The Last Lie She Told (Lies and Misdirection Book 1) Read online

  “Lee, no one signs a non-disclosure unless something bad has happened. I bluffed, and he folded. The article doesn’t give the roommate’s name but gives the student complex name, so let’s start there; there’s always a blabbermouth on hand. Let me do the talking while I’m into my little-old-lady frame of mind. Now, before we go, I need to fuel up on caffeine. There has to be a Starbucks in the student center. Let’s go.” She packed her tablet and intertwined her arm with mine; I suppose in character with her old-lady role. With Mary, you never knew what her game entailed. We were all her puppets being moved around at her will.

  The unsecured entrance to the building was too accessible, and someone needed to tighten up security. A visit to the resident assistant’s office gave us the name of Fiona’s last known roommate, Claire, who still had a room in the grad student apartments. After a few turns through crowded hallways and an elevator ride up to the fifth floor, we were knocking on a door. A disheveled woman of about twenty-five, who appeared to have just awoken, opened the door. After we explained we were tracking down Fiona, she leaned against the doorjamb to consider our request. Her eyes darted back and forth, and she chewed her right thumbnail for a few moments before she invited us in.

  She excused herself to change, a definite sign she was willing to spend time with us.

  “Lee, I changed my mind; you take this one. She gave you the twice over, and obviously wants to impress you,” Mary whispered. “Make sure you call her Claire, not miss. She wants to get personal.”

  “Thanks for the tip, Mary,” I said, having to restrain an eye roll.

  Claire returned dressed in yoga pants that were too tight and a top showing too much cleavage. Christ, the girl was young enough to be my daughter.

  “Claire, what can you tell us about the incident?” I asked, giving a quick eye sweep around the room.

  The girl disliked Fiona, and because of that, we gained a wealth of information. “She asked for it,” she said, snapping her hair into a ponytail as she leaned forward in the oversized chair.

  Now that was unexpected. “How so?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know her endgame, but what girl in her right mind dresses like she’s every guy’s Catholic schoolgirl fantasy?” she asked. She leaned back as she brought her legs up onto the chair.

  “Pardon?”

  “You know, the whole plaid skirt and saddle shoes. Every morning I’d watch Fiona put her costume on, different skirts, same style. She’d start with the oxford white shirts with darts at the chest to make sure it was taut there, and you’d be drawn in to check out her boobs on display because she’d left one-too-many buttons unbuttoned. Then the too-short box pleated skirt so that when she bent over to adjust her slouchy socks, you’d get an eyeful of her lace panties. And don’t get me started on how she polished those stupid shoes every night. Because the worst is yet to come, those stupid, stupid high-on-the-head pigtails just did me in.” She took a breath to collect her thoughts and calm down.

  “So, she wore a variation of this outfit every day?” I clarified. This conjured a fantasy I had to wipe from my mind to avoid an embarrassing situation that threatened to develop.

  “Yes, except when she went to her sex club. Then it was all leather, and ‘Look at me I’m a dominatrix.’ That crazy bitch even had nipple rings. I mean how, no, why would anyone want to put themselves through that much pain?” She looked between Mary and me for the answer to the question.

  I had no clue how to answer.

  “Shameful,” Mary responded.

  She nodded. “Right? So what did she expect advertising her goods like that?”

  “Did that behavior attract a lot of male attention?” Mary asked, as if taking her into her confidence.

  “Of course. Light blonde hair, schoolgirl fantasy, and leather, men tripped over their dicks chasing after her. It was a game to her. Picture the barbeque scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlett sat on the porch and men tripped over themselves to be at her beck and call. That’s Fiona. Every man, young and old, fell under her spell. Even old Professor Langston fell for her ruse. And what did that get him? Fired.” She brought her feet back to the ground and sat forward for emphasis.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you saying Fiona had a romantic relationship with a professor?” That startled me, but it shouldn’t have after learning of her relationship with Hightower.

