The Art of Deception b-8

by Ridley Pearson

  Trust me.”

  “Knives are messy,” Dixon said. “You mess up my carpet and I’m going to personally beat the spit out of you.”

  Dixon moved for the first time, growing ever larger in her peripheral vision, cobra-like, as he approached. Matthews had somehow overlooked Dixon’s formidable presence all these years. Suddenly she understood much more clearly the attraction between Dixon and Boldt-birds of a feather.

  Walker’s pale eyes flipped between Dixon and Matthews.

  “Stop right there,” he warned.

  Matthews took a step and said, “Hand me the knife and it stops. That’s the only way it stops. Put Mary-Ann in this room, Ferrell. Take the rest of us out of here. It’s only you, Mr. Neal, and Mary-Ann. Put Mary-Ann right here where I’m standing-you can do that, I know you can-and then ask yourself what she’d say. How would she react to your threatening Mr. Neal this way? What would she tell you to do?” She took yet another step toward him. Six feet. “Don’t listen to me; don’t listen to Doc Dixon; you just listen to her, to Mary-Ann.”

  Walker stared at her. She said, “Drop the knife, Ferrell.”

  To her amazement, Walker dropped the knife.

  LaMoia rushed him, tackled him, and had him on the floor, Dixon assisting.

  Lanny Neal leaned over him. “You worthless piece of shit.”

  Matthews retrieved the knife from the carpet. It was heavier, sturdier, than she had imagined.

  LaMoia cuffed Walker out of routine but then wondered aloud if they should book him, and Matthews put it onto Neal to make the decision to press charges or not. A grief-stricken brother facing a possible viewing of his murdered sister’s body.

  How tough would the legal system be on Walker?

  “Murdered?” Neal said, repeating her.

  “Well, at least you’re listening, Mr. Neal. That’s a good place to start.”

  10 The Debt

  “Where is he?” Ferrell Walker asked. He occupied one of the two guest chairs in Doc Dixon’s spacious office.

  Matthews patrolled the area behind Dixon’s desk, where, at head level, the room’s only window looked out at ankle-height to the sidewalk above.

  “You need to convince me, Mr. Walker, that we’re making the right decision concerning your release.”

  “The other guy’s got him, right? The guy who tackled me?”

  “You’re not helping your case any.”

  “If I was going to do anything to that piece of shit, it would already be done. Okay? You think I’m going to have a chance like that again?” He tracked her constantly as she paced, his deep eye sockets fixed onto her every movement. “You saved me.”

  “I didn’t save anyone. I intervened, and on Mr. Neal’s behalf, not yours.” Do not twist this around to your liking. “If we release you, we need some reassurance that you’re capable of controlling your emotions, your anger.”

  “I lost my head.” He grinned at her, cool and collected, like so many of the street kids they dealt with. “Is that what I’m supposed to say?”

  “There is no ‘supposed to,’ ” she lied. In fact, that, or something close to it, was what he was supposed to say, but she didn’t appreciate the irreverent tone. “And it’s not what you say but what you do that matters to us.”

  “Okay. I get it now. If you let me go, then I owe you,”

  Walker said. “You’re saying I owe you something. Like a snitch.

  That kind of thing. Right? Listen, no problem.”

  “That’s not at all what I’m saying.”

  “I get it. It’s okay. I want to help you nail Lanny.”

  “It’s not okay. You do not owe me, you owe it to Mary-Ann to let us do our jobs. You owe Lanny Neal the right for us to bring evidence against him or not. He is not guilty simply because he was her boyfr-”

  “He hit her. Did things to her.”

  “And we’ll look into all that. But in point of fact, Mr. Walker, a homicide investigation typically looks at the immediate family first, relationship partners second, and close friends last.

  You are the immediate family, the one we should be looking at first, not Mr. Neal.”

  “So look at me,” he said, opening his arms to her.

  “Did you kill your sister, Mr. Walker?” For Matthews it was a question that begged to be asked. She studied his body language carefully.

