The Liar’s Lullaby

7

ROBERT MCFARLAND OWNS THE COLT FORTY-FIVE?” JO’S HEART rate kicked up. “I’d better see the footage of the shooting.”

“You should. But don’t expect it to clarify anything,” Tang said.

Tang led her to a control room on an upper deck of the ballpark, overlooking the field. One wall was lined with television monitors. Cops and stadium officials filled the room. Below, under the bleached stadium lighting, forensics techs in white bodysuits searched the scene. The medical examiner was preparing to move Tasia’s body to the morgue. A gurney had been brought in and the yellow tarp pulled aside. Against grass churned to dust, Tasia’s clothing stood out, sharp swipes of magenta and black. She looked small, delicate, torn.

Tang asked a tech to run a video. Jo braced herself.

She had seen people die—as a physician, an investigator, and a wife. Death, that radical moment, was a desperately intimate thing to watch. Being of Coptic descent, with a basting of Japanese Buddhism and a thick shellac of Irish Catholic education, Jo believed that death didn’t equate to annihilation. Still, as the video started, she knew she was going to feel like she’d had her bell rung. She slipped her emotional chain mail into place.

The footage began with Searle Lecroix and the band playing the introduction to “Bull’s-eye.” Then the camera swiveled to reveal Tasia on the balcony of the hospitality suite.

Her outfit was a western twist on the Madonna-whore dichotomy: like a barrel-racing champion had taken control of the Mustang Ranch. Yee-haw, by Victoria’s Secret. Her waist harness was clipped on to the zip line. Knowing that the cable was going to collapse gave Jo, as a rock climber, a visceral feeling of dread.

Beneath the thundering music, Jo heard muffled shouting. Tasia was wearing a headset mike. Jo couldn’t make out her words, just a rising tone of indignation—or fear. Inside the suite, the stuntman rattled the doors.

Tasia turned and beckoned to the crowd. The gun flashed in the sunlight. As people surged onto the balcony and surrounded her, stage smoke erupted. She broke into song and aimed the pistol at the stage.

“Holy crap, she’s blowing on the barrel,” Jo said.

She watched, aghast. The music soared. The crowd swarmed around Tasia. CO2 obscured the view.

The roar of the gunshot was sharp and shocking.

Tasia emerged from the roiling smoke, hanging limp from the climbing harness, and slid down the zip line. The gunshot wound was plainly visible, a gory rose blooming on her neck and head.

The camera swerved. The scene turned to panic, falling helicopter debris, collapsing stage scaffolding, people screaming.

Then, amid the chaos, the camera zoomed in on the field. In front of the stage Tasia’s broken form lay on the grass. Beside her knelt Searle Lecroix. Her headset mike amplified his voice above the torrent of noise.

“For the love of God, somebody help her,” he cried.

Jo exhaled. “Stop the video.”

The air seemed to smell of smoke and salt water and the wretched, oily stink of wrecked aircraft. She stared at the screen.

It was impossible to see who had fired the gun.

“Somebody could have taken the pistol from her, or grabbed her hand and squeezed the trigger. Still, three seconds before the shot, Tasia had possession of the weapon,” she said.

She thought about Tasia acting out a high-risk, sexualized game with the Colt .45. Blowing on the barrel was showy, attention-grabbing behavior. Not playful, exactly—more like shtick. And suicides, in the moments before death, tended not to goof around.

“Can I talk to the stunt coordinator?” she said.

“Sure. Guy’s name is Rez Shirazi. Fifteen years experience on feature films.”

Tang led her to one of the corporate hospitality suites. As they walked, she summed up what Shirazi had already told the police.

“He tried to talk Tasia into putting down the weapon—the only thing she was supposed to take onstage was her bad, Botoxed self. She refused, but didn’t threaten him or the crowd or herself. Wasn’t angry. She was frazzled and terrified.”

Tang knocked on the door and entered the hospitality suite. It was filled with cops and stadium officials. A television was tuned to a news channel. Shirazi was pacing, phone to his ear. When Tang introduced Jo, he ended the call and shook her hand.

“I’ve been talking to detectives and lawyers for two hours,” he said. “Please, read my written statement, or else ask me something new.”

He had warm eyes in a rough face, and bounced on his toes as he talked, like a welterweight boxer. In film credits, Jo thought, he’d get stuck as “Thug” or “Crazed Bomber.”

“I’m assessing Tasia’s state of mind. Can you describe her mood tonight?” she said.

