The King of Lies (31 page)

I left the basement and turned off the light. The smell of moldering cardboard followed me as I headed for Ezra’s office. I paused at the foot of the stairs, remembering the sound of a heavy chair crashing down; but now there was only silence, and so I broke it, my feet heavy on the time-worn stairs. The rug looked different; maybe it was the light, but it seemed to ripple at the far corner. I pulled it back, wondered again if my mind was playing tricks on me. The wood was chipped at the edge, gouged around the nail heads. The marks were unfamiliar, small, as if made by a flathead screwdriver. I ran my fingertips over them, wondering if someone else had been here.

I dismissed the thought. Time was not on my side, and I had a number burning holes in my brain. I grabbed the hammer and went to work on the nails. I tried to slip the claw beneath the heads. I gouged more wood, scratched the nail heads shiny, but could not get them out. I rammed the claw into the crack at the boards’ ends and leaned back on the handle. No give. I pulled harder, felt the tension in my back as I heaved. But the four big nails were too much.

I ran back to the basement, back into the weak light of that one dangling bulb, then around the cardboard junkyard to the tool corner, where I’d seen a snow shovel, a ladder, a busted rake, and an old car jack. I found the lug wrench that went with the jack; it was two feet long with a sharp, tapered end. Back upstairs, breathing hard, I pushed the narrow end between the boards, pounded the other end with the hammer. Steel slipped into the crack where that yellow-white wood seemed to smile at me. I jammed the hammer against the base of the wrench for leverage, held it there with my foot, and then I put one hundred and ninety pounds on that long wrench. I leaned into it, heard wood crack and then splinter. I shifted down the board. Pried up one ragged piece and then another, until the whole thing came loose. I ripped the boards out, felt splinters in my palm and ignored them. I threw the ruined boards aside.

The safe challenged me, and for a moment I was afraid; but I pictured my old man’s ledger entry, knew it was the right number. I was ready to tear him down, ready to know, so I dropped again to my knees. I knelt above this last piece of him, said a silent prayer, and typed in the date that he’d made the largest deposit of his life.

The door swung up on silent hinges, opened to darkness; and then I blinked.

The first thing I saw was cash, lots of it, banded together in stacks of ten thousand. I removed all of it. The money was solid in my hand, a brick of currency that I could smell over the mustiness. At a glance, it looked like almost $200,000. I put it on the floor beside me, but it was difficult to look away. I’d never seen so much hard currency. But I wasn’t here for money, so I returned to the gaping hole.

There were pictures of his family. Not his wife and children. Not that family. But the one that raised him, the impoverished one. There was a faded picture of Ezra and his father. Another of his father and his mother. One of several dirty, blank-eyed children who may have been siblings. I’d never seen these before, and I doubted that Jean had, either. The people looked used up, even the children, and in one group shot I saw what had made Ezra different. It was something in his eyes, like in the photo on his desk at home. There was strength in them, as if, even as a child, he could move worlds. His brothers and sisters may have sensed this, for in the photographs they seemed to hover around him.

But they were all strangers to me. I’d never met a single one of them. Not once.

I put the photos next to the money and returned to the safe. In a large velvet box I found some of my mother’s jewelry—not what she was wearing when she died, but the really expensive stuff, which Ezra once referred to as “fuck-you baubles,” and only brought out when he wanted to impress a man or make the guy’s wife look cheap. Mother hated to wear them, and she once told me that they made her feel like the devil’s concubine. Not that they weren’t beautiful; they were. But they, too, were tools, and never intended as anything else. I put the box aside, planning to give it to Jean. Maybe she could sell them.

The videotapes were on the bottom, three of them, unmarked. I held them as I would a snake, and wondered briefly if I’d been wrong—that maybe there were things about a father that a son should never know.

Why would he keep videotapes in a safe?

A VCR and a television sat in the corner. I picked a tape at random and put it in the player. I turned on the television and pushed the play button.

