The Art of Deception Read online

  “Okay, so I’m wrong. I still got to talk to you, Ms. Oblitz, about that original complaint. A woman’s gone through something awful—two others have gone missing—and I think you may be able to help me with this. I think you know what she’s going through.”

  A long pause. He could hear her breathing. “Not now. Not over the phone.”

  LaMoia experienced a great sense of victory. He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and combed his free hand through his hair. “Okay. Thank you. So when? Where?” He added, “You’re in . . . the Bay Area. It’s going to have to be by phone, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m traveling up there on business, Monday. I’m in the W.”

  “Name a time,” he said.

  She asked him to wait a minute. “I have an opening at four. Four to five. Will that suit you?”

  “Four o’clock. Fine.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t announce yourself at the desk, would you not, Sergeant? Just call up to the room, please.”

  “Done.” He hung up the phone with a smile. He owned Ms. Tina Oblitz. She just didn’t know it yet.

  15 The Discovery Process

  “Bernie Lofgrin typed the blood on that sweatshirt your boyfriend delivered,” LaMoia explained to Matthews. “It matches Mary-Ann Walker’s. They’re running DNA now. Meanwhile we’re here for a little chat.”

  “SID?” she asked. “We’re going to search his apartment, right?”

  “If he lets us in, we get a plain-sight search,” LaMoia answered. “But for anything more than that, we’ll need a court order, and for that Mahoney wants a print or prints developed on the sweatshirt, some hairs other than Mary-Ann’s, a second blood type, semen . . . something to bring Neal into the picture with physical evidence.”

  “And the lab?”

  “Is working on it.” He added, “Call me reckless—I don’t feel like waiting another twenty-four hours on this.”

  “And I’m along because?” she asked.

  “Because I like you, Matthews. Why else?”

  She felt herself blush and tried to cover it by saying, “Gee, John, you’ve got me all feverish.”

  “That’s the idea,” he said. “We’ll cool off with a drink later.”

  “Don’t count on it,” she said, though it didn’t sound so bad. LaMoia? she asked herself. Who was she kidding?

  “Because you see things the rest of us don’t,” he said, answering her original question. “And because someone has to keep an eye on him while I inspect his car.” He allowed this to sink in. “She was sitting up facing a car when she was hit, not standing, not running away. Dixie can prove that. If not the sweatshirt, maybe Neal’s car. The point being something is going to win SID a ticket into Neal’s apartment, and I’ll take it however we can get it.”

  He gave her one of his high-voltage smiles as he used a credit card to trick open the lock on the apartment house’s street-side door.

  The dark stairwell smelled sour, of spilled beer and wine, tobacco and other things in various states of organic decomposition that she didn’t want to think about—street sex and intravenous drug use, and always that tinge of the sea. These combined with an odor that she took to be poisoned mice or water rats entombed in the walls in various stages of silent decay.

  “Should we have maybe called for backup?” she asked in a forced whisper.

  “We’re fine,” LaMoia said, climbing the stairs two at a time and reaching inside his jacket for his handgun as he got to the landing.

  It didn’t feel all that “fine” to her, and she nearly said so.

  “You didn’t have to come,” he said.

  “Then why’d you ask me along? What the hell, John: These aren’t even my hours.”

  “Because I knew if I didn’t you’d be all moody about being left out.” This irritated her—not the comment, but the fact that he had her dead to rights. “I asked you because I knew you had nothing better to do tonight, and I thought you might enjoy seeing me take this guy down.”

  “Seeing you take him down,” she restated. “So I’m what, your audience?”

  “It’s not like that and you know it.”

  “What is it like, John?” she whispered. They stood outside the apartment number listed on LaMoia’s slip of paper. She was angry now. Angrier still that she allowed it to show.