“She was wired.”

“Can you be specific? Wired meaning happy? Coked up?”

“Not coked up. At least, she said she was clean. And not happy. I’ve seen her ecstatic, zooming a million miles an hour, and she had a smile, man…but tonight she was agitated.” He circled his hands, seeking the right description. “Once she started talking, I couldn’t get her to stop. It was like her mind was a popcorn machine.”

He shook his head. “I heard she was bipolar. Tonight she seemed manic and depressed. She was energized but dismal. Saying things like, ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die. Like Princess Di.’ And making musical…jokes, kind of, but bummers. ‘Do, re, mi, fa, so long, suckers.’”

“She mentioned death, more than once?”

“She said tonight was all about life and death. She mentioned martyrdom. Car bombs, death squads, holy war.” He tilted his head. “Then she mentioned the Secret Service. And said, ‘He’s out there.’”

“You think she was referring to the president?” Jo said.

“Maybe. But I thought tonight’s main event was supposed to be a concert, so what do I know?”

“Anything else you noticed about her attitude tonight?”

“Yeah. Everything was exaggerated. She came in with the corset undone more than usual, the jeans slung lower, and her makeup was just extreme.” He looked weary. “She acted like she was the center of the universe. All performers do, but tonight she really believed it was all about her. She seemed—on a mission.”

“And this was a change from her mood recently?”

Shirazi rubbed his chest as though it ached. “Yeah. At the start of the national tour, couple months back, she was really up. Bubbly. Then she went flat. Moody, withdrawn—I mean, it was a noticeable swing. But over the past few weeks, everything’s been building up. Her energy and her…discontent.”

“Wired but miserable.”

“You got it.”

His phone rang. He took the call, said, “On my way,” and hung up. “My brother was in the helicopter that hit the bay. He just came out of surgery. I need to get to the hospital.”

“All right,” Tang said. “Anything else you can tell us before you go?”

“I got a terrible feeling she was going play with the gun like a toy. It was a recipe for disaster. And I wish I could tell you what happened. When I couldn’t break the plate-glass windows, I ran for the suite next door, to see if I could get to her on the balcony. But I heard the gunshot.” His voice ebbed. “I ran out of time.”

Tang gave him her card, and said she’d be in touch. He headed out the door.

“Initial assessment?” Tang said.

“Besides the fact that Shirazi feels guilty that she died?” Jo said. “Get a tox screen on Tasia. If she wasn’t on cocaine or amphetamines, she was having some kind of manic episode.”

“You don’t sound convinced about that.”

“Manic episodes are characterized by euphoria, and Tasia sounds far from euphoric. But other things fit,” she said. “With mania, people can’t stop talking. Their speech becomes pressured. And they’re showy. They wear bright-colored clothes and tons of inappropriate makeup. It looks…off.”

Tang nodded. “ ‘Playing in the crayon box’ is the phrase the makeup woman used.”

Jo thought again about the game Tasia had acted out with the Colt .45. “They can also be hypersexual. And they can have grandiose delusions.”

“Like they’re the target of an assassination plot?”

“When people with bipolar disorder become paranoid, they think massive forces are threatening them. Not merely the neighbors and the mother-in-law and their shrink.”

“Such as the president of the United States?”

“There’s the rub,” Jo said.

Behind them, conversation bubbled above the noise from the television. Jo mulled what she’d seen and heard.

“Three possibilities. One, the pistol was defective. It just went off,” she said.

“Unlikely. But we’ll tear it apart and find out.”

“Two, Tasia McFarland put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.”

“You believe that less than you did ten minutes ago.”

“Three—”

On the TV, a news anchor said, “Now we go to the White House, where President McFarland is about to speak about the death of his ex-wife.”

8

JO AND TANG CROWDED AROUND THE TELEVISION WITH THE COPS AND stadium officials in the suite. On-screen, the White House press secretary stood at a podium, pudgy and diffident. The pressroom was a forest of jutting hands, all raised to ask about the death of Robert McFarland’s first wife, the lovely, tragic, maybe crazy Fawn Tasia.

A reporter asked, “Did the president know that she was in possession of the Colt forty-five?”

“The president isn’t going to comment on matters that might fall within the scope of the investigation into Ms. McFarland’s death. Obviously he wants to avoid any remarks that could compromise the investigation.”

“But did he deliberately leave the gun with her when they divorced?”

