Familiar Lies (18 page)

“Me, too.”

They looked at each other for a few seconds before Liz started the car and took them back to the hotel.

* * *

They arrived back in the room just after three thirty a.m. The air had cooled considerably and felt almost pleasant, despite the humidity. Max yawned in the parking lot, feeling the strong tug of fatigue pulling on his eyelids. He needed sleep and he was sure Liz did too.

They passed the desk clerk who smiled at them warmly as they passed. They rode the elevator up to the third floor and got out into an air conditioned hallway that was probably ten degrees cooler than it needed to be.

At the end of the hall, Liz slid the keycard into the lock and opened the door. Once inside, Max found a chair and lodged in under the door knob. It wasn’t much of a barricade, but better than nothing.

He sat on the bed as Liz headed into the bathroom. He laid on his back and looked up at the ceiling, the siren call of sleep loud and undeniable. If he didn’t have to pee so badly he’d likely have just fallen right to sleep where he lay.

A few minutes later Liz exited the bathroom. “All yours.”

Max took his turn in the bathroom, emerging to find Liz already asleep in the bed. He couldn’t have been in there for more than a few minutes. He smiled as she snored lightly, the lamp beside the bed still lit.

He reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone when his fingertips brushed along a slip of paper also in the pocket. He retrieved it and inspected it closely. It was a receipt from Peekies, torn in half. He flipped the paper over and found an address written on the back. He looked at the torn receipt for a very long time, wondering just how it might have gotten in his pocket.

Then it came to him.

Brandi.

She’d slipped it in his pocket when she’d slapped him in the parking lot. It would have been the only way she could have passed the note to him without drawing the wrong kind of attention.

Brandi was a clever girl. Max couldn’t help but smile.

He glanced at Liz lying in the bed. He considered waking her up to tell her but decided against it. She needed sleep.

Max decided that he was overdue for some rest as well. Tomorrow they’d visit the address. He climbed into the bed beside Liz and was asleep within a minute.

He had no dreams that night.

“You’re sure Brandi gave you the note?” Liz asked. Afternoon sunlight from the new day shone on her face, making her skin glow.

“I don’t know how else it could have gotten there. It wasn’t there when I put my pants on in the morning, I know that much.” Max thought about it. “I suppose one of Caldwell’s men could have planted it on me, but I doubt it. Either way, somebody wants us to go there.”

“Clearly. Maybe it’s a setup. Maybe Caldwell’s testing us to see if we can resist the urge to pursue this.”

“Maybe. Seems more likely to me that he’ll leave us alone as long as we don’t get in his way.”

“But we will get in his way, won’t we?”

Max nodded. “I doubt we can avoid that.”

“There’s no way we’re not going to that address, right?”

“What do you think?”

Liz smiled. “I hoped you’d say that.”

“We have to make a stop along the way.”

Liz looked puzzled. “Where?”

“I have to make sure nobody else gets hurt.”

* * *

They found themselves in Liz’s Honda an hour later, headed to the first of their two destinations of the day. They stopped at an ATM on the way, where Max retrieved five hundred dollars from his savings account. He counted the cash as Liz drove away, pocketing the bills as he typed his ex-wife’s new address into his phone.

A moment later the route had been mapped and the phone’s robot voice began spitting out directions. He’d never had a reason to go to Katie’s new house after the divorce, but she’d given him the address in case he needed it. At the time, he couldn’t imagine why he’d ever need to go there, but now he had that reason.

He texted Katie before they left the hotel to make sure she’d be home. She’d started a new job, Max found out, and would be home by four o’clock. It was Monday and Max had neither shown up for work nor called in. It seemed to matter very little either way. He doubted he was long for the place anyway, regardless of how things played out.

They arrived at the house at ten minutes to the hour. Liz parked along the subdivision street, in front of the house. She killed the engine. “Nice place.”

“She married a nice guy.”

“Would it be better if I waited in the car?”

“Only if you want to. You’re welcome to come with me.”

Liz nodded. “How much are you going to tell her?”

“As much as I know and maybe half of what I suspect.”

