Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,42

and turning her and stripping her clothes off without a spare thought for any of the horror of the night just beyond their door.

More easily than it seemed possible, she was all that mattered.

Chapter 51

I THOUGHT ABOUT shooting Kazz and Gammy in the legs, just to teach them a lesson about robbing people. Just a single bullet each in the calf, not a deadly serious injury, just a little reminder for the rest of their miserable lives that crime doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t, pay. I stood holding my gun, considering my options.

I bound both women with the duct tape and wrapped Gammy’s badly bleeding arm with some cloth I found in a tub on the bench. Kazz’s wounds weren’t so bad—I’d punctured her in the right side of the chest, but no deeper than a couple of centimeters. It was the broken collarbone that had her seething. I dug into Gammy’s pockets and retrieved my money, then stuffed my papers back into my backpack.

“I’ve decided I’m not going to hurt you further,” I told them. “But you might consider making an honest living before the next no-hoper you try to scam puts you in the ground. Gammy, you’re probably just smart enough to sort plastic cutlery in a factory. Kazz, they’re always looking for people to put the bolt in the cows’ brains at the abattoir. I think you’d enjoy that.”

“We know who you are.” Gammy tried to sound tough, but she was holding back tears. “We’ll find you!”

I went into the pockets of Kazz’s jacket and found a set of keys.

“This is your bike, huh?” I jangled the keys in her face.

“Fuck you,” she snarled.

I leaned in close so she could feel my breath on her face. “When I get where I’m going,” I told her, “I’m going to torch it.”

Kazz screamed a stream of abuse at me, the colorful language of old-school bikie chicks. I left the women there and walked out of the shed.

I found the bikes, a couple of ancient Harleys meticulously restored and gleaming, parked behind the bar. Kazz’s had a big, flaming K airbrushed into the fuel tank. I wheeled the bike around to the side of the shed and threw my leg over it, revved it a few times so that the women would hear, before I rode out into the fading light.

Chapter 52

CHIEF TREVOR MORRIS entered the small house with his hat in his hand, the way he had done many times in his career, bringing news of a loved one’s death to frightened, wide-eyed relatives. But the elderly woman who walked ahead of him now had already heard that news many years ago. He imagined that night, the patrol officers who had come into the neat dining room and sat at the table with the Howeses, the way they’d tried to avoid looking into the eyes of the couple in case they should accidentally, somehow, worsen their experience. Death notifications were, in a strange way, ceremonial. There was a script. A right and a wrong way to hold one’s facial expression. Pops was sure that none of it helped.

Only Diane, Rachel’s mother, was here tonight. She’d told Pops on the phone that Rachel’s father couldn’t handle talking about their daughter’s murder by Regan Banks more than fifteen years earlier. He had gone out for the evening while Pops visited. Pops hadn’t been assigned the case at the time, but he’d seen pictures of what Regan had done to the pretty veterinarian in the clinic on that awful night. He put a notebook on the dining-room table and refused coffee. Diane Howes was a picture of her daughter at an age she would never reach. Elegant, slender, the strong hands and short nails of a woman accustomed to wrangling animals. Pops spied a pair of enormous Great Dane hounds staring at him through the windows to the patio, taking quiet but intense interest in his presence.

“I know you’ve already been interviewed by police as recently as a week ago about Regan,” Pops said gently, finally allowing his eyes to rest on Diane’s. “But I’ll just make sure by asking what I’m sure you’ve been asked—Regan has made no contact with you, has he? You’ve received no strange calls or visits?”

“No, nothing,” Diane Howes said. “Honestly, Regan Banks has been responsible for so much horror, I’m sure he doesn’t even remember Rachel or the effect he’s had on our lives. I saw her picture in the newspaper the other day. A single