Trust Me When I Lie: A True Crime-Inspired Thriller

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Books. Change. Lives.

Copyright © 2019 by Benjamin Stevenson

Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks

Cover design by Ervin Serrano

Cover images © wilpunt/iStock

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

Extract from Letters of Flannery O’Connor: The Habit of Being by Flannery O’Connor reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the Estate of Flannery O’Connor.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

(630) 961-3900

sourcebooks.com

Originally published as Greenlight in 2018 in Australia by Michael Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Random House Australia Pt Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stevenson, Benjamin, author.

Title: Trust me when I lie / Benjamin Stevenson.

Other titles: Greenlight

Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Landmark, [2019] |

"Originally published as Greenlight in 2018 in Australia by Michael

Joseph, an imprint of Penguin Random House Australia"--Title page verso.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019000962 | (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PR9619.4.S746 G74 2019 | DDC 823/.92--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019000962

Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

S01E01

Prologue

S01E02

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

S01E03

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

S01E04

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

S01E05

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

S01E06

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

S01E07

Epilogue

Reading Group Guide

A Conversation with the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Back Cover

For Mum and Dad

"Life and death: they are one, at core entwined.

Who understands himself from his own strain

presses himself into a drop of wine

and throws himself into the purest flame."

—Rainer Maria Rilke

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

—Flannery O’Connor

Reasonable doubts are for innocent people.

—Kenneth R. Kratz, Special Prosecutor, State of Wisconsin v. Steven A. Avery

S01E01

Cold Open

Exhibit A:

Piece of polyester rope. Length: 70 cm. Diameter: 1 cm. Color: Blue and yellow. Fiber profiles match Exhibit F (fibers recovered from victim’s neck). DNA: Not present.

Prologue

Previously

It was the dripping that woke her. And the smell.

In the dark—it might have even been night, though it was always dark—she couldn’t isolate the sound. She decided it was important to know this, if only because it barricaded her from her usual first thought on waking: he’s back.

Steady and rhythmic on the concrete floor: plink, plink. Not rain. Rain was the sound of fingers thrumming on a car roof, an almost underwater echo down here.

Plink. Plink. Plink. Not rain.

Her left arm was draped out of the bed; she wondered if she’d finally managed to…if the drip was coming from her wrist. She’d thought about it once but failed for courage. He’d found her cradled in a corner, shard in hand, skin unpierced. Too scared to do it, he’d said, and taken the bottles away.

The bottles were gone now. Plink. Plink. Not that either, then.

The dripping sped up. Individual drips blurring together in a spatter. He’d pissed in the corner once, on the floor. Her pulse quickened. Had he come—

No. That had been loud. And hot. Steam rising from the puddle as if he’d pissed acid. She rubbed her forehead, a near-physical memory: the condensation, the way it had settled, sticky, on her brow. Not that. It was cold now. It was always cold down here.

She thought it was coming from her right. Elevated, from the roof. A pipe in the ceiling maybe. But she’d scoured the bare walls, and she remembered no pipes. Besides, pipe water didn’t smell so cloying.

She sat up. Now the dripping seemed to be coming from in front and behind her. More than one leak, then. She put a foot on the floor and gasped. It was freezing. Wet. Tendrils of liquid snaked in between her toes. She stood up, shrugging her blanket off. Shivered. The dripping was getting louder, all around now. Was she imagining it?

It was hard to keep track of things. The time, the day, the most obvious markers. How long she’d been there. Sometimes she began to lose even the most certain things. Who she was. Who she used to be. In the dark, it was easy to lose yourself.

What was her name again? Sometimes she wrote it down. Traced it in the condensation on the walls. Just to remind herself. Others used to write her name, too. Journalists. Detectives. That sort of thing.

She took a step, felt beads of liquid pool at her heel, tumble down the arch of her foot and suicide off her toe. Near the center of the room it was drier. The residue on her feet peeled off with each step. Shedding skin.

