Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

Her cell phone rang-a new number-and she fished it from her purse, checking the caller-ID before she answered it. Seeing the number on the screen filled her with purpose and joy. She felt especially glad that it wasn’t John calling. He’d kept his word about giving her this time here. She hardly recognized the guy anymore. What on earth was she getting herself into?

She answered, the caller-ID having alerted her that it was her attorney. Quick hellos, a brief amount of small talk. Bursting with curiosity, Matthews asked, “Did you speak with the judge?”

“I did.”

“Has he made a determination?”

“There are waiting periods.”

“But the relatives declined custody.” They’d been through this so many times. It seemed so simple to Matthews. Why did the courts get involved and make it so complicated? She had butterflies. She wanted an answer. She knew she might lose John if this came to pass, and that worried her. A part of her questioned the wisdom in losing the one thing currently working in her life. She was happy for the first time in a long, long time.

“Yes, but a further search for blood relations must be made.

We’ll have to petition the court again on your behalf, and I’d be remiss if I encouraged you about the outcome.”

“And in the meantime?”

“State custody.”

“Which means exactly what, after the hospital stay, the in-cubators?”

“An institution for the waiting period. A foster home if she’s lucky after that while the paperwork makes her available.”

“Can I visit her?”

“In all likelihood.”

“And if I’m first in line for adoption?” She felt like reminding her attorney she’d handled an illegal adoption case a few years back. She knew a lot more about providing a good home than anybody would ever know.

“The watchword right now is patience, Daphne.”

“Patience,” Matthews repeated into the phone. She pulled the front door of the houseboat shut angrily, and it locked her out.

“None of this is bad news,” the attorney said. “But you have to stop thinking about this in terms of being first in line. The court looks at qualifications.”

“And I’m a single mother,” she said. “You’re saying that hurts us.”

“Not at all. Plenty of single mothers adopt. I’m saying you need patience. That’s all.”

“I can handle that,” she said, knowing it was the truth. She told herself repeatedly that she could handle it. She felt a wreck.

“But I don’t think it’s best for her.”

The attorney chuckled on the other end of the call. “I’ll call you as her situation changes. And you call me if you change your mind.”

“I’m not changing my mind on this,” Matthews said.

“No,” the attorney said, “I don’t believe you are.”

Matthews said good-bye and tripped the call to disconnect, returned the phone to her purse, and started down the dock. She stopped and grinned as she saw him.

Up under the shadow of a tree, staying out of the heat, John LaMoia was smiling that shit-eating grin of his. John LaMoia-she still couldn’t get over it. He held a picnic basket in his right hand. An incongruous combination if ever there were one.

But then again, John LaMoia had proved himself, if anything, unpredictable.

Please visit Ridley Pearson’s website: www.ridleypearson.com

If you enjoyed The Art of Deception, read on for an excerpt from Ridley Pearson’s next exciting thriller, The Body of Peter Hayes, in bookstores April 2004.

Lou Boldt picked up bits and pieces of the assault over an uncooperative cell phone. Paramedics were still on the scene-a trailer park near Sea-Tac Airport-a promising report because it suggested the victim remained at the scene as well. If he reached the site in time,Boldt meant to ride to the hospital in the back of the ambulance. He owed Danny Foreman that much.

The Crown Vic bumped through a pothole that would have knocked dentures out. Boldt’s eyes shifted focus briefly to catch his reflection in the silver of the windshield. Boldt had crossed forty a few years back,tinges of gray gave a hint of it. He was in the best physical shape of his professional career thanks to Weight Watchers,a renewed interest in tennis,and a regimen of sit-ups and push-ups in front of CNN each morning. He scratched at his tie,seeing that he was wearing some of his dinner,a familiar habit,and hit a second pothole because of the distraction. His head came up to catch a glimpse of a closed gas station. Plywood tombstones where the pumps should have been, the signs torn down,the neon beer ads gone from the windows.

He turned down a muddy lane,dodging the first of many emergency vehicles. The air hung heavy with mist,Seattle working its way out of a lazy fall and into the steady,cold drizzle of winter. Three to five months of it depending on El Nin?o or El Nin?a-Boldt couldn’t keep straight which was which.

Beneath twin sliding glass windows on the butt end,the once white house trailer carried a broken,chrome script that Boldt reassembled in his head to read EVERHOME. It had come to rest in a patch of weedy lawn that needed cutting and was accessed by a poured cement path,broken and heaved like calving ice-bergs. The emergency vehicles included a crime scene unit van, a King County Sheriff patrol car,and an ambulance with its hood up. Technically the scene was the Seattle Police Department’s,and therefore Boldt’s,but Danny Foreman’s career had landed him first in the Sheriff’s Department,then SPD,and now BCI,Bureau of Criminal Investigation,what some states called the investigative arm of the state police. Boldt wasn’t going to start pawing the dirt in a turf war. Danny Foreman was well liked,both despite and because of his unorthodox approach to law enforcement. To his detriment and to his favor he played it solo whenever possible; it had won him accolades and gotten him into trouble. The job was as much politics as it was raw talent,and Foreman lacked political skills,which to Boldt explained their mutual respect.

Foreman lay on a stretcher inside a thicket of blackberry bushes that grabbed at Boldt’s pant legs. A balloon-like device had been inserted into Danny’s mouth. A woman squeezed the bag while monitoring her sports watch. Foreman looked wiry and older than the early fifties Boldt knew him to be. Tired and beaten down. His nap was graying now and cut short,and a pattern of black moles spread beneath both eyes,lending him the mask-like look of a raccoon. Could it possibly have been as long as all that?

Boldt was quickly caught up to date by a deputy sheriff and a paramedic,both interrupting each other to finish the other’s sentence. The deputy sheriff knew the name Boldt and acted like a teenager in front of a rock star,trying to impress while fawning at the same time. Boldt had enough headlines to fill a scrapbook, but wasn’t inclined to keep one. He had the highest case clearance per average in the history of the Seattle Police Department.

He had rumors to defeat and stories to live up to,and none of it mattered a damn to him,which only served to provoke more of the same.

Foreman had apparently been hit by a projectile stun gun and “subsequent to that”-these people all spoke the same way,and though Boldt was probably supposed to as well,he’d never taken up the language-“the subject was administered a dose of an unknown drug with behavioral characteristics not dissimilar to those of Rohypnol.” The date rape drug of choice,alternately known as roofies,ruffies,roche,R-2,rib,and rope,produced sedation,muscle relaxation,and amnesia in the victim,more commonly a coed found later with her panties down than a cop on a stakeout.

The ambulance on the scene was having engine trouble,and though a second ambulance had been dispatched,efforts were being made to get this one started. Boldt’s chest tightened with anticipation as he learned that the combination of the medication and the stun gun had resulted in “respiratory depression.” Foreman had nearly stopped breathing. He’d been unconscious for almost fifteen minutes.