guessing.
“We’d been at my mom’s, the two of us. We’d had a couple drinks. Dinner at my mom’s. My mom likes rum. We’d had a few rums, I guess.”
LaMoia clarified, “This is you, Mary-Ann Walker, and your mother?”
“Right.”
“State your mother’s name, please.”
“Frances. Frances Kelly Neal.”
“You had dinner, the three of you. Which night was that?”
“Saturday.”
LaMoia took a moment to make a point of counting backward. His favorite line of offense was to play the fool to begin with, slowly migrating to the hard-line cop any suspect learned to fear. “March twenty-second.”
Neal said, “We come home after dinner … to my hang, you know? And went to bed. I watched the sports while she … you know, she was busy.”
“Busy, how?”
“You know?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Busy.” He pumped his cupped hand up and down. “Beneath the sheets.”
“Ms. Walker was performing oral sex on you while you watched the sports news.”
Neal grinned proudly, but he couldn’t keep his eyes still.
“That’s it.”
Lies, she thought, as LaMoia caught her attention and rolled his eyes.
“What time would that have been?” LaMoia asked.
“After dinner, like I said.”
“That would be the local news?”
“Q-13.”
“That would be Fox.”
“That would be correct.” He mimicked LaMoia, and the sergeant impressed Matthews with his ability to remain calm and not rise to the bait.
Neal liked to hear himself talk. That played in their favor.
“She wanted some of that action for herself-if you know what I’m saying-and I wasn’t exactly complaining, but-”
LaMoia interrupted. “We’ll skip the play-by-play, if you don’t mind. You did, or did not have intercourse with Mary-Ann Walker on Saturday, March twenty-second?”
“That’s a ‘did.’ For sure.”
Matthews asked, “Using a condom, or without?”
“That would be without.” Neal gave her a tennis pro smile.
LaMoia said, “Following the intercourse, you watched more television, or read, or went to sleep, or what?”
“Slept. At least I did. Mary-Ann might have gone out the window.”
“You want to explain that?”
“For a smoke,” Neal clarified. “Can’t stand that shit. She used the fire escape. Used it all the time. I saw her out there on the fire escape. It was later, a lot later. Probably for a smoke.
Right? I saw her out there, yeah. I just said I did.” Confusion fanned the edges of his eyes.
“Approximately what time was this?”
“Later.”
“Can you be more precise?”
Neal glanced first to Matthews, then to LaMoia, as if hoping one of them might help him out. He pinched his temples between the fingers of his right hand and apparently appealed for divine intervention. She was beginning to put more faith in Walker’s suspicions. Lanny Neal was a self-centered egotist who had a record of abusing his girlfriends. He didn’t lie very well, despite what must have been a great deal of practice.
“I remember her out there … seeing her out there. I didn’t like it when she went out there dressed like that. She never seemed to give a shit what she was wearing. Claimed no one could see her, so high up and all. And that’s another thing-she don’t even like heights, but for a smoke, shit, she’d climb the Space Needle. Anyway, she’d go out there in like a T-shirt and underwear, showing skin and all.
“She was talking,” he continued. “At first I wondered who the fuck was out there with her. Then I saw the cordless phone was missing. She was out there on the fire escape on the goddamn phone with someone. Maybe it was the phone ringing that woke me up in the first place. And I do remember what time it was.” This seemed to dawn upon him, and Matthews thought he was making it up as he went. “All twos flashing at me. Two twenty-two. The clock by the phone on her side of the bed. I remember that. Two, two, two. Flashing away. And I looked out the window, and there she was on the goddamn phone.”
“Two twenty-two A.M.”
“You ought to be talking to that brother of hers. Always begging her for money, bugging her. Punk-ass kid, blaming her for everything bad happening to him. Probably him on the phone. Probably him who did this to her.”
“What exactly do you think happened to Mary-Ann?”
LaMoia asked.
“How should I know? All disgusting like that, the way she was. Looked like she drowned or something. Is that right?”
“What exactly was Mary-Ann wearing at the time? Out on your fire escape.”
“I just told you! Next to nothing.”
“A description of that clothing could prove useful to the investigation.”
“Well, she sure as shit wasn’t going to go out there bare-ass again, you understand. Not after the last time. I’d caught her again-”
He stopped himself.
LaMoia met eyes with Matthews, communicating that they had their first real look at Langford Neal’s inner workings. Interrogators lived for such moments.
LaMoia supplied, “You’d smack her around, let her know who was boss.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Did you smack her around that night, Lanny? Hit her upside the head, or knock her off the fire escape, or what? She was bleeding, wasn’t she? She was bleeding and you didn’t know what to do.”
“That’s bullshit. I seen her out there and I went back to sleep.
End of story. She would’a had on butt floss. White butt floss.
She always wore the same thing.”
Matthews said, “Thong panties. And what about on top? A T-shirt? A blouse? A robe?”
“One of those camel-things.”
“A camisole.”
“Two humps right where they belong. Nice and tight.”
Matthews cringed at his reckless confidence. “A camisole and thong underwear. No sweatshirt, no robe?”
“She’s hot-blooded, I’m telling you. Went out there all the time in next to nothing. For a smoke. A sweatshirt-how the hell should I know? Does she own one? Yes. But that night it was a freak show anyway. Warm for a change. You can check that, right?”
LaMoia said, “We’ll check all of your statement, Lanny.
Every last word.”
He looked briefly bewildered, but then regained his confidence and restated that the last time he’d seen her she’d been out on the fire escape. “Woke the next morning and she wasn’t there. Not that that was all that unusual. She went to sleep later than me and got up earlier. Probably headed straight for a coffee hit, a Seattle’s Best, down a few blocks. You should check with them. Right? They open at six, and she’s always one of the first through the door.”
