Tell No Lies (21 page)

“Okay,” she said. “Um. What do you guys want to ask me?”

The question was out of Daniel’s mouth before he considered it. “Have you had any contact with your ex-husband lately?”

Lil recoiled, wounded. “No. Why would I? He’s in prison.”

So she didn’t know that he’d been released. Or she was lying. What was he hoping to accomplish here? The debate raged in his head—Dooley on one side, Kendra on the other. Inside man or client advocate? Either way he’d have to be smarter and subtler. His blundering inquiries seemed only to put the group members on edge, which in turn made them act more suspiciously.

Daniel noticed the others considering him—his opening question to Lil had been uncharacteristic—so he refocused quickly into a more familiar drill. “Lil, I want you to pick who you like
least
in the group and tell us why.”

“Can I pass?”

“Why do you want to pass?” Daniel asked.

“I don’t want to say anything that might … hurt anyone’s…”

“Bullshit,” Big Mac said. “You’re too scared to say. Don’t put that shit on us.
We
can take it.”

Lil played with her uncombed hair some more, pulling it down over her eyes. “I don’t really have anyone I don’t like. I, um, think people have a lot of complexities and everyone has good qualities and—”

Daniel pulled his keys from his pocket and tossed them at her. Hard.

Startled, she reared back and caught them. Jarred out of her rote reaction. An early supervisor had taught Daniel that stubborn group members at times required more extreme techniques, and he was willing to reach back to that training to shake Lil up now.

“Answer,”
he said.

“I have two,” she said quickly. Shaken up, she handed him back his keys. “The first is … is Walter.”

Fang stiffened in his chair. “Me? I barely say
anything
to you.”

“Exactly. It’s like I don’t
exist
to you.”

“And the other?” Daniel prompted.

“This should be a big fucking surprise,” X said.

“Well, yes, Xochitl,” Lil said. “Obviously it’s you.”

“Why ‘obviously’?” Martin asked.

“She’s just so nasty.”

“And here I thought I was all puppies farting rainbows,” X said.

“Why do you think she’s nasty?” Daniel asked, trying to keep Lil in the lane.

“Well,” Lil said, “because she’s unhappy, clearly.”

“
Is
she unhappy?”

“
Yes.
She just seems so … lonely inside all that anger. And I think of her with Thanksgiving coming up and then Christmas…” Something flickered across her face, and she stopped abruptly.

Daniel felt a narrowing of the room, the picture beneath Lil’s words pulling into focus. It was what he thought of as the magical moment in a session, that split second when the defenses shift and the chinks in the armor align.

He spoke softly. “The holidays can be lonely, huh?”

And with that, Lil began to cry. Fist pressed to her wobbling lips, tears fording the bumps of her knuckles. Even X was too shocked to speak.

Lil recovered to give a fake laugh. “Okay. So maybe it’s not about Xochitl. Maybe I even secretly wish…” She looked away. “That I was strong like her.”

At this, X’s mouth moved—a silent intake of air.

“But I’m not,” Lil added quickly. Another dismissive titter. “I guess … I guess maybe I want to not be so lonely.” A flip of her hand dismissed the notion. “But, I mean, with society’s attitudes toward women my age—”

“Weak,” A-Dre said.

“—and San Francisco, there are so few straight men here. And. I mean, you go out and you feel bad when people ignore you.”

“Will you say the same sentence but replace ‘you’ with ‘I’?” Daniel asked.

Lil cleared her throat. “
I
go out and…” A pause to compose herself. “
I
feel bad when people”—her voice dropped to a whisper as the sentiment settled further into her—“ignore me.” Her shoulders folded forward; she was on the verge of clamping shut and disappearing.

“So you just stopped going out,” Big Mac said. “How long ago?”

“Since … since my husband left.”

“For
five years
?” Martin said.

“Do you think you might want to try to go out socially again?” Daniel asked.

Lil shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“It’s a yes-or-no question.”

“Maybe.”

Always equivocating.

“What would happen if you answered directly?” Daniel asked. She started to respond, and he held up his hand. “Wait. Think about it. Don’t make me throw my keys at you again. What’s the
real
answer?”

“I don’t
know
the real answer.”

