Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

In the courtroom thirty minutes later, Matthews and LaMoia sat among the pimps, prostitutes, and drug addicts awaiting Neal’s three-minute arraignment. Spanish and Asian translators stood just behind the appointed public defenders doing their best to keep the suspect apprised of the rapid exchange and instant negotiations between the bench and the bar. After a half hour of this, it seemed more like assembly-line justice than the real thing. As an expert in her field, Matthews had spent a good deal of time in the witness chair, but attending a district court arraignment soured her mood.

Just prior to Neal’s entrance into the courtroom, Matthews felt the hair on the nape of her neck stand rigid, and she intui-tively turned around to examine the myriad faces in the crowded courtroom. LaMoia turned as well and, so typically of him, spotted Walker first. “There,” he said, without pointing. “Back row.

Far left.”

As Matthews met eyes with the forlorn brother, he hoisted a brown paper sack into view and gestured that he’d brought it for her.

“This is not good,” she said to LaMoia.

“You want me to handle it for you? Happy to do it.”

“He has every right to be here. I warned him I wanted no more contact with him. If you don’t mind, I think you’re handling it might make it seem more official to him.”

“What are you not telling me?” he asked, perceptive as always.

“I held off because I didn’t know the best way to handle it.

At this point, I’d like to talk to you and Lou about it. What I should do.”

“The late-night call?” LaMoia asked.

She answered him with a saddened expression.

“You’re shitting me!”

“Some phone calls. He may have followed me to my place, I don’t know.” She explained finding the boot prints outside her window.

“Matthews!”

“Don’t, okay?”

“I’ll rip him up and use him for chum.”

LaMoia stood. But at this same instant, Neal’s name was announced by the bailiff, and the man was led into the courtroom by a uniformed officer. Matthews tugged LaMoia back down into his seat.

Lanny Neal pleaded not guilty, expressed remorse for the loss of Mary-Ann, and was offered bail of fifty thousand dollars, an astonishingly low amount, given the charges. With a bail bondsman, he’d walk for five thousand, putting his car up for collateral. The wheels of justice rotated, and less than five minutes after he first appeared in the courtroom, Lanny Neal left under escort, essentially a free man. There would be a probable cause hearing set, and much later, a court date. All the while, Lanny Neal was likely to remain free on bail.

Matthews knew the importance of cooling down Ferrell Walker in order to avoid a Jack Ruby moment.

Touching LaMoia’s arm, she said, “Let’s talk to him together.”

LaMoia glanced down at her fingers resting on his forearm, and she jerked them quickly away.

They pushed past the waiting suspects and the exhausted defenders, finally reaching the aisle.

LaMoia called out to Walker and stopped him at the door to the courtroom. The three moved as a group out and into the wide hallway outside the courtroom where wooden benches offered family and friends rest for weary legs. Heads hung.

Desperate voices exchanged overworked cliches in worried whispers-“it isn’t fair,” “he didn’t do it.” The uniformed guards, bored with hearing such claims, looked straight ahead in a stony silence. LaMoia moved them over to the water fountain, where a noisy compressor would help cover their conversation.

“He walked,” Ferrell Walker said with some heat in his voice.

“It’s only an arraignment.”

“They let him go.”

LaMoia said, “They let him make bail. That surprised us, too, but it’s not unheard of. Believe me, Neal is going away for your sister.”

Walker made no indication he’d heard LaMoia, his full concentration was on Matthews. She experienced his attention as nothing short of worship, an intense adoration that felt invasive and a little sickening.

“I told you we’d handle it from here,” she said.

“I told you you needed my help,” he contradicted, holding up the same paper sack he had indicated earlier.

“Lunch?” LaMoia said.

Matthews and Walker locked into a stare that excluded all else. She understood then that this was the moment Walker would cross the line from love to hate, and that she would be the one who pushed him over that line, and that she had no choice in the matter. This inevitability frustrated her, tightened her voice, and shortened her breath. Walker was, in fact, doing this to himself; she was nothing but a proxy, required to deliver the crushing blow to separate them.

She said, “I don’t want or need your help. Not now. Not in the future. We’re all done here.”

His dark eyes flared behind his resentment. He dropped the sack at her feet, though it seemed to float in its descent. “We’ll see about that,” Walker said.

He glanced up at LaMoia, for the first time acknowledging him, though in a roundabout way. “You should have stayed out of this.”

He turned and walked away, quickly lost in the crush of the county’s judicial process.

“Shit,” LaMoia said.

Matthews picked up the paper sack. She opened it, looked in, and asked for a pen from LaMoia. She then stirred through the contents: a wristwatch, a pack of cigarettes, a butane lighter, a woman’s wallet with what appeared to be a speeding ticket clapped in its leather jaws.

“What do you want to bet he broke into Neal’s apartment and confiscated this stuff?” she said.

“If he did, he just screwed us.”

“He thought he was helping. That’s the sad part.”

“If it’s from Neal’s apartment, it’ll invalidate it as evidence.”

“If it’s evidence. I’m aware of that, John.”

“This shit won’t do. We gotta do something.”

“I think I just did it,” she said, regretting the tone she’d taken with Walker, and wondering at the consequences.

“Knock, knock.”

“Come in,” Boldt said. When he saw it was Matthews, he said, “Hello there. It’s been awhile. Have a seat.”

Matthews wondered where his compliments had gone. Boldt had always had something nice to say to her, little observations that had always made her day. They weren’t there anymore, and she missed them.

He said, “John told me about the guy outside your window.”

“He shouldn’t have. It was shoe prints is all.”

“I’ve asked SID to take a look. Better late than never.” Before she could protest, he explained, “On the off chance it’s related to our hotel peeper.”

“It’s not.”

“They’re over there now.”

“Does anyone ever ask around here?”

“We have a photo of a waffle pattern from the construction site-the voyeur watching the hotel. Maybe we can match them.”

“You won’t. I have two candidates of my own,” she said.

“Suspects?”

She shook her head. “Listen, it could have been a handyman.

I had my screens put on a couple weeks ago.”

“That was optimistic of you. Still feels like winter to me.”

“The prints are not connected to Hebringer and Randolf, Lou.”

“I’d rather an educated decision on that be made, a group decision. Okay with you?”

“You’re not yourself.”

He pushed back the office chair and studied her. “You know, after about a hundred people telling me that, I’m tired of hearing it. Yes, even from you.”

“I’d suggest you hand off Hebringer, but I know you better.”

“Yes, you do. So drop it.” He apologized, “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. Something else is bugging me.”