The Art of Deception b-8

by Ridley Pearson

  His eyes lighted on that white fabric tab from fifteen yards away, the glare of his penlight illuminating the improbable color in a world of mud brown and ash gray. Perfect, pure, white. It called out as if it had yelled at him. He headed to it like a bloodhound-the thought of which made him wonder if the K-9

  unit had been called up. He bent and retrieved it.

  Victoria’s Secret, size medium.

  There was no sound, no night air, no sirens, no radio squawks, no movement in his universe, only his trembling fingers and that white fabric tag clasped so tightly.

  Debating whether or not to call for backup, he looked quickly around for something with which to lift that manhole cover. She had made it plain to him that if she went missing, she trusted him to do what was right. Chatwin seemed certain to bungle this, putting Matthews at risk. Backup could wait until he knew the full situation.

  Victoria’s Secret. He would tease her about that when he found her. And he would find her, he told himself. He had to.

  It was the only way he knew. John LaMoia always got the girl.

  Another Level

  “Where’d all the water go?” Boldt asked Iberson and Babcock.

  She wore blue jeans, a brown sweater, and rubber boots. Iberson was dressed for the ball game in tennis shoes, khakis, and a red thin shell that zipped down the front. The two looked back at him blankly. A double dragon swept past them, lifting dust and sand and grit in its wake. The bus tunnel’s oddly sterile mercury vapor lighting turned everyone’s skin a bluish green.

  Boldt said, “The water main. All that water … enough to drown a man. So where’d it go? Where’d it end up?” He said to Babcock, “It was damp but not flooded in that lower level.”

  Iberson answered, “I told you, it came out our wall vents.”

  “Some of it, sure. But all of it?” Boldt asked.

  “Enough to shut us down,” Iberson reminded.

  Babcock understood him. “What prompted this?” she asked.

  He wasn’t interested in such chitchat. “We have an officer wounded. Another’s missing. A girl, a young woman, is in critical condition and probably won’t make it. I’m up against a clock here. The guy I’m after got hold of that key on that lower level. That suggests access that we don’t know about. The water from that broken main, it went somewhere. And not just here, into this tunnel. Most of it had to have gone down to that lower level-that’s just physics. So what happened to it? It should have been a swimming pool down there.”

  Babcock lost a shade. She nodded. “You’re right. Of course, you’re right.”

  “Is anybody going to fill me in?” an irritated Iberson asked.

  Boldt had left Iberson behind, focusing now only on the ac-ademic. “But where? Another level? A sewer system? An aqui-fer?” He had trouble getting the words out, the bubble in his chest from Matthews missing too big to swallow away.

  He picked up a flicker in her eyes. “What?” he asked. She shook her head. “Anything,” he stressed. “He’s got our officer underground somewhere. I’d guarantee you that.”

  “Rumors is all,” she said, her throat dry, her words raspy.

  Boldt nodded furiously. “I’ll take rumors.”

  “There are old references to a smugglers’ tunnel. Supposedly, it connected speakeasies and the hotels to the waterfront during Prohibition. Dug by the Chinese. Controlled by the Chinese mafia in those days,” said the historian.

  “The International District?” He thought of Mama Lu, the very woman who had set him on this quest in the first place.

  Matthews had gone missing within a stone’s throw of the I.D.

  “Connecting this place to the I.D.?”

  “I’m just saying it’s possible. Not probable. Not even likely.”

  Boldt yanked out his cell phone and then shouted at Iberson.

  “I’ve got to get topside. I’ve got to make a phone call.”

  Iberson flagged down the next bus that approached. Boldt and Babcock hit the surface streets less than two minutes later.

  58 The Offering

  The low tunnel bent around a turn, a good deal of the wooden posts and beams-old railroad ties in all probability-badly rotted. Matthews struggled to fight off the fear that wanted to own her.

  Walker stopped her, instructing her to stand out of his way.

  They hadn’t traveled terribly far, the going slow. She watched as his fading flashlight caught the edge of a large hole in the earthen wall. Walker stepped up to it and peered inside, and she came away with the sense that it was familiar to him.

  She couldn’t see into that hole, but she prayed silently that he wasn’t going to make her go through it. It looked like one of those places a person never came out of. It failed to give her any sense of hope that it might lead to an escape route.

  Walker turned and faced her, shining the light first onto her, then directing it onto himself, enabling her to see him. In a childish tone that sent shivers through her, he said, “It’s important to me you know how much I care.”

  “Ferrell-”

  He shushed her and said, “To understand the extent to which I’m prepared to go to help you. You found the room. It’s why …” His voice tapered off.

  She worried he couldn’t hold a thought, that the synapses might be misfiring in his brain, either as a result of stress or some organic malfunction that she’d failed to identify in the course of her contact with him. That face-to-face contact had, in fact, been precious little. “Why what?” she asked.

  “Well … it’s the purpose of all this,” he explained.

  “So if we’ve already accomplished that purpose, Ferrell …

  maybe we should head up topside together.”

  “It’s way beyond that now, isn’t it?” He tried to smile, but his unwilling face would only pinch further, into a snarl. “Come look. It’s for you.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Come. Look.” His hand went to the butt of the knife, and Matthews felt herself moving, as if on the ends of marionette strings.

