The Art of Deception (49 page)

“It changes everything,” he said sadly. “You know that, don’t you?”

There were no words for her, only a pounding heart, a dry tongue, and the chills that came with the knowledge of what she had done. She chastised herself for that decision—she’d allowed the emotion of fear to overcome any hope of rationally negotiating her way out. Had she been outside of this, observing it, she could have identified the victim’s bad decision making at every turn. But from inside her own cloistered fear, she felt only punishment for her will to survive and the internal strength to act upon it.

“On your feet, Anna,” he said, not hearing his own slip.

Metaphorically, she saw light at the end of the tunnel. Then she realized it was for real: There
was
light up ahead.

“We’re going to go join your friends,” he said.

Hebringer and Randolf, the only two “friends” she could think of.

“We’re going to get to know each other.”

She needed some way to attempt to rekindle rapport, even if she played into his fantasy that she was none other than his sister. She searched wildly for a nickname a sister might have used for a younger brother at some point in their long relationship. She settled on the first nickname to pop into her head, literally a stab in the dark. “I already know you … Ferris Wheel.”

Walker snapped his head toward her. He stared at her until she felt him looking
through
her, not at her. Her head ached, but she kept it up. “You think Anna didn’t know that you watched her and Lanny Neal? Of course she did, Ferris Wheel.”

He shoved her. She staggered back but did not fall. Nathan Prair’s head, sideways in the mud now, watched them.

Matthews said, “Is that what caused the split between you? Your watching?”

He shoved her again, and this time she went down hard in the mud, face first, on all fours. Her right hand hit a piece of glass and cut. The smell that kicked up was putrid and sickening. He trained the light down onto her, but by the time he did she’d picked the sizeable piece of curved glass out of her palm, and had transferred it to her left hand, now curled around it. She rubbed her bleeding hand on her pants, and Walker noticed the wound.

“Shit,” he said, the child that didn’t mean to hurt the family pet. “Up ahead there’s this wall. We’ll rest there. Clean that up.”

She gained a few yards on him. She wasn’t going to run
away, but she wanted some physical space in which to clear her mind, regain herself. She recalled all that LaMoia had told her about the interview with the barmaid, Walker’s former girlfriend. “The trouble began after your father died, didn’t it?” The pain in her hand lessened. She decided she had to keep talking, free association, whatever came out of her mouth. Just keep talking. “It was just the two of you on the boat after that.”

“So what?”

“Pretty close quarters for a man and a woman.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“No?” Her mind worked furiously through several sets of possibilities. She’d try them all if she had to. “You think you’re the first guy to ever watch his sister? Give me a break.” Condescending. Mary-Ann would have dominated their relationship. She sorted out several planes of thought on which to operate, areas of possible vulnerability for him. She had him talking—that was the important step. She didn’t want to lose that for anything. Until now the mud had disgusted her, but as it came to cover her, to own her, she felt in a primitive state, capable of almost anything. Prepared to strike.

“Shut up about her,” he said.

“No, I don’t think so,” she fired back. He moved her down the tunnel. The mud walls weeped in places. If she sneezed hard, the ceiling was coming down. “Why do you think you picked me, Ferrell? I’ll tell you why: Because I listen, because I made sense from the very first time we spoke. It was at the docks. Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember.”

“You liked the way I looked, sure. They all do, Ferrell.” She wanted to make him as small as she could, for
both
their sakes. “But more important, you liked what I said.” She didn’t remember what she’d said, not exactly, but she knew something had initiated the transference, and she felt determined to unlock that
key. “You knew I could help you, didn’t you?” she asked. “It’s why you haven’t given up on me.”

“Oh, but I have,” he said, chilling her.

“No, you haven’t.”

He raised the knife blade in the dim light and spun it back and forth so that it threw light across her face. Margaret’s blood had dried onto that knife. “Got me all figured out, do you?” It flashed again. “Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe the fuck not.”

She stood her ground. Plan two. “You picked me for a reason, Ferrell.”

“Because you told me to.”

“I told you to what?”

