Читать книгу The Liar’s Lullaby - Meg Gardiner - Страница 17

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These are the times that try men’s souls.

—Thomas Paine

THE CURSOR BLINKED ON THE SCREEN. HIS FINGERTIPS TINGLED. HE typed the words that transformed him.

Call me Paine.

His thoughts pulsed. When he spoke aloud, people found him clumsy. An awkward white guy, soft around the middle—human mayonnaise. But when he sat before the glowing computer screen and reached into the minds beyond it, he became fluent and convincing. Power surged through his fingers.

The jackal in the Oval Office is playing games with us. Legion is plying us with lies. He thinks we can’t see his ass hanging out.

Beyond the rooftops, downtown San Francisco gleamed in the morning sun. The Transamerica pyramid was a lustrous white edifice, the waters of the bay deceptively smooth. The postcard view disguised the degenerate reality. Whores, addicts, gays. And everywhere, coming out of drainpipes and cracks in the sidewalk, illegals. The ROW—the Rest of the World—a seething mass infecting the nation with their leprosy and laziness.

The city was a magnificent arena. What exquisite irony that the end game should play out here.

Watch the video footage from last night’s concert. Not the film shot by the official camera crew—that footage has already been altered to depict the story the gubmint wants sheeple to believe. Watch videos shot by concertgoers. Raw footage of Tasia’s death. It reveals the shocking truth.

He wiped his palms on his jeans. He was logged on through an anonymizer, a tool that stripped out identifying information about his computer and made his activities on the Net untraceable. Supposedly.

The discussion boards at Tree of Liberty were heaving. Thousands of comments. Battle cries. Pledges to fight to the death. The passion was unbelievable. His people, the online rant-’n’-ravers, loved Paine. They needed him. They bought him. The stock he owned in ammunition manufacturers was going to shoot through the roof. And some commenters were more than mere armchair insurgents. Tom Paine had real volunteers out there.

But these were nerve-racking days. Tasia was gone, and time was desperately short. To save himself from a full-blown attack, he had to act now. Fear touched the back of his neck with a dry heat.

The truth, despite what the more excitable members of our community believe, is that the shooter did not execute Tasia from the stunt helicopter.

I know what some of you think—Look at the stuntmen’s names. Shirazi. Andreyev. And yes, Shirazi is a Muslim name. Andreyev is Russian. These men come from enemy stock, but the facts are indisputable: Neither shot Tasia. The angle of fire is wrong.

In the hall beyond the door, people passed by, laughing and chatting. Paine pulled his hands from the keyboard. His heart was racing.

He was a jack of many trades, but he was a master of persuasion—written, emotional, and political. He hated the word prankster. Intimidator suited him better. He was the rock in the gears, the sugar in the gas tank. He stopped things. Or kicked them off. Politicians talked; Paine turned propaganda into deeds.

He picked up a matchbook and flipped it between his fingers. He needed to stoke the fire.

Analyze the videos. They’re blurred and shaky, but look. Her murderer fired a single shot from a high-powered rifle from the stage rigging in centerfield.

The gubmint will use Tasia’s murder as an excuse to confiscate our firearms. Expect the second amendment to be suspended within the week. National Guard checkpoints will be erected after that. We’ll be stopped, arrested, and interned. Be ready, people.

Yeah, that was good. He was getting warmed up now. His blood heated his hands.

The police investigation into Tasia’s death is puppet theater. The SFPD will never produce the bullet that ended Tasia’s life. Doing so would prove, incontrovertibly, that she was killed by a round fired from a military-issue sniper rifle, not a Colt .45.

And now the authorities have thrown another curve ball. They can’t silence the outcry over Tasia’s assassination, so they’ve decided to smother us with psychobabble. They’ve hired a psychiatrist to analyze Tasia’s death.

This is not a joke.

