The Liar’s Lullaby

10

NOEL MICHAEL PETTY THUDDED UP THE HOTEL STAIRS, SWEATY AND winded, cradling the artifact inside the fatigue jacket. The hallway was dank but empty. Petty rushed inside the hotel room, slammed the door, and leaned back against it, breathless. Nobody had followed. Nobody had even noticed. Not at the ballpark or anyplace along the route to the Tenderloin.

That’s because, when you hover like an angel, you become invisible.

Quick, latch the chain. Clear a space on the table. Shove aside the scissors and the news cuttings. Let the tabloid articles and glossy magazine photos flutter to the floor. Take a breath.

Carefully, ceremoniously, Petty pulled open the fatigue jacket and removed the artifact. It was a piece of turf from the baseball field, a lump of grass and earth about the diameter of a compact disc. Petty set it on the table and ran a hand across it, stroking the grass like a baby’s soft hair.

Victory is mine.

Stepping back, Petty pulled off the green watch cap and turned on the television. Tonight’s events were historic. It was vital not to miss a moment, not one beautiful second.

There—news. Images sparkled on the screen, familiar and thrilling. The smoke so black, the blood so messy, Tasia’s hair so thick, fanning around her head in a gold comet’s tail. People screaming, fleeing from her body. Tasia had terrified the crowd, dying like that. What a cow.

Bursting through the crowd came Searle Lecroix. Petty grimaced.

Too late, Searle. She’s gone. She can no longer suck the love from a man’s bones. We’re free.

Free. Petty glanced at the artifact. It was a memento of deliverance, like a chunk of the Berlin Wall.

Lecroix shoved his way past the ravenous onlookers on the field, gawky strangers who wanted a piece of Tasia McFarland, who wanted a chance to say, I was there. But they were only about celebrity and sentiment. They would never understand. Tasia’s death was not an accident. It was a triumph.

On-screen, Lecroix dropped to his knees beside Tasia’s body. Petty cringed.

“Searle, you fool.”

The death of a cow should not affect a man so. It was a painful sight. It diminished the victory.

If you believed the gossip, Tasia had lured Searle Lecroix into her bed. But he couldn’t have known her. He couldn’t have given himself to her and received back in turn. Not from an unhinged, half-lunatic fame-whore who had fucked the president to get where she was.

Lecroix gripped Tasia’s hand. He begged, “Help her.”

Smarting, Petty turned away. But Tasia’s face followed. She stared down from the walls of the hotel room. Hundreds of photos, her beautiful face, her filthy gaze, her dark inner light, staring, knowing.

Petty stared back. “But you didn’t know what was coming. You refused to listen.”

Tasia had snubbed NMP. Then ignored NMP. She’d had the gall to rebuke and disregard NMP.

A smile squeezed Petty’s lips, full of pain.

Stop that. You are not a fat, weak-kneed fan. You are a righteous guardian and protector of the truth and the Good Ones. Petty scratched an armpit.

The hotel room smelled stale and fuggy, like a cheap costume for a stage play. But that’s what this Tenderloin dive was—a disguise. Nobody would look here for a hovering angel.

The news switched to a White House press conference. Robert McFarland was praising Tasia. He was waxing melodic about her talent.

The thrill of victory subsided. Petty sloughed off the fatigue jacket and sat heavily on the bed. Generosity of spirit…was McFarland joking? The president of the United States was beatifying Saint Tasia, the Holy Cow.

Slut, thief, liar.

A heart as big as the sky. Letting out a moan, Petty thundered to the table, grabbed the artifact, and threw it at the television.

This was insane. It was…a spell. The vixen had bewitched even the leader of the free world.

All Petty’s work had been in vain. The king rat of politicians, a man of the smoothest tongue, a hypnotist, was spreading the lie. People would buy it. Heart as big as the sky would become conventional wisdom. It would twist people’s minds, turn them into Tasia-lovers. It would burrow under the skin of people who needed protection. Tasia, thief of hearts, would steal yet again, just as she’d stolen from NMP, but this time from beyond the grave.

Her death hadn’t ended the battle. It had only intensified it.

Petty heard a voice, a whisper, a promise. Don’t tell. You’re my eternal love. Shh.

Deep breath. It was time to slough off Noel Michael Petty. Time to put on the camouflage that kept the Protector safe and anonymous. It worked on the Net, where nobody knows you’re a dog. Now, offline, Petty needed to assume the guise. Full-time, with no slipups.