  He met eyes with her and whispered back, “I like your company, Matthews. You’re smart, you’re clever, and like I said, you see things in shit-balls like Neal that the rest of us miss. A case like this . . . maybe we find evidence, maybe we don’t. And if we don’t, the evidence may boil down to this guy’s behavior. His reactions. Am I right? And who better than you to sit up on that witness stand and charm the shorts off a jury to where they buy a collection of circumstantial evidence that pins him as capable of anything, including lying.”

  LaMoia reached up and rapped his knuckles on the door. He indicated for her to step back, and he readied the weapon before him.

  She understood then that the pistol was nothing more than posturing on LaMoia’s part—he wanted to scare Neal with this entrance, to establish a degree of distrust that would set the tone for the interview to come. She admired him for this gut instinct of his; sometimes she wondered who, of the two of them, understood human behavior better.

  “Who is it?” Neal asked through the door.

  “Sergeant LaMoia and Lieutenant Matthews, Mr. Neal.”

  The man opened the apartment door with none of the reluctance or hesitation that Matthews might have expected of the guilty, and she took note of this. Such cocksure confidence could be its own telltale, its own undoing for a rare breed of suspect.

  The door opened into a room dominated by a large worn couch covered in an unpleasant green cotton that looked more like a bedspread, a wooden chair facing it, and a coffee table with badly scratched veneer that clearly doubled as a footrest. A shabby, aluminum card table that belonged in an Airstream trailer held two empty beer bottles and a pair of disposable picnic containers of salt and pepper. The table was situated in front of a large double-hung window. Its jamb and sill pockmarked by a dozen coats of poorly applied paint, it looked out onto a black metal fire escape and beyond, an unexpectedly impressive view of Lake Union. Finding the one-man kitchen neat and clean surprised her. She would have expected Neal incapable of housekeeping. A plain-sight search of the small bedroom revealed the television he’d mentioned previously as well as a second window access out onto the fire escape, also part of his earlier statement. At least in his description of the place, his earlier statement held up.

  The artwork, if it could be called that, amounted to travel posters of beach resorts showing scantily clad bronzed women enjoying bright sunshine while surrounded by palm trees and umbrellas.

  He caught her staring. “I was an Internet travel agent until the meltdown happened. Put most of us out of business.”

  “And now?” LaMoia asked. “I don’t think we established your employment, Mr. Neal.”

  “A little of this, a little of that. Between jobs right now.”

  “Between women, too,” LaMoia muttered.

  “Mary-Ann was helping with the rent?” Matthews said.

  Neal shrugged. “A little. You’ll hear it from the maggot anyway, if you haven’t already.”

  “The brother,” LaMoia clarified.

  “He’s a parasite, and don’t look at me like I’m the pot calling the kettle black because it’s my apartment in the first place, my car, my things. I’m between jobs is all, and Mary-Ann helped out. So what?”

  LaMoia said, “Sit down, Mr. Neal,” an order, not a request.

  Neal displayed his disgust as he slouched into the grasp of the green monster, outwardly reluctant in this act of obedience. Matthews purposefully stood over by the table, out of Neal’s peripheral vision but with a clear view of him, temporarily pushing away the continuing concern for Margaret’s whereabouts and the confusion over both Ferrell Walker and Nathan Prair that had robbed her of sleep. She
focused on the suspect, alert for every twitch, every nuance as he reacted to LaMoia’s line of questioning.

  With his detective’s notebook lying on his pressed blue jeans, LaMoia said, “You mentioned your car. What kind of a car is it, please?”

  “Ninety-two Corolla.”

  “Color?”

  “Kind of gold.”

  “Champagne?”

  “Right, champagne.”

  “You said the car was yours?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Only yours?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have the only set of keys, or did Mary-Ann have a set?”

  “Listen, we weren’t married.”

  LaMoia said, “So she did not have a key.”

  “People who spend a lot of time in boats, they don’t make the best drivers. Mary-Ann . . . she was a danger in that car.”

  He repeated, “She did not have her own key.”

  “You’re real quick, Sergeant.” Neal craned his neck then to locate Matthews. “I figured you were probably snooping around while the sergeant here held me riveted with his line of questioning.”

