The Art of Deception Read online

  “Why should I? She blew me off. Her tough luck.”

  Mary-Ann was gone. On to the next. Matthews knew the attitude. She asked him about the last time he’d seen Mary-Ann. Where they were at the time, what Mary-Ann had been wearing, her mood.

  LaMoia interrupted. “I think they’re ready for us.”

  A plain white sheet on a stainless-steel gurney filled the video screen. LaMoia knocked on the glass and the blinds came up like a curtain being raised. A hand appeared, on both the video and through the glass, drawing back the sheet and revealing the remains of a woman’s head, at once both pathetic and terrifying. The lips were grotesquely distended, as if pumped full of air. An eyelid had been stitched shut, apparently to spare Neal the sight of an empty socket.

  Matthews heard herself catch her breath. LaMoia remained intractable. Neal stared at her for a long time, exhaled slowly, shook his head slightly, and looked away with glassy eyes. It was not the reaction she would have expected of a murderer— she and LaMoia met eyes and she knew he felt much the same— leaving her to wonder just how good an actor Lanny Neal might be. This, in turn, prepared her for the Q&A she was already planning in her head.

  “Yeah,” Neal said, still looking away from the window.

  “Mary-Ann Walker?” LaMoia asked.

  Neal looked a little green, his skin carrying a light sheen that hadn’t been there moments before. “You got a men’s room around here?”

  LaMoia directed him down the hall, meeting eyes once more with Matthews and communicating his own surprise at Neal’s reaction.

  The commotion came from the front of the office, where the receptionist stood out of her chair too late to prevent the entrance of a man wearing a torn sweatshirt and filthy blue jeans.

  It took Matthews a moment to identify the late arrival as Ferrell Walker.

  Walker paused in the middle of the medical examiner’s central office looking lost yet determined. Matthews immediately picked up on the kid’s frenetic energy. It jumped around the room like sparking electricity. He held the attention of everyone in the office as heads lifted and a silence of apprehension descended. These people had no idea he was a grieving brother. This was the wild man on the subway, the lunatic in the hotel lobby. Of the employees in the room, only the receptionist made any attempt to intervene, and she reconsidered after taking a few steps toward the kid. Lanny Neal didn’t yet see him.

  Matthews left the small hallway that offered the viewing window and moved across the central room toward Walker, who avoided her by closing in on Neal. The fingers of his right hand danced like a gunslinger’s.

  “Don’t!” Matthews shouted, but her reprimand had the unintended effect of stopping not Walker, but Neal, allowing Walker to close the distance even faster. Matthews knew, without knowing, what Walker had in mind; knew, without knowing, that for a few precious seconds Walker remained impressionable; knew, without knowing, that she was going to have to talk Walker down.

  Walker, now to her left, lunged with reptilian speed, pinning Neal, who was a good deal larger than him. Down the small hallway, LaMoia drew his weapon instinctively, but Matthews waved LaMoia off as the curved blade of Walker’s fillet knife flashed through the air and came to rest against Neal’s throat.

  “The question you have to ask yourself,” Matthews began, addressing Walker as if she’d rehearsed for the role, “is not whether you believe Mr. Neal harmed your sister, or whether you think yourself capable of doing harm to him; it’s not even about the prison time you will serve—you’ll get a life sentence for something like this, Ferrell, meaning Mr. Neal will have destroyed both you and Mary-Ann—the question is what Mary-Ann would say to you, were she here at this moment, whether or not she would approve of you destroying your own life in an effort to save hers, a life already beyond saving.” She inched closer, now fifteen feet away.

  She won his attention, though with no immediate results. The blade remained against Neal’s throat.

  She said, “Mr. Neal identified Mary-Ann just now. She’s here, and you can see her for yourself if you want.” She pounced on what she believed would be his greatest desire—to see his sister again—never taking her eyes off Walker as she pointed toward the hallway where LaMoia waited. She had to steer him back into his grief and away from anger and blame. “Do you want to see Mary-Ann again, Ferrell? That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Believe me—you keep up like this, you’ll never see her again. You’ll be in prison when it comes time to bury her, and your actions here, right now, will have delayed any possible prosecution of Mr. Neal, for whatever role he may or may not have had in your sister’s death.”

  Lanny Neal strained through clenched teeth, “This . . . is . . . bullshit.”

  Walker’s eyes danced.

  Matthews moved yet another step closer. Twelve feet now. “You’re lying to yourself, Ferrell, if you think you’re doing Mary-Ann a favor. You think murdering a man in cold blood is going to help her? How? Do you think it’s going to help your situation in any way? You’re making a lot of trouble here.” She nodded at LaMoia. She wanted Walker’s attention divided. “John! Is this going to save you trouble?”

  “Me? I’m looking at writing up reports for the next week if this guy makes the wrong choice. Not doing me any favors.”

  “No,” Matthews agreed. She extended her open hand toward Walker. “Once you pass me that knife, this incident is closed. Do you hear me, Ferrell? Closed. There’s only Mr. Neal’s word against your own. The sergeant and I, the people in this office: No one saw anything. A grieving brother got a little out of control. Big deal.”

  LaMoia said, “Where’s the foul?”

  “He did this to her!” Walker said, his voice raw.

  “Bullshit I did,” Neal groaned.

  “We don’t know what happened,” Matthews said. “That’s still being determined. If you’re right, then you’re right. But it’s a risky assumption on your part. And what if you’re wrong, Ferrell? What then? What if you kill an innocent man here today? Where’s that leave you? Mary-Ann’s killer at large, and you, in jail, behind bars, where you can’t do anything to help us. We need your help here, Ferrell. You’re her only surviving kin—that’s hugely important to our investigation.”

  Walker tensed instead of handing over the knife.

  A man’s thunderous voice boomed from the far side of the room. “Put down the knife, young man!” Doc Dixon, sounding like God himself. Behind Matthews, and to her right.

  Walker glanced over in that direction, increasing the pressure on Neal’s throat as he did so.

  Dixon said, “You don’t use a knife as a weapon in the basement of a hospital.” It sounded so convincing. “There are a few hundred trained doctors in the floors immediately above us. Emergency rooms. Surgical suites. I’m a doctor. Several of my assistants in this room are also doctors. We’re not going to let him die. No matter what you try, we’re going to save him. The moment you try anything, Sergeant LaMoia over there will either put a bullet in you or break every bone in your body. And another thing to think about: No one here is going to be in any great hurry to help you, believe you me.”

  LaMoia was maybe ten feet behind her now. “This is one way, do not enter.”

  Matthews said, “There’s a legal process that’s meant to handle this. It’s a process that works, Ferrell. Knives don’t work. 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 workplace.”

  “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 my 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 o
ffices 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 stereotypes 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.”