Her name would be gone from the papers now.

In the center of the room hung a long piece of thick cord with a knot at the end. It turned on a single dull light. She swung her arm, missed, rotated her torso, and tried again.

Maybe her name would pop up again. Perhaps an obituary (though the memory of the shard of glass, useless against her pale skin, suggested that particular mercy was out of reach). Maybe one of those retrospective crime shows. Yes. In a couple more years, maybe someone would write her name again. Until then, she had to remember it. In case no one else did.

She felt the cord bounce off her forearm. She wished she had her shoes on. Her soles were gently stuck to the floor, the fluid tacky and deepening around the sides of her feet.

Her name. She tried to focus on that. What did it start with? She knew her parents’ names—Malcolm and Helen. But she’d lost their faces now. Her mother’s had been the first to go. Her father’s soon after. She still had images of them in her head, sure, but those images were distorted. They were the cinematic versions of her parents, missing the moments that made them real—a slight bruise on an elbow, the black tooth at the back of her mother’s jaw you could only see when she laughed: those human flaws. In her mind, her dad wore a suit—he hadn’t worn a suit since he’d retired—and a tie he didn’t own. His face was a kaleidoscope, composited from a fragmented collection of memories. There was only one face she remembered now.

She shook her head, went again for the cord. The liquid sounded as if it was gushing down the walls all around her now. The sickly sweet smell had crept into the back of her throat. She tried to remind herself of these simple facts often. Malcolm and Helen. Plink. Malcolm and Helen. Simple concepts, her mind wrestling them into reality. No one could take those from her. Not even him.

Eliza! Her cheeks flushed with the discovery. Malcolm, Helen, and Eliza. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten so much. Her own name fished, thrashing from the swamp of her confusion. But now she had the name in her head, she couldn’t fit into it. It was as if it were someone else’s name. Someone else’s confidence hitching around Australia. Someone else’s charm talking her into work at pubs and farms and vineyards. Someone else’s brashness cashing in on some good old-fashioned blackmail. Maybe she couldn’t remember her name because that Eliza was dead, nothing but a wisp of lingering smoke from a snuffed-out candle. You’re being dramatic, she told herself. You’re confused from being down here for… How long had she been down here?

That was a more slippery truth. She’d begun by counting sleeps, but that proved futile when she started sleeping when she was hungry. And she was always hungry. A few months, though—that sounded fair. Longer? A year? Long enough to not be in the papers. Long enough to lose herself. She felt the cord against the back of her wrist and twirled her hand to catch it.

She thought back to the shard of glass, harmless in her hand. He said she’d been too scared. He was wrong. She hadn’t been scared enough.

Eliza Dacey turned on the light.

She saw her bloodred footprints leading from the bed. Droplets sputtered from the roof, feeding the dark liquid monster that was consuming the floor. And long, almost-black rivulets ran down all four walls. All a violent, cascading red.

The walls were bleeding.

She was scared enough now.

S01E02

Greenlight

Officer Ian McCarthy of the New South Wales Police Force, after having been first duly sworn, did testify:

Direct Examination

BY Ms. ALEXIS WHITE:

Q: For the benefit of the court, could you state your name and occupation?

A: Officer Ian McCarthy. I am a police officer stationed in Cessnock, and I patrol the surrounding area.

Q: And this area includes Birravale and the Wade Wines vineyard?

A: Affirmative.

Q: You can just say yes.

A: Sure.

Q: And you were one of the first responders to the scene of the murder of Ms. Eliza Dacey?

A: Yes. I was driving, and Andrew Freeman was in the passenger seat.

Q: Tell us what you did when you got there.

A: Well, we arrived around 2:00 a.m. We drove up to the victim. Got out, picked her up, and put her in the back of the car to take her to the hospital.

Q: And why would you do that?

A: I don’t— Your Honor, I don’t understand the question.

The Court: Rephrase, Ms. White.