  “You figured wrong,” she said. “We’re trying to show some respect by coming to your home, rather than dragging you downtown. We’re trying to get to the truth of what happened to Mary-Ann.”

  LaMoia said, “I didn’t see a champagne Corolla out on the street on our way in.”

  Neal shook his head and grinned at the same time. “So you knew about my car before you asked me. Is that supposed to scare me or something, Sergeant?”

  LaMoia responded, “I know a lot of things before I ask you, Lanny. That’s why your answers count so much.”

  “I know what you guys are thinking.” He wormed his hands together and wouldn’t look at LaMoia, interpreting the spill patterns in his worn brown rug instead. “But that’s bullshit, and we both know it.”

  “What are we thinking?” LaMoia asked.

  “Don’t hand me that. You know, and I know. So that’s that.”

  “Yeah,” LaMoia agreed, “that’s pretty much that.”

  “It doesn’t make me good for this.”

  “A person’s history is an inescapable thing, Lanny. Think about it. We got it down in black and white that you like to backhand your women.”

  “That stuff’s not admissible.”

  “So you’re a lawyer now. What happened to travel agent?”

  LaMoia’s comment won another spark of eye contact between the two, and Matthews saw a conflicted personality working hard to contain himself. Lanny Neal wanted to release some of the pent-up anger he was feeling but was smart enough to know that would work against him.

  LaMoia said, “Let’s get back to the location of that Corolla.”

  “Parked in a space out back.”

  “Has it been to the shop recently?”

  “No.”

  “Been to the car wash?”

  “Oh, yeah, I spend a lot of time at the car wash with the soccer moms in the minivans. You got me nailed, I can see that. Reading me loud and clear.”

  “I need a straight answer on this one, Langford. You have or have not cleaned the car in the past six days?”

  The directness of LaMoia’s question sobered Neal. He sat up straight—the kid in the classroom caught doodling—suddenly understanding the severity of LaMoia’s questions.

  “What’s with that?”

  “An answer is all.”

  “Have not. What? You think in killing her I drove her to the Ballard Bridge and tossed her? You want to search the car? Is that it?”

  She’d gone off the Aurora Bridge. Matthews made mental note of the mistake.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” LaMoia glanced over at Matthews, “it might help to clear this up all the more quickly if I took a look at it, yes.”

  “Have at it.”

  Another look between Matthews and LaMoia. LaMoia said, “The lieutenant’ll stay here while I go down and check it out.”

  Neal clearly didn’t like the idea. He appeared to weigh the value of dissenting but indicated a hook by the apartment door where a set of keys hung.

  “I won’t be going into the vehicle,” LaMoia corrected. “I won’t even be touching it. A cursory, external examination is all.”

  “Because you don’t have a warrant. Are you guys charging me with something?”

  “Should we be?”

  “Fuck no! I’m just asking what’s going on here.”

  “What’s going on,” LaMoia replied flatly, “is that I’m going to go out and look at your car while Lieutenant Matthews asks you a few questions.” He added, “Do you have any problem with that?”

  “No . . . problem,” he confirmed, reluctantly.

  LaMoia left the apartment and Matthews moved around to the same chair in front of the green couch and faced Neal. The man’s demeanor changed noticeably, which came as no great surprise to her. Accustomed to controlling women, Neal would believe he could gain the upper hand over Matthews. It occurred to her that she couldn’t rule him out as the man watching her from the parking garage. If those kids had lied about the khaki clothing, then anyone could have been up there watching her.

  “When was the last time Mary-Ann was in your car, Mr. Neal?”

  “What is all this with the car? Why do you have to hassle me? I didn’t do anything to Mary-Ann.”

