Gathering Lies Read online

  “I don’t remember you being all that conservative.”

  “I’ve just grown up enough to look at all sides now, Sarah. As a lawyer, you do the same thing. To get at the truth in a case, you have to.”

  “Not me,” I said bitterly. “My job is to get my clients off. The truth rarely matters.”

  “Well, then, maybe this charge against you is your karma coming back to bite you.”

  “My karma? God, now you sound like Dana.”

  “I just think it’s true, that what goes around comes around.”

  “And if you were a lawyer, you’d do what? Not try to get your guilty clients off?”

  “No. I just wouldn’t be a lawyer in the first place.”

  I bridled, staring at him for a moment. Then I laughed, breaking the tension. He did, too.

  “Seems like old times, us arguing like this,” he said.

  “Except that you would have been on my side back then.”

  “I’m still on your side, Sarah. I’d like to help you.”

  “Great. You have a magic wand?”

  “No, but I might, if I knew what you had. What’s your defense, Sarah? Have you got any evidence? Something that could prove those cops did what you say they did to that woman, then set you up? Do you have anything like that?”

  I hesitated, on the alert suddenly. “Come to think of it, how do you know so much about my case?”

  “Well, from my father, I suppose. At least partly. Your case hasn’t exactly been low profile, Sarah. When it first came out it was all over the news.”

  That was true enough. But I was remembering that Luke’s father, as a judge, had a lot of contacts with the Seattle police department—friendly contacts that went way back. Even if Luke were innocent of trying to trap me, did his father, for some darker reason, send him here to pry information from me? Was Luke perhaps on his way from Seattle—not Orcas—when he washed up at the Ransford dock?

  He seemed to read my mind. “Tell me you aren’t suspecting my father of being corrupt.”

  “Not corrupt, precisely. I’m just wondering who else he might be talking to. The judicial world is a small one.”

  “Sarah, look, forget my father. You can either trust me or not. If you do, I might be able to help you. Just tell me if you’ve got any evidence to back up those rape charges.”

  I thought a moment, and realized that I really wasn’t certain whether I could fully trust Luke. I also realized that my lack of trust wasn’t based on anything I knew about him, but rather on what had been done to me by other people.

  Finally I said, “I do have something.”

  His eyes widened briefly. “You do? That’s great. What is it?”

  “I…I’m not prepared to say.”

  He frowned. “Not even to me?”

  “No. I’m sorry, but not even to you.”

  He made an exasperated sound. “Have you turned this evidence over to the cops?”

  “You’re joking. Who the hell am I supposed to trust in the department? It used to be evidence went into an evidence room and was kept safe there. Now it gets stolen. Or tainted.”

  “Sarah, for God’s sake, you’re letting paranoia take over. For every bad cop in the Seattle PD, I’m sure there are a hundred good ones.”

  “Maybe so. But they don’t wear signs, so who can tell?”

  “Trust me, then. Tell me where this evidence is, and I’ll keep it safe for you.”

  “I…no. I can’t,” I said.

  “You aren’t willing to trust me with it?”

  “No.”

  At his pained look, I added, “Not you, specifically. I just can’t trust anyone. Not anymore.”

  “So that’s what it is,” he said.

  “What?”

  “That hardness I’ve been seeing in you. You’ve built up some mighty strong bastions, Sarah.”

  “Well, if I have, it’s with good reason. And I don’t see that as hardness—just an intelligent use of my brain power.”

  “How intelligent is it,” he said, “withholding evidence? You could be disbarred for that. You could go to prison.”

  “I’ll get around it somehow. Or not. Right now, the only thing that matters is protecting myself.”

  “You’ve got a trial coming up, haven’t you? You’ve got an attorney? If you’ve got evidence that could incriminate someone else, your attorney can get you off.”

  “Maybe. Or we could both end up dead.”

  “Dead? Have you been threatened?”