“Do you think she’ll listen?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

Max sighed. “I don’t know.”

Fifteen minutes later the door to the two car garage opened. The former Katie Williamson pulled into the garage and cut the engine. The garage door closed behind her.

“Ready?” Liz asked.

“No.”

“It’ll be fine. We’ll do it together.”

Max nodded. He got out of the car and closed the door. Liz joined him.

Max introduced Liz to Katie, calling her his
friend
. Katie gave him a disapproving look, as if Liz might actually be his girlfriend but Max was simply too afraid to commit to it. When he thought about it,
friend
seemed an odd term. He considered Liz a friend, but it seemed that friendships typically were built over years. The friendship between Max and Liz had been building over the course of only a few days.

They had, however, compressed a hell of a lot of experiences into a very short time period.

“You look good,” Max said, unsure of why he’d said it. It wasn’t that she didn’t look good—she looked great—but it smacked of forced conversation. He supposed that’s what it was, forced. Might as well embrace it.

“Thanks.” Katie didn’t comment on how good Max looked. Then he remembered the busted nose Gabe had given him. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but this is…odd meeting you like this.”

Max opened his mouth to reply but found no words to fill it. He tried to wrap his mind around all that had happened. Where should he even begin? How much did he leave out? If he left out the wrong pieces of information then maybe she wouldn’t agree to his plan. Or maybe she’d end up dead. Despite what had happened between them, Max had loved Katie once. He still did in a way. Maybe if she ever loved him in the same way she’d do what he planned to ask.

Max decided to start at the beginning. He found the words easily after that, like telling a story in a confession booth. He felt as if he’d been carrying a load of bricks on his shoulders and with each sentence another brick was removed. He hadn’t been much of a talker during their marriage; he didn’t see much sense in sharing too many feelings and burdening another person with this problems and baggage. Today, however, he’d simply uncorked the bottle and let it all flow out.

The only part he left out was Liz killing Detective Smith. That he would take to his grave.

When he finished, Katie sat for a few moments, the gears turning in her head. She looked at Liz. “Is all this true?”

“You don’t believe me?” Max asked.

Katie shook her head. “It’s not that, it’s just this all sounds so incredible. It’s a lot to lay on a person at once.”

Max nodded. “Fair enough.”

“You have to go to the cops.”

Max shook his head. “They’re dirty. The guy we found hanging in the cabin and this Smith guy who disappeared. We don’t know how many others we might find.”

“Then go to the F.B.I.”

“We don’t have enough proof,” Liz said. “If these men killed my daughter and your son then we need that proof; otherwise, we’ll be ignored.”

“And if we don’t get enough proof to lock these guys up they’ll come after us,” Max said. He looked her in the eye. “I’m afraid they’ll come after you and your new husband too.”

Katie’s eyes narrowed. “His name is Denny.”

Liz seemed to notice the tension thickening in the room and stepped in. “We’re not asking you to move away or to go underground for months. Just give us a week. Take the money, check into a hotel where they take cash and don’t ask questions.”

“This is crazy.”

“Just a week,” Max continued. “If we don’t have something solid by then we’ll go to the F.B.I. or whoever. Maybe the police in the next county. We won’t draw this out, I promise.”

Katie sighed. “This is reckless. You could get yourself killed, both of you.”

Max met Katie’s eyes. “I know that.”

Katie’s expression changed. It seemed as if she saw something in Max’s eyes, something that told her that he knew very well the situation he’d gotten himself into. That he knew very well the course of action he’d committed himself to take.

“If we get them, then we can make sure you’re safe,” Max continued. “Or if they get to me then you’re safe that way too. They don’t want you, they want me.”

Katie’s face changed again, this time to disbelief. “Max, be reasonable.”

“Take the money, talk to Danny and convince him.”

“Denny.”

“Denny, whatever. Talk to him.” Max paused. “If he really loves you, he’ll agree to the plan.”

Katie looked at him and for a moment, Max saw the woman he married. Then the moment passed and she was gone, replaced by someone new. “I’ll think about it.”

“Why won’t you go?” Max said. “Just do it.”

