The Art of Deception b-8

by Ridley Pearson

  “Test, one, two,” she said into the empty car.

  Her dash-mounted Motorola squawked and called back, “Copy that, Decoy.”

  She hadn’t liked the moniker assigned her for this operation, but it wasn’t her place to comment on it.

  A few turns later, she pulled into the church lot marked PRIVATE PARKING STRICTLY ENFORCED-VEHICLES WILL BE TOWED, and slipped the cardboard permit onto her dash before locking up. She wore her hair over her ears in order to cover the tiny ear bud that carried the network of radio traffic surrounding her surveillance. She tested the gear once more as she dumped her keys into her purse. “Okay, boys, I’m all yours.”

  “Copy that, Decoy,” the calm voice returned softly in her ear. No jokes from dispatch. No humor. These radio operators were the grumpy librarians of police work.

  She reached the overhang and the door in the side of the church that led down to the Shelter at five minutes before ten, five minutes ahead of schedule. The sky opened up with a drizzle that felt like the misters over vegetable stands in supermar-kets. She thought sarcastically how perfect it was to further complicate things with the added hassle of the rain-traffic would slow, long-distance surveillance would be more obscured, and any right-thinking person would seek some kind of shelter from it, making the undercover roles harder to play effectively without standing out.

  She listened in her one ear to the radio reports from the observation points outside her houseboat, for Boldt didn’t put it past Walker to use the meet to buy himself a chance to get inside her houseboat, either souvenir-seeking or in order to await her return there. The rain was apparently stronger over Lake Union, and one of those keeping surveillance reported a red-and-black umbrella on the dock, unable to identify the person holding it.

  “That’s a neighbor,” Matthews said, barely moving her mouth in case she was being watched by Walker. The red-and-black umbrella belonged to Robert, a man who could have played stunt double to Ernest Hemingway. If they hassled Robert, she’d hear about it for months to come.

  Location by location, the four undercover detectives and the leader of the ERT squad reported into dispatch, confirming their positions, reporting sightings considered “possibles” for Walker, filling the radio with activity where no such activity existed in the real world. She knew that LaMoia had parked the Jetta on the second floor of the car park, engine out, and was sitting in the car’s backseat (making it more difficult for others to spot him), keeping an eye on her through the car’s back window. She felt the attention of all those eyes and ears, both onstage and exposed for all to see. If and when her moment came with Walker, it would be recorded, videoed, and analyzed, as would any subsequent interrogation. She felt uncomfortable in the spotlight, even a little sick to her stomach, as it didn’t feel much different to her than walking around her houseboat certain someone was watching.

  Someone was watching-many someones-and for a person accustomed to doing the watching, she found the reversal of roles unpleasant, going on vulgar. Walker himself was no doubt watching as well, and she could only hope he couldn’t see or sense the swarm of protection that had been created around her, for she felt certain it would put him off and prevent him from approaching her.

  When she needed to speak to dispatch, she would fake a small cough, fist to mouth, and quickly talk. “Nothing so far,”

  she reported, immediately identifying it as an amateurish comment, tagging herself a desk jockey for all in the communications truck to laugh at and make fun of her. She felt tempted to just stomp off and forget about this whole thing-let them find some other way to collar Walker. But a bigger part of her wanted this resolved, both for her own sake-to get Walker off her case-and for Boldt’s, because she thought he was putting too much faith in Walker’s connection to Hebringer and Randolf.

  Standing there in the light rain, the object of so much attention, she felt an added pressure to reassemble the various parts into something that made sense, something that explained Hebringer and Randolf, and felt maddeningly frustrated when she failed after repeated tries. What could Walker tell her that they didn’t already know? Did Prair’s lurking about-his possible stalking of her-have to do with his infatuation with her or his involvement in Mary-Ann Walker’s life prior to her going off that bridge? How could anyone consider a man with Lanny Neal’s past an innocent in all this? Round and round she went, the minutes ticking by. Walker was late, or out there studying her along with the others-the reports in her earpiece identifying first a homeless man on the street corner behind the church and then, finally, “possible solid heading for Decoy from southeast corner of lot.”

  Matthews saw the figure coming, still at a considerable distance-he was the approximate height of Walker, blue jeans, a dark sweatshirt with a hood covering his head. He walked with purpose, either to reach Matthews in a hurry, or to get out of the rain. She tensed and warmed with his approach. She found the radio traffic in her left ear distracting, as dispatch calmly assigned new positions to two of the undercover detectives in the field, placed ERT on alert to the suspect’s current location, and asked the sharpshooters to stand down their rifles until further notice. Matthews knew this meant nothing more than that they were ordered to keep their fingers off the trigger-no sharpshooter took his eye off the sight, orders or not.

  She resolved to do as little talking as possible-Walker had wanted the clandestine meeting … let him do the talking.

