see if this lineup baits him. When Bernie’s guys are out of here, she’ll get some sleep. We’re cool here.”
She exchanged glances with Boldt. His eyes were distant and cold, and she felt she’d betrayed him in some unspoken way.
He went home to a wife and kids, but if she wanted to sleep down the hall from a fellow police officer, that was somehow out of bounds. Resentment built up behind her eyes, and she stopped herself from saying anything.
“Okay,” Boldt said, somewhat awkwardly. “She’s staying.”
He took the key and paused at the apartment door. “Get a fresh battery in that wire pack, and make sure you’re wearing it in the morning.”
She nodded, feeling oddly on the edge of tears that he’d think to make sure she was constantly being looked after. “Thanks, Lou,” she called after him.
Either Boldt didn’t hear her or didn’t choose to answer. The difference between the two kept her up most of the rest of the night.
The Lineup
“You look awful,” Boldt said the next day.
“And just think,” Matthews replied, saying sarcastically, “I’ve had such a stress-free night.”
Neal’s public defender had agreed to, and arranged for, his client’s appearance in the lineup. The man looked properly surprised to see two police lieutenants awaiting them out on the Third Avenue sidewalk. It had been Matthews’s idea to intercept attorney and client outside the front door to Public Safety, buying time for Walker-if he was out there-to register that Matthews had followed through with her promise of the lineup. It also bought Special Ops the opportunity to locate Walker during his surveillance of the building. The radio clipped to Boldt’s belt was supposed to keep them informed of any progress in this endeavor.
Instead it was Boldt’s cell phone that rang. As he answered it, Matthews attempted both to keep them all outside and to buy Boldt some privacy by asking Neal what he knew about Mary-Ann’s relationship with her brother following the father’s drowning.
“You don’t have to answer that,” the attorney advised his client.
Neal told her, “The old man was a bastard to both of them.
The kid fell apart, granted. Fucked up everything. Lost everything. But hell if it made any sense. He should’a been out partying.”
“He leaned on Mary-Ann,” she suggested.
“Fucker fell apart, I’m telling you.”
“You supported her helping out her brother, or you got in the way of that?”
The attorney repeated his caution, this time more sternly, and Neal took his advice, electing to zip it.
Boldt ended the call, saying to Matthews, “Lab’s got that thing for me.” The way he cocked his head, she knew he meant the report on the lair in the Underground-after years of their working together she could read him this way-but he’d said it so that Neal might think he meant the report on Neal’s car, a report they already had and weren’t terribly thrilled with. He said, “I’ll walk you up, then I’ve got to handle this other thing.”
She looked down at his waist, to that radio, and the attorney caught this. “What’s going on?” he asked. “What’s with the radio?”
“Just staying in touch,” Boldt said.
The attorney made a point of looking at the cell phone cradled in Boldt’s left hand, clearly sensing there was more to this.
“Yeah? Well let’s reach out and touch someone inside, shall we?
We’ve all got places to be.”
The police lineup-a few detectives, a janitor, and Lanny Neal, each holding a number and looking through bright lights at a pane of one-way glass-went about as expected, with the truck driver brought in by LaMoia picking out a Special Assaults detective as the man he saw throw Mary-Ann Walker off the Aurora Bridge. That it was about two weeks later now didn’t help his memory any, nor did the fact it had been raining that night and as dark as a cow’s stomach.
With the lineup completed, the four surveillance personnel assigned to keep watch on the immediate area for Walker maintained their positions for a few minutes longer in hopes that Neal’s reemergence onto the street might trigger “an Elvis sighting,” as one of them put it.
Trying to reach Boldt in his office, but missing him, Matthews took twenty minutes of lost time to walk a letter of appeal addressed to Social Services the block and a half over to the King County Courthouse, in hopes that Mahoney could read it and advise her on its legality. Her request to Social Services was for that agency to approve her personally assuming a temporary guardianship of Margaret (“last name to be determined”). If suc-cessful, she hoped to shepherd the girl through the birth of the baby, attempting to eventually place her in a state-sponsored program for teen mothers. A long shot, she went through with it anyway, explaining her situation and leaving the letter with Mahoney. She was determined to help this girl, come hell or high water. News that Margaret had taken a room south of the Safe did little to make Matthews feel better-that room had to be paid for; the neighborhood was lousy; the employment opportunities for near-delivery-date pregnant teens seemed slim.
Intervention seemed the best way to protect the mother and child.
Returning from the courthouse, Matthews tried her best not to think about Walker out there watching for her, or the surveillance team assigned to look for him-all of this focus on her-but instead to remain focused on Margaret, and someone else’s needs.
Eradicating Walker from her thoughts proved a little like trying to talk oneself into falling asleep. Only the idea of rescuing Margaret provided the necessary distraction.
It surprised her to spot Boldt’s back as he entered a Seattle’s Best Coffee just north of Public Safety. She’d been under the impression he’d been down with Bernie Lofgrin looking at the prelim on the underground lair. That meeting was either over, or yet to come, and she decided to go ask which, in case she could join him for it.
She paused, alone at the corner, waiting for the pedestrian light.
“You … ruined … my … life.” The deep male voice came from behind her, and the sound of it nearly dropped her to her knees. She saw herself stabbed and bleeding out on the street corner, traffic passing by, oblivious.
She thought of the lavaliere microphone she’d clipped to her bra that same morning, the fact that somewhere, someone had just listened to her appeal to Mahoney for Margaret’s rescue.
She tried to speak, to raise the alarm, but as he took her shoulders and spun her around, no words came out. She raised her arms defensively, expecting a blow, a wound. She saw the man’s face, recognized it even, but it wasn’t whom she’d expected, and her brain malfunctioned because of this.
It was the guy who’d stopped to “help” her outside Safeco Field. They’d brought him in for questioning.
“Mr. Hollie,” she sputtered. “Take your hands off me!”
But he grabbed her wrist as she reached for her purse, and he bruised her in his grip.
My John Lennon moment, she thought, wondering if a handgun was next, marveling at the irony that her focus for the past several days had been incorrectly on Ferrell Walker.
“What did I ever do to you?”
She heard the emotion in his voice, strangely on the edge of tears, and welcomed it-self-pity was easier to work with than anger-believing she had a decent chance at salvaging the situation. In the back of her brain a little voice reminded her that Boldt would by now be hearing over his radio that she was “in need of backup,” that he’d be coming out of that coffee shop any moment. Another part of her realized that she’d wanted to be rescued for years, that this was part of the attraction to LaMoia. And then the next thought that rattled through her brain at that moment was that she was in fact attracted to LaMoia, and this dumbfounded her. Her mouth went dry. Her head throbbed. She looked around for help. “This isn’t the place,” she said dryly. If she could keep him talking, if she could buy time, she might diffuse his purpose, whatever it was. The terror she felt at that moment was the culmination of all the pent-up fear associated with Walker.
“I stopped to help you, you ungrateful bitch!” The change in tone alarmed her.
“You’re angry.” The absolute wrong thing to say. She knew it the moment it left her lips.
