Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

Standing there in the light rain, the object of so much attention, she felt an added pressure to reassemble the various parts into something that made sense, something that explained Hebringer and Randolf, and felt maddeningly frustrated when she failed after repeated tries. What could Walker tell her that they didn’t already know? Did Prair’s lurking about-his possible stalking of her-have to do with his infatuation with her or his involvement in Mary-Ann Walker’s life prior to her going off that bridge? How could anyone consider a man with Lanny Neal’s past an innocent in all this? Round and round she went, the minutes ticking by. Walker was late, or out there studying her along with the others-the reports in her earpiece identifying first a homeless man on the street corner behind the church and then, finally, “possible solid heading for Decoy from southeast corner of lot.”

Matthews saw the figure coming, still at a considerable distance-he was the approximate height of Walker, blue jeans, a dark sweatshirt with a hood covering his head. He walked with purpose, either to reach Matthews in a hurry, or to get out of the rain. She tensed and warmed with his approach. She found the radio traffic in her left ear distracting, as dispatch calmly assigned new positions to two of the undercover detectives in the field, placed ERT on alert to the suspect’s current location, and asked the sharpshooters to stand down their rifles until further notice. Matthews knew this meant nothing more than that they were ordered to keep their fingers off the trigger-no sharpshooter took his eye off the sight, orders or not.

She resolved to do as little talking as possible-Walker had wanted the clandestine meeting … let him do the talking.

The closer that figure drew, the less Matthews thought he looked right for Walker, and the greater her sense of dread. His hips moved a little too fluidly, the gait of this person’s walk didn’t feel like Walker at all. He’d sent a surrogate, someone to deliver a message.

Her muscles had frozen; she wished like hell that rattle in her ear would stop-couldn’t they just shut up? The approaching person’s right arm lifted, and both she and that voice in her ear had the same thought at the same moment: a knife. The sharpshooters were readied, ERT was assigned a “red alert.” But nothing glittered in the pale cast of the overhead bulb; no metal sparkled. The hand grabbed hold of the hood and stripped it off the head. Short hair, but spiked. Smooth skin. A nose stud. It was a young woman heading for the Shelter, nothing more.

“You on a break?” the girl asked Matthews, who held out faint hope she still might be a messenger.

“Something like that. Waiting for someone.” Matthews vaguely recognized the face-Carmine? Caroline? Carley?

“In this piss?” the girl asked.

“Is it Carley?”

“Yeah. You’re Matthews, right? The cop.”

Word got around quickly. Her reputation as a cop could distance her from these girls forever. Or-it occurred to her a beat too late-was Carley testing that she had the right person for the message?

“That’s right.”

“Is it full?” she asked, pointing to the door. Sometimes the Shelter posted a volunteer out here at the entrance to notify late arrivals of the lack of occupancy. There was a sign that served the same purpose, but the girls rarely paid it much attention.

For the first time in the last fifteen minutes, her earpiece mercifully went silent. The Com Officer had switched it off, both to allow her to think clearly and to ensure the suspect didn’t hear any ambient high-pitch chatter coming from it. Matthews hadn’t bothered to check inside, but she told the girl there were still beds available, her nerves on edge that Walker’s message was yet to come.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Carley said, mistaking Matthews’s electing to stand barely protected from the rain. “You’re okay, Miss Matthews.”

Carley reached for the door handle-a large wrought-iron ring. Matthews stepped out of the way, asking, “Is there something you want to tell me?” Carley looked at her strangely. “A message from someone, maybe?” Matthews pressed.

Carley paused, and Matthews could feel it coming. The girl hesitated, the door open now, and said, “Margaret got herself that place south of the Safe. Her and this other girl. Is that what you mean?”

Margaret. Again, that same pang hit her in the chest. “Oh,”

was all she managed to say. Carley stepped through the door, her footfalls on the stone receding into the basement enclave.

The earpiece popped and Matthews heard dispatch stand down a number of the participants in the surveillance operation.

These commands were nearly immediately followed by a male voice interrupting and identifying itself only as “Gray.” (With police radio codes a combination of numerals, operatives were given a variety of different “handles,” from animal names like Wolf and Dumbo, to nicknames like Sparky and Hooter, to colors of every kind.) “We got ourselves a cross-dresser, people. Heads-up. KCSO-eighty-nine is incoming from Yesler.”

“Eighty-nine?” Matthews clarified, forgetting to try to cover her speaking for the sake of the mike.

“Eight, nine, affirm,” Gray replied.

CO dispatch: “Let’s run a check on that, South.” The instruction was back to Public Safety-the south precinct-and the SPD radio dispatcher monitoring the radio traffic. Normally the Commanding Officer would monitor from there as well, but she knew Boldt was more than likely in the command van.

“Unnecessary,” Matthews said. She glanced toward the second level of the parking garage and the area where she knew LaMoia was sequestered, longing all of a sudden for some kind of contact with him, a sardonic turn of phrase, a comforting look, something to make this okay, because this did not feel okay. She allowed herself to believe she saw movement up there, at the back of one of the cars. Her imagination? She wondered.

LaMoia’s voice came urgently from a handheld radio, through the dispatch communications and into her left ear. She allowed herself to believe he’d somehow sensed that longing she’d felt. “Listen, Decoy, he’s on bus detail over at SO. We know this for fact, right? So he could have made your ten-twenty in the course of the job. Do not jump to conclusions. You got it? Hang in there. Treat it as a right thing. Let the fish come to you. Acknowledge.”

“Copy that,” she said, her fist to her mouth once again, slipping back into her role effortlessly. Why just the sound of his voice should calm her, she had no idea, but it had and she wasn’t asking any questions.

Gray: “He’s pulling over. One block north on Yesler.”

This struck her as odd, if this was the normal course of duty as LaMoia had suggested, but she endeavored to stay calm.

CO dispatch: “Officer on foot, heading south. Decoy, he’s yours in five … four … three … two …”

She picked up Prair’s large silhouette as he passed a hedge-row and walked into the parking lot on foot. He walked with his usual confidence, stiff spine, and military demeanor.

“Lieutenant,” he said, avoiding use of her first name-a first.

“Deputy Prair,” she said, for the sake of the tape recorders out there.

An uneasy silence settled between them as he stepped up to her, only a few feet away. “What is it you want?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?” she said.

“The message.”

“What message?”

“The message said you’d be waiting here at ten P.M., that you wanted to see me.”

“You want to try again?”

“I got the message, Lieutenant.”

She said, “I don’t know what you mean, but you could start by explaining your presence at the end of my dock last night.”