“At the morgue,” he said. “You told me there was no one else in the room. You said to put Mary-Ann where you were … and I did that… and when you spoke, I heard her voice, just like you said I would. You were right.”

“I’m not Anna, Ferrell, am I? Look at me. Listen to me closely. Your sister is dead.”

“Going for that gun just now?” he said. “That was impressive. That was something Anna would have done.” She felt his eyes encompassing her. “It was a mistake, but it was ballsy.”

“How do you think seeing that knife makes me feel? How would Anna feel? You think I want to get to know you when you’re holding that knife, threatening me with that knife?”

“You said you already know me,” he reminded.

She didn’t want to think of him as smart, didn’t want him focusing on her attempt to escape, deciding to challenge him yet again in an attempt to keep him off-balance. “You didn’t find that sweatshirt, did you, Ferrell? I missed that, didn’t I?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he most certainly did.

“Mary-Ann’s sweatshirt,” she said. “You didn’t find that sweatshirt. You
already knew
where it was.”

“What?” His voice betrayed him. He sheathed the knife, taking time to draw its blade clean on his jeans. This victory instilled her with a sense of courage.

“You knew where Neal hid his car key.”

“Enough of this.”

“You’d been with them that night he’d misplaced the other key. A birthday, wasn’t it?”

“I said,
enough
!”

“How did you get her to just sit there while you backed over her, Ferrell?”

He screamed, “Shut… your … mouth!” and she knew she’d scored a direct hit.

“Up ahead, we’ll rest a minute,” she said, wanting it to sound like it was her idea, to take control away from him. She was starting to understand that Walker’s transference had gone beyond what she’d previously imagined. He’d not only transferred his feelings for Mary-Ann onto her, but he’d transferred his own guilt onto Lanny Neal in the form of blame.

She heard his breathing—quick, shallow intakes—and realized they’d switched roles. She had him back on his heels now, and didn’t want to stop.

“You can’t replace her, Ferrell. Not with me, not with anybody. You can’t change what has happened, as much as you’d like to, and repeating what you’ve done—it’s what you have in mind, isn’t it?—that won’t help anything. It’ll just make it worse. The pain, I’m talking about. I know all about the pain. It’ll be much, much worse.” She defiantly and purposely turned her back on him before he had a chance to recover from that. She marched forward toward the resting place he’d told her about.

“You betrayed me,” she heard from behind her, and she knew this was about Mary-Ann, not herself.

She worked with something Neal had told them, saying over
her shoulder, “You begged her for money … to go back out on the boat with you. It’s not what she wanted. She wanted a life. What did you expect, Ferrell?”

“I … saved … her,” Walker said. “She … owed … me.”

She stopped, turned. “Saved her from Lanny Neal, from herself,” she purposely hesitated, wanting this next thought to sink in, “or from
you?
That part of you that thought about her in ways that brothers aren’t supposed to think about their sisters.”

Walker stepped close enough that she could smell his familiar stench. “From
him!”
he said, as agitated as she’d ever seen him. “I saved her from
him.”
His eyes darted to the left, and she knew he regretted having revealed whatever it was he’d just revealed.

Without meaning to, Matthews gasped aloud. She’d missed the catalyst all along. It had been right there in front of her—practically handed to her by LaMoia—and she’d moved right past it. Now the pieces fell into place for her like a row of dominoes tumbling over in perfect succession. Now, it finally
all
made sense, the discovery charging her with a renewed strength and sense of purpose. She
had
him; he was all hers.

She said, “The drowning … It wasn’t an accident.”

Walker’s face tightened, a mass of pain, and she expected tears from his eyes. But he proved far stronger, far more resilient, than she’d expected. He’d already processed some of this, and that brought Matthews back to his confrontation with MaryAnn. Raising the knife between them, he said, “Accidents happen.”