Going into the bathroom, Petty faced the dingy mirror. From now on, you’re not Noel. You’re not a sweaty fan who follows the tour around the country. You’re him. NMP.

Tasia hadn’t seen the end coming. Neither had Searle Lecroix, though he’d been onstage, staring at her. And judging from the news footage, Lecroix still didn’t see. Tasia still held him in her thrall. And now the president was hypnotizing the public into believing the same thing. Somebody had to stop it.

Somebody needed to expose Tasia once and for all. End the love affair with her. Get proof, and make noise, and shut the liars up for good.

You are NMP, the archangel, the big bad bastard. You are the sword of truth.

You’re the man.

11

IN THE MORNING JO WOKE TO THE RADIO.

“…investigation into the death of Tasia McFarland. A police source tells us that a psychiatrist has been hired to evaluate Tasia’s mental state.”

She sat up.

“Our source believes that the police are working on the theory that Tasia committed suicide, and want a psychological opinion to back it up.”

She reached for the phone. Saw the clock: six twenty. Too early to harangue Lieutenant Tang about departmental leaks.

She heard the foghorn. She kicked off the covers, pulled on a kimono, stumbled to the window, and opened the shutters. Fog skated across the bay and clung to the Golden Gate Bridge. But uphill, the sun was tingling through the clouds. The magnolia in the backyard looked slick in the early light.

The news continued. Not a word about a merchant ship on fire and down by the stern five hundred miles off shore. Not a word about the 129th Rescue Wing. Accidents at sea could entangle rescuers in disaster, and she listened, shoulders tight, for the words Air National Guard. Nothing.

She grabbed her climbing gear and drove to Mission Cliffs. She found a belay partner and spent forty-five minutes on the gym’s head wall. It soothed her. Hanging fifty feet off the ground, with nothing but a void between her and a broken neck, always cleared her head.

She was at her desk by eight. She’d finally cleared out Daniel’s mountain bike and Outside magazines, and turned the front room into her office. She kept gold orchids on the bookcase and her favorite New Yorker cartoon framed on the wall—where a drowning man yells, “Lassie! Get help!” And Lassie goes to a psychiatrist.

Normally she began a psychological autopsy by reading the police report and the victim’s medical and psychiatric records. But those weren’t yet available. To determine NASH—whether a death was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide—she needed to assess not only the victim’s physical and psychological history but also his or her background and relationships. Jo interviewed family, friends, and colleagues, and looked for warning signs of suicide or evidence that anyone might have intended the victim harm. She built a timeline of events leading up to the day of the victim’s death.

Since she didn’t have records, she read press accounts of Tasia McFarland’s psychiatric history. It was sad and brutal. And Tasia hadn’t hesitated to talk about it.

Tasia had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder at thirty-two. But she’d whipped between mania and depression for years before that. Volcanic highs and hideous lows had played out in public—tantrums, car wrecks, drug binges, and flights of creativity—as she veered from teen singing sensation to washed-up party animal to comeback queen. In short, as analyzed by Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and People magazine: sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

But bipolar disorder was a devastating diagnosis. The DSM-IV, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, defined Bipolar I Disorder as the occurrence of one or more “Manic Episodes or Mixed Episodes,” though people often had major depressive episodes as well.

During a manic episode, people didn’t need sleep and didn’t feel tired—for a week, a month, two months. They felt on top of the world. They might learn new languages or take up a new instrument. Their extraordinary energy and sense of power came on spontaneously, without being triggered by any outside event, such as graduating from college or winning an Oscar, that could generate euphoria.

Jo wondered about Tasia, revved into the red zone on the night she sang a hit song to a stadium crowd in her hometown.

Manic people could be gregarious and entertaining. In fact, physicians training in psychiatry were told: If you’re highly entertained by a patient, consider mania as a possible diagnosis. But while manic people could be lovable, they could also be exhausting.

And when patients dropped into depression, they crashed. Guilt and hopelessness overwhelmed them. Suicide was common.

And mixed episodes were the roughest of all: A person’s mood disturbance met the criteria for manic and major depressive episodes simultaneously. Mixed episodes were difficult to diagnose. Jo believed they were the state in which people were most likely to commit suicide.

She thought about the way Rez Shirazi, the stuntman, had described Tasia: hyper but dismal.

