Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

“That’s it.”

Lies, she thought, as LaMoia caught her attention and rolled his eyes.

“What time would that have been?” LaMoia asked.

“After dinner, like I said.”

“That would be the local news?”

“Q-13.”

“That would be Fox.”

“That would be correct.” He mimicked LaMoia, and the sergeant impressed Matthews with his ability to remain calm and not rise to the bait.

Neal liked to hear himself talk. That played in their favor.

“She wanted some of that action for herself-if you know what I’m saying-and I wasn’t exactly complaining, but-”

LaMoia interrupted. “We’ll skip the play-by-play, if you don’t mind. You did, or did not have intercourse with Mary-Ann Walker on Saturday, March twenty-second?”

“That’s a ‘did.’ For sure.”

Matthews asked, “Using a condom, or without?”

“That would be without.” Neal gave her a tennis pro smile.

LaMoia said, “Following the intercourse, you watched more television, or read, or went to sleep, or what?”

“Slept. At least I did. Mary-Ann might have gone out the window.”

“You want to explain that?”

“For a smoke,” Neal clarified. “Can’t stand that shit. She used the fire escape. Used it all the time. I saw her out there on the fire escape. It was later, a lot later. Probably for a smoke.

Right? I saw her out there, yeah. I just said I did.” Confusion fanned the edges of his eyes.

“Approximately what time was this?”

“Later.”

“Can you be more precise?”

Neal glanced first to Matthews, then to LaMoia, as if hoping one of them might help him out. He pinched his temples between the fingers of his right hand and apparently appealed for divine intervention. She was beginning to put more faith in Walker’s suspicions. Lanny Neal was a self-centered egotist who had a record of abusing his girlfriends. He didn’t lie very well, despite what must have been a great deal of practice.

“I remember her out there … seeing her out there. I didn’t like it when she went out there dressed like that. She never seemed to give a shit what she was wearing. Claimed no one could see her, so high up and all. And that’s another thing-she don’t even like heights, but for a smoke, shit, she’d climb the Space Needle. Anyway, she’d go out there in like a T-shirt and underwear, showing skin and all.

“She was talking,” he continued. “At first I wondered who the fuck was out there with her. Then I saw the cordless phone was missing. She was out there on the fire escape on the goddamn phone with someone. Maybe it was the phone ringing that woke me up in the first place. And I do remember what time it was.” This seemed to dawn upon him, and Matthews thought he was making it up as he went. “All twos flashing at me. Two twenty-two. The clock by the phone on her side of the bed. I remember that. Two, two, two. Flashing away. And I looked out the window, and there she was on the goddamn phone.”

“Two twenty-two A.M.”

“You ought to be talking to that brother of hers. Always begging her for money, bugging her. Punk-ass kid, blaming her for everything bad happening to him. Probably him on the phone. Probably him who did this to her.”

“What exactly do you think happened to Mary-Ann?”

LaMoia asked.

“How should I know? All disgusting like that, the way she was. Looked like she drowned or something. Is that right?”

“What exactly was Mary-Ann wearing at the time? Out on your fire escape.”

“I just told you! Next to nothing.”

“A description of that clothing could prove useful to the investigation.”

“Well, she sure as shit wasn’t going to go out there bare-ass again, you understand. Not after the last time. I’d caught her again-”

He stopped himself.

LaMoia met eyes with Matthews, communicating that they had their first real look at Langford Neal’s inner workings. Interrogators lived for such moments.

LaMoia supplied, “You’d smack her around, let her know who was boss.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Did you smack her around that night, Lanny? Hit her upside the head, or knock her off the fire escape, or what? She was bleeding, wasn’t she? She was bleeding and you didn’t know what to do.”

“That’s bullshit. I seen her out there and I went back to sleep.

End of story. She would’a had on butt floss. White butt floss.

She always wore the same thing.”

Matthews said, “Thong panties. And what about on top? A T-shirt? A blouse? A robe?”

“One of those camel-things.”

“A camisole.”

“Two humps right where they belong. Nice and tight.”

Matthews cringed at his reckless confidence. “A camisole and thong underwear. No sweatshirt, no robe?”

“She’s hot-blooded, I’m telling you. Went out there all the time in next to nothing. For a smoke. A sweatshirt-how the hell should I know? Does she own one? Yes. But that night it was a freak show anyway. Warm for a change. You can check that, right?”

LaMoia said, “We’ll check all of your statement, Lanny.

Every last word.”

He looked briefly bewildered, but then regained his confidence and restated that the last time he’d seen her she’d been out on the fire escape. “Woke the next morning and she wasn’t there. Not that that was all that unusual. She went to sleep later than me and got up earlier. Probably headed straight for a coffee hit, a Seattle’s Best, down a few blocks. You should check with them. Right? They open at six, and she’s always one of the first through the door.”

“So her clothes were gone,” LaMoia stated. “In the morning, I’m talking about-when you woke up, whatever else she’d been wearing-those clothes were gone?”

“What clothes? How the fuck would I know?” Clearly flus-tered, Neal shook his arms in front of himself as if his hands had gone to sleep. “She wore them to bed, that’s all I’m saying.”

LaMoia reviewed his notes. “A moment ago you said you fell asleep after having sex with Ms. Walker. That you fell asleep after the sex. Now you’re saying she wore panties to bed?

Can you be more precise?”

“She wore them to bed before I took them off her.” He added, “And that would have been after the sports, after the hummer, to be more precise.”

“And what clothes if any, did she leave behind at your apartment that morning?”

“She’s the one picks up, not me.”

LaMoia said irritably, “So you’re saying she cleaned house that morning, before she left for the coffee?”

“Listen, she had clothes at my place, okay? How the fuck do I know what was there and what wasn’t? She lived there with me, don’t forget. Right? Clothes? What? On the floor or something? How the hell would I know?”

Matthews thought the story was getting away from him. The little pauses. The rapid eye movement. She excused herself and left the conference room, returning a few minutes later with autopsy photographs of two different women.

She wasn’t hoping to win a confession, to cause some Perry Mason moment in which Langford Neal hung his head, weeping, and detailed the events of that night. She did, however, intend to run Neal through a litmus test. If she came away with anything, she hoped to at least identify his lies and to make sense of his motivations for telling them. Making a legal case was not her responsibility. All that she wanted was the truth. Until the attorneys were invited in-Neal had yet to request one-she could basically say anything she wanted, could match him lie for lie. She knew how to use her looks against guys like Neal.

Just before reentering the conference room, she tucked in her blouse and squared her shoulders, emphasizing her chest. Let him look all he wanted to. Let him be distracted.