Liz placed a hand on Max’s shoulder. “Max—”

“Answer me. Why won’t you just do this for me?”

Anger flared in Katie’s eyes. “You don’t just get to waltz in here with your new girlfriend and start barking orders, Max. Those days are over.”

Max reeled, incredulous. “I never ordered you around.”

Katie glared. “No, Max, you didn’t. You didn’t do anything at all, that’s the problem.”

“What does that mean?”

“You were checked out. Gone. Working or whatever.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I thought maybe you were having an affair at first, you know? The way you’d be at the office late. Do you know how many dinners you missed?”

Max didn’t answer.

“You were absentee, Max.”

“I worked hard for our family.”

“You worked hard, but not for us.”

“You fucking take that back.”

“You didn’t do it for us. You did it for yourself.”

“You sure liked the house and the money.”

Katie closed her eyes and took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. “I’d have been happy living in a studio apartment, as long as I could have actually lived there
with
you. Josh and me, we just got in your way.”

Max felt his heart rate skyrocket. The anger washed over him and he felt himself shaking under the weight of it. “Why do you say such awful things? When did you turn into this person? Somebody who enjoys ramming a knife in my gut and twisting it?”

“Is that what you think? You think this is some kind of sour grapes on my part? That this is some kind of revenge talk?”

“What the hell else could it be then, Katie?”

“It’s the truth, Max! That’s what it is. It’s the reality of what our life became, the reality that you never could own. You never took responsibility for the end of our marriage.”

Max sat, thinking desperately, trying hard for some kind of barbed comeback that would really defeat her. But the words just wouldn’t come. He put his hands to his face and dropped his head toward the floor.

“Losing Josh almost killed me,” Katie said.

Max looked up at Katie. “You think it didn’t almost kill me too?”

“I know it did. But we lost him years before he died.”

“How could you say that?”

“Because I paid attention. I knew something was wrong. He was distant. He wouldn’t talk to me anymore. He became defensive, even aggressive.” Katie looked Max in the eye. “There came a point where I was afraid of our son. Do you know what that does to a mother? Do you know how hard that was for me? I blame myself every day.”

Max shook his head. “You knew? You saw this? Why didn’t you say something?”

“I did. I tried talking to you. You blew it off. You always had an excuse for him.”

Max thought back and remembered a few of those conversations. It had all seemed so simple then, so discountable. Hormones, puberty, the pressures of high school. Had he really listened when Katie came to him? Or did he simply blow her off as she suggested?

“I stuck around for the family,” Katie continued. “For the three of us. I didn’t want to abandon that. But when Josh died, there didn’t seem to be a reason to stay anymore. If you were checked out before we lost Josh, then you were all but a ghost after he died. I felt like we were two people who were sharing the same space but unable to see each other; like we were on two different planes of existence at the same time.”

It was all too much for Max to take in on top of everything else. He’d come as far as he could and had done all that he could do for now. He removed the five hundred dollars cash and placed it on the coffee table in the living room.

“Max, keep your money.”

Max shook his head. “Take it. Keep yourself safe.” He stood before she could argue and headed for the door. Liz, who’d been silent throughout the conversation, followed.

Katie followed them to the door as well, but she left the money on the table. That made Max feel a little better. She opened the door for them.

Liz stopped at the door and looked at Katie. “It was nice meeting you.”

Katie smiled in return.

Liz walked out of the house, followed by Max. As he stepped onto the front porch, he turned back to face his ex-wife. “Be safe,” was all he could get out.

Katie smiled at him. Tears welled in her eyes. “Take care of yourself, Max.”

She closed the door. Max followed Liz to her car and slid into the passenger seat. Liz got in, started the car and pulled away without a word.

Liz guided the Honda onto the highway, following the directions spoken by her phone. They had a two-hour drive ahead of them. As the car ramped up to cruising speed and the tires began their lulling drone, the sun had already begun its descent toward the horizon. By the GPS estimates, they’d arrive at the address a couple of hours before nightfall. Max didn’t know exactly what they’d find when they arrived at the mystery address, but he decided that he’d rather face whatever it was in the light of day.