Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

She placed the photos in front of Neal. LaMoia knew they’d made the handoff-Neal now belonged to her. She said, “We had a similar fatality last year. Also a young, attractive woman.

We’re investigating possible connections.”

“The connections being bridges and water,” Neal said.

“And/or the men these women dated.”

“You’re looking at me for some head case that jumped off a bridge a year ago?”

“No, we’re looking at you for Mary-Ann Walker, Mr. Neal.”

She made a stage show of looking over at LaMoia. “Who said anything about Mary-Ann jumping?”

“Not me,” LaMoia answered.

“Nor did I,” Matthews said.

“Try the papers, the television,” Neal protested.

Matthews said, “Mary-Ann Walker did not jump, Mr. Neal.”

“But you just said-”

“She was beaten badly, possibly raped, and subsequently was discovered in water wearing a torn thong underwear and a cotton camisole top-just exactly as you’ve now described for us. How she arrived into that water remains under investigation.”

Neal lost the shit-eating grin.

“You’re clearly a smart man,” she lied. “A man who understands women. You don’t have to tell me that some women get themselves into difficult spots. Make promises and change their minds. Get a little too drunk and ask for it and then beg off the sex with the old headache excuse. They cocktease a guy and then refuse to put out.”

LaMoia did a double take on Matthews.

Neal looked uncertain.

“Right?” Matthews said.

“Yeah, sure. I’d buy that.”

“And sometimes a guy’s got to tune her up a little, let her know who’s boss. Sober her up. There’s a way this works and there’s a way this doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work when she’s in some drunken, willing mood one minute, and then an ice maiden the next.”

Neal saw the trap then. “I … ah … I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?”

“No.”

“We’ve got a half dozen prior complaints against you, Lanny.

All of them are for taking a heavy hand with your girlfriends.

You logged a thirty-day stint at county. You put a girl named Eileen Rimbauer in the emergency room with a broken collarbone. Are you aware that Mary-Ann Walker had five such emergency room visits in the last six months? Did she happen to tell you about those? Her brother knows, I’ll tell you that. She claimed to have fallen down the stairs of the boat, said her hand got caught in a winch.” She read all this as if it were printed on the page, which it was not. “Pretty lame excuses, you ask me.

She also had some woman problems that make a lot more sense if some guy is playing it a little kinky and rough. So what you need to look at, Mr. Neal, is not the door, not my chest, not the detective, as you have been, but what happened that night. You need to look at the underlying circumstances that started whatever argument resulted between you, the conditions that escalated that particular argument into violence. We’re cops, yes.

But believe it or not we’re human. We’ve heard it all-there’s nothing you can tell us that will surprise us. This being your third strike, with the battered-woman law in effect you’re facing a serious uphill battle, if convicted. You want half a chance?

Convince us that you and Mary-Ann had a disagreement that night, that things got a little out of hand. A disagreement takes two people, Mr. Neal. That’s a whole lot better than some guy pounding on his woman for no reason whatsoever. Can we start there?”

“She was out on the fire escape. Talking on the phone maybe.

I’m not sure about that. Smoking a cigarette, ’cause otherwise no way would she have been out there. I’m telling you, she did not like heights.”

“Not to get away from you?”

“We had sex is all. Maybe I was rough. I don’t remember. I was pretty loaded that night. But I’ll tell you one thing: You never heard Mary-Ann complaining about the sex, believe me.

She liked it rough. She asked for it rough. That night, out there on the fire escape, that’s the last I seen of her.”

“Two twenty-two A.M.,” Matthews repeated.

“The woman hardly slept.”

“You understand that where there are mitigating circumstances in a case-an argument, for instance-the investigating officer is required to take them into consideration. These things come out in trial no matter what. There’s no sense for a detective to push for capital murder if there’s a domestic case where the girlfriend was complicit-say, acting like a drunken slut one minute and going for a carving knife the next. You need to think about that, because a guy beats up a woman, the sides get drawn long before the jury sits down for the first time. Believe it.”

Neal wore shock in his eyes, which Matthews took as a small victory. “Am I getting through, Lanny?” she asked rhetorically.

“She was all fucked up in the head. All bent out of shape over her asshole baby brother. Said she’d let him down, losing the fishing boat and everything. That she owed him big time.

But shit, he was just working her. Mooching. Crying in his beer.

I wanted her taking care of things around home. For us to get something going. But I’m telling you, she was all fucked up.”

“Okay.” Matthews took a deep breath and savored the surprise that he’d begun to open up.

“She’d been drinking a lot that night, got herself all dumb and loopy. We had the sex, you know, just like I said. Her on top, all angry like. Fast and furious and, I don’t know, mean-spirited, you know? Like she didn’t want to be doing it.”

Matthews didn’t like the next images that filled her head-sweating through the camisole, sticky hair, the slapping of flesh.

“Sometimes it was like that with her,” Neal said, quieter for the first time. “A little strange like that. Like she wasn’t really there, you know? Tripping out. The more I seen of her like that, the weirder it was, to tell the truth. She’d get herself off. It wasn’t about me. It was like I wasn’t there.”

Matthews attempted to wipe those images from her mind, but they wouldn’t fade. She spoke over them. “Was there anything that night in particular that the two of you argued about?

Anything said that maybe’d come up the other times you’d seen her like this?”

“I’m telling you, she got the most pissed off when I brought up Ferrell, and how it was bugging me the way he never left her alone. Jesus, the guy was always showing up at the weirdest times. Sniveling about money and how she’d fucked everything up. And she didn’t like me talking about him. Bitching about him. She’d pretty much taken care of him since their old man bit it. Her mom-I don’t know nothing about her mom. Whether she bolted or croaked, or what. She could be dead, too, for all I know.”

“So you argued about the brother,” Matthews said.

“That night? Not that I remember. I’m telling you: We got back to my place and she went all horny on me. She’s half undressed and going down on me practically before I got the tube on.”

“According to you, she was out on your fire escape in her panties and a camisole top. Maybe a sweatshirt; you don’t know.

Can’t remember. I’m assuming barefoot. And now, fast-forward, she’s in the water.” Matthews paused. “There are problems with your story, Mr. Neal. Are you aware of that? We started out with you and Mary-Ann pretty much in the same miserable condition. You watching your sports broadcast while she services you. Now you say she was oversexed and practically raping you.

We started out with her getting up in the morning and heading out for coffee. But we know for a fact she ended up in the water the night before. How’d she get there?”