Q: Why wouldn’t you cordon off the crime scene for a murder investigation? Why did you put her in the back of the car?

A: She might have been alive.

Q: You didn’t notice she was dead?

A: I’m not a doctor. She was a bit blue, I guess.

(laughter) The Court: Settle down.

Q: Did you look at the body?

A: Yes.

Q: You saw a naked girl with two amputated fingers crammed in her mouth and you didn’t think she was dead enough to establish a crime scene?

A: Uh—affirmative.

Chapter 1

May

If Eliza Dacey had only had the common decency to wear shoes when she was murdered, Jack Quick’s life would have been a lot easier.

At the very least, he wouldn’t have been picking through shrubbery at two in the morning. And, probably, he wouldn’t be famous.

He pulled foliage aside left and right, bent over at the hip like he was looking for the coldest beer in a cooler. He wished he’d brought a better flashlight—the dull, rusty glow only served to blend the browns of sticks and leaves together.

He straightened up, closed his eyes, and inhaled. The corners of his eyes were hot, tired. He was beginning to doubt he’d seen it at all. It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive out here. Picture lock was at dawn. Not much time left.

It was a smallish area to search. Most of the vineyard was neat, short grass, though this section was a small natural garden that backed onto wilder bush past the fence line. He’d strayed too far in, he thought, and took a step back to center himself against a large gum tree. He winced. He’d rolled his ankle jumping over the fence.

Behind him, trellises raked down a slight incline toward a homestead. It was a red-painted, old-fashioned structure with a tin, peaked roof and strong wooden door. He knew; he’d knocked on it before. Not tonight, though.

There was a small gravel walk between the house and a much newer building, a circular one from which the vines seemed to splay out like spokes in a wheel. This building sparkled in the sun, 360 degrees of curved glass windows. Inside, he knew, were crisp, white tablecloths and palm-sized wine goblets, row after row. Tables, glasses, wines, windows, grapes—vineyards are all about symmetry. It was only five years old too; Curtis had built it when he moved in. Only bought the winery off the old owner, Whittaker, on the condition they knocked the old restaurant down first. Didn’t want to be attached to anything old. The new restaurant was a beautiful structure, a bona fide tourist attraction, but Jack hadn’t been able to gawk on the drive in—his headlights had been off since Pokolbin.

He bent back over and resumed scratching through the vegetation. Four years was a lot of regrowth. The flashlight was too dim, useless. He pulled out his phone, flicked the light on. It scorched the earth white. Too bright. A beacon. He shoved it back in his pocket.

He chanced a look back at the house. The lights were off. Good.

It was freezing. Mist cut the sky in half horizontally, as if the world had a ceiling. Most of the vines were laden with fruit, but nearby, some of the lattices were empty. He could see their wooden stakes and bald wires, stark in the moonlight. Homemade prison fences. As if there was something in this serene, symmetrical estate that needed to be kept here.

Jack didn’t know a lot about wine making, but he knew that soil quality was bantered more than sports out here. Acidity. That was a word they loved using. He looked at the empty vines. The soil here, perhaps it was spoiled.

He got his phone back out, cupped his hand, and angled the light at the ground. The object had been on the right, on-screen. He started at the base of the tree, swept to the right, slowly brought it back in. When he hit the tree, he tilted the phone up and swept to the right again. He hoped he might not have seen it on the screen at all. That he might have imagined it. He leveraged the angle again, swept back out.

There. It was real. He cursed again the dead girl’s lack of foresight. He had a decision to make now. The difference between success, fame, a legacy, and fading away like he always had. This would ruin everything he’d worked for. He knew what he wanted to do. He also knew what he should do. Those feelings were not the same.

The homestead lights switched on.

Crunching gravel bore through the silence. A whistle. A faster patter now, many quick, small steps. A dog.

