The Liar’s Lullaby
Politics, paranoia, and country music cross paths—with deadly results
“The fall didn’t kill her,” Tang said. “She had a gunshot wound to the head.”
Jo turned, lips parting. “Somebody shot her? She shot herself? What’s confusing about her death?”
Tang walked down the aisle toward the field. “Aside from the fact that she slid down the zip line with half her throat blown away?”
“Aside from that.”
“And that at least seventy-five people in the crowd were hit by falling debris or trampled in the stampede?”
“And that.”
“And the fact that Fawn Tasia McFarland, age forty-two, born and bred in San Francisco, was the ex-wife of the President of the United States?”
Jo slowed to a stop. “No, that, without a doubt, most definitely covers it.”
Tasia McFarland is a washed-up country-pop singer desperate for the break that will get her back atop the charts. She’s also the President’s ex. So when Tasia writes a song with politically charged lyrics, people take notice and her star begins to rise anew. In the spectacle-driven opener of her comeback tour, she flies down a zip line above her adoring fans, fake-firing a Colt .45 at the fireworks-filled stage. Tasia is riding high.
Until she’s killed by a bullet to the neck, in front of a shocked crowd of forty thousand.
When video and ballistics can’t prove the shot came from Tasia’s Colt .45, the police call in forensic psychiatrist Jo Beckett to perform a psychological autopsy and help avert a political disaster. But as Jo sifts through the facts, she only finds more questions: Did Tasia kill herself in one last cry for attention? Were those lyrics the ranting of a paranoid woman losing her grip? Or warnings from a woman afraid and in danger? And most disturbing of all: Just what does Tasia’s death mean for a president—and in fact a nation—teetering on the brink of catastrophe?
