John Hart - The King of Lies

Also by John Hart

Down River

JOHN HART

www.johnmurray.co.uk

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by John Murray (Publishers)
An Hachette UK Company

John Hart 2006

The right of John Hart to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Epub ISBN 978-1-84854-232-7
Book ISBN 978-1-84854-098-9

John Murray (Publishers)
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH

www.johnmurray.co.uk

For Katie

I ve heard it said that jail stinks of despair. What a load. If jail stinks of any emotion, its fear: fear of the guards, fear of being beaten or gang-raped, fear of being forgotten by those who once loved you and may or may not anymore. But mostly, I think, its fear of time and of those dark things that dwell in the unexplored corners of the mind. Doing time, they call itwhat a joke. Ive been around long enough to know the reality: Its the time that does you.

For some time, Id been bathed in that jailhouse perfume, sitting knee-to-knee with a client whod just gotten life without parole. The trial had damned him, as Id told him it would. The states evidence was overwhelming, and the jury had zero sympathy for a three-time loser who had shot his brother during an argument about whod get control of the remote. Twelve of his supposed peers, and not one cared that hed been drinking, that he was cracked to the gills, or that he didnt mean to do it. No one cared that his brother was an ass and a felon in his own right, not the jury and least of all me. All I wanted was to explain his appeal rights, answer any legal questions, and get the hell out. My fee application to the state of North Carolina would wait until the morning.

On most days I was ambivalent, at best, about my chosen profession, but on days like this I hated being a lawyer; that hatred ran so deep that I feared something must be wrong with me. I hid it as others would a perversion. And this day was worse than most. Maybe it was the case or the client or the emotional aftermath of one more needless tragedy. Id been in that room a hundred times, but for some reason it felt different this time. The walls seemed to shift and I felt a momentary disorientation. I tried to shake it off, cleared my throat, and stood. Wed had bad facts, but the decision to go to trial had not been mine to make. When hed stumbled from the trailer, bloody and weeping, hed had the gun in one hand, the remote control in the other. It was broad daylight and he was out-of-his-head drunk. The neighbor looked out the window when my client started screaming. He saw the blood, the gun, and called the cops. No lawyer could have won the trialId told him as much. I could have had him out in ten, but he refused to take the plea arrangement Id negotiated. He wouldnt even talk about it.

The guilt may have been too much, or perhaps some part of him needed the punishment. Whatever the case, it was over now.

He finally tore his gaze from the jail-issue flip-flops that had known a thousand feet before his and forced his eyes to mine. Wet nostrils shone in the hard light, and his red eyes jittered, terrified of whatever they saw in that jigsaw mind of his. Hed pulled the trigger, and that brutal truth had finally taken root. The trail had wound its way across his face as wed talked for the past few hours. His denials had sputtered to a halt, and Id watched, untouchable, as hope shriveled and died. Id seen it all before.

A sopping wet cough, his right forearm smearing mucus across his cheek. So thats it, then? he asked.

I didnt bother to answer. He was already nodding to himself, and I could see his thoughts as if written in the dank air that hung between us: life without parole and him not yet twenty-three. It generally took days for this brutal truth to bore through the bullshit tough-guy act that every dumb-ass killer carried into this place like some kind of sick birthright. Maybe this joker was smarter than Id given him credit for. In the brief time since the judge handed down his sentence, hed grown the lifer stare. Fifty, maybe sixty years behind the same redbrick walls. No chance of parole. Not twenty years, not thirty or even forty, but life, in caps. It would kill me, and that is Gods own truth.

A glance at my watch told me Id been in there for almost two hours, which was my limit. I knew from experience that the smell had by now permeated my clothes, and I could see the dampness where his hands had pawed at my jacket. He saw the watch come up and he lowered his eyes. His words evaporated in the still air, leaving a vacuum that my body settled into as I stood. I didnt reach to shake his hand and he didnt reach for mine, but I noticed a new palsy in his fingers.

He was old before his time, all but broken at twenty-three, and what might have been sympathy wormed into a heart Id thought forever beyond such things. He started to cry, and his tears fell to the filthy floor. He was a killer, no question, but he was going to hell on earth first thing the next morning. Almost against my will, I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. He didnt look up, but he said that he was sorry, and I knew that this time he truly was. I was his last touch with the real world, the one with trees. All else had been pared away by the razor-sharp reality of his sentence. His shoulders began to heave beneath my hand, and I felt a nothingness so great, it almost had physical weight. Thats where I was when they came to tell me that my fathers body had finally been found. The irony was not lost on me.

T he bailiff who escorted me out of the Rowan County Jail and to the office of the district attorney was a tall, wide-boned man with gray bristles where most of us have hair. He didnt bother to make small talk as we wound through the halls packed with courthouse penitents, and I didnt push it. Id never been much of a talker.

The district attorney was a short, disarmingly round man who could turn off his eyes natural twinkle at will; it was an amazing thing to watch. To some, he was a politician, open and warm. To others, he was the cold, lifeless instrument of his office. For a few of us behind the curtain, he was a regular guy; we knew him and liked him. Hed taken two bullets for his country, yet he never looked down on people like myself, what my father had often called the soft underbelly of a warless generation. He respected my father, but he liked me as a person, and Id never been sure why. Maybe because I didnt shout the innocence of my guilty clients the way most defense lawyers did. Or maybe because of my sister, but that was a whole different story.

Work, he said as I entered the room, not bothering to get up. Im damn sorry about this. Ezra was a great lawyer.

The only son of Ezra Pickens, I was known to a few as Jackson Workman Pickens. Everybody else liked to call me Work, which was humorous I guess.

Douglas. I nodded, turning at the sound of the office door closing behind me as the bailiff left. Whered you find him? I asked.

Douglas tucked a pen into his shirt pocket and took the twinkle from his eye. This is unusual, Work, so dont look for any special treatment. Youre here because I thought you should hear it from me before the story breaks. He paused, looked out the window. I thought maybe you could tell Jean.