The King of Lies by John Hart Page B

just saying if, playing devil’s advocate, then I’d be inclined to agree with Mills. It’s Occam’s Razor, Work. The simplest explanation is usually right.”
    “That’s crap, Douglas. Somebody tried to kill me.”
    “Just give Mills your alibi, Work, and whatever else she wants. Let her check it out and be done with it.”
    I thought about what Douglas was asking me to talk about. I could hear the sound of a neck breaking under terrible force. “You know what happened that night, Douglas.” It was a statement, a novel writ large.
    “I know your mother died in a tragic fall, but that’s all I know.” His voice was unapologetic.
    “It’s enough,” I said.
    “No, Work, it’s not. Because it’s also the night your father disappeared and for all Mills knows, you and Jean were the last ones to see him alive. It’s important, and no one’s going to dance around your tender sensibilities. Your father was murdered. This is a murder investigation. Talk to her.”
    I thought that if he said murder one more time, I’d murder him. I didn’t need a reminder. I saw my father’s flesh-less jawbone every time I closed my eyes, and even now I fought the image of his remains under the knives and saws of the medical examiner in Chapel Hill.
    Douglas loomed. The silence behind his last words demanded a response, but I didn’t look up. He wanted me to cough up the memory of that night like a bloody tumor so that Mills could paw through it, spread it out like finger paint, and discuss it with other cops over coffee and cigarettes. Cops I fought every day in court. I knew how it worked, the twisted voyeurism of people who had seen it all yet never got enough. I knew how they speculated about rape victims in the halls behind the courtrooms, pawed through photographs, and dissected a person’s humanity in the quest to be the funniest cop of the day. I’d heard them joke about how people had been killed: Did it hurt? Do you think she begged? Was she alive when they fucked her? Conscious when the knife first touched her pale skin? Did he see it coming? I heard he wet himself.
    It was a dark farce, a tragedy played out in the pain of victims in every town in the country. But this time it was my pain. My family. My secrets.
    I saw Mother at the bottom of the stairs, her open eyes and blood-flecked mouth, her neck bent like a cruel joke. I saw it all: the red dress she wore, the position of her hands, the Cinderella slipper that lay upon the stairs where it had fallen. The memory was cruel and it cut, but if I looked up, I might see Ezra, and that would be worse. I wasn’t ready for that. I couldn’t do it. Not again. For if I looked beyond Ezra, I would see Jean. I would see what that night did to her, all of it, frozen on her face in that horrible tableau that still chased through my dreams. There was horror in her face, and rage, an animal force that transformed her. In that face I saw a stranger, someone who could kill, and that terrified me now more than ever. What had that night made of my sister? And was she now forever lost?
    If I talked to Mills, it would all come back. She would poke and pry, try with her cop mind to ferret it out. She might see things, and I couldn’t have that.
    “No problem,” I told the district attorney. “I’ll talk to her.”
    “Be sure that you do,” he replied.
    “Don’t worry.” I unlocked my car, desperate to escape. “Thanks for worrying about me,” I said, but my sarcasm was wasted effort. I climbed into my car, but he stopped me with a hand on my door.
    “By the way,” he said. “What were you doing the night Ezra disappeared?”
    I tried to meet his eyes. “Are you asking for my alibi?” I asked, as if he was joking. He said nothing, and I laughed, but it sounded hollow. “As a friend or as the district attorney?”
    “Maybe a little of both,” he said.
    “You’re a funny man,” I told him.
    “Humor me,” he said.
    I wanted to get out of there, away from his