  “Not directly. But it didn’t take much to figure out that if they killed to shut their victim up, I was next on the list. You don’t think they were really going to stop at just having me arrested, do you? Blackening my name? Hell, no. Their next step would have been to drown me in the Sound and make it look like a suicide. People would believe that, after all. They’d think I couldn’t take the scandal.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Sarah. You’re not dead, you’re very much alive. If they wanted to kill you, why haven’t they done it by now?”

  I just looked at him.

  “Sarah?”

  “The reason they haven’t killed me is because I told them what I’ve got on them. And it’s enough to put them away for good.”

  His eyes widened. “You told them? The Seattle Five? And they haven’t come after it? They haven’t killed you already, to stop you from using it?”

  “Luke, don’t be naive! I told them it was in a safe place where they’d never find it, and if anything happened to me it would go to someone capable of putting them behind bars.”

  “Who?” Luke said softly, leaning forward. “Who has the evidence, Sarah?”

  I laughed, but shortly. “What do I look like, an idiot? I tell you, you slip and tell your father, he tells the wrong person—deliberately or not—and it’s all over for me.”

  I was becoming more and more angry, and I thought for a moment Luke would continue pressing and we’d end up in a real argument. It wouldn’t be our first—though as teenagers, we’d argued more as an exercise, not about anything like this.

  But he eased back. Smiling, he said, “Look, this is not something we should be at odds over. Not after all the years we’ve been friends. What do you say we call a truce? Okay? Just promise me you’ll come to me if you need help?”

  I felt a small aftershock run along the ground. It reminded me how close I’d come to never seeing Luke—or anyone—again.

  “Truce,” I said, softening. “And yes, I’ll think about it. Luke, I don’t mean to sound as if I don’t trust you. I’ve just learned to be wary these days. Can you understand that?”

  “I guess I can. Though, with me—” He broke off as he saw me stiffen. “Never mind. God knows, we’ve got enough to handle here. I can’t even imagine what we’ll find when we get off this island and back to Seattle.”

  We both settled back, while I, for my part, wondered what my mother was thinking and feeling, having heard the news of the quake. Was she worried about me at all? I had told her I was coming to Esme, and that the house would be vacant for a month. Since she’d turned it over to me to live in, I had thought it best to make her aware that I’d be away for that long.

  Luke was silent, too. Was he wondering how his father was? I had somehow assumed he and his father had talked since the quake, because he didn’t seem worried.

  “What about the judge?” I asked. “Have you talked to him? Is he all right?”

  “I think so. He managed to get word to me through a friend with a ham radio, a few hours after the quake. We couldn’t talk long. All the ham radios available were needed for the rescue efforts. But he said he was all right. Seattle, though, is a mess.”

  “We heard that. It’s good that you know your father’s all right, though.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there, uh, anyone else you’re worried about?”

  He grinned. “You mean a wife?”

  “Or whatever.”

  “Not at the moment. I was married
, but that was over long ago.”

  “What happened?”

  “We just weren’t compatible, I guess. I was still a kid, just out of college. We got married in London, and she had a career there. I wanted to come back to the States and she didn’t. After a while we parted—amicably, or as amicably as that can get.”

  “Are you still in touch?”

  “Not for years.”

  “What are you doing now? Where are you living?”

  Luke smiled. “You’ll never believe it.”

  “Sure I would. Let’s see…you mentioned a friend in New York. You’re living there? You’re an actor on Broadway? Or a star of stage and screen?”

  He laughed. “Have you seen me on stage or screen?”

  “No, but all those little plays you put on as a kid…what else would you be?”

  “Actually, I’m a detective, of sorts.”

  “A detective?”

  He laughed again. “I sort of like to think of myself that way. I work for a consulting company called KMK. They send me out to consult with other companies around the world. This last several months I’ve been on an island in the Bahamas. My job was to find the safest place to put docks for new ferries connecting the surrounding islands, and then tell my clients how they could put them there at a reasonable cost, but without impacting the environment in a negative way. Three months from now I could be working in Ottawa. Or Paris. I never really know.”