  He stared at her, dumbfounded, cocked his head and said, “Who are you people? He beat her. He said he’d do this, and now he’s done it.”

  He displayed none of the reactions she might have expected from a guilty party-a pregnant pause, rapid eye movement or breaking eye contact, adjusting himself in the chair. Even so, the idea would not leave her entirely and lingered in the back of her mind. Neal had the more likely motive, Neal the opportunity. And, if what they knew about Neal was true, he had the sordid history as well. Walker’s rage, his vengeance, was so prevalent that it filled the room. Assigning guilt was an easy jump for her.

  He said, “From what I’m hearing I owe you a favor for helping me out. Stopping me like that. I’m good with that. I didn’t want him seeing Anna before I did. I was … upset. Okay? I can’t thank you enough for what you did.”

  “It can’t happen again,” she said.

  “I realize that. I’m sorry.” The student cowering to the teacher; the little boy who knows better.

  She cautioned him, “We will instruct Mr. Neal to file a restraining order against you. It’ll be his choice to do that or not.

  That doesn’t bring charges against you, but it serves to put you on notice. It draws a line in the sand that you’d better not cross.”

  “Anna and I, we repay our debts,” he said.

  “There is no debt. Are you hearing anything I’m saying?”

  “I’ll be a good boy.”

  “Don’t push me, Mr. Walker.”

  “Lanny Neal is the one who needs restraining. You see to that, Lieutenant Matthews, and you’ll have no problem from me.”

  “It’s not how it works,” she said. “You’re damned close to threatening a police officer.”

  “She was murdered. You said so yourself. You have her killer in custody. So do something about it. You need help, I’ll help. You helped me out. I won’t forget that.”

  “You’d better forget it. That is not the point!” She’d lost her patience and her composure. Walker seemed to take this as a victory.

  “He broke her legs, didn’t he?”

  Matthews felt a stab of surprise in her chest.

  “You see? I can help you, if you’ll let me. He said he’d do that … said he’d break both her legs if she ever tried to leave him.” He watched her reaction, confirmation, and his eyes welled with tears. “He broke her legs, didn’t he? Oh, God, poor Anna.”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss the particulars.”

  He sat back. “Look at it this way: I didn’t want your help either. Just now, I didn’t want you getting in my face, in my head like that. But you did and it worked out for the better.

  Right? See? All I’m saying is … sometimes we get help when we don’t see it coming. It’s a good thing. I can help you like that.”

  “We’re done here,” she announced. “We’ll want to speak with you again, and when we do we’ll find you at your work-place.”

  “Unless I find you first,” he said childishly, meeting eyes with her and straining to communicate something more.

  She winced. “Go back to work. Go back to your life. If anything comes up regarding the investigation I’ll make sure you’re informed.”

  “You see? Another favor.”

  “That’s standard procedure, Mr. Walker. That is not a favor.

  None of my actions should be construed as personal favors. Any such misinterpretation-”

  “Save it,” he said, rising quickly to close the gap between them. She could smell the overpowering fish odors and his sour perspiration. She nearly retched. “The only question I have is whether or not you give me back m
y fish knife.”

  Matthews glanced down at Dixon’s desk where the gun-smoke gray blade rested by Dixon’s pen stand.

  “That knife has history,” Walker said. “Family history.”

  It felt wrong returning that knife to him, but it felt equally wrong to confiscate the one item that was probably all he had left of his family. “Against my better judgment,” she said, holding it by the blade and offering the knife back.

  “I won’t forget this,” he said.

  She closed her eyes as he left the office, torn between reversing her decision and watching him go. But then he was gone, the decision made for her.

  Crossing the ME’s to a conference room where LaMoia held Neal, she put away her thoughts of Ferrell Walker. As she swung open the door that led out of the offices and into the small reception area littered with magazines, Matthews caught sight of a brown sheriff’s uniform. The medical examiner’s office was a county, not city, department, meaning KCSO had as much or more business here than SPD. Nonetheless, she knew in advance, knew instinctively, who this uniform belonged to.

