The Second Lie (21 page)

He'd done a lot of reading in the past couple of days and now knew more about methamphetamine than he'd ever thought he'd know. Recipes, warnings, ingredients, types of equipment, dangers, laws, costs, availability, even the contents of a report from the Environmental Protection Agency to the president of the United States and the Speaker of the House.

"But they know you're not involved, right?"

"I'm not so sure about that."

"I didn't get the idea from Chuck that you were in any kind of trouble."

"But he was asking about me just the same."

"Yeah, but it was more about the fire than about you. He just wanted to know if I knew anything. What did Sam say?"

"She didn't come right out and say it, but I was left with the impression that she thinks I could be a cook." That word rankled.

"As in making meth? She doesn't think you have anything to do with this superlab she's talked about, does she?"

Kyle's silence, accompanied by a perfectly thrown dart, was his answer.

"That's fucking crazy!"

18

F
ucking crazy.
Kyle wouldn't have put it quite like that. But the sentiment fit. He stopped throwing long enough to shrug nonchalantly in his friend's direction. And then had to defend Sam. "There was some bust at the high school a couple of weeks ago. She's pretty freaked out about it."

"Oh, God." Hands to his head, Pierce took a seat in one of the lawn chairs set up along the wall opposite the dartboard. Zodiac settled down beside him, watching Kyle. "She's doing it," Pierce wailed. "Just like Pappy feared she would."

Frowning, Kyle threw a dart. And then another. And then, helping himself to the stash in the cabinet behind him, six more. Samantha Jones was an old friend. Nothing more.

"She's just so one-dimensional. Pappy said that's the way Dad got, too. Everything you are is about police work. The job is your top priority. Without the force, you cease to exist."

Kyle couldn't speak for Pierce and Sam's father, but the description sure fit Sam.

"Your dad sure seemed to love you kids."

"He did. I was only fourteen when he was killed, but I remember him laughing at the dinner table, playing Santa Claus, tucking us in at night. When he was at home."

Didn't sound one-dimensional to Kyle. He retrieved his darts and started in the twenty spot this time. Might as well have a goal. Aimless projectiles were wasteful and he couldn't afford waste.

Of any kind.

"Problem was that we came second to the job. Always. If the phone rang, or he heard something on the scanner, he'd be out of there. It was like we ceased to exist. Birthday parties, in the middle of the night when we were sick, Christmas Day--it didn't matter." Elbows on his knees, Pierce stared at the hay on the barn floor. Kyle aimed. And launched.

"Even without the phone ringing, he'd have a sudden epiphany at random times and have to go check something out," Pierce continued, as though talking to himself. Kyle let him ramble, glad to be talking of something other than Samantha. Out of nine darts, six hit the twenty mark, two in doubles, one in triples.

He retrieved. And aimed for three. Zodiac was sound asleep.

"Dad was married to the job. Even Mom's tears didn't matter. He always said he was doing it for us...."

Pierce finished his beer. Helped himself to another.

"Sam never said much about any of that," Kyle half muttered, grudgingly participating in an evening he hadn't planned. He'd heard about the good times. Countless trips to the police station, rides in the cruiser, pushing the button to turn on the siren, wearing his badge...

"She didn't know some of it," Pierce said. "The rest she ignored. Dad was her hero. He could do no wrong. She was only ten when he died."

He'd known that, too, of course. But somehow ten sounded so much younger when Pierce said it.

Coming from Sam, the memories left an impression of maturity, when, in fact, she was merely relaying childhood memories through an adult's perception. Funny how he'd never realized that before.

And how, almost imperceptibly, it made a tiny chink in the armor that surrounded her.

Gave a hint of vulnerability where she'd have you believe there was none.

But then, Kyle already knew better than that. Until recently, he'd been the one she ran to when life got too much for her. Like the night of the Holmes murder-suicide.

"Pappy was frantic when you and Sam broke things off."

Kyle's dart misfired. Hit the wall beside the board. Zodiac lifted her head.

