The Art of Deception

by Ridley Pearson

  “And to simplify that testimony, this was determined by the direction of tidal flow, was it not, and the distance the body had reached prior to retrieval?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Your Honor, if it please the court, I could reread—”

  But the judge was not in a pleasing mood. “The significance of this presentation, Mr. Seppamosa?”

  “Is in the nature of the numerals, Your Honor. Flashing. Which is exactly as the defendant, Mr. Neal, reported initially to police. The numbers of such clocks flash only when there’s been a loss of power and the battery backup is insufficient. The clock resets to twelve midnight, and then begins to keep time again.”

  Retrieving a sheet of paper from his table, Seppamosa crossed the room toward the witness chair. “Ms. Matthews, I’m going to ask you to read one more item for the benefit of the court.”

  Mahoney stood up and properly objected this time, suggesting that Seppamosa was badgering the witness in asking her to read documents that did not pertain to her expertise in any regard.

  Seppamosa defended his choice of Matthews because she was a respected member of the police community and could be trusted to tell the truth. He then offered to subpoena a variety of expert witnesses, if the court would prefer. “Clock manufacturers, power utility representatives . . .”

  The judge heatedly declined the offer, clearly rebuffing the man in the process, but Seppamosa was not to be deterred—he was a man with a mission, more alive and cheerful than any PD Matthews had seen stand before the court.

  Matthews was directed by the judge to read the letterhead off the sheet of paper supplied to her. “The letterhead is for Puget Sound Energy. It appears to be a Web page printed or faxed to Mr. Seppamosa.”

  “The highlighted text, please,” Seppamosa said, practically crowing by this point.

  She read, “. . . an area that included all of Ballard, Wallingford, Greenlake, and Phinney Ridge experienced a power interruption at eight fifty-nine P.M. on March twenty-second. This interruption lasted an average of three minutes, with the maximum lost time in Phinney Ridge estimated at seven minutes, twenty-seven seconds.”

  Seppamosa spoke loudly, luxuriating in his Perry Mason moment. “I submit to the court, Your Honor, that this power outage switched off Mr. Neal’s bedside clock at exactly eight fifty-nine. Subsequent to that, the power remained off an additional three to five minutes. Somewhere around nine-oh-four the power came back on—while Mr. Neal and Ms. Walker were still at Mr. Neal’s mother’s house having dinner—returning power to, and resetting the clock, which now began to track time as if nine-oh-four were actually midnight. Mr. Neal did hear Ms. Walker on the phone. He did witness Ms. Walker out on the balcony. Mr. Neal did see the clock flashing—flashing, as it is reported in the statement he signed for the police, the very same statement they are claiming condemns him by invalidating his reporting the correct time of night—flashing the numbers two-two-two. Two hours and twenty-two minutes after the reinstatement of power by PSE at nine-oh-four, or, eleven twenty-six P.M., Your Honor. The very discrepancy the state is attempting to use to suggest guilt on the part of my client is in fact the discrepancy that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Neal’s original statement to the police was factual, entirely factual, and does nothing whatsoever to suggest my client in any way lied at any time to authorities. Nor has he at any time contradicted the window of time for this crime put forth by the state’s very own expert witnesses.”

  The judge took this all in and directed her attention to the prosecutor’s table. “Ms. Mahoney?”

  “The state requests a continuance to review the material that has come to light.”

  “Continuance nothing, Ms. Mahoney,” an annoyed judge declared. “You’ve insufficient evidence, Ms. Mahoney. If the state wishes to try Mr. Neal, you’ll need to start again.”

  She lowered the gavel lightly and released Neal on his own recognizance.

  Matthews heard a commotion at the back of the room. She looked up to see Ferrell Walker leaving as fast as he could.

  27 Three Blocks North of Safety

  With Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” running in her head, Matthews abandoned the idea of a hotel room for a second night and returned to her houseboat, angry over losing ground at the probable cause hearing, angry at LaMoia for not anticipating the contradictory evidence put into play with the flashing clock, angry at herself for allowing Seppamosa to manipulate her and the facts to his client’s advantage. She wanted a drink. She deserved the comfort of her own home—she was sick and tired of being told what to do.