  “I’d like to go back up to the street now,” she said, pressing for his cooperation in a period where he acted at least somewhat conciliatory toward her.

  He positioned her in front of that dark hole in the wall. It looked as if a course of water had ripped loose this rent some years before. The sickening smile he managed should have forewarned her. He turned slowly, training that yellow light with him.

  Sitting on a natural throne carved out of the mud like some kind of shrine was a decapitated corpse of a man in a brown uniform. Matthews cried out loudly and jumped back, as the flashlight caught up to the head of Nathan Prair that sat in his own lap, his big hands coddling it.

  “For you,” Walker said. “He was bothering you, right? I saw you two outside the Shelter that night we were supposed to meet.

  I saw you push him. Him grab you …” His voice trailed off as he realized she was upset with this, not pleased as he’d intended.

  “You were … upset … with him.”

  Walker had been watching her outside the Shelter on the night they’d agreed to meet-the night Nathan Prair had arrived unexpectedly, a result, no doubt, of a phone call or message from Walker himself. She realized he must have followed her back to LaMoia’s-probably knowing about the loft already-must have gone through that window to leave the key as she’d taken Blue for a walk. He’d been playing her all along like a fisherman with a prize catch.

  Her vision zoomed in on the faint edge of that light in a stac-cato way that brought everything closer to her in a series of jerky movements: Prair’s service pistol was still snapped into the holster on his work belt, now, just to the right of his ear. Next to it, an unmarked black can of pepper spray. Next to that, a Maglite.

  Walker, who had shown no interest in Gaynes’s weapon, had clearly ignored Prair’s as well. It took every ounce of strength and composure she could summon, but she stepped forward, toward the shrine. “I was upset with him,” she said. “You�
��re right about that.” She made a point of making contact with Walker and allowing a smile to grace her lips. “You did this for me?”

  Walker nodded, but his eyes ticked back and forth distrust-fully as he sought out hers, and she wondered which Walker had come out to play, the one with the boyish crush on her or the knife-wielding woman killer?

  She edged yet another step closer to both Walker and that hole, wondering if she could bring herself to dive in there with that severed head, reach the gun, and still have enough time to present it as a threat. The air tasted metallic and smelled putrid.

  “I wanted to help,” Walker said.

  “It’s not what I expected.”

  “I love surprises,” he said.

  Gooseflesh chased up her arms and down her spine.

  She said, “Do you? Oh, good.” With that, she recoiled, wound up, and then leaned forward, driving her weight into the shove that lifted Walker off his feet and sent him flying. She dived to her left, into that hole, slipped and scrambled up the muddy slope, facedown next to Prair’s severed head as she fumbled with the holster’s snap, grabbed hold of the weapon, racked the slide to chamber a round, thumbed the safety off, and rolled. Walker was on his feet, at the mouth of the hole, as she squeezed the trigger. Click. The trigger then stuck. She frantically tried to clear the jammed round as Walker took hold of her ankles and pulled, dropping her flat onto her back. Prair’s head rolled off of his lap and up onto her chest, and she threw it aside, screaming. She felt the weight of the gun then, and she knew: Its magazine was missing. Walker had emptied the gun.

  Walker had baited her, yet again.

  He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, shaming her. “Someone’s been a bad girl,” he said.

  She lunged for the can of pepper spray in Prair’s belt.

  “Empty,” Walker called out.

  She threw the weapon at him, but he deflected it.

  “I’ve never liked guns,” he said. “I feel much safer with this.”

  He held the curved gray blade between them.

  Bloodstained and mud-covered, Matthews took a moment to regain her breath. She had disassociated from him, a conscious effort on her part that now would not come without consequences. He had tested her, and she had been suckered into it.

  And she had failed.

  “It changes everything,” he said sadly. “You know that, don’t you?”

  There were no words for her, only a pounding heart, a dry tongue, and the chills that came with the knowledge of what she had done. She chastised herself for that decision-she’d allowed the emotion of fear to overcome any hope of rationally negotiating her way out. Had she been outside of this, observing it, she could have identified the victim’s bad decision making at every turn. But from inside her own cloistered fear, she felt only punishment for her will to survive and the internal strength to act upon it.

  “On your feet, Anna,” he said, not hearing his own slip.

  Metaphorically, she saw light at the end of the tunnel. Then she realized it was for real: There was light up ahead.

  “We’re going to go join your friends,” he said.

  Hebringer and Randolf, the only two “friends” she could think of.

  “We’re going to get to know each other.”

  She needed some way to attempt to rekindle rapport, even if she played into his fantasy that she was none other than his sister. She searched wildly for a nickname a sister might have used for a younger brother at some point in their long relationship. She settled on the first nickname to pop into her head, literally a stab in the dark. “I already know you … Ferris Wheel.”

  Walker snapped his head toward her. He stared at her until she felt him looking through her, not at her. Her head ached, but she kept it up. “You think Anna didn’t know that you watched her and Lanny Neal? Of course she did, Ferris Wheel.”

  He shoved her. She staggered back but did not fall. Nathan Prair’s head, sideways in the mud now, watched them.