What the hell.

"It was his worst nightmare coming true. Sam choosing police work over life and love. He'd been so certain she'd be different. That she'd be like him--a good cop and still committed first and foremost to family. Able to balance the two. To know what was most important."

She knew all right. For Sam, being a cop came first. And second and third, too. But their breakup wasn't all her fault. He was the one who'd given the first ultimatum.

"From the minute he heard the wedding was called off until the day he died, he blamed himself for Sam's choices. For ruining her life. He blamed himself for my dad's death, too. Said he should have seen the signs sooner. Should have done something about it. But Dad had always been so strong, solving the most difficult cases, and Pappy, like everyone else except maybe my mom, had let the fact that Dad was a great cop blind him to the fact that he was crossing a line when it came to protecting the county from rapists."

While Kyle hadn't really warmed up to Sam's grandfather, he'd respected him. And hated to think of anyone dying with a heart full of guilt.

Maybe because he knew what it felt like to live with a guilt-filled heart.

"Pappy always said there'd be one incident, one crime, one problem, that would get Sam. He told me to watch out for her. To catch her before she ended up like Dad. He made me promise. And I've watched her like a hawk. But I still didn't see it coming until it was too late."

Kyle tossed a couple of bull's-eyes and grabbed that beer.

"The fact that she'd really believe you had anything to do with this lab..." Pierce's voice trailed off and Kyle tried to think about the chips the other man had brought, to work up an appetite for them.

Anything to stop thinking about Sam. About the fact that he'd lost her trust.

He hadn't told her about Sherry all those years ago because he'd been afraid he'd lose her forever. The fact he'd slept with another woman during their one day apart would look as though their breakup had meant nothing to him.

Who'd have thought that, more than a decade later, the thing he'd feared back then was happening because he hadn't risked exactly that? Because he hadn't told her what had happened?

Pierce opened another beer. Kyle was going to have to let the man stay overnight or take him home.

"I always thought it would be the rape thing that would get her," Pierce admitted.

"What rape thing?" Kyle asked.

Sam hadn't been raped, had she? She'd have told him.

Like he'd told her about Sherry?

God in heaven...

"Dad's obsession. Didn't Sam tell you about it?"

"I know nothing about any rape." Sam was only ten when her father died. Just a little girl. Kyle felt the bile rise in his throat.

"Our mother was raped...."

Pierce's words brought a swell of heady relief. And then, as Kyle thought of Grace Jones, he felt compassion, pity...and finally...understanding. The woman had always been so fragile. So...frightened. Of everything.

And Peter Jones had been killed when he'd attacked a man who he'd thought was raping a child....

"That's how my mom and dad met," Pierce said, looking over at Kyle with a half-embarrassed expression as emotion momentarily choked him. "She was seventeen and he was one of the officers who answered the call. He'd promised her he'd catch the guy, but he never did."

Pierce stood and grabbed the handful of darts Kyle had abandoned. He threw hard and missed the board completely. His air shots didn't stop him from slamming the darts again and again. Sometimes landing within the vicinity of the board.

On another night, Kyle might have reminded his friend that those dart tips were expensive.

"The night Dad died," Pierce said after a good ten minutes of silence, "he'd been out on a domestic-abuse call and was heading back to his car when he heard a scream. Or at least that's the best anyone can figure. He must have taken off in the direction of the sound. He rounds a corner, sees a tall guy with someone in what appeared to be a headlock. He didn't identify himself as police. Didn't tell the man to stop. He just attacked. And the man did what any guy would do when jumped from behind. He fought back. Grabbed a mallet from the ground and swung. My father was dead before he even knew what hit him."

Pierce had thrown all nine darts. He didn't hit the board once.

"And the person the man was attacking?" Kyle sat in the chair his friend had vacated.

