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Authors: David Ellis

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In the Company of Liars

BOOK: In the Company of Liars
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Contents

JUNE

SATURDAY, JUNE 5

ONE DAY EARLIER:
FRIDAY, JUNE 4

THREE DAYS EARLIER:
TUESDAY, JUNE 1

MAY

SIXTEEN DAYS EARLIER:
SUNDAY, MAY 16

FOUR DAYS EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, MAY 12

ONE DAY EARLIER:
TUESDAY, MAY 11

ONE DAY EARLIER:
MONDAY, MAY 10

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SUNDAY, MAY 9

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SATURDAY, MAY 8

ONE DAY EARLIER:
FRIDAY, MAY 7

ONE DAY EARLIER:
THURSDAY, MAY 6

ONE DAY EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, MAY 5

ONE DAY EARLIER:
TUESDAY, MAY 4

ONE DAY EARLIER:
MONDAY, MAY 3

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SUNDAY, MAY 2

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SATURDAY, MAY 1

APRIL

ONE DAY EARLIER:
FRIDAY, APRIL 30

ONE DAY EARLIER:
THURSDAY, APRIL 29

ONE DAY EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28

ONE DAY EARLIER:
TUESDAY, APRIL 27

ONE DAY EARLIER:
MONDAY, APRIL 26

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SUNDAY, APRIL 25

TWO DAYS EARLIER:
FRIDAY, APRIL 23

ONE DAY EARLIER:
THURSDAY, APRIL 22

FOUR DAYS EARLIER:
SUNDAY, APRIL 18

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SATURDAY, APRIL 17

ONE DAY EARLIER:
FRIDAY, APRIL 16

ONE DAY EARLIER:
THURSDAY, APRIL 15

ONE DAY EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14

ONE DAY EARLIER:
TUESDAY, APRIL 13

ONE DAY EARLIER:
MONDAY, APRIL 12

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SUNDAY, APRIL 11

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SATURDAY, APRIL 10

TWO DAYS EARLIER:
THURSDAY, APRIL 8

MARCH

EIGHT DAYS EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31

ONE DAY EARLIER:
TUESDAY, MARCH 30

ONE DAY EARLIER:
MONDAY, MARCH 29

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SUNDAY, MARCH 28

TWO DAYS EARLIER:
FRIDAY, MARCH 26

ONE DAY EARLIER:
THURSDAY, MARCH 25

ONE DAY EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24

ONE DAY EARLIER:
TUESDAY, MARCH 23

ONE DAY EARLIER:
MONDAY, MARCH 22

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SUNDAY, MARCH 21

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SATURDAY, MARCH 20

THREE DAYS EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 17

THREE DAYS EARLIER:
SUNDAY, MARCH 14

NINE DAYS EARLIER:
FRIDAY, MARCH 5

TWO DAYS EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3

ONE DAY EARLIER:
TUESDAY, MARCH 2

ONE DAY EARLIER:
MONDAY, MARCH 1

FEBRUARY

TWO DAYS EARLIER:
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 28

TWO DAYS EARLIER:
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26

ONE DAY EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25

THREE DAYS EARLIER:
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22

FOUR DAYS EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 18

ONE DAY EARLIER:
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 17

ONE DAY EARLIER:
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16

THREE DAYS EARLIER:
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 13

ONE DAY EARLIER:
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12

ONE DAY EARLIER:
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 11

ONE DAY EARLIER:
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 10

ONE DAY EARLIER:
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8

ONE DAY EARLIER:
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 7

ELEVEN YEARS EARLIER

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

In The Company of Liars

 

A
Berkley
Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

All rights reserved.

Copyright ©
2005
by
David Ellis

This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.

For information address:

The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

 

The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com

 

ISBN:
978-1-1012-0507-5

 

A
BERKLEY
BOOK®

Berkley
Books first published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

BERKLEY
and the “
B
” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

 

Electronic edition: March, 2006

TITLES BY DAVID ELLIS

In the Company of Liars
Jury of One
Life Sentence
Line of Vision

For Jennifer, Jim, Jenna, and Ryan Taylor

SATURDAY, JUNE 5

M
cCoy is first through the door. She hears the man running through the house, his bare feet slapping across the hardwood floor. “Back bedroom,” she is told via her earpiece by a member of the team at the rear of the house, looking through the kitchen window, blocking an escape route.

They flood in behind her, a team of eight agents, but she is first down the hallway. Her back against the wall, both hands on the Glock at her side, she shuffles up to the bedroom door and listens. Over the sound of her team's shoes on the hardwood, she can hear sobbing. She reaches across the width of the door and tries the knob. The door opens slightly, then McCoy pushes it open wider with her foot and pivots, her Glock trained inside the room, and she sees what she expects.

