be doing it.”
Matthews didn’t like the next images that filled her head-sweating through the camisole, sticky hair, the slapping of flesh.
“Sometimes it was like that with her,” Neal said, quieter for the first time. “A little strange like that. Like she wasn’t really there, you know? Tripping out. The more I seen of her like that, the weirder it was, to tell the truth. She’d get herself off. It wasn’t about me. It was like I wasn’t there.”
Matthews attempted to wipe those images from her mind, but they wouldn’t fade. She spoke over them. “Was there anything that night in particular that the two of you argued about?
Anything said that maybe’d come up the other times you’d seen her like this?”
“I’m telling you, she got the most pissed off when I brought up Ferrell, and how it was bugging me the way he never left her alone. Jesus, the guy was always showing up at the weirdest times. Sniveling about money and how she’d fucked everything up. And she didn’t like me talking about him. Bitching about him. She’d pretty much taken care of him since their old man bit it. Her mom-I don’t know nothing about her mom. Whether she bolted or croaked, or what. She could be dead, too, for all I know.”
“So you argued about the brother,” Matthews said.
“That night? Not that I remember. I’m telling you: We got back to my place and she went all horny on me. She’s half undressed and going down on me practically before I got the tube on.”
“According to you, she was out on your fire escape in her panties and a camisole top. Maybe a sweatshirt; you don’t know.
Can’t remember. I’m assuming barefoot. And now, fast-forward, she’s in the water.” Matthews paused. “There are problems with your story, Mr. Neal. Are you aware of that? We started out with you and Mary-Ann pretty much in the same miserable condition. You watching your sports broadcast while she services you. Now you say she was oversexed and practically raping you.
We started out with her getting up in the morning and heading out for coffee. But we know for a fact she ended up in the water the night before. How’d she get there?”
“How’d she get to the water?” Neal asked, as if he was suddenly on their side. “I’m telling you, I saw her out on the fire escape. Heard her talking on the phone.”
He appeared less confident now. If there was a part of his story to exploit, it was Mary-Ann out on the fire escape. Matthews tried again. “How about this? Maybe she’s still drunk out there on the fire escape. Maybe you’ve got the time wrong.
Maybe she’s drunk, tired, a little shaky still from the sex, and she smokes a cigarette and goes a little dizzy and goes right off that fire escape.”
“Oh, yeah, I’m with you,” LaMoia said.
“It wasn’t like that,” Neal objected.
“She’s trying to help you out here,” LaMoia said.
“She goes off the fire escape and she isn’t getting up, and you, Mr. Neal, realize with your history this is not going to look right. Not good at all. Your half-naked girlfriend, carrying your sperm, at the bottom of your fire escape? How you gonna explain that one?”
LaMoia said, “But the condition of the body-that fits: going off the fire escape. That’s good thinking, Lieutenant.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Neal repeated.
“But to a jury? What you’ve got to ask yourself is how it’ll look to a jury. ’Cause I’ve got to tell you-it’s pretty damn convincing to me.”
“To me too,” LaMoia chimed in.
Neal wore a full face of sweat now, his eyes jumping between his two interrogators.
Matthews leaned into the suspect where he could smell her, where he couldn’t avoid her. “But sadly for you, the truth always plays better. You know what I think? I think you hit Mary-Ann.
I think you got angry with her and you struck her, and things went badly for you. You thought she was passed out like the other times, but she never got up. Sometime that night, or the next morning, you discovered she was dead. You’d killed her.
And now what? Maybe for whatever reasons, it turned you on.
Maybe you’re like that. Maybe you did things to her after she was dead.” She lowered her voice. This was her ground now.
“There’s nothing quite like that anger of yours, is there? It gets away from you, that kind of anger. It turns back on you, doesn’t it? Bites back. Then comes the moment you don’t understand.
You’re riding a rocket while your little sweetheart’s gone all limp. You’re all over her with your stuff, because that’s how the arguments always end-right? — the two of you in the sack, clawing at each other and starting out all ugly before the sex starts to heal things. Only this time it doesn’t heal, does it? This time she isn’t coming awake.”
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, his eyes dilated.
“I’m your way out of this mess. We are-the sergeant and I. You want out of this, don’t you, Lanny?”
LaMoia dragged his palms across his pants. The jangle was in the air like the smell before a thunderstorm.
She said, “I want you thinking about the lab tests. When that nasty bruising occurred. When she broke those bones-before or after she died. What? You didn’t think we knew that yet?
Seventeen broken bones, Lanny. What? You thought we’d think her hitting the water did that? And speaking of water, what about when the water went into her lungs? Before or after death?
You’ve got to consider the jury and how this could turn out for you, because this meeting, right here, right now, this is a good chance for you to help yourself. We don’t deal in stories. We process the facts and let them tell the story. And that’s the story the jury believes. The one and only story. The more you bend it around, the worse your chances of cutting a deal with us.”
Matthews stood up and made a point of smoothing the wrinkles in her shirt, as if she’d picked up some of his filth by sitting a little too closely. Lanny Neal remained fairly composed, maintaining an air of self-importance that he wore on his face along with the good looks he didn’t deserve.
Interrogations were as much about timing as the questions asked. She and LaMoia exchanged looks and LaMoia cut Neal loose, asking that he “stay close to home.” No travel outside the city without notifying the police.
“Impressive,” LaMoia said after Neal was gone, “if a little unorthodox.”
“What’d you think of him?” Matthews asked.
“Mixed review,” LaMoia said.
She felt disappointment seep through her. She wanted so badly for this to be over, to wrap it up and put Mary-Ann Walker to rest. But her review was mixed as well-Neal seemed something of a contradiction. “We wait for the lab results. Both SID’s and Dixon’s. Maybe that’ll clear it up for us.”
Wishful thinking, and they both knew it.
A Drowning Is a Drowning, a Fall, a Fall
The signature combination of antibacterials and preservatives never failed to remind Boldt of death, images of bruised and bloated corpses indelibly stamped in his consciousness from the 134 autopsies he had attended. He never lost count.
This was a place where the soles of feet bore identification codes in black marker, where nakedness reigned and was never attractive. Floor-to-ceiling stainless-steel refrigerated drawers with sliding trays capable of supporting four hundred pounds and six-foot-two frames. He hoped beyond measure that it was a place Susan Hebringer would never visit. But he had his doubts.
Although state law required investigators to attend autopsies of any death of questionable or suspicious causes, it was not any such requirement that brought Boldt here. That requirement had already been fulfilled by Detective Chas Milner. Instead, it was because it was here, at the ME’s, that the dead whispered their last words
