The Perfect Liar (7 page)

That was the name of the victims' charity his attorney had warned him about.

Nervously swinging his keys around and around his finger, he let the answering machine pick up. It kicked in on the sixth ring. A few seconds later, a woman's voice reverberated his living room.

"Captain Trussell, this is Ava Bixby. I'm with The Last Stand, a victims' charity in Sacramento. I've been contacted by Sergeant Kalyna Harter. She told me an unsettling story about the time you spent together on June 6. Before I get too involved in this case, I'd like to hear your version of the encounter. If you can spare a minute, please call me."

She left her cell-phone number, as well as her office number.

Luke's hand hovered over the handset. Ms. Bixby sounded open-minded, as if she hadn't yet decided to go after him. But he couldn't pick up. The best defense lawyer in Sacramento had warned him against talking to her.

After he was sure she'd hung up, he called McCreedy.

"It's Luke Trussell," he said when his attorney came on the line.

"Hello, Captain Trussell. How are you today?" McCreedy responded.

It was easy to be pleasant when you weren't the one on the hot seat, Luke thought. "Anxious."

"How can I allay your fears?"

"I'm not sure you can. Ava Bixby, from The Last Stand, just called."

"You didn't give her any details, did you?"

"None. I didn't even answer."

"Good."

Luke kept twirling his keys. "Why is that good? She said she wants to hear my side, and I'd really like to tell her."

52

"It's a trap. She's hoping to catch you in a weak moment, get you to say something that can be used against you later. Trust me, Captain Trussell, she's called a victims' advocate for a reason."

But McCreedy was dispensing advice based on a false premise--that Luke might be lying. Most defendants lied, didn't they? They
couldn't
be honest, not if they expected to stay out of prison.

"This case is different," he argued. "I'm not like most of your other clients. I have nothing to hide, so I don't see how it can hurt to talk to Ava Bixby."

"Al my clients are innocent until proven guilty. And you could do a world of damage."

"But if I didn't rape Kalyna, how can anything I say hurt me?"

"Depending on her level of motivation, Ms. Bixby could misinterpret a comment or two, or even misrepresent what you said."

"But if I don't respond, she'l assume the worst. Anyone would."

"No, she'l assume you have good representation," he said. "Because you do."

At that point, Luke gave up trying to convince McCreedy. He was paying the man for a reason. He needed to trust his advice.

Fifteen minutes later, driving to the gym, he was telling himself he'd done the right thing. But it didn't make any difference. He couldn't stop thinking about Ava Bixby and her message, so he turned around and went home. He wanted to learn more about The Last Stand, and he was too impatient to put it off a couple of hours.

Tossing his keys on the counter as soon as he walked through the door, he went directly to his computer.

Google provided a whole list of links on the charity, mostly newspaper articles citing how various individuals from the organization had found missing persons, helped convict sex offenders and murderers, protected abused spouses.

The praise lavished on them made Luke nervous. McCreedy had said they were "dogged" that seemed to be true. But would they go after an innocent man with the same dogged determination they'd go after a guilty man? Would they bother to notice the difference?

One link that came up went to the official Last Stand Web site--

53

TheLastStandVictimsCharity.com. There, he saw their mission statement posted on the home page:
To help victims of violent crime find justice,
safety and peace of mind.

It sounded noble. Several other paragraphs detailed the need for such an organization and made a plea for financial support. There was even a way to donate directly through the site via a secure server.

Luke would probably have given them a couple hundred bucks had he stumbled upon the site at another time, but right now he was afraid his money would end up being used against him.

Surfing through a few of the other pages, he pulled up information on the staff. According to what was posted, only three people, all of them women, worked full-time in the Sacramento office. Unfortunately, the Web site didn't include pictures of these "directors," as they were called, but he found a short bio on each one. Ava had been born and raised in Northern California. She'd graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University with a B.A. in psychology, and she'd gotten involved with The Last Stand through volunteering.

Luke stared at the short paragraph he'd just read. She seemed smart.