He is standing at the opposite end of the bedroom, near what appears to be a walk-in closet and then a bathroom. A large bed separates the man and McCoy.

McCoy holds a hand up behind her, freezing the other agents in place, before returning her hand to the Glock trained on the suspect.

“Put the gun down, Doctor,” she says.

Doctor Lomas, she knows, is a broken man, nothing like the proud figure she has seen in the company brochures. She stifles the instinct to think of him as a victim, though a victim, in many ways, is precisely what he is. It is hard to look at this man, barefoot in boxer shorts and a rumpled white T-shirt with stained armpits, with flyaway hair and an emaciated frame, and see the promising scientist he once was.

The doctor is crying uncontrollably, his chest heaving and tears flowing. Part of her job is seeing the worst in people, watching them feel, firsthand, the collapse of their lives. But she doesn't often confront a man holding a revolver to his temple.

Behind her, McCoy hears one of the agents on his radio, calling for paramedics. Others are searching the remainder of the house, kicking open doors to rooms and closets.

“I didn't know,” Lomas manages through halting breaths, but of course that statement itself means that he did know, or at least suspected. “I didn't. I didn't know, I didn't—”

“I believe you, Doctor,” she says calmly. “Put the gun on the bed and let's just talk.”

“They'll kill me,” he says.

He's not talking about the federal agents swarming outside the bedroom. She knows it. Doctor Lomas seems to assume she knows it.

“There's no ‘they' anymore, Doctor. ‘They' are all in custody. You're the last one.”

He doesn't seem to be listening. Fear of death does not seem to be foremost in his mind. No, what's causing the heaving of his chest, the trembling of the arm that tries to
keep the gun pressed against his skull, is not what will happen now but what has already taken place.

The television, resting in a dark oak armoire, is on a cable news station. The headline blaring across the bottom of the screen is “Muhsin al-Bakhari Captured.” Reporters are live from northern Sudan, the cameras on the assault that took place last night on a convoy of terrorists resulting in the capture of the Liberation Front's number-two man.

“You know why you're the last one we picked up?” McCoy says to Doctor Lomas, as evenly as she can. “Because we know you're not a threat. We know you're not a bad person. Because we know you were tricked.” McCoy motions to the television set. “You see that, Doctor? You see we caught Mushi?”

Doctor Lomas blinks, as if surprised by the change of topic. Suicides, in these instances, often go down a single track on their way to pulling the trigger or slitting their wrists. The key is to pull them away from their tunnel vision, to make them think about anything at all that might sober them up.

“So what?” His voice breaks, trembles. His trigger finger twitches.

She is ten feet from the doctor, but the bed prevents any interception she might attempt. If this guy wants to die, she won't be able to stop him.

“So,” McCoy says, “you helped make that happen. This,” she says, nodding to him, then gesturing toward the TV set, “was about
that
.”

“That—” Lomas's face contorts, a hideous, trembling snarl of a mouth struggling with the words. “
That's
where it went? To—to
them
? To
terrorists
?”

“We intercepted it,” McCoy says quickly. “We have the formula in our possession. It's over, Doctor. No one was hurt.”

“Allison Pagone,” he whimpers. “She's dead because of
me. I knew she didn't kill herself,” he adds, more to himself. “I
knew
they killed her.” He starts to quiver again, his whole body like a shot of electricity has hit him.

“Listen to me, Doctor, Allison Pagone—”

“No closer.”
Lomas takes another step back and brushes the wall. With the jerk in his movement, his right elbow drops, and the gun slides off his temple, pointing upward.

McCoy fires once, into the brachial nerve near the collarbone on the doctor's gun side. The doctor's hand immediately releases the gun, which falls to the floor and bounces into the closet. Two reasons for severing the brachial nerve—he can't hold the weapon and he can recover, for the most part, from a shoulder injury; had she gone for his hand, he'd never be able to use it again.

She is on him immediately, as he slides to the floor. Lomas makes no effort to reach the gun. He doesn't even seem to notice the wound, a red, widening stain on his T-shirt, dark at the center.

McCoy finds the nearest piece of laundry, a pair of underwear, balls it up and applies pressure to the wound. Doctor Lomas stares wide-eyed, a deep, consistent moan coming from his throat.

McCoy talks to him. She tells him to hang on, everything is going to be okay. She looks up and sees the bullet mark in the wall, which means it went through cleanly, no ricochet down to a major organ. He was lucky. Luckier than some.

The paramedics arrive and take over. In the bathroom McCoy splashes some water on her face and lets out a groan. Her partner, Owen Harrick, is behind her, smiling at her in the mirror.

“It's over, Janey,” he says. “This is the end.”

“Yeah.” She shakes the water off her hands.

“What you have to do,” Harrick advises, “is forget about the beginning.”

BOOK: In the Company of Liars
3.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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