angel Kipling paced up and down the carpet before her husband Harry. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t know what this is about.’ She held up the printout from the computer. A single sentence repeated one hundred times across the sheet. ‘A witness to what? What have you done?’ Her voice was in the whining mode and threatened to climb into a scream.

Harry Kipling was buttoning his shirt in front of the mirror. Now he sought out her reflection behind his own. ‘It’s not addressed to me, is it?’

Angel’s lip was curling as he turned around to face her in the flesh. She placed her hands on her wide hips, and her robe fell open to display the ponderous breasts sagging against the thick body. His eyes dropped to the opening in the robe, and he quickly turned away from her. She winced as though she had been slapped.

As he left the full-length mirror to examine his tie rack, Angel stood alone in the glass, staring at her reflection. She had not yet put on the armature of make-up, and her hair was wild with snarls.

She closed the robe quickly and addressed her husband in a smaller voice this time. ‘It’s not another bank card scam, is it, Harry? You’re not having trouble living on your allowance money, are you?’

It had cost her a fortune to clean up after his last foray into creative banking, that or face the scandal and the stockholders. And she had never believed the stolen money was gone, spent. Was he amassing capital for a getaway? No, he would never leave her. He would never stray far from the source of unlimited wealth.

He ignored her and continued the business of tying his tie, an odd and useless preoccupation for a man who had no occupation, no business to conduct. And now she forgot that she was ugliest in the morning, most vulnerable without her magic make-up.

‘Answer me, you prick. You don’t want me to cut off your allowance again, do you?’

‘Angel, I have no idea what’s going on. It’s probably a prank. Some kid in the building.’

‘It’s another bank swindle, isn’t it? I thought I made it very clear what would happen if you tried this one more time. You won’t like being poor again, Harry.’

‘I haven’t done anything.’

She pulled a crumple of computer paper from her robe pocket and thrust it at him.

‘This was faxed yesterday. It’s an application for a credit card, and the form is addressed to you.’

‘I haven’t applied for any credit cards.’

‘Read it!’

He accepted the ball of paper and made a small production out of smoothing it over the surface of the bedside table.

Under the heading of pertinent information it read: First, tell us why you did it. Please print or type your confession in the space provided.

He picked up the sheet of paper, bringing it close to his eyes, examining the logo of the credit card company, which appeared at the top of the page.

The next line read: Does your wife know what you did? If so, we have provided additional space for her comments.

Now he stared at the short list of questions:

1. Why did you lie?

2. Would you do it again if we gave you the chance? He lowered the page and then looked up as Angel paced back and forth across the rug with barely contained fury.

‘And now this message on the building bulletin board!’ The words exploded from her mouth. ‘What does it mean?’ She looked down at the most recent message, clutched in her hand. ‘ “I have a witness.” A witness to what? Talk to me, Harry, or I’ll cut off your allowance, and then I’ll cut off your balls!’

Eric Franz was slow to answer his door. Betty Hyde could hear him walking toward the foyer, a shuffle of hard soles on marble. When the door did open, he was looking over her shoulder, as though just missing her with his eyes. A sheet of paper was wadded in his hand. His face was a mask. The room behind him was dark but for the constant glow of the computer’s ever-open eye.

‘If she knew you were digging into her past, it could end your friendship,’ said Rabbi David Kaplan.

‘I only want the connection between the boy and Mailory,’ said Charles Butler, The rabbi’s den was a place where books lived. They were not kept to the shelves, but quietly gathered in stacks on every surface of the room, perched in groups of agreeable subjects. A single leather-bound volume lay open on the desk, patiently awaiting the rabbi’s return to the interrupted business of scholarship.

‘Perhaps the connection between them is only a simple commonality,’ said the rabbi.

‘The difference in their backgrounds doesn’t leave room for much in common.’

‘All children have a commonality in innocence.’

‘I wouldn’t describe either of them as innocent. The boy talks like a forty-year-old man. And Mallory… is Mallory.’

‘Perhaps they share the innocence of good and evil.’

‘That’s the first time I’ve heard the word innocence so connected with evil.’

‘Take Helen’s view of Kathy. Helen could see nothing bad in the child. Helen always said no one had ever explained the rules to Kathy, and she was close to the truth. These concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, heaven and hell, what is that to a child on the street, living by wit and theft? When she first came to live with Louis and Helen, her behavior sometimes bordered on that of feral children raised apart from humans.’

‘What about the natural mother? Is it possible she abused her child? Perhaps that would explain a lot of the damage.’