At first, there was static, then a sofa. Soft lights. Voices. I looked at the long leather couch behind me, then back at the screen. They were the same.

“I don’t know, Ezra.” A woman’s voice, somehow familiar.

“Humor me.” That was Ezra.

I heard the sound of a gentle smack, a burst of girlish laughter.

A woman’s legs, long and tan. She ran past the camera, flung herself onto the couch. She was naked, laughing, and for an instant I saw a flash of white teeth, and equally pale breasts. Then Ezra heaved into view, filling the screen. He shrank as he moved to the couch, but I heard him mumble something. Then her voice: “Well, come on, then.” Her arms above her head, face obscured. Her legs opened, the left finding the back of the curved leather couch, the right circling his waist, guiding him down.

He collapsed onto her, buried her under his massive body; but I saw her legs, and she had the strength to rise up beneath him. “Oh yeah,” she said. “Like that. Fuck me like that.” And he did, slamming her, driving her down and into the yielding leather. Narrow arms escaped from beneath him, found his back, and dragged claw marks into his skin.

Watching, I felt sick, but I could not look away. Because some part of me knew. It was the voice. The way her legs joined. That brief, horrible flash of teeth.

I knew, and in bleak disbelief I watched my father nail my wife to the couch.

CHAPTER 33

T
he images were hammer blows. He used her, manhandled her, and her eyes, when I saw them, glowed like an animal’s. There was no office, no world; it was gone, obliterated, and I could not feel the floor that rushed up to meet my knees. My stomach clenched, and my mouth may have filled with bile, but if it did, I never tasted it. Every sense was overwhelmed by the one that I could forever do without. Sights no man should see swelled and burst like rotten fruit. My wife, on her back, then on her hands and knees. My father, hairy as any farm animal, grunting over her as if she, too, were mindless flesh, and not the wife of his only son.

How long?
The thought found me.
How long had this gone on?
And then, quick on its heels:
How could I have missed it?

And just when I could take no more, the screen went dead. I sagged into myself and waited for a collapse that never came. I was numb, staggered by what I’d seen and by what the sight implied. Her voice, when she spoke—it shocked the hell out of me.

“You nailed the boards down.”

I turned and saw her. She stood by Ezra’s desk. I hadn’t heard her come up the stairs and so had no idea how long she’d been there. She lowered the remote control to the desk. I climbed to my feet. She looked calm, but her eyes were glazed and her lips were damp.

“Do you know how many times I’ve tried to open that damn safe?” She sat on the edge of the desk and looked at me; her face remained pale, and her voice was equally colorless. “Late at night, usually, while you slept. It was the best thing about being married to a drunk. You were always a heavy sleeper. I knew about the tapes, of course. I shouldn’t have let him do that, but he insisted. I didn’t know he kept them in the safe until it was too late.”

Her eyes were lightless, and when she blinked, her body seemed to tilt. She looked drugged, and may well have been. I didn’t know her. I never had.

“Too late for what?” I asked, but she ignored me. She pulled at her ear with one hand and kept the other hand behind her back. I knew then that I’d been wrong about a great many things.

“It was you that night,” I said. “You pushed the chair down the stairs.”

I looked around the office. There was only one way out.

“Yes,” Barbara said. “I’m sorry about that. But I guess it was bound to happen, sooner or later. I’ve been up here so many times.” She shrugged, and the gun appeared. It was in her left hand, and she acted as if it weren’t there. I froze at the sight of it. It was small and silver, an automatic of some kind. She used the barrel to scratch at her cheek.

“What’s the gun for, Barbara?” I tried to make my voice as nonthreatening as possible. She shrugged again and looked at the gun. She tilted it this way and that, as if fascinated by the play of light along its glittering edge. Her face was slack. She was clearly not herself, and I thought she had to be stoned or mentally adrift.

“Something I’ve had for awhile,” she said. “This town is getting so dangerous these days, especially for a woman alone at night.”

