The Art of Deception

Chumming

Matthews stood in the parking lot by her Honda, awaiting Walker as he punched out at a small shack at the foot of one of the fishing docks. The air pungent with saltwater, the wind heavy with a cold mist, she squinted against the blow, taking in the damp and the beauty of the shipping canal and the greenish gray hill rising toward the blinking radio towers. American flags hung everywhere, even in the rain. A boy rode his bike, a mangy dog running to keep up. The sound of rubber tires running on wet roadway had become so familiar to her that the scenery did not exist without it, the same way downtown demanded the low cry of the ferry horns bellowing out into Elliott Bay. This great city was fungal smells and mystical sounds, dreary skies and paper cups of steaming coffee. It was rubber boots and rain slickers, a place pedestrians waited at cross lights. The trawlers had serviced these same docks for more than a hundred years. Matthews could hear the clip-clop of horses’ hooves on cobblestone. She could hear the fishmongers shouting out prices as little blond-haired boys carried fillets wrapped in newsprint over to well-dressed house servants and cooks.

“You need my help again, don’t you?” Walker called out to her across the blacktop.

“Some questions is all,” she said loudly, as he was still some distance away.

He wore an old pair of running shoes, not waffle-soled boots as she’d expected. This discovery bothered her, for it still left the person responsible for the prints outside her mudroom window in doubt.

“How ’bout that drink?” he said, catching up to her. He wore the same clothes she’d seen him in before. Wet at the knees, caked with mud on the lower leg, they did not appear to have been washed.

“I don’t want you calling me anymore, Mr. Walker.” She added, “Any further attempts to make contact on your part will be considered harassment. Do you understand?”

“That’s the thanks I get?” He cocked his head, “What?

You’re teasing, right? You want more stuff, is that it? Something you need done?”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said. She saw confusion register on his face. “If you find it difficult to get over the grief, there are programs, counselors I can-”

“What the fuck? Counselors? You want me off your case, then you-”

“We’re closer to an arrest in this case,” she said, cutting him off.

This hit him like a slap in the face. Some spittle bubbled at the corner of his lips. “You need me,” he whispered. “I can help you.”

“I need you … to stay out of this. Your involvement could compromise our efforts, Mr. Walker.”

“That sweatshirt? That compromised your efforts, I suppose?”

He’d caught her, and the slight hesitation on her part cost her, though she salvaged the moment by turning it to her advantage. “Okay, I’ll admit it, there is something you can do to help us out.”

“I knew it,” he said deliberately, a quiz show contestant confident his answer had been right all along.

“I need to see your driver’s license, and I need to confirm your residence. Next-of-kin paperwork,” she explained, although this wasn’t the real reason behind her query.

“I don’t own a car, and I don’t have a license because I let it expire. But you probably know that already, right? I mean, what’s the point?” He indicated the docks behind him. “I bus up here. I bus back into the city. Home’s a hole in the ground, a place out of the rain. I’ve got a tarp, a box of some stuff.

That’s home. That’s what fucking Lanny Neal left me with when he took Mary-Ann off the boat.” He stepped toward her, another wave of anger gripping his eyes, another pulse of nausea seeping into her. “Why ask questions you already know the answer to?

Are you toying with me?”

“I was under the impression you’d driven Lanny Neal’s Toyota Corolla,” she lied. She went fishing with the fisherman. It wasn’t an impression, but a suspicion that resulted from the lab work on the car. “Your sister’s birthday dinner a couple months back.”

“That’s bullshit. Neal drove.” This was her first confirmation that Neal had been telling the truth about that particular night.

It was also the first she’d learned that Walker had been along for the celebration-his sister’s idea, no doubt. She couldn’t see Neal inviting him.

“He got locked out of the car. Is that correct?”

“The guy’s a numb nuts. I’ve been telling you that.”

“Did Mary-Ann hurt herself that night?”

“Hurt herself how?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“He beat on her all the time, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking if you witnessed any violence between the two in Neal’s car that night.”

Again, Walker cocked his head. “I get it,” he said, nodding slowly. “Sure he did. Damn right he did.”

“Mr. Walker, it does no one any good-least of all Mary-Ann-if you fabricate your responses. If you lie to me.”

“Sure, I can see that,” he said, still with an almost whimsical, beguiling expression. “But I’m not lying, am I, Lieutenant? I did see him. He did hit her that night. Knocked her around.”

“You risk invalidating everything we’ve ever gotten or will get from you if you’re caught in a lie. You understand that, Mr.

Walker? That includes the sweatshirt.”

“What do you want from me, Daphne? Am I allowed to call you that?”

This was a device she used on suspects-establishing rapport through use of a given name. Having this reversed on her ran chills up her arms-the sleight-of-hand magician who’s caught in the act.

“I want the truth. I want some answers. That’s all.”

“I’ll tell you anything you want me to tell you. You’ve just got to let me know.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Lanny Neal’s still walking the streets, so don’t tell me about it working. It’s not working. I can help with that, Daphne. Me and you … we can team up here … we can get stuff done. You know what I’m saying.”

“It does not work like that.”

“It works however we make it work.”

“I have a kit in my car,” she announced. “It’s a fingerprint kit. Real simple. Takes about five minutes. You don’t even have to clean up. There are forms to fill out-consent forms.”

“What’s this about?”

“It takes us another step closer to Neal. That’s what you want, right?” she asked.

“Of course that’s what I want.”

“So we’ll roll out some prints and help move this forward, if it’s all right with you.” She hadn’t wanted LaMoia along for this reason-two cops wanting prints would have put even an eager beaver like Walker on notice.

He stared at her until she finally met eyes with him-a concession of sorts. “There’s so much I can do for you.”

She struggled with a response. “We’ll start with the prints and take it from there, if that’s okay with you.”

Five minutes later Walker was rolling his right index finger into a box on a WSDOJ card. He sat in the front seat of her car, out of the mist and the rain, her cell phone and Starbucks tea between them. NPR played from the radio. She turned it down and then cracked a window to vent the smell coming off him.

“How’d you know he locked himself out of the car?” Walker asked. “He tell you he was that stupid? He tell you I could’a had him in that car and the engine running in about three minutes flat? Let me tell you something-you work on boats long enough, you can do anything, any kind of mechanical, electrical repair, whatever kind of problem there is. Numb nuts didn’t have a clue. All stressed out over losing his keys. Fuck me. Guys like that ought to be taken out back and shot.”

She set him up to roll prints from his left hand. The ink pad was colorless, though he left a fingerprint on the card.

“This is all about the car, isn’t it?” Walker asked, fidgeting.

“You started by asking about the car. Mary-Ann drove his car.

I can help you with this stuff. We’re solid on this, right, you and me?”

“There is no you and me,” Matthews said. “I meant what I said about no more contact.”

“Sure you did.”

“No drink, no coffee, no contact.”

“Right.”

“Mr. Walker?”

He directed himself to Matthews then, turning to face her in a deliberate, overly dramatic way. “I … can … help … you,”

he declared, popping open the door and slipping outside. A chill, damp wind took his place beside her. As he leaned back inside the car, a darkness overcame his face and she thought that this was a side of the man she had not yet seen. “Do your job,” he said, “or I’ll do it for you.”