Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

She looked down at his waist, to that radio, and the attorney caught this. “What’s going on?” he asked. “What’s with the radio?”

“Just staying in touch,” Boldt said.

The attorney made a point of looking at the cell phone cradled in Boldt’s left hand, clearly sensing there was more to this.

“Yeah? Well let’s reach out and touch someone inside, shall we?

We’ve all got places to be.”

The police lineup-a few detectives, a janitor, and Lanny Neal, each holding a number and looking through bright lights at a pane of one-way glass-went about as expected, with the truck driver brought in by LaMoia picking out a Special Assaults detective as the man he saw throw Mary-Ann Walker off the Aurora Bridge. That it was about two weeks later now didn’t help his memory any, nor did the fact it had been raining that night and as dark as a cow’s stomach.

With the lineup completed, the four surveillance personnel assigned to keep watch on the immediate area for Walker maintained their positions for a few minutes longer in hopes that Neal’s reemergence onto the street might trigger “an Elvis sighting,” as one of them put it.

Trying to reach Boldt in his office, but missing him, Matthews took twenty minutes of lost time to walk a letter of appeal addressed to Social Services the block and a half over to the King County Courthouse, in hopes that Mahoney could read it and advise her on its legality. Her request to Social Services was for that agency to approve her personally assuming a temporary guardianship of Margaret (“last name to be determined”). If suc-cessful, she hoped to shepherd the girl through the birth of the baby, attempting to eventually place her in a state-sponsored program for teen mothers. A long shot, she went through with it anyway, explaining her situation and leaving the letter with Mahoney. She was determined to help this girl, come hell or high water. News that Margaret had taken a room south of the Safe did little to make Matthews feel better-that room had to be paid for; the neighborhood was lousy; the employment opportunities for near-delivery-date pregnant teens seemed slim.

Intervention seemed the best way to protect the mother and child.

Returning from the courthouse, Matthews tried her best not to think about Walker out there watching for her, or the surveillance team assigned to look for him-all of this focus on her-but instead to remain focused on Margaret, and someone else’s needs.

Eradicating Walker from her thoughts proved a little like trying to talk oneself into falling asleep. Only the idea of rescuing Margaret provided the necessary distraction.

It surprised her to spot Boldt’s back as he entered a Seattle’s Best Coffee just north of Public Safety. She’d been under the impression he’d been down with Bernie Lofgrin looking at the prelim on the underground lair. That meeting was either over, or yet to come, and she decided to go ask which, in case she could join him for it.

She paused, alone at the corner, waiting for the pedestrian light.

“You … ruined … my … life.” The deep male voice came from behind her, and the sound of it nearly dropped her to her knees. She saw herself stabbed and bleeding out on the street corner, traffic passing by, oblivious.

She thought of the lavaliere microphone she’d clipped to her bra that same morning, the fact that somewhere, someone had just listened to her appeal to Mahoney for Margaret’s rescue.

She tried to speak, to raise the alarm, but as he took her shoulders and spun her around, no words came out. She raised her arms defensively, expecting a blow, a wound. She saw the man’s face, recognized it even, but it wasn’t whom she’d expected, and her brain malfunctioned because of this.

It was the guy who’d stopped to “help” her outside Safeco Field. They’d brought him in for questioning.

“Mr. Hollie,” she sputtered. “Take your hands off me!”

But he grabbed her wrist as she reached for her purse, and he bruised her in his grip.

My John Lennon moment, she thought, wondering if a handgun was next, marveling at the irony that her focus for the past several days had been incorrectly on Ferrell Walker.

“What did I ever do to you?”

She heard the emotion in his voice, strangely on the edge of tears, and welcomed it-self-pity was easier to work with than anger-believing she had a decent chance at salvaging the situation. In the back of her brain a little voice reminded her that Boldt would by now be hearing over his radio that she was “in need of backup,” that he’d be coming out of that coffee shop any moment. Another part of her realized that she’d wanted to be rescued for years, that this was part of the attraction to LaMoia. And then the next thought that rattled through her brain at that moment was that she was in fact attracted to LaMoia, and this dumbfounded her. Her mouth went dry. Her head throbbed. She looked around for help. “This isn’t the place,” she said dryly. If she could keep him talking, if she could buy time, she might diffuse his purpose, whatever it was. The terror she felt at that moment was the culmination of all the pent-up fear associated with Walker.

“I stopped to help you, you ungrateful bitch!” The change in tone alarmed her.

“You’re angry.” The absolute wrong thing to say. She knew it the moment it left her lips.

“Angry? Is that what I am? It made the evening news, the morning paper. My name! I lost my job. My neighbors dumped their trash at my door.” He stepped back, arms dangling limply at his side. “Angry?”

She tracked his right hand as it moved slowly into the pocket of the trench coat. Then, movement to her right. Boldt, oblivious to traffic, his weapon drawn. A car braked, narrowly avoiding hitting him.

Movement shifted into an eerie slow motion, an awkward street ballet choreographed for a mugging gone south. She knew well enough that no matter how fast one reacts, the blade or the bullet always reaches the victim unexpectedly fast. She also knew that 99 percent of mugging victims reacted defensively and afraid.

Matthews said, “You don’t want to do this!” Then she lowered her right shoulder and charged into him, struggling to get her purse open at the same time.

Boldt shouted something about “Hands over your head,”

though it existed only ephemerally for her-a drone in the buzz behind her. The purse slipped off her shoulder, falling to the sidewalk, its contents lost. From all around her, a convergence of special assignment officers. She felt them running toward her.

Heard the chaos over the handheld radios.

She leaned her weight into the center of Hollie’s chest, just below his sternum, and drove into the unforgiving stone edifice of Public Safety, knocking the wind out of him. She would not be a victim. She would not succumb to the fear. She screamed with the move, part aggression, part reaction, backed off the pressure, and then slammed into his chest a second time. A bone cracked beneath her effort. Hollie groaned as he gasped and sank to the sidewalk.

She lifted her knee into his crotch as he went down-sharply, like a move in step aerobics. Boldt pulled her away and tackled her, covering her, just as two undercover officers arrived. He lay on top of her, his face filled with rage.

She witnessed Boldt’s thought process as he realized she was all right and took appraisal of Hollie. He rolled off her and came to his knees.

Hollie’s hand was yanked out of his coat pocket on its way to a handcuff. A piece of paper rose like a bird, fluttered, and returned to earth.

Not a gun, after all, but his eviction notice. The weapon she had feared was nothing but a piece of paper.

Boldt was walking her around to the front of the building when her cell phone rang from within her purse. He’d offered to have her join him at the lab for Lofgrin’s report on the Underground, but she didn’t feel up to it. She wanted her office. A cup of tea.