  She climbed the ladderlike stairs to her tiny bedroom, weary from a long afternoon of meetings.

  Meetings begot meetings—a tried and true axiom of police work. She wasn’t looking forward to the following day. She poured herself an expensive glass of a near-perfect wine—again the Archery Summit Pinot—drew a hot bath, and settled into the idea of spending a mindless, somewhat inebriated night in front of the television. But as preparations for the bath continued, she thought about Margaret out on the streets and found it impossible to enjoy herself. She thought about Nathan Prair and the fact that he had yet to submit the report LaMoia had demanded be delivered—a report Matthews hoped would clear up whatever relationship had existed prior to the young woman’s murder.

  As she undressed in her bedroom, paranoia crept in, despite the fact that she’d covered every inch of glass in the house, whether by window blind or thumbtacked towel. Down to her bra, she couldn’t bring herself to disrobe any further. Still partly clothed, she wrapped herself up in a robe and headed back down to the houseboat’s tiny bathroom, where, with the door locked, she undressed. She caught herself folding clothes she knew were headed for the laundry and recognized the action as a warning sign—hairline fractures in her sanity. To make matters worse, she overreacted, knocking the stack of dirty clothes into the sink and stirring them up into a tangled ball.

  Having forgotten her glass of wine, she donned the robe again and headed out to retrieve it, but found herself walking extremely slowly, attentive to every errant sound. Part of the problem for her came from the look of the place, the fact that covering all the windows had shrunk the space to a claustrophobic size. She resented the intrusion, her feeling forced to defend herself this way, the depressing darkness of the room with the lights along the lake removed from view.

  Wine in hand, she relocked the bathroom door, intent on soaking away both the day’s tensions and her increasing fear. Some sounds, some dirt found outside a window, a few strange phone calls from a disturbed kid—when she quantified the events of the past week they seemed nothing to get worked up about. Had she been on the receiving end of this list as a psychologist, she’d have wondered at the fuss. But being on the receiving end as a potential victim heightened the urgency in a way she had never fully understood before.

  The piping hot water helped the wine go to her head, but the wine failed to quiet her imagination as she’d hoped. What should have been a few luxurious moments of peace found her swapping places with Melissa Dunkin bathing in the hotel room. Despite her being locked in a windowless room, she could feel a stranger’s eyes feasting on her. Anything, anyone, could be out there at any time. There was no place that could be considered completely safe. She mentally reviewed locking both doors and all the windows, but she didn’t trust herself. The bath itself seemed like a failed idea—it would lull her into a stupor, she’d come out of the bathroom a half hour later, dazed and dull, the perfect victim. Catching herself slipping back into paranoia, she reached for her wineglass—her medication—and missed, knocking it to the tile floor where it smashed at a volume twice as loud as it should have. Shards of jagged glass wall-to-wall awaited her bare feet. The spilled red wine looked like a pool of blood.

  “Goddamn it!” Her voice rang out equally loudly, bouncing off the mirror, the tile, and the tub.

  She felt foolish. Idiotic. The bath was a bust. The whole evening felt
like a bust.

  Where a certain personality might have left the mess to enjoy the bath while the water remained hot, Matthews felt obligated to clean it up immediately, martyring herself in the process.

  Using the toilet seat as a stepping-stone, she climbed out of the tub, forgoing a towel for the robe and the sense of privacy, and inched her bottom along the countertop and finally leapt out the door and into the hall. She slipped her feet into a pair of rubber boots at the back door, grabbed a broom and dustpan, and went about cleaning up.

  As she accounted for the last of it, she felt another wave of anxiety steal into her chest. Stewing in self-pity, she saw her life as her stalker must see it: jam-packed and yet empty. She thought it too bad she couldn’t clean up the pieces of her recent past the way she had this shattered wineglass. Two broken engagements, still partly reserving herself for an unavailable married man who showed less interest now than ever before. She’d made a career of repairing other lives but had proved unable to mend her own.

