prevent the entrance of a man wearing a torn sweatshirt and filthy blue jeans.
It took Matthews a moment to identify the late arrival as Ferrell Walker.
Walker paused in the middle of the medical examiner’s central office looking lost yet determined. Matthews immediately picked up on the kid’s frenetic energy. It jumped around the room like sparking electricity. He held the attention of everyone in the office as heads lifted and a silence of apprehension descended. These people had no idea he was a grieving brother.
This was the wild man on the subway, the lunatic in the hotel lobby. Of the employees in the room, only the receptionist made any attempt to intervene, and she reconsidered after taking a few steps toward the kid. Lanny Neal didn’t yet see him.
Matthews left the small hallway that offered the viewing window and moved across the central room toward Walker, who avoided her by closing in on Neal. The fingers of his right hand danced like a gunslinger’s.
“Don’t!” Matthews shouted, but her reprimand had the unintended effect of stopping not Walker, but Neal, allowing Walker to close the distance even faster. Matthews knew, without knowing, what Walker had in mind; knew, without knowing, that for a few precious seconds Walker remained impressionable; knew, without knowing, that she was going to have to talk Walker down.
Walker, now to her left, lunged with reptilian speed, pinning Neal, who was a good deal larger than him. Down the small hallway, LaMoia drew his weapon instinctively, but Matthews waved LaMoia off as the curved blade of Walker’s fillet knife flashed through the air and came to rest against Neal’s throat.
“The question you have to ask yourself,” Matthews began, addressing Walker as if she’d rehearsed for the role, “is not whether you believe Mr. Neal harmed your sister, or whether you think yourself capable of doing harm to him; it’s not even about the prison time you will serve-you’ll get a life sentence for something like this, Ferrell, meaning Mr. Neal will have destroyed both you and Mary-Ann-the question is what Mary-Ann would say to you, were she here at this moment, whether or not she would approve of you destroying your own life in an effort to save hers, a life already beyond saving.” She inched closer, now fifteen feet away.
She won his attention, though with no immediate results. The blade remained against Neal’s throat.
She said, “Mr. Neal identified Mary-Ann just now. She’s here, and you can see her for yourself if you want.” She pounced on what she believed would be his greatest desire-to see his sister again-never taking her eyes off Walker as she pointed toward the hallway where LaMoia waited. She had to steer him back into his grief and away from anger and blame. “Do you want to see Mary-Ann again, Ferrell? That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Believe me- you keep up like this, you’ll never see her again. You’ll be in prison when it comes time to bury her, and your actions here, right now, will have delayed any possible prosecution of Mr. Neal, for whatever role he may or may not have had in your sister’s death.”
Lanny Neal strained through clenched teeth, “This … is …
bullshit.”
Walker’s eyes danced.
Matthews moved yet another step closer. Twelve feet now.
“You’re lying to yourself, Ferrell, if you think you’re doing Mary-Ann a favor. You think murdering a man in cold blood is going to help her? How? Do you think it’s going to help your situation in any way? You’re making a lot of trouble here.” She nodded at LaMoia. She wanted Walker’s attention divided.
“John! Is this going to save you trouble?”
“Me? I’m looking at writing up reports for the next week if this guy makes the wrong choice. Not doing me any favors.”
“No,” Matthews agreed. She extended her open hand toward Walker. “Once you pass me that knife, this incident is closed.
Do you hear me, Ferrell? Closed. There’s only Mr. Neal’s word against your own. The sergeant and I, the people in this office: No one saw anything. A grieving brother got a little out of control. Big deal.”
LaMoia said, “Where’s the foul?”
“He did this to her!” Walker said, his voice raw.
“Bullshit I did,” Neal groaned.
“We don’t know what happened,” Matthews said. “That’s still being determined. If you’re right, then you’re right. But it’s a risky assumption on your part. And what if you’re wrong, Ferrell? What then? What if you kill an innocent man here today? Where’s that leave you? Mary-Ann’s killer at large, and you, in jail, behind bars, where you can’t do anything to help us. We need your help here, Ferrell. You’re her only surviving kin-that’s hugely important to our investigation.”
Walker tensed instead of handing over the knife.
A man’s thunderous voice boomed from the far side of the room. “Put down the knife, young man!” Doc Dixon, sounding like God himself. Behind Matthews, and to her right.
Walker glanced over in that direction, increasing the pressure on Neal’s throat as he did so.
Dixon said, “You don’t use a knife as a weapon in the basement of a hospital.” It sounded so convincing. “There are a few hundred trained doctors in the floors immediately above us.
Emergency rooms. Surgical suites. I’m a doctor. Several of my assistants in this room are also doctors. We’re not going to let him die. No matter what you try, we’re going to save him. The moment you try anything, Sergeant LaMoia over there will either put a bullet in you or break every bone in your body. And another thing to think about: No one here is going to be in any great hurry to help you, believe you me.”
LaMoia was maybe ten feet behind her now. “This is one way, do not enter.”
Matthews said, “There’s a legal process that’s meant to handle this. It’s a process that works, Ferrell. Knives don’t work.
Trust me.”
“Knives are messy,” Dixon said. “You mess up my carpet and I’m going to personally beat the spit out of you.”
Dixon moved for the first time, growing ever larger in her peripheral vision, cobra-like, as he approached. Matthews had somehow overlooked Dixon’s formidable presence all these years. Suddenly she understood much more clearly the attraction between Dixon and Boldt-birds of a feather.
Walker’s pale eyes flipped between Dixon and Matthews.
“Stop right there,” he warned.
Matthews took a step and said, “Hand me the knife and it stops. That’s the only way it stops. Put Mary-Ann in this room, Ferrell. Take the rest of us out of here. It’s only you, Mr. Neal, and Mary-Ann. Put Mary-Ann right here where I’m standing-you can do that, I know you can-and then ask yourself what she’d say. How would she react to your threatening Mr. Neal this way? What would she tell you to do?” She took yet another step toward him. Six feet. “Don’t listen to me; don’t listen to Doc Dixon; you just listen to her, to Mary-Ann.”
Walker stared at her. She said, “Drop the knife, Ferrell.”
To her amazement, Walker dropped the knife.
LaMoia rushed him, tackled him, and had him on the floor, Dixon assisting.
Lanny Neal leaned over him. “You worthless piece of shit.”
Matthews retrieved the knife from the carpet. It was heavier, sturdier, than she had imagined.
LaMoia cuffed Walker out of routine but then wondered aloud if they should book him, and Matthews put it onto Neal to make the decision to press charges or not. A grief-stricken brother facing a possible viewing of his murdered sister’s body.
How tough would the legal system be on Walker?
“Murdered?” Neal said, repeating her.
“Well, at least you’re listening, Mr. Neal. That’s a good place to start.”
10 The Debt
“Where is he?” Ferrell Walker asked. He occupied one of the two guest chairs in Doc Dixon’s spacious office.
Matthews patrolled the area behind Dixon’s desk, where, at head level, the room’s only window looked out at ankle-height to the sidewalk above.
“You need to convince me, Mr. Walker, that we’re making the right decision concerning your release.”
“The other guy’s got him, right? The guy who tackled me?”
“You’re not helping your case any.”