He didn’t have time to think; he grabbed the object and ran. Get there. Come on. Get there. It was a lopsided run, favoring his left, and he lumbered over the fence hard and landed on his side. Dropped the object. Fuck. The grass was wet against his cheek. The mist had settled, descending ghosts.

A strong beam shot up in the air, cutting through the fog. Unexpectedly, he felt a pang of not fear but jealousy: Lauren had a better flashlight than he did.

He pushed himself up to his knees, patted the ground until he found it. He ran to the car, immediately felt dizzy—too much running on an empty stomach—and leaned against the hood for a second. He had a second. Breathed in, tried not to focus on the pain. The dog sounded close now, no more time. He jumped in, tossing his find on the passenger seat, and shot off, no headlights, into the darkness.

The moon was high and bright. Vast quadruple-lane bridges spanned canyons hundreds of meters deep. In the daylight, red-rock cliff faces plunged into deep-blue, glittering water below. But in the dark, the bridges soared over nothingness, long black holes. In between gorges, rock walls loomed, the road a deep wound blasted through each mountain. Not a tunnel, a gash—open to the sky but encased in rock, dark with trickling water on either side. The bridges and cliff walls alternated every couple of hundred meters, giving Jack the feeling he was both in the middle of the air and deep underground. Safe enough now, he flicked the headlights on.

He gripped the steering wheel so hard his fingers were white and the curve of his bones showed through. He’d always had thin, cold hands. Bad circulation. Vampiric fingers designed to protrude from, curl around the lids of, coffins. Not a man’s hands, really.

He crunched the transmission into fifth. The mist had settled low on the road, illuminated in the headlights. His car broke it apart, sending the rolling vapors back to the gutters, where it stayed until he’d passed, when it crept back onto the road, reforming like it had never been broken.

After a few kilometers, he had to pull over. His head was swimming; his vision, fuzzy. He took a sip of water. Sometimes that helped, something in the mouth. His hands hurt, peppered with tiny scratches. He’d been looking behind him, but he hadn’t seen any following lights. He didn’t really expect any, having stolen something that wasn’t even supposed to be there.

Stolen. The word tasted bitter. It wasn’t meant to be like that.

What felt worse was that, in his mad dash to the car, he’d run right through her spot. The patch of overgrown grass at the end of the final row of grapes, closest to the road.

That was where Eliza had been found. Four years ago. Strangled. Two fingers cut off and shoved in her mouth. Naked. Barefoot.

That definitely would have fucked with the acidity.

The network was housed in a large old-fashioned building about twenty-five minutes’ walk and—depending on Sydney traffic—twenty-five minutes’ drive from Jack’s terrace home. It could be seen from a couple of streets away. Only eight stories tall, yet it loomed, as older buildings tend to do. There wasn’t much adorning the outside, just the red-and-blue logo on a spire and a few vacant parapets. Jack had suggested to friends and colleagues that it could do with some gargoyles, just to spice things up. But they’d disagreed, suggesting that objects of snarling menace would clash with the overall aesthetic of the place. Jack couldn’t see their point; after all, it was network television.

Late night or early morning? Jessica asked as Jack swiped his pass. The plexiglass saloon-door partition folded inward, admitting him into the ultra-modern foyer. Curvy and uncomfortable furniture was scattered across the harshly lit waiting room. Someone had told him early in his career that you had to have a strong back to work in television. Based on the furniture here, this had mostly proved true. The message was clear to TV dreamers: Don’t cold call.

Jessica was the day guard, the night-shift guards having just knocked off. Jack had made it back before sunrise, but only just. The breakfast producers, who he always liked to dodge, would be in. He handed her his ID.

Season finale, he offered.

In this building, if you looked scruffy, it was either a finale, a premiere, or you’d just been axed. Jack knew his hair was too long—it hung down past his ears—and his beard was coming in patches. He tried to remember the last time he’d shaved. Episode 3? He measured time in production schedules now. Monday, Friday, Sunday—meaningless. Instead, greenlight, picture lock, final cut, air date. Jack put his scratched hands in his pockets and shifted his weight to his good foot. Limping and bloodied hands were a sure sign of an axing.