She got herself a cup of coffee. She needed Tasia’s prescription records and toxicology results. When well medicated, people with bipolar disorder could be accomplished and creative. They became physicists, computer scientists, artists. A number of famous classical composers had been bipolar.

But people often went off their meds because they loved feeling manic. They loved the explosion of creativity brought on by mania.

“Art and madness” was a cliché. But Jo had attended a med school lecture series on the mind and music. Strong evidence existed that Schumann had bipolar disorder. Gershwin may have had ADHD. And composers’ mental states influenced their compositions. Bipolar composers, she recalled, loved repetitive melodic motifs and sometimes became obsessed with particular sounds or tempos.

Jo listened again to “The Liar’s Lullaby.” Her musical ear wasn’t sharp enough to pick out clues buried in the melody, but the lyrics were disturbing enough. You say you love our land, you liar / Who dreams its end in blood and fire. The third verse was less eerie, but nonetheless sad.

I fell into your embrace

Felt tears streaming down my face

Fought the fight, ran the race

Faltered, finally fell from grace.

She tapped her fingers on the desk, wondering if the verse referred to Tasia’s marriage.

Few photos existed of Tasia and Robert McFarland together. But online she found an old, and vivid, magazine photo essay. Tasia had met McFarland while performing for the troops, and several photos showed her mingling with soldiers. McFarland was prominent among them. He looked young, handsome, and sure of himself. In one lighthearted shot, McFarland and a bullet-headed officer Jo recognized as K. T. Lewicki, now White House chief of staff, had hoisted Tasia onto their shoulders. In another, taken soon after the McFarlands’ marriage, they brimmed with energy—seemingly from being in each other’s presence. Tasia looked like a saucy cheerleader, ready to single-handedly rouse the army to victory. McFarland looked like he believed himself the luckiest man alive: confident, swimming in love, and unselfishly proud of his talented young wife. They were laughing as though the world had revealed its secrets, and was beautiful.

At nine, Amy Tang phoned. “Tasia’s autopsy is this morning. Medical and psychiatric records might be with you this afternoon, but full tox and blood work will take days. Her next of kin will meet with you at ten A.M.—her sister, Vienna Hicks.”

Jo wrote down Hicks’s phone number. “Did you know that police sources are talking to the press about me?”

“As I told you, this is a cheap thrill ride, not the Pirates of the Caribbean. But I’ll remind people to keep their mouths shut.”

Jo looked again at the photo of Tasia and Robert McFarland, young and in love. She didn’t know how Tasia had gotten from there to writing, But Robby T is not the One / All that’s needed is the gun. She wondered if Tasia’s sister could tell her.

12

SHORTLY BEFORE TEN, JO DROVE DOWNTOWN. THE STREETS OF THE Financial District were packed with cars and delivery trucks. The sidewalks bustled. The sun flashed from skyscraper windows, and wind funneled between the buildings. Jo pushed through a door into a coffeehouse where silverware clattered and the staff wore facial piercings and protest buttons pinned to berets. Vienna Hicks waved from a table against the windows.

Jo worked her way through the crowded room. Hicks stood and clasped her hand. “Dr. Beckett. I’m Vienna.”

Vienna Hicks stood six feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds. Her ash-blue suit was impeccable. Her red hair looked like a runaway fire.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Jo said.

“I was downtown on business. I’m a paralegal at Waymire and Fong. They’re handling Tasia’s estate, and they’ll tackle any lawsuits that get filed against it.”

She sat again, solidly. Her physique looked too grand for the tiny table. She had the forceful gaze of a grizzly bear. She eyed Jo up and down, and didn’t look dazzled.

“Psychiatrist. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. They’re running on empty, aren’t they?” she said.

“The police?”

“They don’t know how to label Tasia’s death.”

“The police are searching for an explanation. I’m here to help them find it.”

Vienna tapped manicured nails on the table, patently skeptical. “This place is stifling. Let’s walk.”

She stood and headed for the door, parting the crowd around the counter like an ocean liner. Jo hustled after her. Outside, Vienna threw a crimson scarf around her neck and strode along the sidewalk toward the Embarcadero Center. The scarf whipped in the wind like a crusader’s banner.

“You want a label? The media gave Tasia enough of them to carpet the streets at a ticker-tape parade.” She put on a pair of oversize sunglasses. They barely contained the force of her gaze.

“Starlet. Mouseketeer. Pop tart,” she said. “Loser, reality show contestant, drug addict.”

