In the Company of Liars (34 page)

Jessica looks back at the house. “We have to go in,” she says.

“Yes.” Allison steers her daughter, whispers in her ear. “This is going to turn out fine, Jess,” she promises.

S
ecrets. She lived with them for over a decade, maybe since the day she and Mat married, though she cannot rewind and know this. She did not love him. She did not love the man she spent over twenty years with, with whom she had a daughter.

Secrets never stay secret. She couldn't live with it forever, and once Jessica was in college, it seemed the time.

And secrets, now, with Sam. An
ethical dilemma
, he said twice over the phone during the last week, but he wouldn't elaborate. Wouldn't even discuss it with her face to face.

A secret. Sam wouldn't tell her.

And neither had she told him. A secret. Probably the same secret. She knows, too.

The FBI already seems to know. They have already seized Mat's bank records. Mat told her—in the way he does—over dinner, in January. They had promised to do it,
to see each other, to keep in touch. Mat often drank too much but really overdid it on that occasion.

They think I bribed some senators
, he said, spitting out the words as if they were poison.

It didn't take Einstein to fill in the gaps. It had been a big victory for Mat, when he got that bill out of the Senate last year, the prescription-drug bill. A big but controversial victory, involving a sudden vote change on the part of three different senators. That kind of behind-the-scenes arm-twisting might look bad to the public, but it makes legends out of lobbyists. Mat was a big winner in that deal.

Allison had noticed it when they were settling up on the divorce in December, a month earlier. Several large withdrawals from their bank account. About thirty thousand dollars, withdrawn in cash, over the last several months. She decided that she wouldn't care, wouldn't mention it. Maybe he had a mistress. Maybe he was trying to protect himself financially, stealing from the pot before it was divided up. She didn't know and she didn't care. She had plenty of her own money. If a peaceful resolution of the marriage cost her thirty thousand, it was the best money she had ever spent.

She didn't know Mat was putting the cash in the hands of state legislators.

An ethical dilemma
, Sam told her, twice in the last week, over the phone. He wouldn't elaborate. A secret. He must have known.

She had the same secret, and neither of them wanted to tell the other because of who was involved.

Allison closes the book she's reading. She's hungry. It's just after seven in the evening and she hasn't eaten all day. Her stomach is in revolt.

Oh, she was so stupid, overreacting like a schoolgirl. Sam was admiring Jessica at the party, and she drives all the way down to the capital to make Sam fire her? Even accuses him of sleeping with Jess?

She had connected the three things like a paranoid, insecure child. Her daughter's comment, that she was interested in
a guy at work
and Allison
wouldn't approve
. Sam's mention of an ethical dilemma. And then Sam's look at Jessica at that party.

She covers her face with a hand. She wishes she could wipe yesterday off the calendar. Just remove Friday, February the sixth from the books, and explain to her daughter in a thoughtful, mature way that the man for whom she is carrying a torch is actually Mommy's boyfriend now.

She'll do it. She'll call Sam and apologize for her childish behavior.

She'll talk to Jessica and explain everything.

Jane McCoy stands, silently, over the body of Sam Dillon. Owen Harrick walks out of the kitchen. “It's clean,” he says. “We swept the whole place. The wire is gone.”

“Positive?” McCoy whispers.

“Positive. It's clean, Jane.”

Other agents, two men and a woman, emerge from other parts of the house, all standing around the body of Sam Dillon.

“So we're clean here,” McCoy confirms.

Every agent nods.

“Okay,” she says, her voice above a whisper for the first time—far above a whisper. “Then can someone tell me how the hell this happened?”

“Nobody thought he'd
kill
him,” says Owen Harrick. “He never gave any indication. You saw Haroon's e-mail, Jane.”

Yes, she did. Since he first arrived in the U.S., Ram Haroon has had an e-mail address set up—
[email protected].
Whenever Haroon needed to communicate
with the U.S. government, he sent an e-mail to himself, secure in the knowledge that the government was monitoring the site and reading the message, too. He would have to be careful with the text, in the incredibly unlikely event that the Liberation Front was hacking into the site, too, but he would be able to get his message across to the feds.

It had been through this e-mail address that Haroon informed the FBI, a few months ago, that he had made contact with a front man who was now calling himself Larry Evans. It was through this e-mail address that Haroon informed them, last week, that Larry Evans was carefully watching two people, Sam Dillon and Allison Pagone, because there was some fear that Dillon had become wise to the operation at Flanagan-Maxx and had told his girlfriend, Allison, about it.

“Haroon said Evans was going to watch and wait,” Harrick agrees. “Not kill.”

“You guys didn't see him come in?” McCoy asks, looking at the trio of agents assigned to watch the house.

“No. He slipped in when the food was delivered about six-twenty.”

They know this now. The Bureau has been watching and monitoring, by video, the property surrounding Sam Dillon's house. Larry Evans was good. He snuck into the house when Sam Dillon was answering the front door. The problem is, Larry Evans not only escaped Sam Dillon's attention; he faked out three federal agents.

“We saw him leaving, which was when we called you,” one of the agents says.

Yes, and then they went to the video and hit rewind, saw Larry Evans pick the lock through the back entrance at six-twenty—just as Sam Dillon was answering the front door—and saw him leave again about ten minutes after seven.

“I can't believe this,” McCoy mumbles to herself. She looks at Harrick. “We're good on Allison Pagone?”

“Yeah. We've got her covered.”

“Make sure of it, Owen. No one else is dying tonight.”

“What do we do now?” Harrick asks.

McCoy walks around the room delicately. “We don't do anything, is what we do. We can't be seen here. We have to go.”

“We leave this body here?” Agent Cline asks.

“Hell yes, we do. What do you suggest? We call the police? Maybe we should just call up Larry Evans and tell him we're interested in him.”

“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.”

“
Jessica
Pagone?” 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 is
that
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, or
lived
, 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 nothing
to
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 what
I'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 anything
but
a professional hit.”

“But what I'm wondering,” Harrick says, “is whether the police will come up with someone
else
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.”