Джеймс Паттерсон - Liar Liar

By 5.30 pm, he promised himself, he’d be sober again – mentally strong, emotionally impenetrable, ready to continue the hunt. The Dexedrine pills would have worn off. He would be clean. Everybody gets a day off once in a while, right? he thought. As long as Vada didn’t notice he was high, he would be fine.

‘Edward, slow down!’

‘Sorry.’

‘What did the report say, exactly?’ Vada gripped her seatbelt. She’d had to take a phone call when Whitt was called up to the emergency briefing in the command centre.

‘It just said a woman’s body was found in a house,’ Whitt said. ‘A big man, broad shoulders, white, late thirties, not a regular from the neighbourhood was spotted leaving the scene in her car late morning. We haven’t found the car yet but we’ve got an alert out on it. They’re erecting roadblocks but they may be too late. Local cops say the scene was only discovered because a neighbour got curious about the door standing open for a couple of hours.’

‘What did they say about the scene?’

‘Only that it was bad.’ Whitt glanced at his partner. Heard the tremor in his own voice. ‘Really bad.’

Chapter

32

CUTS AND SCRAPES: I could deal with them.

The leap from the train had done something funny to the tendons in my elbow: nothing major.

The shoulder of my backpack had torn and it now hung crooked: that was alright, I’d get used to it.

But I’d left my hoodie on the train, and it was cold.

Goddamnit, I hate the cold.

The cold makes me unreasonably angry. Pair it with a strong wind and I become near homicidal. I gathered my arms around myself and trudged, head down, through the rough, battered landscape north of Nowra station, keeping an eye on the highway in the distance. I decided overland on the isolated roads stretching between farms was the safest route. There was no need to make a spectacle of myself.

It started to rain. I ground my teeth, my fingers gripping my shoulder straps so tight the tough fabric bit into my palms.

Regan called. I didn’t answer. I was not his plaything. He didn’t get to just call me up to whisper sadistic sweet nothings whenever he pleased. I was going to be this man’s killer. His righteous punisher. It was all I could do not to throw the phone into the dry grass of a nearby field.

After an hour of walking through farmland, my phone rang again. I had a brief moment of weakness and answered.

‘Hello, shit biscuit,’ I said.

‘Hello, Harry,’ Regan said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Thinking about breaking all of your fingers.’ I sniffed and wiped my eyes on the back of my wrist. ‘With a hammer.’

‘Sounds windy where you are,’ he said. ‘Don’t catch a cold, Harry.’

‘Thanks, I’ll try not to. I hope you’re snuggled up somewhere warm. Perhaps very close to a crackling fire, enjoying a steaming mug of gasoline.’

He laughed.

‘What are you going to show me in Nowra?’ I asked. It was quiet where he was. I pictured him sitting in a car somewhere, maybe watching me. I glanced towards the highway. A big truck lumbering slowly along. ‘Are we going to take a tour of your childhood family getaways? This is where baby Regan had his first swim. This is where teenage Regan disembowelled a cat .’

‘I do have something to show you,’ he said. ‘But it’s not about me. It’s about you.’

‘Well, I’ve got some sad news for you,’ I said. ‘I have no personal relationship with Nowra whatsoever. I think I might have had some excellent fish and chips here once. That’s about it.’

‘We’ll see,’ he said. I could hear the smile in his voice. I hesitated before I asked the next question, wondering if I would give the monster on the other end of the line any ideas.

‘Does my mother live in Nowra?’ I didn’t want to tempt Regan to go after my mother, though something told me that he knew she wasn’t the most important person in my life. My mother had taken $40,000 to do a magazine interview on Sam and me only days after his death in prison. She’d posed for pictures by the ocean, staring out at the waves, a single tear sliding down her drug-ravaged face. All my life, she’d been uninterested, unreliable, a junkie who popped up in my life periodically, looking for money or shelter and nothing more. I had no idea where she lived.

He gave no answer.

‘Are you there?’

‘I’m here,’ he said. ‘I’m thinking. Trying to analyse your tone. Do you want your mother to die, Harry?’

‘No.’

‘No one would be surprised if you did,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking at the reports on her in your records. On your fourteenth birthday she turned up three hours late to the McDonald’s where you were scheduled to meet. She was high as a kite, on the nod. She had a black eye, and some thug who wouldn’t give his full name was with her. She stayed for fifteen minutes, then tried to punch a DOCS worker when he accused her of being under the influence.’

‘I’ve tried to punch a few DOCS workers in my life,’ I reasoned.

‘She did a good job of looking torn up about Sam,’ Regan said. ‘Did she even know anything about him?’

‘Sure,’ I lied. ‘In fact, I think they were pretty close at times.’ I was hoping to bait Regan into talking about Sam, maybe revealing something about their relationship.

‘Sam grew out of nothing , Harry,’ Regan continued. ‘That something so complex and beautiful and unique could grow out of the beginning that Sam had is just amazing to me. He was full of potential. He refused to be what he should have been, another scavenger. It took a long time to understand what Sam did to me.’ He struggled with the words. ‘ For me.’

‘You loved him, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘You were in love with him. What did he do to you?’

Regan hung up on me. I saw a house through the trees before me, a car sitting in the gravel driveway. The lights in the house were off. With regret stinging in my chest, I approached the house and made a cautious circuit, looking for the best way in. I needed a car and a new jacket, and my food supplies were running low. I hated to steal from innocent people but right now I had no choice.

As I shoved open a window left ajar at the side of the house, my phone beeped. The text message contained an address.

Chapter

33

KILLERS HAVE THEIR rituals. I’d seen them before. A murderer comes into a house and cuts the phone lines, turns all the family photos face-down, maybe tours the victim’s underwear drawer as he waits for her to return home from work. He draws the curtains. Sits on the living room sofa in the dark and gets a feel for the house. The ritual allows him to do the deed, move on and do it again. A well-practised routine.

Cops have their murder rituals, too. They unfurl blue and white crime scene tape and festoon the house and surrounds like they’re preparing for a party. They close off the street. Set up roadblocks. Video the cars, the people emerging curiously from their houses. They go in, turn the lights on, push back the blinds.

I crouched in the bush behind the house that had been identified in Regan’s text and watched the goings-on, well acquainted with everything that was happening and the reasons for it. The Nowra police had the scene but seemed to be holding off processing it, waiting for someone. They’d set up a perimeter around the house and gathered in a neighbour’s yard to smoke and chat under umbrellas. When a car arrived and two detectives got out, the most senior officer broke away and approached, hand out in greeting.

Whitt and a woman I didn’t recognise walked up and identified themselves before being led into the scene.

I gasped at Whitt’s appearance. Usually immaculate, his shirt and hair were rumpled and his eyes were restless, like he was afraid. He walked with a sharp, determined stride. It hurt to be so near to my friend and unable to go to him. I envisioned myself walking up from the back of the house and simply presenting myself to the Nowra officers. But I knew if I did that I would be shoved in a patrol car and driven right back to Sydney, perhaps without even getting to talk to Whitt.