Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

“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 about.”

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.”

Matthews told the suspect, “What we were just discussing is of relevance here.”

His face reflected a mixture of annoyance, anger, and uncertainty. “If there’s blood in that car, I’ve got no idea how it got there. None.”

Matthews informed LaMoia that they’d just been exploring various possibilities for any such evidence. She dropped the hammer with, “… since we know that Mr. Neal has the only key to the vehicle.”

“It’s not the only key,” he spoke up. His eyes pleaded for understanding. “You asked if Mary-Ann had a key. She didn’t.

But it wasn’t the only key. I’ve got one of those spare key things inside under the driver-side rear wheel.”

This news hit her like a bomb, and she could see it had with LaMoia as well, though he hid it cleverly from Neal, disguising it as a yawn that he covered with his hand. He wanted Neal thinking he was bored. Anything but.

“A second key,” LaMoia said.

“Rear wheel, up on the axle. One of those magnetic boxes.”

Matthews asked, “And you would expect that key to be in place at the moment?”

“Last time I used that was a good two months ago. It’s gotta be there.”

“Locked yourself out?” LaMoia asked.

“Over on Forty-fifth. We’d gone to that Thai place … Viet-namese … whatever it is. Mary-Ann’s birthday.”

“I’m going to check it out,” LaMoia informed Matthews.

“You okay here?”

“Fine,” Matthews said.

“I hit a bird last week,” Neal volunteered. “Right side of the car, right?” he called out after a retreating LaMoia.

LaMoia stopped. “With your permission, Mr. Neal, I’m going to check for that key.” He waited for a response.

Neal looked back and forth between the two, clearly weighing cooperation versus objection. He looked as if he might ask a question of Matthews, but she made no effort to encourage this. If LaMoia was operating on a bluff, the wrong answer now could sway Neal to start protecting himself-the last thing she and LaMoia wanted.

Neal said, “What the hell?” LaMoia opened the door but did not leave. He turned to Neal and nodded faintly, sending the man a signal. “You have my permission,” Neal conceded.

If a randomly placed key existed somewhere on the car, any decent first-year defense attorney could shred their attempts to lay blame on Neal for any damaging evidence collected. Confusing Matthews further was Neal’s willingness to cooperate with the search. His earlier conviction and brief prison time, when combined with what was obviously an above-average intelligence, should have prevented him from making any such agreements. Guilty or not, she thought.

“I hit a bird,” he repeated for her benefit.

“Sure you did,” she said, trying her best to sound utterly unconvinced.

“No key, Mr. Neal,” LaMoia announced when he returned less than five minutes later. “I checked the same location behind all four tires.”

“Yeah?” His bravado seem to crumble. Matthews had seen this dozens of times before: that point when the lies collapse under the weight of truth. “Then it fell off somewhere…. Or maybe … I never put it back after the last time.”

“Sure.”

“I’m telling you …” But he couldn’t think how to complete the thought.

LaMoia was just getting warmed up. “Crawling around under the car just now, you want to know what I found?” He asked this to Matthews, as if Neal weren’t in the room.

“What’s that?” she answered.

“Some hair. A nice little smudge of blonde hair and blood.

Bottom of the rear bumper, and more on the bottom of the gas tank. Rear of the vehicle,” he said, for Neal’s sake. “You ever hit a blonde bird, you scumbag? Backing up? Maybe you’d like to start doing some talking, on account SID is going to collect all that physical evidence-including, I want to bet, some blue cotton fibers from the sweatshirt that you, yourself, put Mary-Ann in that night-and you’re going to lose any chance you had to put us, or the court, on your side of this. You understand how that works, don’t you? You’re no stranger to the process.”

“An argument,” Matthews said, seizing on LaMoia’s discovery of this evidence. She felt energized, gripped by adrenaline.

“Maybe she shoved you. Hit you. Swore at you. All that affects the way the lawyers look at a domestic.”

“But if that evidence piles up ahead of time,” LaMoia said, “then what the hell do we need you for? How the hell you going to get anyone to listen if we’ve already got you in the bag?”

“We’re listening right now, Mr. Neal,” Matthews said. But Neal looked as paralyzed by LaMoia’s announcement as she felt.

Every time they had a leg up on this guy, he threw her into doubt with an unexpected reaction. She cautioned herself to work the Boldt method-listen to the victim, follow the evidence, discount witnesses, and ignore the suspect completely until all the facts were in. She tended to react emotionally to suspects, at least on a surface level, and to trust that reaction. It was this opposite approach of theirs that made their combination such an effective team. With LaMoia, things were a little different. He tended to cut to the chase, go for the heart and then leave it to her to show the suspect the error of his ways. She added, “We won’t be around forever, Lanny. This thing will be out of our hands soon,” she said, wondering if they could be so lucky, “and into the hands of the attorneys. At that time, your chance of gaining any points for cooperation pretty much disappear.”