Liar Liar - James Patterson Page 0,9

to survey the chaos, the smashed coffee table and the blood pool where my friend had fallen. Numb, working purely on cold, calm directions coming from somewhere deep in my subconscious, I’d packed a bag with some clothes, the cash that was lying around my home, my phone, and all my IDs. I’d locked the apartment, gone straight to a bank, and emptied my accounts of the few thousand dollars I had left after my brother’s trial. This I’d put straight into the backpack.

I’d copied essential numbers from my phone, switched it off, dumped it, and got a taxi back to Kings Cross, where I’d spent many of my first cases in Sex Crimes taking statements from working girls abused by their pimps or clients. I found someone I knew and, on her recommendation, headed for a back-alley phone dealership where I purchased an untraceable sim card and handset. Standing in the alley under blinking LED lights strung over the battered doorway, I’d called my boss. In the small, dark storage room where I’d bought the phone, a Chinese family was sitting down to dinner surrounded by unopened boxes of phones in every shape, color, and size. The laptop that served as their television set was being pawed at by a toddler in pajamas. My brother’s face was warped by the angle of the screen, the banner under his chin half hidden by Chinese subtitles.

Breaking news: GRK accused Samuel Jacob Blue dead after prison fight

I’d been so out of it, Pops was on the line for a long moment before I spoke. I barely remembered dialing.

“I can’t let him get away with it,” I’d said finally.

“Harry? Harry, listen.” Pops had sounded puffed, the way I’d always known him, an old man trying to control a much younger, much angrier fighter in the ring. “I know this hurts. But don’t do anything. I’m warning you. Don’t—”

“I’m sorry,” I’d said.

I’d never stopped being sorry. I was sorry for every night that I didn’t come in, for every phone call I knew Whitt and Pops were making to my original, switched-off phone, leaving messages that would never be picked up, hoping to talk me down. I was sorry that I had not gone to Sam’s funeral. That I had not called our mother. That I had not visited Tox in hospital. I regretted what I was about to do now, as I sat in the darkened car park of the Department of Family and Community Services, smoking a cigarette and watching the automatic back doors opening and closing as workers left for the night.

I’d committed plenty of crimes since I went underground. Theft. Fraud. Fare evasion. The crimes were getting worse.

Resisting arrest. Assaulting a police officer.

When there was one car in the parking lot, I stood and flicked open the blade on my pocketknife.

I was about to commit my worst crime yet.

Chapter 14

THE REMAINING CAR was a brand new Toyota Corolla, rose red and shining in the light of the moon. I snuck up to the side of it and punctured the front passenger-side tire with my blade before dashing behind a row of bushes.

Only minutes passed before a plump woman in a long denim skirt came wandering out of the back doors of the building, locking the glass door behind her and shouldering a heavy handbag. She was typical of the child-services women I’d traipsed after for most of my childhood in foster care. The long skirt was good for a little kid to hide behind, and the handbag, if squeezed, would crackle with the sound of lolly bags. I waited while the woman crossed the lot and slid into the car, dumping her handbag on the seat beside her with the crackle I’d expected. For a moment or two, she appreciated the new feel of the car, the strange slant toward the front left side. When she exited the vehicle and walked around the front of it, I crouched, ready.

“Oh, shit,” she wailed, looking around the empty lot. “Shiiiiiit!”

I waited. She grabbed her phone and dialed while she popped the boot and went around the back. As she began speaking, I snuck forward and went for the driver’s-side door.

“It’s me,” I heard her saying. “I’ve got a flat tire. Can you believe it? No, I’m just gonna change it myself. But stay on the line with me, will you? I’m all alone out here. I’ll put you on speaker.”

I squatted in the doorway as the car shifted all around me, the