“What’s it buy you
not
to answer questions directly?”

She chewed her lip. “Everyone gets frustrated with me.”

“That’s a
good
thing?” Big Mac said.

“At least I get to be the center of attention,” she said, her voice suddenly loud. “This is the only place I have. I live alone. I have no friends at work. I have no
friends.
This … this is it for me.”

A rare silence fell over the circle. She wiped her nose, looked down at her hands, then finally continued. “I was never on my own before. I always had someone looking out for me. My dad. My husband.”

Daniel asked, “What are you afraid will happen if you go out alone? Socially?”

“I can’t stand it when people reject me.” She tilted her chin to her chest. Quick little breaths.

“Fuck you, Lil,” Daniel said. “You’re stupid and ugly, and I
don’t want you here.
”

She jerked away, her chair screeching on the uneven tile and tilting back on the rear legs. She stared at him with wide eyes.

Daniel said, “Tell me you don’t care what I say.”

After a pause she said, weakly, “I don’t care what you say.”

The front legs of her chair lowered again to the floor.

“Tell me I don’t know who you are.”

A little more conviction. “You don’t know who I am.”

“Tell me I’m rude and I shouldn’t speak to you that way.”

“You’re
rude
and shouldn’t speak to me that way.”

Daniel spread his hands. “Maybe you can stand more than you think.”

As Big Mac took center chair next, Daniel realized that in the last ten minutes his mind had drifted, finally, from the investigation. He’d forgotten that Lil had failed to produce his business card, which made her—like Martin—suspect. He’d dropped completely into her fears and vulnerabilities, tried to pull her out of the morass and into a new awareness. A connection like that was powerful, powerful enough even to distract him in the middle of a spate of murders. Big Mac’s voice faded as Daniel contemplated how quickly the room had reclaimed its veneer of relative safety.

That was when the fight broke out.

Chapter 32

At the fringe of Daniel’s awareness, he sensed the escalation.

Big Mac was waxing philosophical from the center seat. “—in the rain, skidded out on the Embarcadero and almost wound up in the Bay. I mean, three more feet and my rig woulda gone off the lip. But I guess it wasn’t my time. I guess it wasn’t in God’s plan.”

At that, Martin was on his feet. “God’s
plan
? What about the family who died yesterday in the wreck over in Mission Terrace? God decided to pick them instead of you? And the kids starving in Africa or wherever they starve nowadays? God chose them, too?
Huh?
But you, you with your big, important world-peace-making job driving a fucking trash truck, for
you
he decided to take his eye off the Middle East and tsunamis to stop your rig three feet shy so you can live to tote another goddamned trash can, you self-important, bullshit-spouting
fuck
?”

When Big Mac came off his chair, he threw a shadow across the room.

Lil yelped and scrambled away, and even X, Fang, and A-Dre shoved back a few feet.

Daniel barely managed to jump into the ring before Big Mac lunged for Martin. He got a hand on both chests as the two large bodies clashed. The muscle mass of the men was overwhelming, rock-solid torsos like shields, crushing in on him. He was shouting over their shouts, and then Martin’s elbow clipped his chin and spun him like a top into an abandoned chair, and then both men stopped as abruptly as they’d begun, staring at him, mortified. The chair clattered to a stop across the room.

Daniel took advantage of the shocked pause, popping back to his feet and pushing them apart toward opposite seats. “Back off.”

“Shit, Counselor,” Martin said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Now,”
Daniel said.

Both men took a step back but refused to sit, glowering over Daniel’s head at each other, simmering rage tangible in the air. In the whirl of his thoughts came images of that form clad in black, its featureless mask cocked, the predatory glare cutting through the shadows of Marisol Vargas’s house. He fought for focus. In his distraction he’d let the room get out of control. He owed it to at least five people not to let that happen again.

“Now sit down,” he said.

Martin obeyed, but Big Mac took a beat, clearly grappling with himself, the skin of his face tough and lined, like hide. Finally he lowered himself to his chair.

“
O
kay,”
X said. “
That
just happened.”

