"We're fine," LaMoia said, climbing the stairs two at a time and reaching inside his jacket for his handgun as he got to the landing.
It didn't feel all that "fine" to her, and she nearly said so.
"You didn't have to come," he said.
"Then why'd you ask me along? What the hell, John: These aren't even my hours."
"Because I knew if I didn't you'd be all moody about being left out." This irritated her-not the comment, but the fact that he had her dead to rights. "I asked you because I knew you had nothing better to do tonight, and I thought you might enjoy seeing me take this guy down."
"Seeing you take him down," she restated. "So I'm what, your audience?"
"It's not like that and you know it."
"What is it like, John?" she whispered. They stood outside the apartment number listed on LaMoia's slip of paper. She was angry now. Angrier still that she allowed it to show.
He met eyes with her and whispered back, "I like your company,
Matthews. You're smart, you're clever, and like I said, you see things in shit-balls like Neal that the rest of us miss. A case like this ... maybe we find evidence, maybe we don't. And if we don't, the evidence may boil down to this guy's behavior. His reactions. Am I right? And who better than you to sit up on that witness stand and charm the shorts off a jury to where they buy a collection of circumstantial evidence that pins him as capable of anything, including lying."
LaMoia reached up and rapped his knuckles on the door. He indicated for her to step back, and he readied the weapon before him.
She understood then that the pistol was nothing more than posturing on LaMoia's part-he wanted to scare Neal with this entrance, to establish a degree of distrust that would set the tone for the interview to come. She admired him for this gut instinct of his; sometimes she wondered who, of the two of them, understood human behavior better.
"Who is it?" Neal asked through the door.
"Sergeant LaMoia and Lieutenant Matthews, Mr. Neal."
The man opened the apartment door with none of the reluctance or hesitation that Matthews might have expected of the guilty, and she took note of this. Such cocksure confidence could be its own telltale, its own undoing for a rare breed of suspect.
The door opened into a room dominated by a large worn couch covered in an unpleasant green cotton that looked more like a bedspread, a wooden chair facing it, and a coffee table with badly scratched veneer that clearly doubled as a footrest. A shabby, aluminum card table that belonged in an Airstream trailer held two empty beer bottles and a pair of disposable picnic containers of salt and pepper. The table was situated in front of a large double-hung window. Its jamb and sill pockmarked by a dozen coats of poorly applied paint, it looked out onto a black metal fire escape and beyond, an unexpectedly impressive view of Lake Union. Finding the one-man kitchen neat and clean surprised her. She would have expected Neal incapable of housekeeping.
A plain-sight search of the small bedroom revealed the television he'd mentioned previously as well as a second window access out onto the fire escape, also part of his earlier statement.
At least in his description of the place, his earlier statement held up.
The artwork, if it could be called that, amounted to travel posters of beach resorts showing scantily clad bronzed women enjoying bright sunshine while surrounded by palm trees and umbrellas.
He caught her staring. "I was an Internet travel agent until the meltdown happened. Put most of us out of business."
"And now?" LaMoia asked. "I don't think we established your employment, Mr. Neal."
"A little of this, a little of that. Between jobs right now."
"Between women, too," LaMoia muttered.
"Mary-Ann was helping with the rent?" Matthews said.
Neal shrugged. "A little. You'll hear it from the maggot anyway, if you haven't already."
"The brother," LaMoia clarified.
"He's a parasite, and don't look at me like I'm the pot calling the kettle black because it's my apartment in the first place, my car, my things. I'm between jobs is all, and Mary-Ann helped out. So what?"
LaMoia said, "Sit down, Mr. Neal," an order, not a request.
Neal displayed his disgust as he slouched into the grasp of the green monster, outwardly reluctant in this act of obedience. Matthews purposefully stood over by the table, out of Neal's peripheral vision but with a clear view of him, temporarily pushing away the continuing concern for Margaret's whereabouts and the confusion over both Ferrell Walker and Nathan Prair that had robbed her of sleep. She focused on the suspect, alert for every twitch, every nuance as he reacted to LaMoia's line of questioning.
With his detective's notebook lying on his pressed blue jeans, LaMoia said, "You mentioned your car. What kind of a car is it, please?"
"Ninety-two Corolla."
"Color?"
"Kind of gold."
"Champagne?"
"Right, champagne."
"You said the car was yours?"
"Yeah."
"Only yours?"
"Yeah."
"You have the only set of keys, or did Mary-Ann have a set?"
"Listen, we weren't married."
LaMoia said, "So she did not have a key."
"People who spend a lot of time in boats, they don't make the best drivers. Mary-Ann ... she was a danger in that car."
He repeated, "She did not have her own key."
"You're real quick, Sergeant." Neal craned his neck then to locate Matthews. "I figured you were probably snooping around . while the sergeant here held me riveted with his line of questioning."
"You figured wrong," she said. "We're trying to show some respect by coming to your home, rather than dragging you downtown.
We're trying to get to the truth of what happened to Mary Ann
LaMoia said, "I didn't see a champagne Corolla out on the street on our way in."
Neal shook his head and grinned at the same time. "So you knew about my car before you asked me. Is that supposed to scare me or something, Sergeant?"
LaMoia responded, "I know a lot of things before I ask you, Lanny. That's why your answers count so much."
"I know what you guys are thinking." He wormed his hands together and wouldn't look at LaMoia, interpreting the spill patterns in his worn brown rug instead. "But that's bullshit, and we both know it."
"What are we thinking?" LaMoia asked.
"Don't hand me that. You know, and I know. So that's that."
"Yeah," LaMoia agreed, "that's pretty much that."
"It doesn't make me good for this."
"A person's history is an inescapable thing, Lanny. Think about it. We got it down in black and white that you like to backhand your women."
"That stuffs not admissible."
"So you're a lawyer now. What happened to travel agent?"
LaMoia's comment won another spark of eye contact between the two, and Matthews saw a conflicted personality working hard to contain himself. Lanny Neal wanted to release some of the pent-up anger he was feeling but was smart enough to know that would work against him.
LaMoia said, "Let's get back to the location of that Corolla."
"Parked in a space out back."
"Has it been to the shop recently?"
"No."
"Been to the car wash?"
"Oh, yeah, I spend a lot of time at the car wash with the soccer moms in the minivans. You got me nailed, I can see that. Reading me loud and clear."
"I need a straight answer on this one, Langford. You have or have not cleaned the car in the past six days?"
The directness of LaMoia's question sobered Neal. He sat up straight-the kid in the classroom caught doodling-suddenly understanding the severity of LaMoia's questions.
"What's with that?"
"An answer is all."
"Have not. What? You think in killing her I drove her to the Ballard Bridge and tossed her? You want to search the car? Is that it?"