In the Company of Liars Read Online Free PDF Page B

scenes than Jane McCoy.
    â€œA bathtub?” McCoy asks.
    â€œIt’s private,” Harrick answers. “She wanted intimacy. It’s also easier to clean up.”
    â€œOh, she didn’t want to mess up the house?” McCoy looks at her partner. “She’s worried about resale value?”
    â€œIt’s the house she raised her daughter in. She cares about how it looks. You’re thinking way too hard on this. It’s a suicide, Jane. She thought about it first, is all. People do plan suicides.”
    McCoy is silent.
    â€œShe killed Sam Dillon,” Harrick continues, turning a corner and leaving the sight line of Allison Pagone’s home. “She killed him and she felt remorse. That works for me.”
    â€œI hope so.” McCoy’s head falls back against the head cushion. It will be another sleepless night for her.

ONE DAY EARLIER
TUESDAY, MAY 11
    The small turn of his head, as if his attention were diverted. The set of his jaw, the clenching of his teeth. The line of his mouth turned, ever so slightly, from a smile to something more primitive, almost a snarl but not so prominent. A stolen moment, an entirely private moment in public, a stolen glance among a roomful of people, intended for private consumption.
    Thursday, February fifth of this year. A cocktail party thrown by Dillon & Becker, Sam’s lobbying firm, an annual party for clients in the city’s offices. Hors d’oeuvres passed by servants in tuxedos, soft classical music playing from speakers in the corners.
    The Look, Allison calls it, though she has never spoken of such things aloud, except to Sam. A look of pure, unadulterated lust, a passion that drives men to do things they should not do, the most primitive of emotions. She watches everything about Sam—how he holds his breath, moves his eyes up and down her body—trying to imagine exactly whatit is that Sam is imagining, because Allison has no experience with such things, has never seen this look from her husband in the twenty years they were married.
    She freezes that image in her mind. She is not sure why. Maybe because it was one of the last pictures that she has of Sam—he was dead two days later—or maybe because it is so staggering to think how far things have fallen.
    Allison Pagone sits on the wine-colored couch in the den. The memories always flood back, no matter how fleetingly, when she sits here. Memories of her childhood. She remembers when she was fifteen, when she had a party while her parents were out, a bottle of red wine spilled on the couch, her enormous relief when the wine blended in with the color. Another memory: She was six, sleeping on the couch because she had wet her bed, worrying about her parents’ reaction, then her mother’s soothing hand running through her hair as she woke up the next morning.
    She thinks of her daughter, Jessica, and the torment she must be feeling right now, her mother standing trial for murder. And she will not be acquitted. Jessica has read the stories, watched the television coverage, despite the judge’s instructions to the contrary. Regardless of whether she is a witness, nobody is going to tell a young woman she cannot read the cold accounts of her mother’s crime in the paper.
    Allison has watched her daughter age over the last three months. Twenty years old, she is in many ways still a girl, but these events have changed that. Allison is to blame, and she can do nothing about it.
    She picks up the phone on the coffee table. She dials Mat Pagone’s office. She checks her watch. It is past nine o’clock in the evening.
    She gets his voice mail. She holds her breath and waits for the beep. She looks at the piece of paper in front of her. They spelled his name wrong. It should be Mat with one t, short for Mateo .
    â€œMat, I know you’re not going to get this until tomorrow morning. I’m sorry. For everything. I also want you to listen