  “Nothing questionable about it. She fucked the old man’s brains out. Now I can’t honestly say I didn’t get some joy out of the fact it happened to him the way he sat all on his moral high horse. But he was just one of the many that, even after she’d dumped their asses, still followed her around like trained puppies. And I’ll add one more thing. She even tried flirting with my boyfriend, Adam. And get this, she offered a three-way. As if—”

  “OK. I’ve got the idea, and you don’t seem to approve of her lifestyle. But who would? That’s a crazy situation you were living in,” I said, and her down-turned lips at the corners and a bob of her head showed I’d scored points. “What can you tell us about what happened?”

  “All I know is what I read online and heard from campus gossip. Someone heard Fiona screaming as they came back to their room. They went to her bedroom and found her tied up in some crazy way, naked on her stomach. I didn’t see her because I’d spent the night at Adam’s. The floor buzz was she had a cherry-red bottom, whip marks that ripped her skin apart and bled like crazy. Somehow, she’d worked a ball gag from her mouth, and her lips were a mess and swollen. It’s rumored whoever did this sodomized her. I don’t want that picture in my head again,” she said, moving her feet under her butt.

  Mary and I exchanged glances, and she continued the interview.

  “Claire, dear, that’s awful. People do horrible things to each other. There’s no reasonable explanation for it. From the small news article, we read, it appeared they arrested someone. But it was impossible to figure out the outcome from the article,” Mary said, patting Claire’s arm.

  “That’s not unusual; around here they keep everything on campus. None of the sexual assaults reach the paper; the administration locks that shit down. You don’t want donors squawking now, do you? Anyway, Fiona said her attacker was another student. He wore a face mask, but she said he had a distinct voice, and she recognized his accent. She said Mahir Abajian did it.

  “It was all hush-hush when his parents flew in from Manhattan, with his mother being a big shot lawyer and his father a doctor. If you want my opinion, Fiona overplayed this and bit off more than she could chew. She probably thought there would be a quick hush-money payoff, and she could be ‘persuaded’ to drop the charges. Wrong. His mother swooped in all badass Armenian in her red-soled Louboutins, and those twelve-hundred-dollar shoes kicked ass and took names. By the time the drama settled down, the district attorney had dropped the charges, and the school gave Mahir and Fiona both a golden parachute of early graduation. Shit, if I could get that deal, I’d pay someone to beat the hell out of me,” she said, twisting her ponytail between her fingers.

  That information was a lot to digest.

  “Was anyone convicted?” I asked.

  “Hell no. After mama bear got finished with Fiona, her ass was gone, and good riddance. She may have tried to shake the school down for money, but she got early graduation with honors. Bye-bye.”

  “Did anyone investigate the sex ring she frequented?” Mary asked. “What you describe sounds like something people like that would be involved in.”

  Jesus, I didn’t need her getting in the middle of a sex club and wanting to put that on our to-do list.

  “I have no idea. I have a theory. If Fiona wasn’t doing it for the payoff, then maybe one of those perverts she hangs with had it in for her. Adam, my boyfriend, explained she was something called a top, the one in charge. But the way they found her, he thought she’d pissed off someone, and it was payback. He said probably another top gave her an embarrassing ass whoppin’. Just saying.”

  “Well, that is an
other avenue isn’t it?” I said, giving that a moment to sink in. “Claire, do you know anything about her family, like where they come from or what her story is?”

  “Connecticut, no, wait, the Boston area. I can’t remember. We weren’t that close. Her mother is a bitch with a capital B, and her father a pussy with a capital P. That whole family could do with years of therapy and drugs and still not be right in the head. That’s about all I can tell you. You should talk to the private investigator Mahir’s mother hired to dig up dirt on Fiona,” she said.

  “Do you know his name?” Mary asked.

  “Nope, sorry. All I know is Mahir was pretty traumatized and went back to New York and is working somewhere in Manhattan. It’s a shame what happened. His family had been through a rough time in Armenia and emigrated here and established new roots. We weren’t friends, and I didn’t know much about him other than what I told you, but when I saw him, he always had his head in a book and kept to himself. Kinda quiet and fragile. You never know what someone is capable of, but damn. I didn’t think that skinny little guy would have it in him to overpower Fiona and then beat and rape her ass.”