I knew that I was in danger, but I didn’t care.

“Why did you kill him, Barbara?”

Suddenly, she was on her feet, jabbing the gun in my direction, and the vacuous calm of her eyes disappeared, replaced by something entirely different. I flinched, expecting the bullet.

“I did that for you!” she screamed. “For you! How dare you question me? I did it all for you, you ungrateful bastard.”

I held up my hands. “I’m sorry. Try to calm down.”

“You calm down!” She took three uneven steps toward me, holding the gun as if she meant to use it. When she stopped, she didn’t lower the gun. “That son of a bitch was going to change the will. I fucked him for six months before he agreed to do it right in the first place.” She laughed, the sound like fingers on a chalkboard. “That’s what it took, but I did it, and I did it for us. I made that happen. But he was going to undo all of that, put it back the way it was. I couldn’t allow that. So don’t you pretend that I never did anything for you.”

“That’s why you slept with my father? For money?”

“Not for money. Money is a thousand dollars or ten thousand. He’d never trust you with fifteen million dollars. He was going to leave you three.” She laughed bitterly. “Just three. Can you believe it? Rich as he was. But I convinced him. He changed it to fifteen. I did that for you.”

“You didn’t do it for me, Barbara.”

The gun began to shake in her hand, and I saw her fingers whiten where she gripped it. “You don’t know me. Don’t pretend that you know me. Or what I’ve been through. Knowing that the tapes were here. Knowing what it would mean if somebody else found them.”

“Can you put the gun down, Barbara? It’s not necessary.”

She didn’t respond, but the barrel drifted lower, until it pointed at the floor. Barbara’s eyes followed it and she seemed to slump. For an instant, I dared to breathe, but when her face came up, her eyes sparkled.

“But then you started seeing that country whore again.”

“Vanessa didn’t have anything to do with us,” I said.

The gun came up, and Barbara screamed, “That bitch was trying to steal my money!”

I had a horrible revelation. “What did you do to her?”

“You were going to leave me. You said so yourself.”

“But that had nothing to do with her, Barbara. That was about us.”

“She was the problem with us.”

“Where is she, Barbara?”

“She’s gone. That’s all that matters.”

Inside, I felt something tear. Vanessa was the only reason I had left for living. So I said what was on my mind.

“I’ve slept with you enough times to know when you’re faking.” This time, I stepped toward her. My life was over. I had nothing. This woman had taken everything and I let my anger build. I gestured at the blank screen, but in my mind I still saw her, and the way she screamed. “You loved it. You loved fucking him. Was he that good? Or did you just like the idea of hurting me?”

Barbara laughed, and the gun came up. “Oh. Now you’re a man. Now you’re a tough guy. Well, let me tell you. Yes, I loved it. Ezra knew what he wanted and knew how to get it. He had power. I don’t mean strength. I mean power. Fucking him was the biggest rush I ever had.” Her top lip curled. “Coming home to you was a joke.”

I saw something in her face, and had another revelation. “He dumped you,” I said. “He liked having sex with you because of the power he held. He controlled you, manipulated you; but then he realized that you liked it, and once that happened, he got bored. So he dumped you. That’s why you shot him.”

I was right. I knew that I was. I saw it in her eyes, and in the way her lips twitched. For a moment, I felt a fierce joy, but it didn’t last.

I saw her pull the trigger.

CHAPTER 34

I
 dreamed again of contentment, of green fields, the laughter of a small girl, and Vanessa’s cheek pressed softly against my own; but dreams are fickle deceivers, and they never last. I caught a final fleeting glimpse of cornflower eyes and heard a voice so faint, it must have crossed oceans; and then the pain hit with such ferocity that I knew I was in hell. Fingers peeled back my eyelids, and red light was everywhere, beating at the world. Hands ripped at my clothes, and I felt metal against my skin. I struggled, but bone-white fingers forced me down and bound me. Blank faces flickered in and out; they floated, spoke a language I couldn’t understand, and then were gone, only to return again. And the pain was ever constant; it pulsed like blood, it channeled through me, and then there were more hands upon me and I tried to scream.