  She looked around to see a virtual cocoon, the windows covered, the doors locked and dead-bolted. Afraid of her own shadow, she was the person to whom others turned to be rescued from their fears.

  She decided against the wine—it was only making things worse—and tried some Mahler instead. Nice and loud, like sitting in the second row of Benaroya Hall. She sought refuge in a mindless television show but found it unsatisfying, unable to shake the feeling that someone was watching her. Back to the wine, and another deep glass; she now felt warm to the core but still worried.

  Feeling pathetic and childish, Matthews nonetheless took the commercial breaks to patrol the houseboat. On one such foray, she grabbed a pair of flannel pajamas and returned to the bathroom and changed into them, electing to continue to wear the robe. In the process she missed a crucial part of the television show and turned off the set on the verge of tears. Another glass of wine, and she was feeling drunk.

  Unable to lose the feeling of being watched, a few too many glasses of wine in her, she determined that Walker or Prair or someone had hidden cameras in the house, and she made it her mission to find them. What was so unreasonable about that? There were “spy stores” in town that sold fiber-optic cameras that fit into smoke detectors, electric switch plates, bathroom fans, and heating ducts.

  She started out methodically, but within minutes found herself frantically pulling books from shelves, yanking artwork off the walls, and uprooting potted plants. Had she looked behind herself she would have seen a path littered in destruction and might have stopped herself. But it wasn’t until she’d come full circle that she saw her downstairs in ruins—books scattered, plants and lamps tipped over, the walls bare and crawling with unfamiliar shadows from lamps on their sides.

  Hurricane Daphne.

  Actions did in fact speak louder than words. She saw her rampage as a sustained scream, a cry for help of epic proportions.

  Her mobile phone chirped from somewhere on the kitchen counter. She searched for it contemptuously, as if it, too, might be watching her.

  “Matthews.”

  “Daphne? It’s Ferrell.”

  Her breath caught. He’d called again. With impeccable timing. And on her cell phone, a number he simply could not possess.

  “You let me down, Daphne.”

  She felt as if he’d poured ice water down her back. “I asked you not to contact me.” Could he sense her terror? Did she dare hang up on him?

  “You said it was a process, a system. That it worked. I don’t see it working, Daphne, and I don’t see you doing anything to fix it.”

  “It’s a process that takes time, Mr. Walker. Believe me, we’re doing everything—”

  “Don’t hand me that crap! If you were doing everything you could, he’d be locked up, not free to do what he wants.”

  “You and I talking about it is not going to help. I’m going to hang up now.”

  “I brought you her sweatshirt!”

  “Get this straight: The more you try to help, the more you hurt our chances of putting away your sister’s killer. Tampered evidence is inadmissible.”

  “Since when can’t an informant supply evidence?”

  “Since the informant held a knife to the suspect’s neck. Since the informant is related to the victim. Since the informant has repeatedly been asked to stay out of it. Since the informant is not an informant in the first place! Police informants are recruited and managed, and records are kept of their activities. You are not a police informant, Mr. Walker. You are not helping things.”

  “Okay, okay. Cards on the table?” Walker asked.

  “Mr. Walker, you are not listening.”

  “I can help you, Daphne.”

  “Mr.—”

  “The two missing women.”

  The sudden silence in the room and over the phone was replaced by a pounding in her ears as a slide show of recent events flashed through her consciousness. Hebringer and Randolf had stolen away Boldt and his CAP team for months. She had personally worked up profiles, interviewed family members, and torn open the lives of these two women to where secrets no longer existed—sex toys, family turmoil, medications, and past lives included. As a resident of the city, Ferrell Walker certainly knew of the department’s dedication to the investigations—so was this tease of his an act of desperation or a legitimate offer? If the latter, did she dare refuse him?

  “I’m listening,” she said, her heart continuing to race as adrenaline coursed through her. She reached for the wine bottle and upended it.

  “I’ll help you find those women if you’ll get Lanny Neal behind bars for good.”

