rare visitor, found the basement setting, the medicinal smell, and the overpowering silence repulsive. Perhaps her feelings stemmed from the doctor-office look of the place: tube lighting, gray carpet, white lateral filing cabinets, the efficient young men and women spanning Seattle’s ethnic palate, all dressed in white lab coats, some carrying clipboards, some answering phones. It felt too normal. One expected something more dismal and final-sweating rock walls and bars on the window, a doctor with a speech impediment, a nurse with a limp. This felt more like her OB-GYN’s office.
This setting didn’t work for her at all.
LaMoia entered, his sergeant’s shield clipped to the pocket of the deerskin jacket. He winked at the receptionist, an African American woman who had to be in her sixties, low-fived one of the young docs who made a point of catching up to him, and took Matthews around the waist, steering her toward the double swinging doors that led into the “meat locker”-the primary receiving room that housed twenty-one refrigerated drawers and sported three stainless-steel autopsy tables with drains, lights, and video cameras. There was at least one other autopsy room that she knew of-more of a private surgery suite where Dixon or his chief assistant occasionally tackled a sensitive or particularly gruesome case. She abruptly put on the brakes, not allowing LaMoia to escort her through those doors before it was necessary, and her effort had the unintended effect of turning LaMoia toward her and briefly making contact with her. They bounced off each other, gently, and for a moment there was only that contact lingering in the nerve endings of her skin.
“That our guy out there?” LaMoia stepped back from her, keeping it business.
“Yes. Langford Neal,” she said, giving her jacket a small straightening tug. “Boyfriend, or former boyfriend, if it’s Mary-Ann Walker in there.”
“And the doc thinks it is.”
“The doc got hold of a better driver’s license photo than I did.
One of her eyes, the left, I think, is still where it belongs, and it’s apparently a match for color: blue. Height’s about right. Weight could be right, discounting for saturation and bloat. I’ve got a call in to the brother to try to locate dental records for her.”
LaMoia glanced in the direction of the reception area. “Let me tell you something about our little angel, Neal. Two convictions as well as a number of complaints from previous love interests. This guy plays rough. He served thirty days in county for one of the convictions. The second, he was in for six months, out in four.”
The news moved Neal up the list in both their minds. She understood the added spring to LaMoia’s step now-he loved having the jump on information. “That certainly helps,” she said, “but we shouldn’t lose sight of the brother, either.”
“Ten-to-one she was killed in or near the boyfriend’s pad, given the underwear, the bare feet, and the rest of it.”
“The brother could have harbored jealousy and anger over his being deserted for Neal. That’s powerful stuff.”
“Neal has two convictions for knocking women around. You kidding me? Not losing sight of the brother, that’s okay. But we focus on Neal. If he does, in fact, ID the body as her, then from what you were saying, your take is to run him straight up to the bull pen and have a go at him. Is that right?”
“That, or use a conference room here.”
“You’re thinking that this viewing may put him off-balance-her being so ripe and all-and that we pounce while we have the opportunity.”
“You’re a lot smarter than you look.”
He took it in stride. LaMoia had his timing down to an art form. He kept it business-for the time being. This put her on edge, her defenses at the ready.
“You want to sit this one out, I’m okay with that. You’re way too … sweet … for a floater. Especially one that’s been in the meat locker for a few extra days.”
She knew she could handle it, she’d seen plenty of dead bodies, some in dreadful condition, but it didn’t mean she wanted to. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I think.”
“You think too much,” he said, meeting her eyes to drive home his point. LaMoia had large brown eyes and knew how to use them to effect.
“Meaning?”
“You gotta teach yourself to feel, Matthews.” He leaned against one of the two swinging doors. He wasn’t going to make her follow inside. “You’re all engine. It’s the handling that counts.” Everything came down to cars for LaMoia. “You get that down, you’ll be just about perfect.”
“Who said I wanted to be perfect?” But he didn’t answer her.
He left her there to think about it. The door flapped shut behind him. Timing was everything.
Decades earlier, in municipalities across the country, medical examiner and coroner offices had learned to separate the individual making an identification from the room containing the body, as the smell tended to cause fainting and vomiting. Some used video, some a window-most used both, as did the King County Medical Examiner’s Office, where a color TV was mounted to the left of a narrow window that housed a venetian blind controllable from the inside.
Lanny Neal was handsome in a ski bum kind of way, cocksure of himself judging by the rigid shoulders, the smug expression, and his willingness to blatantly check out Matthews, leveling his gaze and drinking her in, head to foot.
She knew she should wait to question him, but he’d fired the first salvo with that rude survey of her topography, and she fell victim to the challenge.
“When did you last see Mary-Ann?” she asked.
The question didn’t rattle Neal in the least-although LaMoia looked a little uncomfortable. Neal remained calm and collected, as if he were there applying for a job. This further irritated Matthews.
“Couple nights ago.”
“How many nights ago?”
“Saturday, I guess.”
“You guess, or you know?” Matthews pressed.
“Saturday night. Late.”
“You weren’t worried about her?”
“Pissed was more like it.”
“You didn’t report her missing. Why’s that?”
“Why should I? She blew me off. Her tough luck.”
Mary-Ann was gone. On to the next. Matthews knew the attitude. She asked him about the last time he’d seen Mary-Ann.
Where they were at the time, what Mary-Ann had been wearing, her mood.
LaMoia interrupted. “I think they’re ready for us.”
A plain white sheet on a stainless-steel gurney filled the video screen. LaMoia knocked on the glass and the blinds came up like a curtain being raised. A hand appeared, on both the video and through the glass, drawing back the sheet and revealing the remains of a woman’s head, at once both pathetic and terrifying. The lips were grotesquely distended, as if pumped full of air. An eyelid had been stitched shut, apparently to spare Neal the sight of an empty socket.
Matthews heard herself catch her breath. LaMoia remained intractable. Neal stared at her for a long time, exhaled slowly, shook his head slightly, and looked away with glassy eyes. It was not the reaction she would have expected of a murderer-she and LaMoia met eyes and she knew he felt much the same-leaving her to wonder just how good an actor Lanny Neal might be. This, in turn, prepared her for the Q amp;A she was already planning in her head.
“Yeah,” Neal said, still looking away from the window.
“Mary-Ann Walker?” LaMoia asked.
Neal looked a little green, his skin carrying a light sheen that hadn’t been there moments before. “You got a men’s room around here?”
LaMoia directed him down the hall, meeting eyes once more with Matthews and communicating his own surprise at Neal’s reaction.
The commotion came from the front of the office, where the receptionist stood out of her chair too late to