Then there was motion and a white metal sky that rocked as if I were at sea. I saw a face I’d come to loathe, but Mills did not torment me further. Her lips moved, but I couldn’t answer; I didn’t understand. Then she left, just as I understood, and so I called out. I had the answer. But bloody hands forced her back, until she pushed them away, found the place above me, and leaned into my words. I had to shout, because I was in a deep well and falling fast. So I did. I screamed, but her face fell forever into the white sky and I crashed into the powdered ink that filled the bottom of the well. And my last thought as darkness settled around me was to wonder at a white sky in hell.

But even in that blackness, time seemed to pass, and on occasion there was light. The pain rose and fell like the tides, and when it was weak, I imagined faces and voices. I heard Hank Robins arguing with Detective Mills, who, I sensed, wanted to ask more questions; but that didn’t make sense. Then Dr. Stokes, looking old with worry. He held a clipboard and was talking to a strange man in a white coat. And once Jean was there, and she wept with such force that it killed me to see it. She told me she understood, that Hank had told her everything—about the jail and my willing sacrifice. She said that she loved me but knew that she could never spend life in prison for me. She said that made me better than her, but that didn’t make sense, either. I was in hell, but it was hell of my own making. I tried to explain that to her, but my throat wouldn’t open. So I watched in silence and waited for the well to pull me back in.

Once, I thought I saw Vanessa, but that was hell’s cruelest joke, and I did not rise to it. I closed my eyes and wept for the loss of her, and when I looked up, she was gone. I was alone, cold in the dark. The cold seemed to last forever, but eventually the heat found me, so that I remembered. I was in hell. Hell was hot, not cold. And hell was pain, so that when I woke and found it all but gone, I thought the dream had returned. I opened my eyes, but there was no child, no field, and no Vanessa. Perhaps the torments of this place were more than purely physical.

When finally I woke, I blinked in the cool air and heard the rustle of movement; so that when a face appeared above me, I was prepared for it. It was blurry at first, but I blinked it into focus. It was Jean’s.

“Relax,” she said. “Everything’s fine. You’re going to be okay.”

A stranger appeared beside her, the man in the white coat. He had dark features and a beard that glistened as if oiled. “My name is Dr. Yuseph,” he said. “How do you feel?”

“Thirsty.” A dry croak. “Weak.” I could not lift my head.

The doctor turned to Jean. “He can have an ice chip, but only one. Then another in ten minutes or so.”

I heard the clink of a spoon, and Jean leaned over me. She slipped an ice chip into my mouth. “Thanks,” I whispered. She smiled, but there was pain in it.

“How long?” I asked.

“Four days,” the doctor replied. “In and out. You’re lucky to be alive.”

Four days.

He patted me on the arm. “You’ll recover; it’ll hurt, but you’ll get there. We’ll put you on solid foods as soon as you feel up for it. Once your strength returns, you’ll start physical therapy. It won’t be long before you’re out of here.”

“Where am I?”

“Baptist Hospital. Winston-Salem.”

“What about Barbara?” I asked.

“Your sister can tell you anything you want to know. Just take it easy. I’ll be back in an hour.” He turned to Jean. “Don’t tire him. He’ll be weak for some time yet.”

Jean reappeared at the bedside. Her face was swollen, the flesh around her eyes as dark as wine. “You look tired,” I said.

She smiled wanly. “So do you.”

“It’s been a tough year,” I said, and she laughed, then turned away. When she looked back, she was crying.

“I’m so sorry, Work.” Her words broke, and the edges seemed to cut her. Her face reddened and her eyes collapsed. The tears devolved into sobs.

“For what?”

“For everything,” she said, and the words, I knew, were a plea for forgiveness. “For hating you.” Her head bowed, and with terrible effort I reached for her. I found her hand and tried to squeeze it.