  She had a point, if he were as she’d described him.

  “Anything else you can tell us?” I asked.

  “The woman was an attention whore. She loved pitting one guy against another for attention. Then add in jealousy, hormones, and possibly anabolic steroids, and what happens? An explosion!” she said as she remained still. It appeared like she was deciding if she were going to share anything else.

  “You people aren’t cops, so you can’t arrest me. I may have used her computer once, and I may have found sick shit on it. Extreme BDSM sites and that sugar daddy site that was on Dr. Phil. That’s all I’m saying. I have a class in an hour, and beauty takes time, so I need to wrap this up.”

  She smiled as I handed her my card and asked her to keep us updated with anything that might come to mind.

  As we walked out of the complex for grad students, I asked Mary, “Where do we start, boss?”

  “I’d like to visit that high-end sex club while we’re here—”

  “Yeah, that’s not happening. That crowd will take one look at you, think you escaped from a nursing home, and shut the door in your face. If we need to visit it, I’ll be the one to do it.

  “Now let’s get serious. I think we should touch base with this Mahir guy and see what he can tell us. But first, let’s get a copy of the police report. It will take too long if we go to the police for them to approve and process the report, so let’s go to the county courthouse where it should be part of the criminal file. Unless they sealed it, it should be part of the public record.”

  “Hold up, slick,” Mary said as she rummaged through her suitcase of a purse. She pulled out her phone and after a few false starts found what she was looking for. “The county uses online records. Here’s the whole file. Come on, let’s head to the car and print out the report.”

  “You mean head all the way back to the hotel to print it out?” I asked.

  “Lee, don’t be daft.” She rummaged in her bag and produced a portable printer with a car adaptor.

  Sweet Jesus, who is this woman?

  “Mary, forget the printer. Hand me the phone, and let me skim the report.”

  Fiona stated she’d never seen the man. She’d identified him by voice only. He’d had a distinct accent she recognized, and she said it was Mahir Abajian. A fellow neurophysiology student in the PhD program. His alibi was loose, and based on her identification, he’d been arrested. The police had processed the crime scene and investigated, but nothing had tied him to the crime. Some clerk had been sloppy to allow a rape report to be put in the county file.

  “I still think we should check out the sex club,” Mary said.

  “Drop it. No one from the sex club will talk to us. Technically, what they’re promoting is sexual battery, which they’ll argue all parties consent to, but the law still frowns down on it. If we go in, it’ll have to be undercover, and I have other options to explore before we go down that road.”

  “I disagree. The guy in Seattle we interviewed at Benjamin’s said she was heavy into sadomasochism,” she said.

  I glanced over and saw her searching for BDSM clubs and groups.

  “I’m not saying we should discount it, Mary. But remember, Fiona was trolling websites and sex chatrooms. If she was doing it here, her search history might still be on her work computer in Seattle. Let’s map this out, one step at a time. First, let’s see if we can set up a meeting with this Mahir guy.”

  An hour later we reached out to Mahir who refused to speak to us by phone but agreed to meet with us the next day at a place in Manhattan.

  Lee

  We took a red-eye flight into New York. Manhattan has a life force, almost like its own ecosystem. You either go with the flow, or it spits you out. It reminded me of the Chicago buzz, and I fell right back into a routine of being hypervigilant, waiting for something bad to happen. Our appointment with Mahir wasn’t until one o’clock, which left us time for lunch and to plan a way to get the information we needed.

  “Lee, I should take this interview. My touch is softer than yours, and the boy might be unsettled by us bringing this back up. The word ‘cop’ is written all over you, and based on his experience, he may be reluctant to talk to us,” Mary said as she forked her chicken salad.

