Page 48 of Tightrope

“You can crack safes?”

“I’m good with locks.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

He hesitated and then nodded once. “Go ahead. You’ve got a right. I asked you about Abbotsville.”

“Yes, you did. And you appeared to believe me when I told you my story, even though the police and the press doubted my version of events. Tonight you seemed very certain that Seymour Webster was telling the truth when he said Pickwell’s last words were about giving the keys to the robot.”

“Weren’t you inclined to believe him, too?”

“Well, yes. It seems an unlikely story to invent on the spur of the moment. But that’s not my point. You trust your intuition when it comes to separating truth and lies, don’t you?”

“Most of the time. I’m not infallible.”

“Evidently you’ve got people like Luther Pell convinced that you’re very, very good at what you do.”

Matthias flexed his hands on the steering wheel. She got the feeling that he was bracing himself.

“There are a lot of people in my family who have better than average intuition,” he said. “I’m one of them.”

“Right. You said there were a lot of psychics on your family tree. No offense, but everyone thinks they have better than average intuition. My father always claimed that I have flyer’s intuition.”

Matthias glanced at her. “It’s obvious from the way you move that you have a sense of balance and timing and an awareness of the space around you that is unusually intuitive. I’m sure you’ve got great reflexes, too. Those things usually go together.”

“You’re not joking, are you?” she said.

He did not take his eyes off the road. “Is it so hard to believe I’ve got a certain talent for detecting lies?”

Once again he appeared to be steeling himself.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “It just strikes me as a somewhat unusual claim. Have you always been able to tell when people are lying?”

“For as long as I can remember. But that’s the easy part. People lie all the time. The hard part is figuring out why they are lying.”

“You care about why they do it?” she asked.

“When you have a talent like mine, you learn very quickly that intent is everything.”

She reflected on the implications. “I can understand how that kind of ability would be useful to an investigator or a cop, but doesn’t it drive you crazy the rest of the time?”

He was momentarily flummoxed. Then he smiled.

“How did you guess?” he asked.

“It just seemed obvious.”

“Most lies are harmless and often well-intentioned,” he said. “They have some social value. The ability to lie helps make it possible for people to be polite and civil to each other.How’s your day going? It’s going great, thank you. Did you enjoy the cake I baked for you? It was wonderful, thanks.”

“Okay, I never considered those kinds of questions and answers to be outright lies.”

“Because you are aware of the intent behind them. Everyone knows that conversations like that are a kind of social glue. You are so comfortable with little white lies that you automatically tune out the dissonance. It’s not so easy for me. And when people find out what I can do, they are often... uncomfortable around me.”

She smiled. “Had a lot of relationships end badly, have you?”

“Yes.” He cast her a quick, searching look. “You think that’s amusing?”

“Nope. But I do know how it feels.”