sound of his voice should calm her, she had no idea, but it had and she wasn’t asking any questions.
Gray: “He’s pulling over. One block north on Yesler.”
This struck her as odd, if this was the normal course of duty as LaMoia had suggested, but she endeavored to stay calm.
CO dispatch: “Officer on foot, heading south. Decoy, he’s yours in five … four … three … two …”
She picked up Prair’s large silhouette as he passed a hedge-row and walked into the parking lot on foot. He walked with his usual confidence, stiff spine, and military demeanor.
“Lieutenant,” he said, avoiding use of her first name-a first.
“Deputy Prair,” she said, for the sake of the tape recorders out there.
An uneasy silence settled between them as he stepped up to her, only a few feet away. “What is it you want?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“The message.”
“What message?”
“The message said you’d be waiting here at ten P.M., that you wanted to see me.”
“You want to try again?”
“I got the message, Lieutenant.”
She said, “I don’t know what you mean, but you could start by explaining your presence at the end of my dock last night.”
A gust of wind tossed her hair. Prair’s face tightened, and for the first time he glanced around, as if sensing the surveillance. The wind blew again, a mixture of rain and cold air this time, and as he reached out and moved her hair off her neck, a move that briefly terrified her, she realized he hadn’t sensed anything: He’d spotted the wire from the earpiece.
“What the hell’s going on here? You got a thing going here?”
“You stepped into that thing,” she said. “You squirreled it.”
“I was told to meet you here.”
“What is it with you, Deputy?
“I … got … a … message, said you wanted to see me.”
“A written message?” she asked.
“Central took it while I was on patrol.”
“I bet they did.”
“Listen, Lieutenant-”
“Save it,” Matthews said. “We’ll have a chat over at Public Safety, sort this all out.” Such were the instructions she received from dispatch through the earpiece.
“I’m on ten minutes lost time,” he complained.
“Well, we’ll make it an hour,” Matthews said.
“I got a message. Check it out. Central will have a record of it coming in.”
She stepped up to him, her anger rising. “You’ve got all the bases covered, don’t you?”
He held up his hands like he wanted no part of it. “I don’t know what’s going down here, Lieutenant. But if I squirreled things, I was set up.”
“Blue!” Boldt’s voice hollered over her earpiece. “Blue: Crash the nest. On my authority, you crash the nest right now!”
Her houseboat.
She understood then that Boldt believed Walker had used the meet as a distraction, had used Prair to cement that distraction, and that the ultimate goal of that distraction had been to penetrate the houseboat.
Prair backed up, out into the rain.
“Don’t go anywhere, Deputy.”
“You got this wrong, Lieutenant.”
He appeared intent on breaking into a run.
“Stay where you are, Deputy.”
“This is not my thing, Matthews. You got that wrong. I’m going back to my car, my route. I don’t need no trouble.”
“Too late,” she informed him. “You stepped into it. Now we’ve got to clean it up.”
“To apologize,” he barked out, winning her full attention.
She tugged the noisy earpiece from her ear. He was beginning to get wet in the rain. “I was there … at your place … the dock, to apologize. Swear to God. For the way I’ve been, the stuff I’ve done. I fucked up not telling you about ticketing the Walker woman. That was wrong. I wanted to come clean for that. Try to set things straight.”
“My car,” she said, stepping closer and driving him back a like amount. “This parking lot. That parking garage,” she said, pointing to where she knew LaMoia was watching. “That was you.”
“I should have told you about the moving violation. That was stupid.” He wouldn’t admit to any role in the sabotage of her Honda.
“All of it, Nathan, or none of it. You can’t put filters on this.”
He moved another step back, wearing frightened eyes. “I was there to apologize,” he repeated. “Nothing more.”
A pair of plainclothes detectives entered the parking lot at a jog. “You’re off-Com, Lieutenant,” one of them called out.
“We’re all done here, thanks to Roy Rogers,” he said, addressing Prair. “You won yourself a backstage pass to the fifth floor, and we’re your personal escorts, sir.” They stood to either side of the deputy.
“You got this wrong,” he said to Matthews.
“We’ll see about that,” she said back to him. But she felt half-convinced that he was right, and that left her all the more confused.
Alone Again
Nathan Prair invoked his right to a guild representative, a lawyer, ahead of his interview, effectively nullifying that any such interview would take place and, through the process, casting additional suspicion onto himself. He was released, pending a board hearing, though it seemed unclear any such hearing would ever take place, as SPD had little authority to remand a deputy sheriff. It would take the attorneys some time to sort this all out.
Boldt threw a fit in the Situation Room, angry at his team for the failed surveillance operation, the bungled intelligence, furious with Walker for having stung them. He ordered LaMoia to orchestrate a sweep of all known locations for Walker in a bid to bring him in for questioning. LaMoia broke a key off his key ring and handed it to Matthews, asking if she’d mind feeding Rehab when she returned to his loft.
“There’s no reason to go back to your loft, John, although I appreciate the offer.”
“The hell there isn’t.”
“We’ve had the houseboat under surveillance all night long.
Twice it has been searched and swept top to bottom. It’s probably the safest place in the city right now.”
“It’s on our hot-spot list, Matthews. Don’t give me shit about this. We’re going to roust every homeless haunt in this city in the next couple hours. I need all hands on deck for that. We will not be watching your crib. We will not be sweeping your crib.
You’ll stay at my place at least one more night, maybe longer.
It’s that or a hotel. You know the Sarge. You know the drill.
This is not me, darlin’. You want to complain, you go over my head.”
“I will.”
“Be my guest.”
Her bluff having failed, she winced and tried to charm her way out of this requirement. “How ’bout I feed Blue