"A girl. She was the guy's daughter, which was why he was so fierce in his defense of my dad's attack. He'd been protecting his daughter against my father. Father and daughter had just been playing around. They were fixing some landscape lighting, which is why the mallet was on the ground, and she kept poking him, trying to tickle him. He retaliated with a headlock. The mother saw the whole thing from the front window. She'd been guiding her husband on how to position the floodlights so that they didn't shine into the living room."

"What happened to the guy?" He'd killed a cop.

"Nothing. He was on his own property, acting in self-defense. No charges were filed."

Kyle had heard bits and pieces of the story, like pretty much everyone else in Chandler. He could still remember his own family's shock when they'd heard the news that Peter Jones was dead.

But he'd never known the details. Obviously the sheriff's department had done what it could to protect one of its own. And his family.

"He died for nothing," Pierce said. "But beyond that, if he'd followed police procedure, he would still be alive. All he'd had to do was say that he was a cop when he approached. The most basic training."

"Maybe he thought the element of surprise would help."

"He didn't think." Pierce threw again and hit the bull's-eye. "He was obsessed with stopping every single rapist in the county with his bare hands. There wasn't a rape call that came in that he didn't answer, even if he wasn't first on the scene. He refused to let a case go cold. Some of them were older than I was and he still put them in the system for DNA checks on a regular basis. He was going to get every single rapist if it killed him."

And in the end, it had.

Kyle now understood Pierce's fear where his sister was concerned. Pierce had just been lying in wait for the day when his sister let her job consume her to the point that it obscured her judgment.

"Help me." Pierce pulled another chair over, opened two fresh beers and handed one to Kyle.

"Help you?"

"With Sam. We have to stop her. If anyone can get her to listen, it's you. The first day she met you we all knew without her even telling us. She'd changed. She'd talk about things you said as though you'd created the earth. For the first time in her life, there was someone whose opinion mattered to her as much as her own."

"That was a long time ago."

"But that much hasn't changed," Pierce said. "Samantha puts stock in what you say, Kyle. In what you think. She gives you way more credit than she ever gives me. Or Mom, for that matter. She loves us. She humors us. She'd die for us. But a lot of the time she doesn't think we have a thought worth percolating."

"Samantha doesn't trust me anymore."

"Deep down she does. She's just losing it over this drug problem. The fact that she thinks she can't trust you is proof that she's lost her ability to think rationally on this one."

"No, it isn't."

"What are you saying? You
are
involved with meth?"

"Hell, no! You know me better than that."

"What, then?"

Kyle had kept quiet about Sherry Mahon for so many years he'd almost convinced himself his stupid mistake hadn't really happened.

Except that there'd been consequences he was never going to forget. Maybe because he couldn't figure out a way to forgive himself.

"You remember back when Sam first announced she was going to the academy?"

"Yeah. You two broke up. She spent the weekend alternating between biting our heads off and crying. I'd never seen her cry like that before. Even when she was little."

"And then on Sunday she came to me, begging me to take her back, telling me we'd make it work somehow."

Pierce's look was assessing. "I remember."

"When Samantha walked out on me that Friday I felt like the sun had left my world forever," Kyle said. "I honestly couldn't imagine life without her."

"I figured as much."

"Well, Chuck and some of the other guys from school stopped by that Saturday, offering to take me out to forget about Sam. I went. And I drank. Way too much."

"A lot of guys would have done the same."

"I slept with someone else that night, Pierce."

"I know that." The man spoke as though Kyle had just told him he'd fed Grandpa that morning.

"You know."

"Of course. I'm Sam's older brother, Kyle. All those guys you were with--you didn't think that at least one of them would tell me what you did?"

"But you never said anything to me."

"I didn't figure I needed to."

"And you didn't tell Sam."

"I thought you had."

Kyle shook his head.

"Oh, shit." Dropping the darts back on the table, Pierce sat down. "I'm guessing she found out."

"That's right. And it gets worse."

Pierce's eyes looked weary as he glanced over at Kyle. "Can it?"

"The woman I slept with was just arrested for possession of a large quantity of methamphetamine."

"We're fucked."

Chandler, Ohio
Monday, September 20, 2010