  She was right. After twenty-two years on the force, I still carried myself in a way that screamed law enforcement. The only thing missing was my sidearm. Law enforcement was in my DNA, coming from a family of officers and agents that traced back to my grandfather, the first of the family to walk the beat in Boston. We were a hardened, closed-off group who lived the life expected of us. If you dared to say you wanted to share your feelings you would be mocked by the rest of the family, so all of us learned to bottle up our fears. The one emotion acceptable to the Stone clan was anger, so much so we were encouraged to express it through the use of our fists. My brothers and I spent many an hour in the principal’s office for disorderly conduct, only to be praised by my dad for being men.

  “First off, Mary, he’s a man, not a boy. I’ll hand it to you; the interviews you’ve conducted produced some excellent results. However, since this one involves someone who might be a criminal, I’m going to do it. I’ve done hundreds of interviews, and this guy won’t give us much time. We need to get to the crux of the matter. What would be Fiona’s motivation in falsely accusing this guy? Did she wake up one morning and say, ‘Today is the day I’ll destroy Mahir’? That seems unlikely. Something happened to get her to that place,” I said, pouring my third cup of coffee and feeling my nerves vibrate.

  “There, right there. You already have it in your head he’s guilty and just got away with it. Your whole demeanor screams he’s guilty, and he’ll become defensive—”

  Before she completed her monologue, the phone rang, and Jackson’s name appeared on my screen. I put the phone on the table, hit the speaker, and lowered the volume. “We’re both here.”

  “Any progress?” he asked.

  “Why?” Mary asked, filling her cup.

  “Well, Mary, maybe because I’m the managing partner and want to make sure nothing you’ve done so far has opened me up to a lawsuit,” he threw back. I heard papers spitting out of a printer and computer keys being pressed.

  “Jacki boy, I provided you thorough documentation, even using bold print and yellow highlights. No one’s escorted us from any premises, and there are no petitions for a restraining order pending. So, why are you really butting your nose into our business?”

  I laughed silently. This woman was a real ball-buster.

  Jackson cleared his throat and took a breath to calm himself before continuing. “Well, I see an interview is on tap with this Mahir guy today, and I wanted to review your strategy. I assume Lee will take the lead, and I wanted to brainstorm with you both.”

  “Jackson, we have this covered—” she started.
/>   “Mary, we are now in a position where a misspoken word or accusation may cause a lawsuit, so I beg to differ that you’ve got this covered. I’d like to hear from Lee.”

  He could have been a little less confrontational, but I suppose his history with Mary warranted his concern.

  “Morning, Jackson,” I said. “I understand your concern, and I can assure you, we have this. I reviewed the case against Mahir last night and don’t understand how the Cali police thought they’d make it stick. This guy’s from a well-to-do family and never been in any trouble. I’d call him a nerd. The witness statements were thin, and there was no way to place him at the scene that night. The identification involved a voice ID from the victim because of his accent. But hell, half the program she was in is filled with people with foreign accents. So how she could identify this one under a moment of intense stress is questionable.

  “He passed the polygraph, and during the interview showed no sign of fabricating his story. His mother, who’s an attorney, sat in for the interrogation, and her abrasive manner seemed to set the lead detective off. I believe, from the encounter with her, he got a hard-on for this case. They didn’t follow up on any other leads; although, there were several men Fiona had snubbed,” I said.

  “But maybe they didn’t have accents,” Jackson said.

  Fair point.

  “We’ll never know, because they zeroed in on him, and that was it. Look, I’m no profiler, but this Fiona sounds like a narcissistic manipulator, a sociopath. I think she amused herself by toying with people’s emotions. Somehow, this Mahir got on her radar, and she targeted him. My approach to him will be I assume he got twisted up in a game he didn’t understand.

  “Though, I might be wrong. For all I know, this guy might fly the same freak flag as Fiona. If I get that vibe, I’ll change course with my questions. There had to be a reason the DA dropped it. The school wanted the whole thing swept under the rug, to get them both off campus as quickly as possible. This event wasn’t national news. So, I don’t think this guy is a serial rapist.”