The press secretary adjusted his glasses. His forehead looked shiny. “The president will issue a statement momentarily. If I could—”

“Tasia McFarland was a diagnosed manic-depressive. Did the president know of that diagnosis at the time he left a large caliber semiautomatic pistol in her possession?”

Jo said, “Wow.”

There was a stir in the pressroom. The press secretary said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the president.”

The camera swiveled. Robert Titus McFarland strode toward the podium, grave and purposeful.

He had the ascetic build and weightless gait of a cross-country runner. His hair, black as a priest’s cassock, was shorn unfashionably short, a legacy of his army years. His temples were salted with gray.

He gripped the edges of the podium. He looked drawn. He didn’t have the aw-shucks charm of Bill Clinton, didn’t have Kennedy’s élan or Reagan’s disarming ability to project whimsy. He had a craggy dignity and laconic style that pundits called “western” and attributed to his Montana roots.

He peered into the lights. “The news tonight from San Francisco has come as a shock, and has saddened me, deeply.”

He let that last word fall heavily. He let it roll across the press corps until it pinned them to their seats and smothered all noise in the room.

“My thoughts are with the family of the pilot who lost his life, and with all those who were injured.”

McFarland was an outlier: a working-class liberal, a warrior turned antiwar. He had grown up in a double-wide trailer on a cattle ranch outside Billings, son of the ranch foreman and his Salvadoran wife. He won the state cross-country championship, received a commission to West Point, and served as an army officer in hot zones across the globe before—famously—resigning his commission in protest over a friendly fire incident for which junior officers took the blame while higher-ups escaped censure. He returned to Montana, went to law school, practiced environmental law, and went into politics. His rise was swift. He won the presidency after serving five years in the Senate.

He had a reputation as a quick-thinking, hard-driving politician, a man who held everything in his head like a mental battlefield map and maintained rapport with underlings and rivals. In other words, a commander.

Along the way he’d married and divorced Fawn Tasia Hicks. And for two decades he had carefully avoided talking about her. He’d been remarried, to the calming, outdoorsy First Lady, for seventeen years. They had twin sons and a golden retriever, and kept roan quarter horses on their spread outside Missoula. As a political liability, Tasia had been no cause for alarm, not even a wisp of smoke on the horizon. She’d been a curiosity.

Not anymore. Jo watched him, thinking: Let’s really see who I voted for here.

McFarland gazed around the pressroom. “Tasia’s death is a tragedy. Sandy and I extend our sympathies to her family, and join her friends and all those around the country who are tonight mourning this…” He slowed, and his voice deepened. “…loss.”

He looked down and shifted his weight. Still gripping the podium, he shook his head. Then he seemed to throw a switch.

“Prepared remarks don’t cut it at a time like this.” He looked up. “This news is a kick in the gut. Tasia was too young to die.”

Behind him, at the edge of the screen, stood presidential aides and the White House chief of staff. McFarland glanced their way. Their presence seemed to bolster him. He straightened.

“Tasia was a force of nature. Plain and simple, she had more personality than anybody I’ve ever met. She could have moved mountains with a stare if she wanted. And for all her singing talent, and her fame, what marked her out was her generosity of spirit. She had a heart as big as the sky.”

He paused. “Learning that she was shot to death with a pistol I bought is shattering. There’s no other word for it.”

A buzz ran through the pressroom. McFarland took time to consider his next remark.

“I didn’t intend to take questions this evening, but on my way in, I heard somebody asking if I knew Tasia had bipolar disorder when I left the gun with her.”

In the background, the White House chief of staff stiffened. K. T. Lewicki had the bullet head of an English bull terrier, and he looked like he wanted to tackle McFarland. The president didn’t see it, or deliberately ignored it.

“The answer is no,” he said. “Tasia and I were married for two years. She was twenty-three when we divorced. As I understand it, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her early thirties.”

He scanned the room, making eye contact. “I bought the pistol before I deployed for duty overseas. She was going to be home on her own. I wanted her to have a reliable means of defending herself.” His tone sharpened. “And before you ask—it never crossed my mind to take it from her when we divorced. That pistol was supposed to protect—”

His expression fissured.

“…protect her.” A glaring light seemed to shear across his face. “Offer a prayer for her. Thank you.”

He turned and left the podium. He couldn’t have left faster if the room had been burning. A reporter said, “Mr. President, had you spoken to her recently?”

McFarland raised a hand as he walked away. “No.”

