Familiar Lies Read Online Free

himself you were supposed to see. That’s all we can expect of anyone.”
    Vanessa left the table, exiting through the front door. The attached bell rang softly as the door opened and closed. Max watched her get into a silver BMW and back out of the parking space. As she pulled away, Max committed the license plate to memory just as the waitress reappeared.
    “Anything else I can get you?” she asked.
    “Yes,” he replied. “A pen.”

Chapter Seven

    Max returned home from the diner and by ten o’clock found himself parked in front of his laptop. He started with county public records, searching for the only clue that Vanessa had given him: the club.
    Max didn’t know what kind of club it was, who owned it, or how it played into what happened to Josh. But he had a few names to go on and it was worth a shot to see if any of them shook out.
    Navigating the government website took considerable time and before he knew it an hour had passed. There was no way he’d make any headway before midnight and working the following day would be impossible. He’d never be able to keep his mind on the job. He could take vacation time, maybe even through the following week. He had enough saved up and if they called him on it then he’d tell them the anniversary of his son’s death had taken a toll on him. It certainly wouldn’t be lying, but using Josh’s death that way made Max feel like a heel.
    But he’d promised that he’d find out who did this to his son and that promise needed to be kept, regardless of how it made him feel.
    By one o’clock a.m. Max found himself no closer to matching a name with a club than he had been when he started. He searched all the business licenses granted to nightclubs in the county for the past ten years, but none of the names on the applications matched with the names in Josh’s letter.
    Did you really think it would be that easy? a little voice in his head asked. The same voice that had been speaking to him as of late, something inside that he never knew existed before.
    No, he hadn’t thought it would be that easy, but he’d hoped. He wondered if the voice in his head was simply inner dialogue or a sign that he was under too much mental stress. He didn’t actually hear the voice—not with his ears, at least—and he knew it was his own. That was enough to convince himself that he wasn’t cracking up…at least not just yet.
    If the county records wouldn’t give up the tie then Max knew that he’d have to do it the old fashioned way. He wouldn’t get to the bottom of what happened to Josh by surfing the Internet. No, he’d have to get out there and beat the streets, ask questions, stir up the hornet’s nest.
    It occurred to Max that maybe Vanessa was right. Maybe this situation was a hornet’s nest. Maybe this entire business should be dropped altogether, but to not do anything, to let someone get away with killing his baby boy simply wasn’t an option.
    Max would know what happened that day a year ago. He would know what happened, even if it killed him.
    As Max sat at the dining room table staring at the laptop screen, the sound of a closet door opening came from inside Josh’s room. Max looked up and stared at the closed door, his heart suddenly racing. He sat there, wondering what could have made that sound. Probably just the house making its usual groaning at night; nothing unusual.
    But it did sound unusual. Despite knowing better, Max found his skin turning to gooseflesh as he listened hard to the sound of the house in the wee hours of the morning.
    Then he heard the sound of footsteps from behind Josh’s door. They were faint but perceptible. Like the sound of his son walking across his room, from the closet to his bed.
    “That’s impossible,” Max said out loud into the lonely house. His voice sounded like a bomb going off in the silence. He stood, noticing the stiffness in his legs. How long had he been sitting at that table? Three, maybe four hours? He suddenly had