  Matthews said, “Is that what caused the split between you?

  Your watching?”

  He shoved her again, and this time she went down hard in the mud, face first, on all fours. Her right hand hit a piece of glass and cut. The smell that kicked up was putrid and sickening.

  He trained the light down onto her, but by the time he did she’d picked the sizeable piece of curved glass out of her palm, and had transferred it to her left hand, now curled around it. She rubbed her bleeding hand on her pants, and Walker noticed the wound.

  “Shit,” he said, the child that didn’t mean to hurt the family pet. “Up ahead there’s this wall. We’ll rest there. Clean that up.”

  She gained a few yards on him. She wasn’t going to run away, but she wanted some physical space in which to clear her mind, regain herself. She recalled all that LaMoia had told her about the interview with the barmaid, Walker’s former girlfriend. “The trouble began after your father died, didn’t it?” The pain in her hand lessened. She decided she had to keep talking, free association, whatever came out of her mouth. Just keep talking. “It was just the two of you on the boat after that.”

  “So what?”

  “Pretty close quarters for a man and a woman.”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “No?” Her mind worked furiously through several sets of possibilities. She’d try them all if she had to. “You think you’re the first guy to ever watch his sister? Give me a break.” Condescending. Mary-Ann would have dominated their relationship.

  She sorted out several planes of thought on which to operate, areas of possible vulnerability for him. She had him talking-that was the important step. She didn’t want to lose that for anything. Until now the mud had disgusted her, but as it came to cover her, to own her, she felt in a primitive state, capable of almost anything. Prepared to strike.

  “Shut up about her,” he said.

  “No, I don’t think so,” she fired back. He moved her down the tunnel. The mud walls weeped in places. If she sneezed hard, the ceiling was coming down. “Why do you think you picked me, Ferrell? I’ll tell you why: Because I listen, because I made sense from the very first time we spoke. It was at the docks. Do you remember?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  “You liked the way I looked, sure. They all do, Ferrell.” She wanted to make him as small as she could, for both their sakes.

  “But more important, you liked what I said.” She didn’t remember what she’d said, not exactly, but she knew something had initiated the transference, and she felt determined to unlock that key. “You knew I could help you, didn’t you?” she asked. “It’s why you haven’t given up on me.”

  “Oh, but I have,” he said, chilling her.

  “No, you haven’t.”

  He raised the knife blade in the dim light and spun it back and forth so that it threw light across her face. Margaret’s blood had dried onto that knife. “Got me all figured out, do you?” It flashed again. “Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe the fuck not.”

  She stood her ground. Plan two. “You picked me for a reason, Ferrell.”

  “Because you told me to.”

  “I told you to what?”

  “At the morgue,” he said. “You told me there was no one else in the room. You said to put Mary-Ann where you were … and I did that … and when you spoke, I heard her voice, just like you said I would. You were right.”

  “I’m not Anna, Ferrell, am I? Look at me. Listen to me closely. Your sister is dead.”

  “Going for that gun just now?” he said. “That was impressive. That was something Anna would have done.” She felt his eyes encompassing her. “It was a mistake, but it was ballsy.”

  “How do you think seeing that knife makes me feel? How would Anna feel? You think I want to get to know you when you’re holding that knife, threatening me with that knife?”

  “You said you already know me,” he reminded.

  She didn’t want to think of him as smart, didn�
�t want him focusing on her attempt to escape, deciding to challenge him yet again in an attempt to keep him off-balance. “You didn’t find that sweatshirt, did you, Ferrell? I missed that, didn’t I?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he most certainly did.

  “Mary-Ann’s sweatshirt,” she said. “You didn’t find that sweatshirt. You already knew where it was.”

  “What?” His voice betrayed him. He sheathed the knife, taking time to draw its blade clean on his jeans. This victory instilled her with a sense of courage.

  “You knew where Neal hid his car key.”

  “Enough of this.”

  “You’d been with them that night he’d misplaced the other key. A birthday, wasn’t it?”

  “I said, enough!”

  “How did you get her to just sit there while you backed over her, Ferrell?”

  He screamed, “Shut … your … mouth!” and she knew she’d scored a direct hit.

  “Up ahead, we’ll rest a minute,” she said, wanting it to sound like it was her idea, to take control away from him. She was starting to understand that Walker’s transference had gone beyond what she’d previously imagined. He’d not only transferred his feelings for Mary-Ann onto her, but he’d transferred his own guilt onto Lanny Neal in the form of blame.

  She heard his breathing-quick, shallow intakes-and realized they’d switched roles. She had him back on his heels now, and didn’t want to stop.

  “You can’t replace her, Ferrell. Not with me, not with anybody. You can’t change what has happened, as much as you’d like to, and repeating what you’ve done-it’s what you have in mind, isn’t it? — that won’t help anything. It’ll just make it worse. The pain, I’m talking about. I know all about the pain.

  It’ll be much, much worse.” She defiantly and purposely turned her back on him before he had a chance to recover from that.

  She marched forward toward the resting place he’d told her about.

  “You betrayed me,” she heard from behind her, and she knew this was about Mary-Ann, not herself.