  “Well, that fits,” I said.

  “In what way?”

  “That you travel a lot. After that year that we were, uh, together, I heard you were wandering about Europe. Going to college there. Dana says Sagittarius men can’t sit still. They love to travel.”

  “Oh?” He grinned. “And you were talking to Dana about me?”

  “No.” I looked away. “Just talking about signs in general. That made me think of you.”

  “Well, did Dana also tell you that Sagittarius men are very loyal?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, she said they were off loping after a new woman every other week. They need a fresh face, is what she said. Just like they need a fresh view. They aren’t very dependable as lovers, either. They might even disappear for years at a time, she said, then turn up as if nothing had changed at all.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. That’s pretty much what I said.”

  “Well, maybe I’m on the cusp or something.”

  “Ha.”

  “Sarah…I really am sorry we’ve been out of touch for so long. It’s wonderful, seeing you again like this.”

  “Funny, you haven’t really been acting that way.”

  “Well, I didn’t know what you expected. I thought I should keep my distance for a while.”

  “But not from Grace, right?”

  “Grace?” He looked perplexed. “What about Grace? I don’t get along with her at all.”

  “Oh, please. Since when hasn’t that been an indication of some sort of sexual tension?”

  “Sexual?” He laughed. “Well, I must admit I do find Grace rather…different.”

  “Different?”

  “Sarah…who’s being naive now? Don’t you think maybe Grace likes women, rather than men?”

  At this, I laughed. “You think she’s a lesbian? Why—because she doesn’t let anybody give her any grief? Or maybe it’s because she’s tough and knows how to take care of herself.”

  “Not that, no. You should know me better than that, Sarah. I just thought…well, she doesn’t seem turned on by men.”

  I let out a hoot. “You mean by you, don’t you? Grace hasn’t given you a tumble, so you just naturally assume she’s a lesbian, because what woman would not be turned on by you?” I ran a hand through my hair, laughing. “Oh, God, it’s been so long since I’ve been around a man, I must have forgotten how the male ego works.”

  He had enough goodwill to laugh at that. “Admittedly, I have always thought of myself as being able to charm birds—and women—out of trees.”

  “That’s you, all right, Luke. A real charmer.” I sobered. “Until, that is, you lost interest and went loping off, as Dana says, after the next fresh face.”

  He frowned. “You’re deliberately twisting things. At eighteen, we just naturally went our separate ways. Why are you making it sound as if I walked out on you?”

  I stood and brushed leaves and twigs from my behind. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe so I can be sure to see you in a clear light now, and not through some romanticized haze from twenty-two years ago.”

  He stood, too, holding his arms open. “Here I am, Sarah. It’s me. Just me, no matter what light you choose. You’ll still get the same thing.”

  “We’ll see,” I said, crawling behind my protective wall again.

  The soft singing of distant birds suddenly became a loud cry, a cawing. Shading my eyes, I scanned the sky. “Something’s wrong with them. What do you think it is?”

  “Either they’ve spotted an intruder bird, or are warning each other that there’s a hungry animal out there.”

  As we watched, turkey vultures began to wheel and circle. I felt a chill. “You’re probably right. Maybe they found a dead animal.”

  In the next moment, however, I heard my name being called. Kim’s and Dana’s panicky cries carried over the air.

  Luke and I turned in the direction they seemed to come from, and ran through the brush. I could hear the cries getting closer, and as I passed old tree stumps I remembered them as landmarks from years before. We were running toward Adams Ravine, a deep gorge created in the island by an ancient quake. As children, Luke and I had pretended there was a bridge over the ravine, and called it the Bridge of San Luis Rey. We imagined tiptoeing across it and looking down the two hundred feet to the bottom, the rope bridge swaying and threatening to topple us into the yawning chasm.

  This was nothing like those early imaginary exploits, however. Dana, Kim and Grace were standing on the edge of Adams Ravine, looking down. The expression on Dana’s face was one of horror.

