Free EIGHT LIES (About the Truth): A collection of short stories by Sean Chercover

Millwood, the private detective who’d served divorce papers on George Garcia. He looked up the file and told me that he’d served George at Juno Auto Center, at 9:15am. The date of service matched the date of the accident. It was possible that George had slipped out for a few drinks after getting the bad news and before working on Sarah Shipman’s car. Or not.
    Millwood had no idea where to look for Garcia. The only addresses he had were the trailer home and place of work.
    I didn’t want to visit George’s estranged wife, but you go where a case leads you or you find a new line of work. So I looked up her current address from the divorce papers and arrived at her modest apartment in the early afternoon.
    Betty Garcia was a mousey little thing in her mid-twenties. Everything about her— body, face, hairstyle, mannerisms—seemed vaguely pleasant and entirely forgettable. You could ride the same bus with Betty Garcia on the daily commute for five years but if someone showed you her photograph, you’d swear you’d never seen the girl before. A great attribute for a private detective or an assassin, but Betty was neither.
    We sat at a Formica table and drank instant iced tea and she told me about her marriage to George. They’d been high school sweethearts and then Betty got pregnant and they got married. George earned his mechanic’s license and they moved into the trailer park. Betty assured me that they weren’t “trailer trash,” even though I had suggested no such thing. She explained that they had to cut corners so she could go to community college part-time. She studied marketing.
    And fell for her teacher.
    “George loves me and he’s a good father,” Betty insisted. “It’s just…well it’s kinda hard to explain. College opened up a whole new world for me. George still likes watching television, but I like books now. I mean, I tried to get him to improve himself but he just wanted to do his job and play with the baby and he wasn’t interested in improving himself. Whenever he did read a book, it was either a book about cars or one of those stupid novels where everybody shoots at each other. But Andrew, he’s in public relations and he’s like a genius—his apartment is full of books and not just about marketing either. Andrew’s into philosophy , like Plato and stuff. He’s really making something of himself. Anyway, so that’s what happened. It really wasn’t anybody’s fault. I guess you could say I just sorta outgrew George.”
    Maybe Betty was an assassin, after all.
    I laid down the same line that I’d used on Phil—it was best for George to come forward and give a witness statement and get on with his life. I knew Betty would respond to the idea of George getting on with his life, and she did. But she had no idea where he was. I told her I had reason to believe he was staying with his mother in Indiana.
    “Oh, that’s easy,” she said. She left the room and returned with a small piece of paper. She handed me the paper, which had an address written on it. “His mom lives in Des Plaines, but she also has a dumpy little cottage in Indiana. It’s just a shack, really, in the middle of nowhere. Rural Route 2, about fifteen miles south of Gary.”
    Gary, Indiana. Some people call it the armpit of America. Which is an uncharitable thing to say but, Christ, it’s a sad city. Steel mills with smokestacks belching fire and the air smells like Mom’s home cooking and potholes in the streets and downtown shops displaying boarded-up windows, padlocked doors and graffiti. Litter and vagrants and abandoned houses and the only shops thriving are the liquor stores which live on every corner like parasites feeding on despair. A city of suburban White Flight and economic gloom. A city on its knees. God Bless America, Land of the Free and Home of the Very Fucking Brave…
    I passed through Gary without stopping and continued south on highway 41. Near Cedar Lake, Rural Route 2 ran by some smaller