But could he trust her? Would she have an ear for the truth or even care about it? Or had she been so convinced by Kalyna that she'd care only about chalking up another conviction?

He needed
someone
to listen, to stop this travesty of justice before it went any further. He wanted to resume his life, get back to flying.

He called the office number Ava had left on his machine.

A pleasant voice answered. "The Last Stand."

"Is Ava Bixby in?"

"She's on another line. Can I take a message and have her call you back?"

Don't talk to her. She's on their side,
McCreedy had warned. Why wasn't he listening?

"No, no message," he said, and hung up.

54

"Y
ou got a minute?"

Ava glanced up as Jonathan Stivers poked his head into her office on Thursday afternoon. "Of course," she said. "Get in here. I've been trying to reach you."

"Sorry, my phone's dead and I lost my charger."

Just shy of six feet tall with a wiry build, brown hair and brown eyes, Jonathan was definitely handsome. Although Ava had never been attracted to him in a romantic sense, the interns and volunteers gushed over him all the time--to no avail. He was engaged to Zoe Duncan, a woman he'd met while he was working to locate her kidnapped daughter.

"Then I'm glad you stopped by." She shoved some phone records she'd been studying for another case off to one side. "I've been dying to talk to you."

He ambled in and took a chair across from her desk. "Fortunately, you're stil here. I didn't want to drive all over the place looking for your houseboat."

She rolled her eyes. "Don't start, okay? It's not
that
hard to find."

"It's at least a forty-minute drive."

"But I dock it in the same place every night. Well, every night so far this month," she corrected.

"When are you going to buy a real house?" he asked. "It can't be convenient driving out to the delta every night."

"Skye's house is farther." She shrugged. "Anyway, a houseboat has its advantages."

"And they are..."

"I'm not sure I want to live in Sacramento forever. If I had a regular house, I'd have to sell it in order to leave."

"So you're saying you can pick up and go whenever you want."

She opened her top drawer to get a package of gum, then slammed it shut. "Exactly."

55

He arched an eyebrow at her. "Like right now."

"Yup. I could if I wanted to." She unwrapped a piece of gum and tossed the paper at the wastebasket, but missed.

"You can't simply abandon the houseboat."

"I'd call my father and tell him to take care of it himself. After all, it's his, isn't it?" She popped the gum in her mouth.

"You couldn't do that. Because then he'd have to sell it, dispelling the il usion you've helped him create that he hasn't gotten too henpecked to steal away on a fishing trip now and then." Jonathan jerked his head toward her desk. "I'l have a piece of that."

She threw a stick of gum
at
him instead of
to
him, but he managed to catch it. "His il usions are not my problem."

"Now you're dissembling."

"Dissembling?
Where'd you come up with that word?"

He wadded up his wrapper and tossed it in the direction of the wastebasket--it went right in. "I have a good vocabulary. I just try not to use it. I don't like to intimidate those around me."

She had to laugh. "Well, I'm not
dissembling
or
prevaricating
or
fabricating."

"You've been holding back, too," he said with a whistle. "I'm impressed."

"I'm glad. Does that mean we can stop arguing?" There was no point in trying to convince him she was right, because she wasn't. She couldn't hand the houseboat back to her father, not without plenty of notice. Now that her mother was in prison, Chuck Bixby was all she had. Distant though he'd always been, at least in an emotional sense, she was taking it upon herself to bridge the gap between them, to build what she could out of the tattered remnants of her family. That meant she couldn't rock the boat--in her case, the houseboat.

"We're not arguing. We're
ratiocinating,
" he said.

"Ra...what?" She got up to put her gum wrapper in the garbage.

"Ratiocinating." He offered her a smug smile. "It means to reason methodically and logically."

She raised one hand as she returned to her seat. "Fine, smart-ass.

I've got one for you. Quit being a polemical asshole, okay?
Now,
can we 56

get on with business?"

He scratched his head. "The asshole part I definitely understand...."