  The wide shoulders turned, the blond head swiveled, and just before the door shut she caught a glimpse of the profile of Deputy Sheriff Nathan Prair.

  What business did Nathan Prair have here? Was it Mary-Ann Walker or was it Daphne Matthews? She turned around quickly, hoping he hadn’t seen her. She hurried toward the conference room, a part of her wanting escape; she knocked once, turned the handle, and stepped inside, her heart beating a little too quickly.

  “Why don’t you walk us through the events of the night Mary-Ann went missing,” LaMoia said.

  Neal’s erratic eye movement, constant swallowing to fight dry mouth, and perspiring upper lip warned Matthews to pay strict attention to the lies she felt were certain to follow. Here was more what she’d been expecting of Walker when she’d put the question to him. By prior agreement, she’d let LaMoia kick things off. At an appropriate time, yet to be determined, she would take over and he would be the one to stay quiet. If they sensed they had a live suspect, they would finish up by double-teaming Neal, at which point Matthews would play the hard-ass, and LaMoia the more patient, reasonable cop, turning ste-reotypes on end and hoping to keep Neal guessing.

  “We’d been at my mom’s, the two of us. We’d had a couple drinks. Dinner at my mom’s. My mom likes rum. We’d had a few rums, I guess.”

  LaMoia clarified, “This is you, Mary-Ann Walker, and your mother?”

  “Right.”

  “State your mother’s name, please.”

  “Frances. Frances Kelly Neal.”

  “You had dinner, the three of you. Which night was that?”

  “Saturday.”

  LaMoia took a moment to make a point of counting backward. His favorite line of offense was to play the fool to begin with, slowly migrating to the hard-line cop any suspect learned to fear. “March twenty-second.”

  Neal said, “We come home after dinner … to my hang, you know? And went to bed. I watched the sports while she … you know, she was busy.”

  “Busy, how?”

  “You know?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Busy.” He pumped his cupped hand up and down. “Beneath the sheets.”

  “Ms. Walker was performing oral sex on you while you watched the sports news.”

  Neal grinned proudly, but he couldn’t keep his eyes still.

  “That’s it.”

  Lies, she thought, as LaMoia caught her attention and rolled his eyes.

  “What time would that have been?” LaMoia asked.

  “After dinner, like I said.”

  “That would be the local news?”

  “Q-13.”

  “That would be Fox.”

  “That would be correct.” He mimicked LaMoia, and the sergeant impressed Matthews with his ability to remain calm and not rise to the bait.

  Neal liked to hear himself talk. That played in their favor.

  “She wanted some of that action for herself-if you know what I’m saying-and I wasn’t exactly complaining, but-”

  LaMoia interrupted. “We’ll skip the play-by-play, if you don’t mind. You did, or did not have intercourse with Mary-Ann Walker on Saturday, March twenty-second?”

  “That’s a ‘did.’ For sure.”

  Matthews asked, “Using a condom, or without?”

  “That would be without.” Neal gave her a tennis pro smile.

  LaMoia said, “Following the intercourse, you watched more television, or read, or went to sleep, or what?”

  “Slept. At least I did. Mary-Ann might have gone out the window.”

  “You want to explain that?”

  “For a smoke,” Neal clarified. “Can’t stand that shit. She used the fire escape. Used it all the time. I saw her out there on the fire escape. It was later, a lot later. Probably for a smoke.

  Right? I saw her out there, yeah. I just said I did.” Confusion fanned the edges of his eyes.

  “Approximately what time was this?”

  “Later.”

  “Can you be more precise?”

  Neal glanced first to Matthews, then to LaMoia, as if hoping one of them might help him out. He pinched his temples between the fingers of his right hand and apparently appealed for divine intervention. She was beginning to put more faith in Walker’s suspicions. Lanny Neal was a self-centered egotist who had a record of abusing his girlfriends. He didn’t lie very well, despite what must have been a great deal of practice.

