Page 87 of The Lie Maker

I called up the guide to get more information on the episode, found the title, then searched to see which of the countless video-on-demand services had it in its repertoire. I found the episode and hit play.

Then I fast-forwarded until I got to the part where the detectives were interviewing that waiter, and froze the image.

Studied it. Looked at the actor. He seemed familiar to me.

I picked up my phone, brought up the IMDb app, which told you everything in the world you could possibly want to know about every movie and TV show ever made, went to Law & Order, and found details about this particular episode. I scrolled down to information about the cast, including who played all the bit parts.

I hadn’t taken note of the name of the waiter, but I found a small, thumbnail headshot of the actor I thought had played him. The character’s name was Del Rizzo, and he had been played by an actor named Garth Walton. I went to his page to find more pictures of him and a listing of his roles.

He hadn’t done much, and he certainly hadn’t done much in the last decade. One of a million actors who’d hoped that a bit part on a network show would lead to something bigger, only to have those dreams dashed. Maybe, given that the show was shot in New York, he’d had more of a stage career. Broadway and off-Broadway stuff.

I supposed there were other sites I could check to learn more, but for now I felt I had learned as much as I needed to know from online entertainment sites about Garth Walton.

Or, as I knew him, Bill.

Forty-Four

The vice president’s speech was a bust. Oh, she was there, and she spoke, but she didn’t say anything that anyone would have expected her not to say, and she did not make herself available for questions after, but was whisked away in a bulletproof limo and escorted by about thirty cars back to her vice presidential jet, which was warming up on the tarmac at Logan. There wasn’t even a respectable protest outside the venue, as one might have expected, which was either a good thing or a bad thing, Lana decided, depending on how you looked at it. A protest would at least have meant the current administration was doing something that upset some people, because when you were upsetting one constituency, you could sure as shit bet you were making a different constituency very happy. Such was the nature of politics. And not only was there no protest, the audience reaction was relatively muted. Polite applause, maybe a third of the audience on their feet. If you couldn’t get people riled up, you probably couldn’t get them excited about you, either.

Lana found a seat in the hotel lobby and filed a quick story to the newsroom from her laptop, then hoofed it home, since the speech was delivered at a hotel within a few blocks of her place. It was only in the moments before she fell asleep that she gave even a moment’s thought to what more she might be able to learn about Jack’s father.

God, and I thought my family was weird, she thought. Next to Jack’s parents, her father’s obsession with tinplate toys from the early 1900s and her mother’s occasional manic baking episodes where she’d spend five days in the kitchen making bread and then taking it all to the park to feed pigeons seemed trivial. At least neither of her parents had killed anyone or taken on a new identity.

She was up early the next day to cover the first court appearance of a woman who had lost her daughter in a mass shooting and was charged with setting fire to a firearms retailer. Gun rights advocates wanted her jailed, while the gun control faction had turned her into a hero.

The case was getting underway when Lana sensed a vibration from her purse. She reached in for her phone and saw that Florence Knight was calling her.

“Shit,” Lana said under her breath.

She discreetly slipped out of her seat and exited the courtroom, tapping the phone and whispering, “Hang on.” Once the courtroom door had closed behind her, Lana was able to speak in a normal voice.

“I was in court,” she explained.

Knight was not the least bit interested in why. “I ran that New Hampshire plate.”

“Fantastic,” Lana said.

“What’s this about?”

“Just something I’m checking out.”

A sigh. “We still have a deal on that other matter?”

“Yes,” Lana said. “But you know how it works. If this breaks somewhere else, I’ve got no choice but to run with it. And I was doing some digging on another story and stumbled on something that might be a lead for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“Your dead judge was the one who sentenced Galen Frohm years ago. It was a big case back in the late nineties. Big CEO type. Owned motel and fast food chains and dollar stores. Got one of his people to commit a few murders.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she said. “Willard Bentley was the judge in hundreds of high-profile cases, including a couple of terrorism ones. We’re looking at those. This might be some kind of payback thing.” She paused. “That was off the record.”

“Understood,” Lana said, feeling deflated. She thought she’d been onto something with the Frohm connection. “The plate?”

“It’s registered to—”

Lana, without a pen in her hand, said, “Can you email it or text it—”

“Yeah, that’s what I want. A digital trail of me helping you. And Lana, swear to God, if you’re recording this, I will never—”

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