Another reporter called, “Do you know why she brought your gun to the concert? Mr. President, did she ever speak about suicide?”

He shook his head and strode out the door.

In the hospitality suite, people wandered away from the television. Behind Jo, a man said, “Conscience has him by the throat.”

Tang turned. “Mr. Lecroix.”

Searle Lecroix stood at the back of the room, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, staring at the TV from under the brim of his black Stetson. “That man’s just one more person who let her down. But at least he seems to know it.”

His smoky drawl sounded hoarse. His face was drained. Tasia’s baby boy, her Mister Blue Eyes with the silver tongue, looked like he’d had the stuffing pounded out of him.

Tang walked over. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

“I couldn’t leave while Tasia’s out there,” he said. “Leave her lying on the field with people picking her over—I couldn’t. She deserves to have somebody nearby who cares.” His timbre dropped. “What happened to her?”

“We don’t know yet,” Tang said. She motioned Jo over. “This is Dr. Beckett.”

Tang explained what Jo did, and asked Lecroix to let Jo interview him.

“You want to talk about Tasia from a psychological perspective? Now?”

Jo shook her head. “Tomorrow or the day after.”

He agreed, and gave her his cell phone number. “You going to find out who let this happen?”

“Maybe you can help us figure that out.”

He nodded. “They’re taking her to the morgue. I need to go.” He touched a finger to the brim of his hat. “Lieutenant. Doctor.”

They watched him walk down the hall, shoulders slumped. After a moment, Jo said, “I was going to tell you Possibility Number Three.”

“Please.”

“Tasia planned to shoot somebody besides herself. But an unknown person in that swarm of fans got hold of the trigger and shot her first.”

“Now you believe somebody was out to get her?”

“Now you don’t?” Jo said.

“I don’t know. I mean, you heard her. ‘Liar’s words all end in pain.’”

9

TANG DROPPED JO AT HER HOUSE ON RUSSIAN HILL. SHE HANDED over a thick manila envelope.

“The concert video, photos of the scene, witness statements from the stuntman and stage crew. And Tasia’s ‘in the event of my assassination’ recording.”

Jo paused. “Using her ex-husband’s gun is a huge statement.”

“No kidding, Sigmund.” Tang pointed at the envelope. “Figure out what she was saying.”

The car grumbled away.

The night air was cool. The cable car tracks hummed with the sound of gears and cables ringing beneath the road. Jo climbed her front steps.

Her small house sat across from a park, surrounded by grander, brighter homes painted building-block colors. Hers was a fine San Francisco Victorian with iron-red gables. The front yard was a spot of grass the size of a paperback book, bordered by gardenias and white lilacs. Inside, her Doc Martens sounded heavy on the hardwood floor. Her keys echoed when she dropped them on the hallway table.

Jo never would have chosen the house for herself. She would have struggled to afford it. But her husband had inherited the home from his grandparents. He and Jo had redone the place. Knocked out walls, sanded the floors, installed skylights.

When Daniel died, his absence from the house had been excruciating. Early on, Jo had moments when she was overcome with an urge to shatter the windows and shout, Come back to me. Daniel’s parents would have loved for her to sell it to them. But she’d made it her home, and now couldn’t bear the thought of giving it up.

She went to the kitchen and fixed coffee. The magnolia in the backyard was laden with flowers. Under the moon they shone like white fists. Music from a neighbor’s house floated to her, a Latin tune with sinuous horns. She felt jacked up, like she’d spent the evening strapped to a rocket sled.

She heard a sharp knock on the front door.

She answered it to find Gabe Quintana standing on the porch, hands in the pockets of his jeans. One look at her and his eyes turned wary.

“Maybe I should have called first, ” he said.

“The concert ended with the star and a stunt pilot dead, fans trampled, and me signing up for a case from one of the more exotic rings of hell.”

“Want me to come back another time?”

His black hair was close-cropped. His eyes had a low-burning glow. Right, Jo thought. He didn’t believe for a second that she’d kick him out.

“Some day I’ll actually say yes. Just to keep your self-confidence under control,” she said.

His smile was offhanded. “No, you won’t.”

Laugh lines etched his bronze skin. He leaned against the door frame, his gaze rakish.

Jo grabbed him by the collar of his Bay to Breakers T-shirt and yanked him through the doorway. She kicked the door closed and thrust him against the wall.

“Watch it. I can push your buttons and bring you to your knees”—she snapped her fingers—“like that.”