She headed toward the waterfront. “A-list dropout. Fame whore. Presidential reject.” She glanced at Jo. “Manic-depressive.”

“Was that officially diagnosed?”

“By a board-certified psychiatrist. Rapid-cycling Type One bipolar disorder.”

Vienna’s cat’s-cream skin was nearly luminous in the sunlight. Her red hair flew about her head in the wind.

“You want to know if she killed herself? Fully possible. Her major depressive episodes were deeper than a bomb crater.”

“When did she begin showing signs of the disorder?” Jo said.

“Her teens. It became obvious in her early twenties. During her marriage.”

“Was it a factor in her divorce?”

Vienna’s jaw cranked down. “You’d have to ask him.”

Him being the man who got 67 million votes in the most recent election, whose face graced the cover of every news magazine on the rack, and whose voice echoed from the television every ten minutes, day and night. Piece of cake.

“You don’t speak to Robert McFarland, I take it,” Jo said.

“I don’t even speak of him. And I never speak out about him. Tasia did that enough when she was off her medication.”

Jo nodded. Ahead, she saw the clock tower at the ferry building, the bay, and Alcatraz.

“Besides,” Vienna said, “you don’t need to hear my opinion on Rob. There’s plenty to go around. Read the Vanity Fair profile, the one that described Tasia as a hopped-up, bebop Bunny wannabe with her gleaming eyes on the prize.”

Jo kept her mouth closed. If Vienna wanted to talk, she wanted to hear it.

“I presume you’ve got the whole IMDb-of-crazy database that lists Tasia’s greatest hits of conspiracy theory,” Vienna said.

“I’ve seen a few clips.”

“Fox News?”

“Talking about the Second Amendment. Assault rifles for all. Homeland Security putting tranquilizers in the water supply,” Jo said. “The YouTube rant against the Federal Reserve.”

Vienna’s mouth pursed. “The vitriol was clinical paranoia, and yeah, it was embarrassing as well as frightening. But in her defense, she was off her meds then. In recent years she got much better treatment and good med management. The political rants stopped.”

They paused at a corner. Palm trees stood sturdy against the breeze, fronds cutting the air. A tram rolled past, orange and yellow, one of the mid-twentieth-century electric trolleys recently resurrected by the city. When it stopped, Jo half-expected to see Humphrey Bogart climb off, fedora rakishly cocked.

“Being Tasia’s sister must have been difficult—”

“Eight years of medical training for that insight? You went to public schools, didn’t you?”

“—but you must have felt both angry and protective of her.”

Vienna’s Afrika-Corps-size sunglasses hid her eyes, but she radiated heat. The light changed. Vienna plowed across the street toward the waterfront.

“And helpless,” Jo said. “As if she was being taken from you by a host of banshees, and you were powerless to stop it.”

Vienna walked on for a few seconds. Then she turned to Jo and pulled off the shades. She let out a slow, barely controlled breath.

“People feasted on her like vultures. And she enabled it,” Vienna said. “She was so passionate about performing—so talented, so needy for an audience, so…panicked about the idea that all the attention might go away. She practically staked herself out on the ground and called them down to tear chunks from her flesh.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jo said.

“Thank you. Tell me it was an accident. Please.”

“That’s why I’m talking to you.”

The wind blew Vienna’s scarf skyward. “I know.”

“Did you know she had the gun?”

“It always worried me.”

Jo surmised how Vienna felt: In a perverse way, the fait accompli was a relief. The dread she had lived with for years, the fear that her sister would suffer harm, had come to pass, and brought with it release from the awful pressure and anxiety. None of that lessened Vienna’s grief. But the grinding worry that never went away…had now gone away.

“Did she ever threaten to shoot herself?” Jo said.

“Not in so many words. ‘What’s the point?’ she’d say. ‘Who’d miss me? Would people treat me like Kurt Cobain if I played his final verse?’”

“That must have been awful for you. Did she ever attempt suicide?”

Vienna’s lips parted, words seemingly on the tip of her tongue. Tart words. Then she checked herself. “Maybe he can tell you. Or at least supply her medical records from the army hospital.”

Superb. Intra-family feuds, with a guy who had round-the-clock Secret Service protection.

“Any attempts you personally can tell me about?” Jo said.

“Half-hearted, twelve years ago. Southern Comfort and a dozen ibuprofen.”