Tasia’s murder had been bold, incredibly so. She was a fire, and she’d been put out. But much worse was coming, straight at him, unless he took action immediately. Government minions—Legion’s legions—would descend on him like demons. Robert McFarland could cry for the TV cameras, but his people certainly weren’t. They were thinking Finish the job. They would come for Tom Paine.

Authority always did. He had to strike first.

We’ll get “insights” into Tasia’s “tortured” mind. This psychiatrist will give us a sad, I’m-so-sorry face, and blame Tasia’s mother and American society for her “tragic suicide.” You know she will—she’s from San Francisco. She’s a gubmint lackey, a useful idiot.

This is how tyrants plant their boot on our faces. Not always with a midnight knock on the door, but through the comforting lies of a quack.

A chill curled down his arms. He would put out the call. Keyes, the ex-merc who now drove for Blue Eagle Security, would answer, and that atavistic white power groupie he worked with, Ivory.

Tasia warned us. She came to the concert armed with the jackal’s gun. She raised it high. She could not have shouted a louder message: True Americans will not go quietly.

To quote Thomas Paine: Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Who’s with me?

Yes, Keyes and Ivory would be dying to ride to the rescue. The question was how many people could they take with them when they rode off the cliff?

AFTER JO SAID good-bye to Vienna Hicks, she walked back to her truck along crowded streets. Businessmen’s ties writhed like snakes in the wind. Above skyscrapers, clouds fled across the blue sky. When she turned on her phone it beeped with multiple messages from Tang.

But the message she wanted, one from Gabe saying he was safe on dry land, wasn’t there. Her breath snagged. Her emotions caught on a bramble, fear glinting in a corner of her mind.

She shook loose from the feeling. He would call. She wouldn’t. She would wait, because that was the unspoken rule. Instead she called Tang, who sounded like she’d been chewing on sandpaper.

“Give me joy, Beckett. I need progress.”

“Tasia’s sister thinks it’s fully possible she committed suicide.”

“ ‘Fully possible’ doesn’t work. I need concrete results.”

“You sound like you’re sitting on a sharp rock.”

“You been watching the news? ‘Still no information on the bizarre death of Tasia McFarland, and with each passing hour speculation grows that the police are incompetent, in on the conspiracy,’ blah blah repeat until nauseated. The sharp rock’s sitting on me.”

Jo stopped at a corner for a red light. Taxis and delivery trucks jostled for space at two miles an hour, horns quacking.

“I need Tasia’s medical and psychiatric records. All of them, including files from the years when she was married to Robert McFarland,” she said.

“Army records, yeah. Getting paperwork from the military is going to be like pulling teeth from a chicken.”

“You expect them to drag their feet?” The light changed and Jo crossed the street, dodging oncoming pedestrians. “Who’s got their thumb on your neck, Amy?”

“You want the list alphabetically, or in order of political throw-weight? The White House wants this to go away. K. T. Lewicki called the mayor to express the administration’s support for our investigation. In other words, the president’s chief of staff wants us to turn off the gas and snuff this story out. Get me something we can use, or we’re going to get squashed.”

“Still nothing on the search for the bullet?” Jo said.

“The Tooth Fairy is more likely to put it under your pillow than I and the department are to find it.”

“The Warren Commission found a magic bullet on a hospital stretcher in Dallas after JFK was assassinated.”

“Beckett.” Tang’s next words were barked at her in sharply inflected Mandarin. “Don’t you dare inflict that conspiracy garbage on me.”

“Political paranoia is as American as apple pie and obesity. We dine on it as a nation.”

“The departmental powers want me to clear the case by the end of the week. Get me something solid, Jo. I need progress by tomorrow so I’ll at least have dog chow to feed to the brass.”

“On it.”

“Have you gone to Tasia’s house yet?”

“Next stop.”

“Step lively, chickie.”

NMP—YOU ARE not Noel Michael Petty, you are NMP, the big bad bastard, the sword of truth—gazed down the hillside. He was invisible in the thick brush, hovering like an angel.