  “We’ve been looking for those two women for a long time, Mr. Walker. What makes you think—?”

  “Because I know things you don’t.”

  “And how am I to believe that?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve had a vision. The two of them strung up like marlins. Maybe you’ve been looking in the wrong place.”

  She didn’t consider herself easily rattled—“strung up like marlins”—and yet this homeless, bereaved street person had her shrinking and shaking as she took yet another swig of wine in an attempt to settle herself. “A dream, or something more concrete?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Childish. Toying with her.

  “Yes, I would, Mr. Walker.”

  “You’re scared because I know more than you,” he said. “I can understand that. But there’s no reason to be. We’re friends, the two of us. I wouldn’t hurt you. You wouldn’t hurt me. I can help you; you can help me. Tell me you’ll help me.”

  The psychologist pushed aside the frightened woman in what she considered a moment of personal triumph. “The arrest and conviction of Lanny Neal isn’t about you, Mr. Walker. It’s about us doing our jobs. As for your contributing to our ongoing investigation into the disappearances—”

  “Then do your job,” he complained.

  “We are. We’re doing just that.”

  “By letting him go? By buying a bottle of red wine and taking the night off?”

  Oh God: He’d followed her, watched her. He knew her cell number. She fought to hold herself together, to place the psychologist ahead of the victim.

  “How’d you get this phone number?” She blurted it out without thinking, her internal wiring a mess from the unwanted cocktail of wine and adrenaline. She realized that the phone would reveal to her the caller-ID information once she disconnected. She had to know where he was calling from, and she had to hang up on him to get the information. But with Walker dangling information about Hebringer and Randolf, she knew she couldn’t hang up. Not yet.

  “Why cover the windows like that? It spoils the view.”

  Her entire body twitched as her nerves seized. She never let these guys win, yet the temptation was to hang up. She could stare across any interrogation table faking self-confidence and leveling intimidating looks that made even the most heartless think twice about going up against her. So why couldn’t she face F
errell Walker over the airwaves?

  She disconnected the call.

  Her fingers fumbled through the phone’s menu choices in search of caller-ID.

  PAY PHONE #945

  She lunged for her home phone and dialed 911 as her mobile began chirping again. The caller-ID blinked on the screen:

  PAY PHONE #945

  Walker, calling back.

  “Emergency operator,” a controlled voice answered.

  Matthews introduced herself, recited her shield number, and requested the street address for pay phone number 945.

  She was placed on hold as her mobile continued to ring. Then the mobile went silent as the voice mail engaged. Two transfers later, she reached a supervisor. Nearly five minutes after that, minutes consumed by the supervisor establishing her legitimacy, she was finally supplied the address of pay phone 945. An address just two blocks south of her.

  Hanging up the phone, she sensed the walls of the room closing in on her—physically moving—and though she’d heard such anxiety attacks described in sessions from the other side of the couch, only now did she experience the terror associated with the physical environment shrinking. Suddenly the houseboat was but a cage from which to be plucked. Walker was two blocks away and watching her.

  Already on the run, she snatched up car keys, purse, and cell phone, giving little thought to stepping outside the safety of her home. Clomping down the dock in a pair of rubber Wellingtons, her robe slipping open to expose her flannel pajamas, Matthews fished her handgun from her purse and chambered a round.

  She lumbered past a well-dressed couple, neighbors returning from dinner. They made way for her, the woman calling out and offering help.

  A blur of white terry cloth, Matthews clomped her way up a set of wooden steps that led from the dock to street level beneath an overhang of limbs, maple trees and a sycamore reaching down with their long bony fingers, an area where even she had to duck and maneuver in order to avoid having an eye poked out. Her head averted, she ran smack into a person. The unexpected contact took her breath away—part solid physical contact, part shock. In such close quarters, amid the jumble of lacelike mottled light from a streetlamp, she saw only the brown uniform at first, the resulting wave of terror filling her head like a rush of blood from standing up too quickly. She’d struck a man’s chest. A tall man. She looked up into the eyes of Nathan Prair.