  Running to stand beside them, I looked to where Dana pointed, her hand shaking. Halfway down the ravine, on a shelf perhaps four feet wide, lay a body. The jean shorts and pink shirt were all too familiar.

  “Jane,” I breathed. “Oh, God, no.”

  She had fallen atop a long, thin, broken tree trunk, perhaps five feet high. Its ragged top had pierced her completely through, and blood lay in pools around her. The vultures were circling, impatiently biding their time until the human intruders left. Their hungry screeching was what Luke and I had heard.

  It seemed clear, even from this far away, that Jane was dead. “I’ll go down,” Luke said. “If she’s still breathing…”

  He let the words hang, and we all knew that even if Jane were breathing there would be little we could do. With so much blood loss, she would need transfusions. Surgery. Neither of those was available to us.

  He began to lower himself down, hand over hand on the outcroppings of bushes and roots. Here and there he would dig the toes of his boots into the dirt, but it was still wet from the rain, and slick. That, and the aftershocks, made it slow going. He would get to a certain level, then have to stop and hang on. Once, I thought for sure the trembling ground would shake him loose and tumble him into the ravine.

  I had wanted to go down to Jane, and Grace had offered, too. Luke had insisted it would be safer if he went alone. I could see, now, that this was true. Most of the surrounding ravine was bare of trees and shrubs. There was one natural path of roots, however, that bulged out from the sides of the cliff. This led from where we stood to where Jane lay, in a more or less direct line. If we were to follow Luke and fall, we would take him down with us. And vice versa, if Luke were to follow one of us.

  I turned to Dana, who was clinging to my arm and crying. “What happened?” I said, taking her by the shoulders. She was shaking so much, I tightened my grip automatically, as if to keep her from flying apart. “Dana! Tell me what happened!”

  Te
ars filled her eyes. “I…I lost her. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how she got here.”

  “You lost her?”

  “I mean, I don’t know what happened! She went into one of those cabins, the one we thought Gabe Rossi might own. She said she thought we should check it out again. God, I don’t know why she did that! Why did she have to do that?”

  Dana’s eyes fixed on me, wet and haunted. “After she went into that cabin, I had a sudden, terrible feeling she was going to burn it down, like she did Luke’s house. But that didn’t occur to me at first. I just thought she was curious.”

  I shook my head, hardly able to believe what I was hearing. “You let her go up to this cabin alone, after what happened at Ransford? Dana, you were not supposed to let her out of your sight!”

  “I told you, I’m sorry! You just don’t know—” She gulped, and caught her breath, speaking more quietly. “Sarah, I stayed down by the shore because I’d tripped and twisted my ankle, and the path up to that cabin was so steep, I didn’t think I should try it. But when Jane didn’t come back, I finally went up there to get her.” Dana shook her head, her expression dazed and disbelieving. “She just wasn’t anywhere around. It was like she disappeared into thin air.”

  I looked down at Dana’s ankle, at the same time noting something, peripherally, about the ground on the edge of the ravine. Grace interrupted, however, distracting me from my train of thought.

  “Where did you look?” she demanded of Dana. Then, to me, she said, “Kim and I ran into Dana at Luke’s house.”

  “At Luke’s house?”

  “I had a feeling,” Dana explained quietly, in an obvious attempt to calm her voice, “that Jane went back there to see if the fire had attracted a rescue team. It was the only thing that made sense—except, why didn’t she just come back down from the cabin and go with me?”

  She began to cry again. “I am such an idiot. I keep thinking I know things, and the truth is, I don’t know a goddamned thing anymore! If I did, maybe I could have found her in time to save her.”

  Kim, who had been staring down into the gorge, turned to me. “I don’t know what her reasons were for disappearing on Dana, but obviously Jane wasn’t at Luke’s house. We started to look in the woods, and we found a path from the house, mostly overgrown. It brought us here.”