"Forget it!" She opened her file on Kalyna Harter. "What have you learned about Captain Trussell?"

Jonathan made a clicking sound with his tongue. "I hate to tell you this, babe, but you've got the wrong guy."

"What?"

"The Luke Trussell you had me run could be a Boy Scout. I don't know what more there is to say."

"His record is
that
clean?"

"Two speeding tickets in three years. That's it."

"No previous arrests? No DUIs?"

"No assault and battery. No domestic abuse. No disturbin' the peace.

No freakin' skateboarding in the park."

"Have you talked to his friends, enemies, previous lovers?"

"I couldn't find any enemies. I got hold of two women he's dated in the past. One said he took her out a few times, but never tried to sleep with her. When I asked why, she told me he didn't want to make a commitment.

He was only twenty-four at the time, wasn't ready."

"And the other one?"

"Paris Larsen. Captain Trussell dated her for more than a year. And she admitted right up-front that he was the best lover she could imagine.

Kind and gentle. Those were her words. He broke off the relationship eighteen months ago, but if I had my bet, she's stil in love with him and would take him back in a heartbeat. And this woman is a clothes designer who's now living in San Francisco and making a name for herself.

Completely credible, very sharp."

"He's a kind and gentle lover?" Ava echoed. "My client claims he used his fists on her, and then he raped her. Does that sound kind and gentle to you?"

"You're forgetting the alleged part."

"Why would my client lie?"

"I don't know, but Trussell has a flawless service record. And get this--he was valedictorian at his high school."

Ava wasn't sure what to make of this information. So far, she'd heard 57

her client portrayed as a tramp, and the accused as a model citizen. "So, what's up? Did he drink too much and let his libido get out of control?"

"This wasn't about libido, Ava. Whoever attacked Kalyna Harter was angry."

The phone rang, but it was after-hours so Ava let it go to voice mail.

"Maybe she really pissed him off. She could've hit him first or belittled him in some way." She tilted her head quizzically. "Maybe she made fun of his package."

"From what his ex-girlfriend had to say, I'm guessing his package is nothing to be embarrassed about. I doubt it's as impressive as mine, but you know...not bad."

"You're too much." She grinned in spite of the serious nature of their conversation. "He was drunk the night he attacked Kalyna. Alcohol alters behavior."

"Bar-hopping isn't a pattern of conduct. None of the places I visited recognized his picture."

She could've argued that anyone could get drunk and act up, even if it wasn't a pattern. But something Jonathan had said caught her attention.

"You have his picture?"

He pulled a photograph from his back pocket. "Courtesy of Paris Larsen," he said, and slid it across her desk.

She studied the clean-cut man staring back at her. He had nice, even features and a great smile, but it was difficult to make out the finer details of his face because he was outdoors at a baseball game, wearing a ball cap, a pair of sunglasses and a windbreaker. "What about steroids? Is he into weight lifting?"

"He lifts, but he hasn't been to a civilian doctor or pharmacy in six years. He gets regular checkups at the military hospital, and that's it."

"I would imagine, because of his job, there's some mandatory drug testing going on."

"There is. He's tested randomly. Al his tox screens have come back clean."

Ava refused to give up so easily. Kalyna's past exploits meant she'd have a very small chance of obtaining justice.
If Trussell was actually
guilty,
she thought, but she didn't want to consider the possibility that she'd 58

been played. She hadn't believed Bella, either, and Bella had been telling the truth. She'd left Bella friendless and depressed enough to resort to the most desperate of measures..."There are other ways to get steroids."

"Trussell lifts to stay in shape, like he plays basketball," Jonathan said. "He's not a bodybuilder."

She drummed her fingers on the desk. "Why would such a smart, successful, clean-living guy suddenly flip out and rape a woman--especially so violently?"

"That's my point," Jonathan said. "I don't think he did."

But he
could
have. And if she hoped to help Kalyna--hoped to avoid another tragedy like Bella's--she needed to know for sure.