Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

Her houseboat, last on the left of dock 7c, was constructed of gray shiplap. Thirty-gallon terra-cotta flower tubs sat to either side of the hemp rope railing that surrounded her deck. No green thumb, she’d tried annuals in the tubs for a while but kept killing them off. They currently housed a variety of Korean boxwood that required no attention.

She walked briskly down the dock, her Cole Haan flats clapping like gunshots, her heart rate elevated as she wondered if she’d been followed. Her houseboat’s front door was African mahogany and bore a carving of a dove she could do without.

She entered, locked the door, and threw its deadbolt. Removing and hanging up the rain jacket reminded her of the color of her blouse and reintroduced a wave of brief panic at the thought that Walker not only had managed to see her with her jacket off but was brazen enough to mention it.

The downstairs was finished cedar, the furnishings spare-a foldout couch, a wood-burning stove, a hand-carved cherry rocker. An eight-by-eight post in the center of the small living room supported the roof. The galley kitchen was separated from the living area by a small island countertop that hosted three stools, a walk-around phone, a cutting board, and a suspended wooden rack that was home to wineglasses. The killer home stereo had taken her three years to acquire. She fired up Sarah McLachlan’s Surfacing and cranked the volume. If anything eventually sank this place it would be the high count of books and professional journals that overflowed the bookshelves and rose to towering stacks on the floor. A narrow, padded window seat offered her favorite reading nest. Snuggled in there, a fire going, a throw pulled across her legs, she had consumed many hours of pure bliss-at least those hours that weren’t tied down.

They’d been increasingly few in the last several months. Something drove her to not just fill her schedule but pack it full of work, volunteering at the Shelter, running, and the gym-it didn’t matter as long as she filled 6 A.M. to exhaustion without time to think. For thinking was the real enemy: thinking about herself, the lack of romance in her life, the isolation, the poverty of public service, the missed opportunities.

After a dinner of broiled chicken breast and a green salad with rice vinegar, she changed into flannel PJs, built a fire, and tucked herself into the window seat, a glass of Archery Summit Pinot in hand. She felt a bit guilty about not stopping by the Shelter to inquire about Margaret, but Walker’s phone messages had unsettled her, and the comfort of home proved just what the doctor ordered, she being the doctor. Chapter by chapter, she lost herself to Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer-a book she found unexpectedly titillating-a rare and much-needed escape from psychology reviews. She caught herself dozing off.

Luxury came cheaply these days.

At 11:32-she noticed the firm, bright green display of the kitchen’s digital clock-she heard what her mind registered as an unfamiliar sound. The houseboat had a life of its own, never perfectly at rest, battered by water and weather, always shifting, settling, creaking, and groaning. These pops and grunts, the wooden cries and long, eerie sighs helped to form a personality uniquely its own. Matthews knew that personality well. These same sounds lulled her to sleep. They woke her up. On some occasions they frightened her, as they did on this night.

She suddenly felt more awake. Her brain sorted through the database of familiarity with what she now heard, filtering out the noises that accompanied any night on Lake Union: the seaplanes landing and taking off, motor craft, highway traffic, distant ferry horns, sirens, and the noises of her neighbors going about everyday life. She lay there, ears ringing slightly, as she “stretched” to hear beyond the walls. She couldn’t be sure what she heard, or whether or not it was just a bad case of nerves.

Those phone messages had rattled her. So had her experience at the parking garage. More than she had thought. She promised herself that she wouldn’t let this get the better of her, yet she glanced across the room to her purse, which hung by its strap from one of the three ladder-back stools-her handgun, cell phone, the small can of pepper spray, and a mini Maglite. Barbara Kingsolver drew her eyes back to the novel as she told herself that noise carried well and did funny things across water.

No reason to get all worked up.

But she’d momentarily lost the chance at sleep. Another few minutes passed behind the efforts of the delicious pages, the melodious singing, and the sumptuous wine. Going on midnight.

Feeling tired again at a chapter break, she inserted the bookmark, spun her legs off the window seat, and mechanically folded the throw. She hand-washed the wineglass in the kitchen sink, its glass squeaking, and placed it carefully down into the drying rack. She watched a seaplane land-the last of the night-as it taxied across the lake’s black water. As the groan of the pro-pellers faded, she heard yet another unfamiliar creak from the bones of her houseboat.

This time she grabbed her gun and moved to the front door, intent on escorting Walker off the dock. Never mind that the residential phone numbers and addresses of police officers went unpublished, never mind that she’d carefully watched her car’s rearview mirrors and had assured herself she hadn’t been followed; she remained convinced it was Ferrell Walker creeping around out there, and it was beginning to get to her.

Thumbing aside the curtain on the narrow window to the left of the front door, she peered out toward Bob and Blair’s place.

Their downstairs lights were off, the blue glow of a television emanated from the window of the loft. She saw that Robert and Lynn were still awake next door. Lynn’s nephew, Gin, visiting from Japan was currently prowling the refrigerator. She’d been pulling the blinds extra carefully on that side of the houseboat, as Gin had a teenager’s voyeuristic tendencies. With all the sounds, she knew she wouldn’t sleep well if she didn’t take a security lap around the house. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d lapped the house. More typically, such trips were made to ensure structural integrity in the middle of a raging storm. Heading out now, on a relatively calm night with only a slight drizzle, while pushing her chest into a knot, hardly compared with challenging a forty-knot wind and sideways rain.

She grabbed the halogen penlight from her purse, pulled the Gore-Tex jacket over her pajamas, and let herself out while throwing the night latch to ensure no one sneaked in behind her.

Precautions. Any practicing forensic psychologist learned to live with them-ex-cons who blamed you for their incarceration returned to pay their respects; ex-cops who’d been tossed from the force for drug abuse or continued spousal abuse decided you were the instigation behind their removal; prosecutors and detectives arrived at all hours believing they had every right to free advice.

Barefoot on the redwood decking, she headed counterclock-wise around the corner, increasingly cautious with each turn. Her toes curled from the cold, wet wood, she tiptoed in bare feet, moving in a trained, controlled fashion, and snagged a splinter in her foot. Hopping on one foot to avoid the shooting pain, she balanced against the house and lifted her foot to the light. The thing was the size of a toothpick and sunk in pretty deep. Her focus shifted beyond her foot to the deck, where a thin film of rainwater left a silvery patina. Offset from that sheen were two muddy boot prints that led in succession from where she stood to her mudroom window. The window was beneath an overhang, dark in shadow. Suddenly it felt much colder out. There had been boot prints found at the construction site overlooking the hotel and Melissa Dunkin’s room. She envisioned a man-hands cupped to that window, peeping her. Her orbit of the house completed, her nerves tingling, she hurried around to the back door and the hidden house key. LaMoia needed to hear about this. A moment later she was locked and bolted inside, the splinter and the pain it caused a forgotten footnote.