Carol O’Connell - The Man Who Lied To Women

‘It was a stupid lie, wasn’t it? You had to know she’d catch you in the lie when she saw your son.’

‘What were the odds they would ever meet? Most of the year, my son is away at school. There are camps in the summer. My wife has no maternal instincts. Peter looks so much like me, Angel hates the sight of him. He’s rarely around.’

‘But Amanda saw him. That’s why she forced the meeting in the park.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. We only met at her place.’

‘I know you met her in the park. You don’t have to talk to me. You could remain silent. If you say anything it could be used against you in a court of law.’

‘Are you reading me my rights? Still playing cops and crooks, are we? Next you’ll be telling me that if I can’t afford an attorney, one will be appointed for me. You’re no more a cop than I am. Did they kick you off the force? You’re a cheap little hustler, aren’t you? There’s no law against cheating on your wife. Maybe the two of you are thinking in terms of a multimillion-dollar civil suit? Well, forget it.’

Mallory shrugged. His constitutional rights were recorded on camera. His arm leaned on the shelf of the bookcase, close to the knife, only inches from it. It was working so well. The only snag was that she didn’t have the gun. What had he done with it?

‘You met her in the park. She called you on the lie. She had just killed her child, thinking it was a monster, but it wasn’t. She aborted it for nothing. She was so angry. You panicked when she threatened to tell your wife what a monster you were. She was going to do it then, wasn’t she? Right that minute. Then you killed her.’

‘So Amanda was the woman in the park killing. No wonder you thought you were going to score big. Cheating and murder. Has it occurred to you she knew more than one man in this building, that someone else killed her?’

‘No. It never did, not from the beginning.’

‘If it was me, I’d take the subway,’ said Amanda, taking a long drag on her cigarette.

Charles stared at her. There was no music in the cab. Perhaps it was the stress that had triggered the delusion this time.

Now he realized that there were flaws in his construction, glitches in the mechanics of freak memory, for every now and then, Amanda’s blue eyes would slip into Mallory green.

‘Amanda, you’re not allowed to smoke in this cab. See the sign? Perhaps you – ’

‘I ain’t smoking, buddy,’ said the cab driver. ‘And the name is Fred.’

Amanda smiled and continued to hold the cigarette. ‘One of the perks of being dead – no fear of lung cancer. But if it bothers you, I’ll put it out.’

He couldn’t smell the burning weed, and neither did the swirling blue smoke sting his eyes. That was a good sign. He was not altogether crazy. The gun pressed into his leg, and he removed it from his pants pocket and shifted it into his coat.

‘So, what’s with the gun?’

‘Mallory needs it.’

‘What did you say?’ asked the cab driver.

‘Nothing.’

‘Take the subway,’ said Amanda. ‘Just on the chance that she needs it in a hurry. This traffic is the pits.’ She stared out the back window at the still life of motionless vehicles trailing behind them.

‘I’m sure we’ll get moving soon,’ said Charles, waving his hand at the phantom smoke swirling around the interior of the cab. ‘You know, the cigarette smoke does bother me. The cab is full of – ’

The cab driver turned around to say, ‘For the last time, pal, I’m not smoking.’

And now the cab was filled with smoke that was not real, but which obscured every real thing. He was engulfed in the smoke, panic was rising.

Steady now. It’s not real.

But then he turned to Amanda, who was blurred by the thickening blue clouds of his delusion, and he realized he was getting lost in this very cramped space which was his mind.

‘Please stop! Stop it!’

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ said the driver. ‘Out of my cab, fella. Now!’

‘Cheating on my wife doesn’t make a good motive for murder.’

‘Oh, sure it will. I like it. Money motives are the best. According to your father-in-law’s will, you don’t inherit if your wife dies. Smart old man, your father-in-law. And you don’t get alimony if she divorces you for cause. And that, incidentally, is the clause that hangs you – you couldn’t afford to get caught in the act.’

‘You can’t possibly base a murder motive on the possibility that she wouldn’t overlook one small indiscretion. You’d be laughed out of court. Everybody cheats.’ And everybody lies.

‘You mean the way she overlooked your embezzlement? I found the transactions in the company computer. She covered the sale of the stock you didn’t own, and she covered the collateral loan on the condo. She wouldn’t haul you in court for that. It might make the stockholders nervous to find an embezzler in the family. But I’m betting she’d haul you in for adultery.’

‘The threat of divorce is still a weak motive for murder.’

‘Is it? If Angel divorces you, you get nothing. You even had to agree to give custody of your own child to another relative in the event of your wife’s death. That’s how much the old man trusted you.’

Kipling was backing off in the body language, regrouping for another tack. ‘My wife is rather cold. She never lets me touch her any more. I had to have a woman on the side. But I certainly didn’t kill Amanda.’

She had always known it would be something simple, and disappointing. Now there was only the tedium of letting him flap his mouth, catching him in the lies while the camera was rolling. He was exhibiting all the signs of the liar. He explained too much, emoted too much. And now he was going on and on about the tragic death of Amanda and his own, more important tragedy.

All his life, he’d been waiting on opportunity, which had arrived in the shape of an heiress. And now, when he was set for life, it was all falling apart on him, everything unraveling, and he could not, would not see it. The lies didn’t work any more, and yet he kept on lying.

‘Amanda made the decision to have an abortion,’ he said.

Butchery , Mallory silently translated.

‘It’s unreasonable to blame me.’

She was going to tell your wife.

‘Eventually, Amanda saw it my way.’

Stunned with a rock, and bleeding.

‘I loved Amanda. I love all women.’

To death.

And here, Mallory interrupted him. ‘Your blood type is B positive.’

Kipling tightened all the muscles of his face.

‘You killed her by the water, and then you ran away. You came back later and smashed up her hands. You took some time with that.’

‘I suppose you were there when this fantasy supposedly happened?’

Mallory smiled.

At a dead run, Charles took the stairs leading down below the level of the sidewalk. He was half falling down them, as others were shouldering up the narrow stairway. At the booth, he made a frantic exchange of coins for tokens. The man behind the bulletproof window busied himself with some bit of paperwork and then began slowly to count out a packet of dollar bills. He never looked up, never responded to the crazed knocking on the glass, which sounded the panic of the oncoming train that Charles would miss without the token. The train pulled in as the clerk was pushing a token under the partition.

Charles turned into the crush of disembarking straphangers, to plant his token in the slot and hurry through. He ran at the train. The doors were closing, and he put his hand inside and pressed them open again with the aid of an electronic eye which had not kicked in until Charles felt real pain. He squeezed in among the press of other passengers, who looked up at him as though his size was something he was guilty of.