  “When you say you didn’t do anything, exactly what do you mean? Anything of a violent nature, is that it? Because we know you had sexual relations with Mary-Ann—you’ve already told us about that. You cohabitated here in this apartment,” she reminded. “You argued, at least you implied as much. I need to advise you, Mr. Neal, that we take your answers seriously. They’re being written down, and we’re assuming you’re making every effort to aid us in our investigation. Are you going to tell me now that you never struck Mary-Ann, never threatened her, never abused her in any way or fashion—because when you make a sweeping statement like the one you just made, you force me to reconsider every other answer you’ve given us.”

  “I didn’t kill her,” he said, though he sounded much less convinced, and Matthews made note of the last minute of their exchange. As she was writing he said, “She was in the car all the time. Okay? Maybe not every day, but all the time.”

  “Did you ever strike her when she was in the car?”

  “I’m not saying I ever hit her.”

  “Do you need for me to repeat the question?” She found herself interested in his ability to pay attention to the questions and identify some of the traps she was trying to lay. Neal was no stranger to such interrogations, if she had to guess. Her colleagues in Special Assaults didn’t keep track of the number of times a person was brought in for questioning—but had they, she believed Neal’s jacket would be littered with such interviews.

  “I never hit her when she was in the car. Never hit her, period.”

  “Was Mary-Ann ever in an accident in the vehicle?”

  “Damn near, the way she drives.”

  Matthews noted the present-tense answer, wondering at the same time if Neal had yet to fully accept Mary-Ann’s death, or if it was merely a slip of the tongue. Guilt and remorse could play tricks on the brain. “Should I repeat the question?”

  “No accidents, okay?”

  She let the tension in the air settle, like waiting for smoke to clear. “Then you could see no reason, no explanation, for any of Mary-Ann’s spilled blood being found in or on your vehicle—this nineteen ninety-two champagne Corolla?”

  “Blood?” His eyes went wide and she could feel his chest knot with panic. He was wondering how she’d jumped to this, thinking what he’d overlooked, what she’d led him into.

  “It’s a simple enough question,” she said, “or would you like me to repeat it as well?”

  “What’s all this about?”

  “The question concerns possible explanations for blood found in your—”

  “I heard the goddamn question. I asked what it’s a
bout.”

  Neal gave the impression of genuine surprise at her implication they might connect Mary-Ann’s blood to his car. She didn’t trust this impression, but she took note of it nonetheless. If he could play his girlfriends, then why couldn’t he play investigators? Guys like Lanny Neal grew accustomed to playing everyone around them to get what they wanted. It made him difficult to read, and she found it even more difficult to trust her own assessments. Domestics—and this had every indication of being just that—usually cleared on a confession or a statement by the guilty party. Some eighty percent of domestic homicides were cleared through confessions to the first officer to arrive on the scene. Lanny Neal was bucking the odds, but it didn’t let him off the hook.

  LaMoia stepped through the door without knocking. “Hands in plain view, Mr. Neal,” he said strongly, approaching the couch. “Keep them on your knees.”

  Matthews understood immediately where this was headed— Neal did, too, for that matter. She stood out of her chair, wishing LaMoia had consulted her first. She’d softened up Neal with her questioning, might have gotten to a confession if LaMoia had given her some time. He then asked Neal to stand and carefully patted him down, searching for weapons. This completed, he delved into the cushions and cracks of the green monster—she didn’t envy him that job—brushed his hands off, and set the suspect back down into the couch.

  “Are you familiar with court-ordered search warrants?” LaMoia asked Neal.

  Matthews wondered if the pat-down had been motivated by real evidence or LaMoia’s desire to imply the discovery of real evidence. With LaMoia, one could never tell. She continued to believe she knew where this was headed, though for the first time she began to question from what it had come.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve applied by phone for permission to search and seize your property, Mr. Neal. Specifically, your car. I’m well aware that we already had your verbal permission to inspect the vehicle, but this more formal step is necessary to protect what we call the chain of custody, in terms of evidence collection. Do you understand?”

  “Not really. The warrant stuff, sure. But why?”

  “I thought you might tell me,” LaMoia said. “It could save us all a lot of time.”