“God doesn’t choose anything. Only people do. And bad shit, it just
happens.
” Martin’s voice was choked with emotion, though his eyes remained dry. “You don’t know shit about it unless your lady is dying of cancer and you’re running outta money and you rob a fucking store because this person you love, she’s disintegrating—”

X cut in. “Everyone’s got a sob story.”

“Hold on,” Daniel said. Then, to Martin, “Before we get into that, you’re gonna have to take responsibility for how you spoke to Big Mac.”

Martin took off his Buddy Holly glasses, squeezed his eyes. Sweat glistened on his scalp, visible through his buzz cut. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry, Big Mac. I’m sorry.”

Big Mac said, “Not fucking good enough.”

“He has the right to make a mistake, Big Mac,” Fang said. “No one’s … ah, ah, ah. No one’s perfect. We all need to have the … ah, right to screw up.”

Even in the midst of the tension, Daniel felt a stab of satisfaction at Fang’s speaking up.

“He stood first, but you came at
him,
man,” A-Dre said to Big Mac. “You threw down first.”

“This is bullshit.” Big Mac stood again. “After he attacked me, I’m not gonna sit here and listen to—”

“This is your last chance,” Daniel said. “To sit down.”

Big Mac crossed his arms. Kept his feet.

“You’re gonna have to leave now,” Daniel said.

“No way. I am
not
taking the ding on my record after Martin—”

“Then we’ll wait until you do.”

They all sat quietly, eyes on the floor, waiting. Big Mac shifted a few times on his feet. Finally he stormed out, slamming the door behind him so hard that a stack of chairs in the corner slid over.

Martin broke the resultant silence. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

Daniel said, “That was a helluva reaction, Martin.”

“When people talk about God’s will, it makes me angry—”

“It doesn’t
make you
anything,” Daniel said. “You
get
angry.”

“Okay, okay. I
get
angry ’cuz I know there’s no one looking out for us. No big judge up there who says my lady shoulda died and someone else’s shoulda lived. Or that
I
should have to go through…” He palmed sweat off his forehead, wiped it on his jeans. “I got out of prison a few months after she died. Even then I couldn’t trust myself to get behind the wheel, ’cuz I’d start crying. Couldn’t see the road. Sobbing like a baby in the middle of anything…”

Daniel thought of Cristina hacking into her fist in that ethereal white bathroom, blood spots on the breast of her sundress.

“She was perfect,” Martin said.

“No one’s perfect.” Lil’s hands worked the hem of her shirt. “Like Fang said.”

The anger was back. “You didn’t know
her,
” Martin said. “She was so innocent.”

Inflating her, as always, to saintly proportions. All of Martin’s defenses—his very self-definition—had coalesced around the loss. He’d placed her memory on a pedestal of steel, making it nearly impossible to chip away at.

Daniel pursed his lips, worked out a route in. “Is your mourning keeping you from doing other things?”

Martin scowled. “Like what? Dating?”

“Living,” A-Dre said, his voice a rumble.

The answer, from unlikely quarters, caught Martin off guard. “
Living?
I don’t … I don’t know how to do that no more.”

“Don’t know how or don’t
want
to?” Daniel asked.

Martin looked away sharply. “If I let go of her, then she’s really gone. And she was the best thing in this shitty world.”

“You can find a way to connect with others.”

“I can’t.”

“So you just stay
frozen
?” Daniel asked.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Lil stiffen, the question landing hard for her, too. Martin didn’t respond.

“You’ve already made a lot of choices to change,” Daniel said. “To be here. To not return to crime. When did you decide to give up
that
life? How did that moment happen?”

Martin was quiet for so long that Daniel was on the verge of asking a follow-up to move him forward. But then he answered, his voice low. “When I was inside about nine months, I finally pulled garden duty. Sounds nice, right? Garden duty. But mostly we hauled sacks of dirt and shoveled rock in the field behind the prison. And through a chain-link fence, there was this little prison cemetery. Overgrown. Weeds. All the folks that died in there who no one cared about. No one even missed them. And I looked at all them little wooden crosses and faded stones and thought, it’s too late for them.” He took a deep breath. “But maybe not for me.”

The impact on the others was evident, and Daniel let them take their time with their respective thoughts. After a pause he said, “How about the rest of you? What was your moment for change?”