  The closer that figure drew, the less Matthews thought he looked right for Walker, and the greater her sense of dread. His hips moved a little too fluidly, the gait of this person’s walk didn’t feel like Walker at all. He’d sent a surrogate, someone to deliver a message.

  Her muscles had frozen; she wished like hell that rattle in her ear would stop-couldn’t they just shut up? The approaching person’s right arm lifted, and both she and that voice in her ear had the same thought at the same moment: a knife. The sharpshooters were readied, ERT was assigned a “red alert.” But nothing glittered in the pale cast of the overhead bulb; no metal sparkled. The hand grabbed hold of the hood and stripped it off the head. Short hair, but spiked. Smooth skin. A nose stud. It was a young woman heading for the Shelter, nothing more.

  “You on a break?” the girl asked Matthews, who held out faint hope she still might be a messenger.

  “Something like that. Waiting for someone.” Matthews vaguely recognized the face-Carmine? Caroline? Carley?

  “In this piss?” the girl asked.

  “Is it Carley?”

  “Yeah. You’re Matthews, right? The cop.”

  Word got around quickly. Her reputation as a cop could distance her from these girls forever. Or-it occurred to her a beat too late-was Carley testing that she had the right person for the message?

  “That’s right.”

  “Is it full?” she asked, pointing to the door. Sometimes the Shelter posted a volunteer out here at the entrance to notify late arrivals of the lack of occupancy. There was a sign that served the same purpose, but the girls rarely paid it much attention.

  For the first time in the last fifteen minutes, her earpiece mercifully went silent. The Com Officer had switched it off, both to allow her to think clearly and to ensure the suspect didn’t hear any ambient high-pitch chatter coming from it. Matthews hadn’t bothered to check inside, but she told the girl there were still beds available, her nerves on edge that Walker’s message was yet to come.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” Carley said, mistaking Matthews’s electing to stand barely protected from the rain. “You’re okay, Miss Matthews.”

  Carley reached for the door handle-a large wrought-iron ring. Matthews stepped out of the way, asking, “Is there something you want to tell me?” Carley looked at her strangely. “A message from someone, maybe?” Matthews pressed.

  Carley paused, and Matthews could feel it coming. The girl hesitated, the door open now, and said, “Margaret got herself that place south of the Safe. Her and this other girl. Is that what you mean
?”

  Margaret. Again, that same pang hit her in the chest. “Oh,”

  was all she managed to say. Carley stepped through the door, her footfalls on the stone receding into the basement enclave.

  The earpiece popped and Matthews heard dispatch stand down a number of the participants in the surveillance operation.

  These commands were nearly immediately followed by a male voice interrupting and identifying itself only as “Gray.” (With police radio codes a combination of numerals, operatives were given a variety of different “handles,” from animal names like Wolf and Dumbo, to nicknames like Sparky and Hooter, to colors of every kind.) “We got ourselves a cross-dresser, people. Heads-up. KCSO-eighty-nine is incoming from Yesler.”

  “Eighty-nine?” Matthews clarified, forgetting to try to cover her speaking for the sake of the mike.

  “Eight, nine, affirm,” Gray replied.

  CO dispatch: “Let’s run a check on that, South.” The instruction was back to Public Safety-the south precinct-and the SPD radio dispatcher monitoring the radio traffic. Normally the Commanding Officer would monitor from there as well, but she knew Boldt was more than likely in the command van.

  “Unnecessary,” Matthews said. She glanced toward the second level of the parking garage and the area where she knew LaMoia was sequestered, longing all of a sudden for some kind of contact with him, a sardonic turn of phrase, a comforting look, something to make this okay, because this did not feel okay. She allowed herself to believe she saw movement up there, at the back of one of the cars. Her imagination? She wondered.

  LaMoia’s voice came urgently from a handheld radio, through the dispatch communications and into her left ear. She allowed herself to believe he’d somehow sensed that longing she’d felt. “Listen, Decoy, he’s on bus detail over at SO. We know this for fact, right? So he could have made your ten-twenty in the course of the job. Do not jump to conclusions. You got it? Hang in there. Treat it as a right thing. Let the fish come to you. Acknowledge.”

  “Copy that,” she said, her fist to her mouth once again, slipping back into her role effortlessly. Why just the 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 and then go over to my place?” She wasn’t sure why she’d attached so fiercely to the idea of independence-she didn’t actually relish the idea of being alone in the houseboat. Yet something com-pelled her not to accept his offer. She felt it showed weakness to accept. “Leave just one guy to watch my dock.”

  “Walker’s a fisherman, Matthews. He’s probably just as likely to try a water approach. I don’t have the manpower. Even if I did, I couldn’t justify it to a lieutenant who doesn’t want you staying there. Do me a favor, don’t make me take another meeting with the Sarge. He’s in a stink. I don’t need it, not tonight. If we turn up Walker, I’ll promise to call and let you in on it, okay?” It hadn’t occurred to her that they might not include her in on this interrogation, but with her as the “victim,”