Page 56 of The Lie Maker

I forced the words out. “I know.”

“A real father... would have been better at staying in touch after your mom passed. I wonder where he ended up.”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s kind of hard for me to believe he wouldn’t have contacted you over the years, directly or indirectly,” Earl said. “I mean, you say he was a good father. You’d think it would have just killed him to have to give up his son, to never see him again. I don’t get how anyone could do that. If it was the other way around, and you knew where he was, and he didn’t know where you were, wouldn’t you have gotten in touch? Arranged some kind of secret meeting? Something like that?”

“Hard to say.”

“But seriously, he’s never been in touch? One way or another? Didn’t he send messages through the witness protection program? Couldn’t they act as an intermediary?”

“Never heard a word,” I said, keeping a straight face.

He reached into his pocket and brought out a pack of cigarettes and a cheap lighter. I thought he’d given up smoking years ago.

“You mind?” Earl asked.

“Go ahead,” I said, and as he lit up, I thought back to the other night, and the glow of a cigarette I’d seen in the window of a low-slung car across the street. Before, I was guessing, Earl had unloaded his Porsche.

“Were you thinking of dropping by the other night? Parked out front, maybe?”

Earl looked puzzled. “Huh? No. Why would I do a thing like that?”

Thirty-One

It had taken Lana two days to track down Florence Knight, a Boston PD homicide detective who, Lana had been told, investigated the drowning deaths of Dr.Marie Sloan and retired judge Willard Bentley.

Detective Knight was something of a legend in the department, not so much for her investigative skills, although no one was in any way discounting those, but because of her name. She was Florence Straight before she got married to Ronald Knight, and given that this was back in the late 1970s, when not all women were hanging on to their own names, she became Florence Knight.

She wasn’t even out of the academy before she was given the nickname “Nightingale.”

And it had stuck for her entire career. Years ago, she’d debated whether to go back to the name Straight to avoid the nickname, but instead decided to embrace it. Now, two years away from retirement, she was known simply as Nightingale, most people not even aware that wasn’t her actual name.

Lana caught up with her coming out of a chowder place on Atlantic Avenue, a takeout container in her hand, about to get back behind the wheel of her unmarked car. Lana, across the street, called out, catching the woman’s attention before she settled in behind the wheel.

Knight sighed as Lana ran across the street, but the truth was, Knight saw a lot of herself in Lana. When she was Lana’s age—and oh, it was a long time ago, she thought—she was hustling to prove herself each and every day in a profession dominated by men. One might have thought things had progressed since then, but not nearly as much as they should. Newer, male detectives who did not know her well assumed she would be the one to get the coffees, or grab some notepads and pens if they were having a meeting, like she was some fucking secretary. The older detectives would smile and wait for the newbies to learn their lesson, which came in the form of something that had come to be known as the “Nightinglare,” a look Knight had perfected that, without a single word, said, “Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”

In their off-duty hours, usually over cosmos, Knight and Lana had shared a few war stories, and Knight had passed on whatever wisdom she could. It usually amounted to “Don’t take shit from nobody.”

Also, be prepared.

Two years earlier, while Lana was covering an angry demonstration at the Massachusetts State House, a burly man waving a crudely panted sign proclaiming lies! had gone after her when he realized she was with the newspaper. It had started with the screaming of obscenities, including multiple uses of the C-word, and then the man had thrown down his sign and appeared ready to punch Lana in the face.

Knight, who happened to be heading into the building at the time, spotted what was happening and intervened. She flashed her badge, pulled back her jacket far enough for the man to see the gun strapped to her hip, and shouted at him to back the fuck off.

To Lana’s relief, he did, running off to join his fellow protesters, no doubt bragging about how he’d put that bitch from the Star in her place.

Lana was shaken, and Knight took her for a drink the following afternoon. Said she needed to give some serious thought to better protecting herself. Take up karate. Carry a few surprises in her purse.

“If you’re going to suggest I carry a gun, that’s not happening,” Lana said. “And I think brass knuckles would kind of weigh down my handbag.”

“I’m not talking about anything like that.” She produced a couple of gifts: a pepper spray about the size of a lighter, and a small knife disguised as a lipstick.

“Are these even legal?” Lana had asked, unsure about whether to accept them.

“When you’re in a tight spot, you won’t give a shit,” Knight replied.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

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