The Art of Deception (7 page)

“That our guy out there?” LaMoia stepped back from her, keeping it business.

“Yes. Langford Neal,” she said, giving her jacket a small straightening tug. “Boyfriend, or former boyfriend, if it’s MaryAnn Walker in there.”

“And the doc thinks it is.”

“The doc got hold of a better driver’s license photo than I did. One of her eyes, the left, I think, is still where it belongs, and it’s apparently a match for color: blue. Height’s about right. Weight could be right, discounting for saturation and bloat. I’ve got a call in to the brother to try to locate dental records for her.”

LaMoia glanced in the direction of the reception area. “Let me tell you something about our little angel, Neal. Two convictions as well as a number of complaints from previous love interests. This guy plays rough. He served thirty days in county for one of the convictions. The second, he was in for six months, out in four.”

The news moved Neal up the list in both their minds. She understood the added spring to LaMoia’s step now—he loved having the jump on information. “That certainly helps,” she said, “but we shouldn’t lose sight of the brother, either.”

“Ten-to-one she was killed in or near the boyfriend’s pad, given the underwear, the bare feet, and the rest of it.”

“The brother could have harbored jealousy and anger over his being deserted for Neal. That’s powerful stuff.”

“Neal has two convictions for knocking women around. You kidding me? Not losing sight of the brother, that’s okay. But we focus on Neal. If he does, in fact, ID the body as her, then from what you were saying, your take is to run him straight up to the bull pen and have a go at him. Is that right?”

“That, or use a conference room here.”

“You’re thinking that this viewing may put him off-balance—her being so ripe and all—and that we pounce while we have the opportunity.”

“You’re a lot smarter than you look.”

He took it in stride. LaMoia had his timing down to an art form. He kept it business—for the time being. This put her on edge, her defenses at the ready.

“You want to sit this one out, I’m okay with that. You’re way too … sweet … for a floater. Especially one that’s been in the meat locker for a few extra days.”

She knew she could handle it, she’d seen plenty of dead bodies, some in dreadful condition, but it didn’t mean she
wanted
to. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I think.”

“You think too much,” he said, meeting her eyes to drive home his point. LaMoia had large brown eyes and knew how to use them to effect.

“Meaning?”

“You gotta teach yourself to
feel,
Matthews.” He leaned against one of the two swinging doors. He wasn’t going to make her follow inside. “You’re all engine. It’s the handling that counts.” Everything came down to cars for LaMoia. “You get that down, you’ll be just about perfect.”

“Who said I wanted to be perfect?” But he didn’t answer her. He left her there to think about it. The door flapped shut behind him. Timing was everything.

Decades earlier, in municipalities across the country, medical examiner and coroner offices had learned to separate the individual making an identification from the room containing the body, as the smell tended to cause fainting and vomiting. Some used video, some a window—most used both, as did the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, where a color TV was mounted to the left of a narrow window that housed a venetian blind controllable from the inside.

Lanny Neal was handsome in a ski bum kind of way, cocksure of himself judging by the rigid shoulders, the smug expression, and his willingness to blatantly check out Matthews, leveling his gaze and drinking her in, head to foot.

She knew she should wait to question him, but he’d fired the first salvo with that rude survey of her topography, and she fell victim to the challenge.

“When did you last see Mary-Ann?” she asked.

The question didn’t rattle Neal in the least—although LaMoia looked a little uncomfortable. Neal remained calm and collected, as if he were there applying for a job. This further irritated Matthews.

“Couple nights ago.”

“How many nights ago?”

“Saturday, I guess.”

“You guess, or you know?” Matthews pressed.

“Saturday night. Late.”

“You weren’t worried about her?”

“Pissed was more like it.”

“You didn’t report her missing. Why’s that?”

“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 MaryAnn 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.