The first scream turned LaMoia in the right direction. Prior to that, he’d been following the city storm sewer out toward Elliott Bay. But that cry, a woman’s cry, spun him on his heels and he rapidly retraced his steps, his cell phone immediately in hand. When the phone proved useless, its signal blocked by his depth underground, he debated climbing back up the chimney of concrete to the manhole through which he’d come—he was passing by this exact same spot again—debated enlisting the support of Special Ops, but recalling her request to avoid tying up her rescue in department-dictated procedures, something she had somehow foreseen, he passed beneath the manhole entrance, ignoring it, determined to follow the sound of her voice before he lost it, and her with it.

Heading in this direction, his flashlight picked up two pairs of muddy shoe prints that, a few minutes later, led to a woven metal grate in the wall of the storm sewer’s concrete tube. He pulled on the grate, and it came free in his hand. He stuffed the small flashlight into his mouth like a cigar and used both arms to set the grate aside so he could climb through. The muddy tracks continued on the other side—a low horizontal shaft that reminded him of a mining tunnel. The thing looked ancient… and then his mind seized upon what he was looking at. He knew next to nothing about storm sewers and tunnels, and yet the
detective in him believed that in all probability this was the smugglers’ tunnel the minister had mentioned.

A voice shouting came from far away down the tunnel—barely audible. This voice was male.

Ferrell Walker.

LaMoia’s chest tightened painfully. He trained the Maglite into the dark. He ducked through the hole and stepped inside that tunnel. It smelled familiar—
like death,
he thought.

“I’m coming,” he whispered under his breath, already moving quickly into the dark.

In all his visits to Mama Lu, Boldt could remember seeing her out of that rattan throne only twice, surprised once again by how short she was.
Not small,
he thought,
but short.

“I appreciate this, Great Lady,” he said. He and Babcock, Mama Lu and her two trained polar bears in the black garb stood behind the butcher’s meat counter where a crippled stairway led down into the glare of overhead bare bulbs. The Korean grocery smelled of fresh ginger and exotic spices. Korean talk radio played from a nasal-sounding AM radio behind the cash register at the other end of the room.

“This been family secret many generations, Mr. Both.”

“We understand.”

“You, I know, I trust. Yes. But woman? Mama Lu no know.”

“You’ve nothing to worry about,” Babcock said.

“I give you my word,” Boldt said, knowing the commitment that statement represented.

“Police no know this. Nobody know.”

Boldt said, “Understood.”

“Only because this friend of yours.”

“Matthews,” Boldt said.

“I do this only for you. For her. You good man, Mr. Both. You clear Billy Chen’s good name.”

He didn’t want to have a twenty-minute discussion about it,
but he knew her ways. “We’ll eat a meal together,” he said. “We’ll celebrate.”

She grinned across lipstick-smeared teeth. “But later.”

She knew him better than he thought.

“Yes, later.”

“Show them,” she said to the larger of her bodyguards. To Boldt she said, “Saved my life three times, this secret. Maybe save your friend, too.”

Boldt nodded, a frog caught in his throat. “Thank you,” he said. He ducked his head, and the three descended the cramped stairs to the storage room below.

“This is old,” Babcock informed him excitedly, well before the bodyguard pulled on the gray boards of built-in pantry shelves, opening and revealing a narrow passageway into darkness. “This is it.”

Boldt nodded to the big man and led the way through to the damp smells and pitch-dark. “Let’s hope so,” he heard himself say.

Sitting on a damp ledge in total darkness, Walker having turned off the flashlight to save batteries, Matthews adjusted the broken piece of bottle glass in her left hand. To make the laceration count she would need a good deal of pressure, and this made her realize she needed her own hand protected or she might let go of the glass as it also cut into her.

Walker turned the light back on, surprising her, and took her right hand in his, examining her cut. “It’s not so bad,” he said. He pulled a soiled rag out of a back pocket—she didn’t want to think where it might have been—and he stuffed it into the hand to stem the bleeding. Without knowing it, he’d just passed her a shield for her piece of glass.

She tried to understand his patience. Why wasn’t he in a hurry? Did he fail to realize that half the city’s police department was by now out looking for her? Or was it simply that he trusted these tunnels—virtually untraveled by all but the homeless for the past hundred years—to protect him from discovery? Or was it something much worse, that he wanted to put off what he had in mind for her for as long as possible?