You’re all good. Jess held out the ID just far enough away that Jack had to lean in to get it. Bait. She leaned in too, lowered her voice conspiratorially. I can’t wait for tonight.

Jack nodded. He’d had this conversation with a lot of women. And a lot of men.

You know, my husband, he thinks he did it.

Does he?

Me, I’m not sure. You’re right, you know, about how they ganged up on him. I think… Jess had become distracted and put Jack’s swipe card down on her side of the counter. If he were directing their conversation, Jack thought, he’d film this scene for comic effect. Though he’d need to recast Jessica, whose sensible brown bun and buttoned-up navy security shirt wouldn’t cut it. No, she’d need to be younger. Not security, either. Pencil skirt, do something with a blouse. Pretty too. Not for eye candy, but because mockery was easier comedy if the women watching were jealous. Gum too. Rabbiting on like this, she’d have to chew gum. Jack blinked and fictional Jessica disappeared. He felt a pang of guilt for thinking about Jess that way, which ebbed quickly with the rationalization that he was in a hurry, and, besides, she was still talking. …feel sorry for him, you know. Hard done by. So, do you think he’s guilty, then?

I’m really sorry. I’d love to chat, but I’m on a deadline. Jack nodded at his ID. Do you mind?

Oh, sorry.

It’s nothing. Just in a rush.

Of course. She pressed a button and the next set of saloon doors gave way. The main office floor was huge, crisscrossed with felt-walled cubicles. The carpet smelled of instant coffee—ground in. During peak news hours, this floor heaved with scurrying journalists weaving from desk to desk, printer-ink coffee sloshing in stained mugs. The advantage of having a dedicated edit suite on the third floor: no powwows. Also, not having to use words like powwow. See you tomorrow?

Maybe. Might not need to come in here anymore. Jack hurried over to the elevators and stepped inside.

Season 2? Jess called from the desk.

Not unless someone else gets murdered, I suppose.

The elevator doors slid closed. Sanctuary.

Upstairs, the door to his editing room was still shut. Taped across the inset window was a piece of paper, hastily scrawled on in black marker:

If you don’t want Curtis Wade to cut off your fingers, fuck off.

Jack held his card up to the reader and waited for the whir and click. One of the breakfast producers whipped past—tailored shirt, tapered in, the type Jack couldn’t wear—until he recognized Jack and reeled to a stop.

Mate, let’s talk about getting you on tomorrow.

Jack had never met this man before. He didn’t even know what program on referred to. Did this man chat up women this way? Babe, I’ll get you on.

For Jack, the attention had felt good up until around episode 4, but he knew now no one just gave spots away. If he went on this bloke’s show, Jack would be doing him a favor. Not the other way around. Maybe it was ingrained from producing his podcast on his own, but he still preferred to work alone. A pat on the back, in this building, was because you had shit on your fingertips and needed to wipe it off.

I don’t think—

We’ll talk. Rough trot. I hope he gets a retrial.

And the man was gone. Cocaine must speed them up, thought Jack, pulling himself into the room and leaning against the inside of the door. He closed his eyes and breathed. Almost finished now.

The room was as he’d left it. The lights were off, and he’d made sure to kill the monitors, so the glare when he started them up again made him wince. There was the image he’d left on the monitor, paused. Six hours, five hundred kilometers, and one obstruction of justice ago.

Five more minutes and he’d have greenlit the damn thing. He already wished he hadn’t seen it.

