His dark eyes flared behind his resentment. He dropped the sack at her feet, though it seemed to float in its descent. “We’ll see about that,” Walker said.
He glanced up at LaMoia, for the first time acknowledging him, though in a roundabout way. “You should have stayed out of this.”
He turned and walked away, quickly lost in the crush of the county’s judicial process.
“Shit,” LaMoia said.
Matthews picked up the paper sack. She opened it, looked in, and asked for a pen from LaMoia. She then stirred through the contents: a wristwatch, a pack of cigarettes, a butane lighter, a woman’s wallet with what appeared to be a speeding ticket clapped in its leather jaws.
“What do you want to bet he broke into Neal’s apartment and confiscated this stuff?” she said.
“If he did, he just screwed us.”
“He thought he was helping. That’s the sad part.”
“If it’s from Neal’s apartment, it’ll invalidate it as evidence.”
“If it’s evidence. I’m aware of that, John.”
“This shit won’t do. We gotta do something.”
“I think I just did it,” she said, regretting the tone she’d taken with Walker, and wondering at the consequences.
A Wallet and a Watch
“Knock, knock.”
“Come in,” Boldt said. When he saw it was Matthews, he said, “Hello there. It’s been awhile. Have a seat.”
Matthews wondered where his compliments had gone. Boldt had always had something nice to say to her, little observations that had always made her day. They weren’t there anymore, and she missed them.
He said, “John told me about the guy outside your window.”
“He shouldn’t have. It was shoe prints is all.”
“I’ve asked SID to take a look. Better late than never.” Before she could protest, he explained, “On the off chance it’s related to our hotel peeper.”
“It’s not.”
“They’re over there now.”
“Does anyone ever ask around here?”
“We have a photo of a waffle pattern from the construction site-the voyeur watching the hotel. Maybe we can match them.”
“You won’t. I have two candidates of my own,” she said.
“Suspects?”
She shook her head. “Listen, it could have been a handyman.
I had my screens put on a couple weeks ago.”
“That was optimistic of you. Still feels like winter to me.”
“The prints are not connected to Hebringer and Randolf, Lou.”
“I’d rather an educated decision on that be made, a group decision. Okay with you?”
“You’re not yourself.”
He pushed back the office chair and studied her. “You know, after about a hundred people telling me that, I’m tired of hearing it. Yes, even from you.”
“I’d suggest you hand off Hebringer, but I know you better.”
“Yes, you do. So drop it.” He apologized, “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. Something else is bugging me.”
“The city worker drowning?”
“The EMTs tell me there’s a section of the Underground there, still intact. The city won’t let me down the sinkhole because it’s too dangerous. Can you believe that? Someone tell that to Susan Hebringer. So I’m exploring the possibility of an alternate access. There’s a woman at the U, a Dr. Babcock, looking into it.” He added, “So are you going to tell me who your suspects are, or is your plan to try to distract me?”
She never got much past him. She wasn’t even sure why she tried. “The floater, Mary-Ann Walker?”
“Right.” He knew the case.
“She has a younger brother that’s number one. There may be a little transference going on. He seems to think he’s Watson to my Holmes.”
“Lovely.”
“The other possibility is Nathan Prair.”
“Again?”
“He was on the bridge the night we investigated. Sheriff’s Office is involved-don’t ask me how. He’s his same old creepy self, and I think there’s a chance he was watching me, or at least keeping an eye out for me, over at the Shelter.”
“You want me to talk to him? Bring him in?”
“A personality like his? No. Thanks, but no thanks. Guys like Prair, they live with expectation. Bringing him in, we’d add fuel to the fire, and at that point he’d have to prove to himself, to me, to everyone involved how right he was about the perfect match he and I would make. I’ve been through this before with him. The best approach is to give it distance.”
“And that’s it? A list of two? We can handle that.”
“That’s the short list,” she said. “The long list includes every con I’ve ever helped put away who’s now out on parole. It might have to include Langford Neal as well-the boyfriend we’ve charged with running over Mary-Ann and then tossing her off that bridge. He’s a controlling personality, has a history of abuse. I’m a woman who’s making decisions about his future, and that’s bound to sit wrong. I can see him getting curious about me, and that can lead to some ugly behavior.”
“I’m not liking where this is headed,” he said.
“That makes two of us.”
“So let’s do something about it.”
“It’s a passive crime, Lou. That complicates matters. Walker leaves me phone messages that turn my stomach. Prair shows up in parking garages and then disappears. I’ve got some mud and dirt outside a window. What charges do we file? And how much do I want to discourage Walker, given that he just supplied us with evidence we otherwise might not have found?”
“What evidence?”
“Some of his sister’s personal effects, her wallet, a watch, and a pack of cigarettes. There’s some paperwork in the wallet, including what appears to be a traffic citation. We left it all off with Bernie before we dug into it. He’ll process it for latents and hairs and fibers, and then give us a look.”
“If the brother is compromising evidence, then that’s obstruction. You want him locked up, we’ll lock him up.”
“John wants to question him, sure. But I may have scared him off earlier. I was pretty tough on him. I had him roll some prints. My guess: He won’t be showing up at work for a couple days. The other thing is, we don’t know where he got this evidence. At first, John was furious, and rightly so. But then we thought it through: If Neal had this stuff hidden, if Walker found this stuff hidden rather than in plain sight-it actually could help us build a case.”
“That’s playing with fire, and we both know it, Daffy. You don’t want to get in the middle of this.”
“I’m already in the middle. What I’d like is to get to one side, to let John be the center of this guy’s attention. That takes a little manipulation with personalities like this. It can’t be done all at once.”
Boldt put down the pen and removed his reading glasses. A depth to his eyes drew her in. So much going on in there. “So how can I help?” he asked.
“Mersi-do and Mersi-don’t,” LaMoia said, entering Boldt’s office without knocking. He hooked a chair with his