  “I remember her out there … seeing her out there. I didn’t like it when she went out there dressed like that. She never seemed to give a shit what she was wearing. Claimed no one could see her, so high up and all. And that’s another thing-she don’t even like heights, but for a smoke, shit, she’d climb the Space Needle. Anyway, she’d go out there in like a T-shirt and underwear, showing skin and all.

  “She was talking,” he continued. “At first I wondered who the fuck was out there with her. Then I saw the cordless phone was missing. She was out there on the fire escape on the goddamn phone with someone. Maybe it was the phone ringing that woke me up in the first place. And I do remember what time it was.” This seemed to dawn upon him, and Matthews thought he was making it up as he went. “All twos flashing at me. Two twenty-two. The clock by the phone on her side of the bed. I remember that. Two, two, two. Flashing away. And I looked out the window, and there she was on the goddamn phone.”

  “Two twenty-two A.M.”

  “You ought to be talking to that brother of hers. Always begging her for money, bugging her. Punk-ass kid, blaming her for everything bad happening to him. Probably him on the phone. Probably him who did this to her.”

  “What exactly do you think happened to Mary-Ann?”

  LaMoia asked.

  “How should I know? All disgusting like that, the way she was. Looked like she drowned or something. Is that right?”

  “What exactly was Mary-Ann wearing at the time? Out on your fire escape.”

  “I just told you! Next to nothing.”

  “A description of that clothing could prove useful to the investigation.”

  “Well, she sure as shit wasn’t going to go out there bare-ass again, you understand. Not after the last time. I’d caught her again-”

  He stopped himself.

  LaMoia met eyes with Matthews, communicating that they had their first real look at Langford Neal’s inner workings. Interrogators lived for such moments.

  LaMoia supplied, “You’d smack her around, let her know who was boss.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Did you smack her around that night, Lanny? Hit her upside the head, or knock her off the fire escape, or what? She was bleeding, wasn’t she? She was bleeding and you didn’t know what to do.”

  “That’s bullshit. I seen her out there and I went back to sleep.

  End of story. She would’a had on butt floss. White butt floss.

  She always wore the same thing.
”

  Matthews said, “Thong panties. And what about on top? A T-shirt? A blouse? A robe?”

  “One of those camel-things.”

  “A camisole.”

  “Two humps right where they belong. Nice and tight.”

  Matthews cringed at his reckless confidence. “A camisole and thong underwear. No sweatshirt, no robe?”

  “She’s hot-blooded, I’m telling you. Went out there all the time in next to nothing. For a smoke. A sweatshirt-how the hell should I know? Does she own one? Yes. But that night it was a freak show anyway. Warm for a change. You can check that, right?”

  LaMoia said, “We’ll check all of your statement, Lanny.

  Every last word.”

  He looked briefly bewildered, but then regained his confidence and restated that the last time he’d seen her she’d been out on the fire escape. “Woke the next morning and she wasn’t there. Not that that was all that unusual. She went to sleep later than me and got up earlier. Probably headed straight for a coffee hit, a Seattle’s Best, down a few blocks. You should check with them. Right? They open at six, and she’s always one of the first through the door.”

  “So her clothes were gone,” LaMoia stated. “In the morning, I’m talking about-when you woke up, whatever else she’d been wearing-those clothes were gone?”

  “What clothes? How the fuck would I know?” Clearly flus-tered, Neal shook his arms in front of himself as if his hands had gone to sleep. “She wore them to bed, that’s all I’m saying.”

  LaMoia reviewed his notes. “A moment ago you said you fell asleep after having sex with Ms. Walker. That you fell asleep after the sex. Now you’re saying she wore panties to bed?

  Can you be more precise?”

  “She wore them to bed before I took them off her.” He added, “And that would have been after the sports, after the hummer, to be more precise.”

  “And what clothes if any, did she leave behind at your apartment that morning?”

  “She’s the one picks up, not me.”

  LaMoia said irritably, “So you’re saying she cleaned house that morning, before she left for the coffee?”

  “Listen, she had clothes at my place, okay? How the fuck do I know what was there and what wasn’t? She lived there with me, don’t forget. Right? Clothes? What? On the floor or something? How the hell would I know?”