That Eliza Dacey had been naked had been one of the cornerstones of the series. The evidence around Curtis Wade had been circumstantial at best—there was no blood; there was no murder weapon. Of course, his footprints had been everywhere, but it was his property. And he’d tried to help, got his DNA everywhere. Idiot. As for Eliza, she’d picked fruit for the neighboring winery for six months, but then left to travel more. No one had heard from her since. That wasn’t particularly suspicious—obviously the parents had panicked, tried to get police to launch a missing person search, but no one ever took it seriously. She didn’t have friends in town—they’re transient, the pickers, and they tend to stick together. By the time it became a murder investigation, they were either back home or on plantations elsewhere. Because a backpacker can’t really disappear. Everyone assumed she’d taken off—a new group of friends, a rusted van with a slur for a license plate, and off they go. She could have been anywhere from Melbourne to Townsville. Not worth the police resources to chase. Not in this town. Until her body was found on Curtis’s property eight months later—and when you’d pissed off a town the way he had, a young dead woman at your feet was an awfully hard thing to come back from.

So it was open-and-shut. Curtis in a cell before the pretty backpacker was even in the ground. The police, headed up by local sergeant Andrew Freeman, hadn’t given great thought to the mystery of the dead girl in the vineyard. Curtis was their man, they were sure. I always knew he’d do something like this, echoed the townsfolk. That was all the evidence they needed. So in those crucial first few days, they were sloppy. A country police force not used to dealing with homicides. The body was moved, put in the back of a police car that they drove right up to the crime scene. Forensic photos were sketchy, half-assed. A few footprints at the fence line were used to place Eliza at the scene. They said they had a witness too, but no one ever came forward. No one asked why there was no blood where the body was found. No one asked anything, really.

Until, four years later, Jack did.

Before he’d even contemplated making a TV series, Jack had been sitting in a coffee shop with Theodore Ted Piper, the prosecutor of the original case. Ted’s skin cells might as well have been phosphorus, charged as they were by being in the spotlight. Jack had convinced him that the new wave of true-crime documentaries would be a profile builder. Ted had taken the bait, even styled his short black hair in a wave, despite being fully aware that this was audio only. Jack’s khaki unidirectional recorder lay on the table between them, its orange screen a dull glow.

So, Jack began, after a short introduction, you’re confident that Eliza was killed on the Wade property? And not taken there after her death?

Yes, said Ted.

There was no blood at the scene.

She may have been moved. From somewhere else. Inside the house.

There was no blood in the house.

Find me her blood somewhere else, and then we’ll talk, Ted said sharply, noticing he was in the middle of an interrogation.

Sure. Sure, muttered Jack. The crinkle of his notes as he ruffled through them, which was picked up by the mic, made him cringe when he listened back—such an amateur back then. So you place her there. Tell me how.

There’s a cluster of footprints by the fence line. They belong to her. It shows that she was there recently. Eight months after she was reported missing.

They’re her footprints?

Size 9. We matched the prints to a brand of shoe: ASICS. And the style of the running shoe, color, and design. We’ve had people verify that she wore them.

More note ruffling. Pink with silver trim?

Yes.

So how did she get—rustle—two hundred meters to where she died without leaving a single trace?

They’re her prints.

They’re her prints?

Are you going to keep asking me the same question?

You matched them to her shoes?

Yes.

Tell me how you did that again—Jack leaned forward; even as an amateur, he had an instinct for tone and drama, knew how to drop the bombs—when she wasn’t wearing any.

On the podcast, there was such a gigantic pause that listeners had initially thought the download was broken. Then, faintly, the screech of a chair pulling back, sliding across concrete. Footsteps. Fainter still, the jingle of a café door opening and closing. Jack let the pause go on a few more seconds before fading out, ending the episode.

In an industry of words, that silence had made him famous.

And that led him to here. Ted Piper’s prosecution weakened by the fact that a size 9 ASICS could belong to literally anyone. A groundswell of support, more media interest. Then the TV offers came in. And Jack’s thesis was suddenly in every home: Curtis had been set up; Eliza’s body had been dumped.

And that had all been convincing until they’d decided to go back out and shoot an on-location pickup for a recap in the final episode. Which was what he’d been putting the final touches on last night.

Jack scrolled forward two