A man was inside the house below. A man in a shiny blue blazer who had parked in the driveway and jogged to the door, sorting keys in his hand.

Hours of surveillance were about to pay off. Hours of silent hovering, of waiting for the chance to get inside the house without breaking in, because break-ins brought the police, or left forensic evidence, and—Don’t tell, precious love, promise me—NMP was no fool. And now, finally, the property manager had shown up.

To Tasia’s house. The battle was about to be joined.

Blue Blazer Man, quick and skinny, scurried inside the house and shut off a beeping alarm. He opened a window to let in fresh air. He came to the sliding glass patio door and opened it a crack, thank you very much. Then he disappeared.

NMP waited. Inside that house lay proof, and the truth, and NMP was going to get it, because the truth will set you free.

A minute later, the front door slammed. Blue Blazer Man got back in his car and sat there, making phone calls.

NMP slipped down the hillside and ran across the backyard. Noel Michael Petty might have lumbered, or tripped and fallen, but not NMP. He glided inside through the sliding glass door.

He stood there, dizzy.

It looked like Tasia. It smelled like Tasia. Slowly he turned his bulk to take in the panorama. In the living room was a grand piano. Sheet music lay on top of it. He balled his fists and pressed them to his mouth.

Don’t squeal. Don’t gasp. He saw the photos on the walls. Oh, the photos! So many famous people, all lined up to get their picture taken with Tasia.

He crept along the wall and examined each in detail. He recognized many of them from TV and magazines. Red carpet shots. Awards ceremonies. Tasia singing the national anthem at the Indianapolis 500, wind blowing her hair across her face like a shroud—a portentous shot. To finally see those famous photos firsthand felt like coming home.

See, Tasia: I know you. I’ve been this close to you, from the beginning.

This hallway, this house, validated everything. All the hours, the days, the year NMP had spent gaining familiarity with Tasia’s background. Learning about her early life, her school days, her early forays into entertainment; they all showed here. The weekends NMP had spent at the library, the online all-nighters tracing her life through articles and links, images and videos, music downloads, chat room discussion threads about her, snarky comments by know-nothings…he had followed her lifeblood, from her beating heart to her fingertips. That’s how well Petty knew her.

Petty.

Stop calling yourself by your last name. You’re NMP. Out on the streets, you’re three letters, no more. No ID, no driver’s license or wallet, no way to identify you. You’re NMP, big bad bastard of the Tenderloin.

NMP knocked a fist against the side of his head as a reminder to be careful.

Then he fought down a giddy giggle. He was inside Tasia’s house. It was like exploring the heretofore-undiscovered tomb of an ancient ruler. And, oh, goodness—in the living room were photos that weren’t to be found on the Net. Private snapshots, albums showing Tasia with friends and family. Photos from the Bad Dogs and Bullets tour.

NMP’s stomach soured. Who were those people? Entourage. Stage crew. Groupies, managers, hangers-on, bandmates, stuntmen. Why did they get backstage passes? NMP was the tour’s most fervent follower. Where was his backstage pass?

Not fair. Not motherloving fair.

He was seeing her soul, at last, and it was corrupt.

Disgusted, NMP crept into the kitchen—and saw signs of Searle. The empty box of KFC in the trash. Searle Lecroix was an extra-crispy man; it was in US Weekly magazine. Up the stairs, creeping on tiptoe, big bad dude moving like Papa Bear sneaking up on Goldilocks, finding himself outside her bedroom door, her fantasyland, her center…

Her clothes were draped across the bed, the nightstand, the chair, the floor—as if she had performed some debauched striptease. Guitar leaning against the chair. Boots by the bed.

Petty gasped, a hard involuntary moan of pain.

Outside, a car door slammed. Petty lurched to the window and peeked through the blinds. Somebody was here. Petty fled the bedroom.

The Liar’s Lullaby

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