“I’m sorry, too,” I whispered. I wanted to say more, but my throat closed again, and for a long time we shared a bittersweet silence. She held my hand with both of hers and I stared at the top of her head. We couldn’t go back to the way it had been for us; that place was a garden overgrown. But looking at her, I felt as close to our childhood as I ever had. And she felt it, too, as if we’d reached back to a time when apologies mattered and do-overs were a simple word away. I saw it in her eyes when she looked up.

“Did you see all your flowers?” she asked with a timid, brittle smile.

I looked past Jean and saw the room for the first time. Flowers were everywhere, dozens of vases with cards.

“Here’s a card from the local bar—every lawyer in the county signed it.” She handed me an oversized card, but I didn’t want it. I still saw the way they’d looked at me in court, the ready condemnation in their eyes.

“What about Barbara?” I asked, and Jean put the card, unopened and unread, back on the table. Her eyes moved over the room, and I was about to repeat the question.

“Are you sure you’re ready to talk about this?” she asked.

“I have to,” I said.

“She’s been arrested.”

I exhaled a mixture of relief and despair; part of me hoped that her betrayal had been the dream. “How?” I asked.

“Mills found you. You’d been shot twice, once in the chest and once in the head.” Her eyes drifted upward, and I touched my head. It was bandaged. “The one in your chest went through a lung. The head shot just grazed you. At first, she thought you were dead. You almost were. She called the paramedics and they transported you to Rowan Regional. Eventually, you were brought here.”

“But what about Barbara?”

“You were conscious in the ambulance. You managed to tell Mills who’d shot you. She arrested Barbara two hours later.”

Jean’s voice trailed off and she looked away.

“What?” I asked. I knew there was more.

“She was having a late lunch at the country club, as if nothing had happened.” Her hand settled onto mine. “I’m sorry, Work.”

“What else?” I had to move on. I could see her so clearly, sipping white wine, a fake smile plastered to her face. Lunch with the girls.

“They found the gun at your house, hidden in the basement, along with a lot of money and Mother’s jewelry.”

“I’m surprised Mills doesn’t think I put them there and shot myself.” I could not keep the bitterness from my voice.

“She feels terrible, Work. She’s been here a lot, and she’s not afraid to admit her mistake. She wanted me to tell you she was sorry.”

“Mills said that?”

“And she left something for you.” Jean got up and walked across the room. When she came back, she held a stack of newspapers. “Most are local. Some are from Charlotte. You look good in print. Mills even made a public apology.” She picked the top copy off the stack. I saw a picture of Barbara being led from a police cruiser. She was cuffed, trying to hide her face from the cameras.

“Put it down,” I said.

“Okay.” She dropped the papers onto the floor by the bed and I closed my eyes. The picture of Barbara brought it all back, the pain and betrayal. For a moment, I could not speak. When I finally looked at Jean, her eyes were veiled, and I wondered what she was seeing.

“Do you know?” I asked.

“About Barbara and Daddy?”

I nodded.

“Yes, I know. And don’t you dare apologize.”

I closed my mouth; nothing I could say would make it go away. It was a part of us now, as much his legacy as the color of my hair.

“He was a horrible man, Jean.”

“But now he’s gone, so let that be an end to it.”

I agreed, even though I knew there would never be an end to it. His presence among us lingered, like the smell of something dead but unburied.

“Would you like some more ice?” Jean asked.

“That would be nice.”

She fed me the ice, and as she hovered there, I saw the fresh scars on her wrists. They were tight and pink, as if the skin had stretched too tightly over the veins. To better protect them, perhaps. I didn’t know. With Jean, I never did; but I hoped, and I thought that maybe it was not too late to pray.

“I’m fine,” she said, and I realized that I’d been staring.

“Are you really?”

She smiled and sat back down. “You keep saving my life,” she said. “There must be some value in it.”

“Don’t joke, Jean. Not about this.”

She sighed, leaned back, and for a moment I feared I had pushed too hard. The line between us had grown vague, and I didn’t want to step over it. But when she spoke, there was no resentment, and I realized that she was taking her time and wanted me to understand.

“I feel like I’ve come through a long, dark tunnel,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt to stand straight anymore, like something’s let go inside of me.” She clenched her hands in front of her stomach and then opened them, a ten-petaled rose. “It’s hard to explain,” she said, but I thought I understood. Ezra was gone; maybe that brought closure. Maybe not. But it was not my place to fix Jean. That was a truth I’d come to understand. She had to do that herself, and looking at her smile, I thought she had it in her.

“And Alex?” I asked.

“We’re leaving Salisbury,” she said. “We need to find a place of our own.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Jean’s eyes were expressive and very real. “We have issues, like everybody, but we’re dealing with them.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” I said.

“I feel like we just found each other, Work. Alex understands that. It’s one of the things we’ve been dealing with; and while she’ll always have issues with men, she swears that she’ll make an exception for you.”

“Can she forgive me for dredging up her past?”

“She knows why you did it. She respects your reasons, but don’t ever mention it to her.”

“So we’re okay?” I asked.

“Wherever we go, you’ll always be welcome there.”

“Thank you, Jean.”

“Have some more ice.”

“Okay.”

She fed me the ice and I felt my eyes grow heavy. Suddenly, I was exhausted, and I closed my eyes as Jean moved around the room. I was almost gone when she spoke.

“There’s one card you might like to read. It’s more of a letter, actually.” I cracked my eyes. Jean was holding an envelope. “It’s from Vanessa,” she said.

“What?”

“She was here for awhile, but said she couldn’t stay. She wanted you to have this, though.” She handed me the envelope, which was thin and light. “She thought you would understand.”

“But, I thought . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Hank found her at the hospital in Davidson County. She’d gone to the feed store in Lexington and was crossing the street, when somebody hit her.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Nobody knows. All she remembers is a black Mercedes that came out of nowhere.”

“Is she okay?”

“Broken ribs and bruises all over, but she’ll survive. They kept her at the hospital overnight. She was pretty doped up on painkillers.”

“I thought she was dead.”

“Well, she’s not, and she was pretty broken up to see you like this.”

Suddenly, I couldn’t see. The letter in my hand was hope for the future, something I thought I’d lost. I wanted to read her words, to see the letters made by her hands. But my fingers were clumsy.

Jean took the envelope from my hands. “Let me,” she said.

She tore it open, removed the folded page, and put it back in my hand. “I’ll be outside if you need me,” she said, and I heard the door close behind her. I blinked, and when my vision cleared, I looked at the note Vanessa had left for me. It was short.

Life is a torturous journey, Jackson, and I don’t know if I can handle any more pain. But I’ll never regret the day we met, and when you’re ready to talk, I’m ready to listen. Maybe some good can come of all this. I hope so, but I know too well the cruelness of fate. No matter what happens, remember this—every day I thank God that you’re alive.

I read it three times, and fell asleep with it on my chest.

When I opened my eyes again, I felt ten times better. It was late, dark outside, but someone had turned on the lamp in the corner. I saw Mills in the chair, and I managed to sit up in bed before she looked up from the book she was reading.

“Hey,” she said, getting up. “I hope you don’t mind, but Jean has been here around the clock and was exhausted. I told her I’d stick around.” She stood, looking uncertain. “I thought you might have some questions.”

“I guess I should say thanks,” I said. “For saving my life.”

If possible, Mills looked even more uncomfortable. “And I owe you an apology.”

“Forget about it,” I said, surprising myself. “The past is dead. I don’t intend to think about it too much.” I gestured at the chair next to the bed. “Sit down.”

“Thanks.” She sat and put her book on the table. I saw that it was a mystery, and for some reason that struck me as funny, her being a detective and all.

“I really don’t know what I want to hear,” I told her. “I haven’t had much time to think about any of this.”