She took a deep breath to clear her thoughts. She'd worked with dozens upon dozens of disturbed men, some across an interrogation table, some in a corrections facility: sex offenders, drug addicts-homicidal, suicidal-social misfits. Ferrell Walker was still grieving, no doubt, and had clearly transferred some of his feelings for his unavailable sister onto her. Such transference was more typically directed at people considered close to the individual, not a virtual stranger, but there were no rules to such things, no commandments to follow.
Walker's final message ran goose bumps up her arms then down her spine and into a nauseated stomach. "I hope I'm not scaring you with these messages. I know women-especially attractive women-must be scared in this city right now. I'm not going to hurt you or something. I want to help you get Lanny Neal is all. The sooner, the better, as far as I'm concerned." The unspoken message there was that in fact he might be planning to hurt her if Neal was not brought in.
She sat down heavily into her chair, her hands steepled before her lips. One more thing to deal with. She struggled to evaluate him as she might a patient. With the death of his sister he had preexisting emotional conditions that allowed the possibility of a fantasy stage where Matthews was seen as his solution to all ills and injustices. She'd made a mess of it by not laying down strict guidelines at his first offer to help her. Worse yet, such a fine line existed between love and hate that she now faced a very difficult job of distancing herself without repercussions.
The sixth message was from Boldt-just the sound of his voice came as a great relief. Something about Mama Lu, an autopsy, and a possible connection to Hebringer and Randolf, though she didn't focus on it clearly, Walker's bloody apron still foremost in her mind. Without the mounting evidence against Neal, without Walker's initial call-in and his attempt to assist in Neal's prosecution by turning over that evidence, she might have believed Walker capable of having killed his only sister himself. She couldn't rule it out entirely, even so.
"End of messages," the voice mail announced. A pleasant, automated voice that had no idea of the worry those messages instilled in her. She stabbed the speakerphone button and disconnected,
Walker's messages and his unflinching tone echoing in her head. First things first: She would start a file, detailing the passing of the sweatshirt, making notes about the silhouette in the parking garage, transcribing the various phone messages. If he continued to harass her, the existence of that file would help her make a case. She would not allow him to rattle her. She'd seen much worse than Ferrell Walker, although in her patients the conflict, the violence, the obsession or fixation was always directed at others, not her. Always someone else's problem.
She was the facilitator, not the target. The cop. Not the victim.
She packed up and headed home, but found herself checking her rearview mirror a little more often, glancing around while stopped at red lights, and triple-checking the car's automatic door lock. Walker had put the bug in her, and it wasn't going away.
Her houseboat on Lake Union had been bought well before the city's techno renaissance, when the floating one-and-a-half story homes-actual houses on pilings and accessed by a wooden dock down the middle-had been a latent-hippie community, nonconformists who wanted a home in the city but not the cost of the land beneath. The houses had been dirt cheap back then, an awkward phrase given their setting. Now those same homes went for high six figures, and Matthews had long since realized she was living in her 401(k); at the very least, she had quadrupled her investment.
Her houseboat, last on the left of dock 7c, was constructed of gray ship lap Thirty-gallon terra-cotta flower tubs sat to either side of the hemp rope railing that surrounded her deck. No green thumb, she'd tried annuals in the tubs for a while but kept killing them off. They currently housed a variety of Korean boxwood that required no attention.
She walked briskly down the dock, her Cole Haan flats clapping like gunshots, her heart rate elevated as she wondered if she'd been followed. Her houseboat's front door was African mahogany and bore a carving of a dove she could do without. She entered, locked the door, and threw its deadbolt. Removing and hanging up the rain jacket reminded her of the color of her blouse and reintroduced a wave of brief panic at the thought that Walker not only had managed to see her with her jacket off but was brazen enough to mention it.
The downstairs was finished cedar, the furnishings spare-a foldout couch, a wood-burning stove, a hand-carved cherry rocker. An eight-by-eight post in the center of the small living room supported the roof. The galley kitchen was separated from the living area by a small island countertop that hosted three stools, a walk-around phone, a cutting board, and a suspended wooden rack that was home to wineglasses. The killer home stereo had taken her three years to acquire. She fired up Sarah McLachlan's Surfacing and cranked the volume. If anything eventually sank this place it would be the high count of books and professional journals that overflowed the bookshelves and rose to towering stacks on the floor. A narrow, padded window seat offered her favorite reading nest. Snuggled in there, a fire going, a throw pulled across her legs, she had consumed many hours of pure bliss-at least those hours that weren't tied down. They'd been increasingly few in the last several months. Something drove her to not just fill her schedule but pack it full of work, volunteering at the Shelter, running, and the gym-it didn't matter as long as she filled 6 A.M. to exhaustion without time to think. For thinking was the real enemy: thinking about herself, the lack of romance in her life, the isolation, the poverty of public service, the missed opportunities.
After a dinner of broiled chicken breast and a green salad with rice vinegar, she changed into flannel PJs, built a fire, and tucked herself into the window seat, a glass of Archery Summit Pinot in hand. She felt a bit guilty about not stopping by the Shelter to inquire about Margaret, but Walker's phone messages had unsettled her, and the comfort of home proved just what the doctor ordered, she being the doctor. Chapter by chapter, she lost herself to Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer-a book she found unexpectedly titillating-a rare and much-needed escape from psychology reviews. She caught herself dozing off. Luxury came cheaply these days.
At 11:32-she noticed the firm, bright green display of the kitchen's digital clock-she heard what her mind registered as an unfamiliar sound. The houseboat had a life of its own, never perfectly at rest, battered by water and weather, always shifting, settling, creaking, and groaning. These pops and grunts, the wooden cries and long, eerie sighs helped to form a personality uniquely its own. Matthews knew that personality well. These same sounds lulled her to sleep. They woke her up. On some occasions they frightened her, as they did on this night.
She suddenly felt more awake. Her brain sorted through the database of familiarity with what she now heard, filtering out the noises that accompanied any night on Lake Union: the seaplanes landing and taking off, motor craft, highway traffic, distant ferry horns, sirens, and the noises of her neighbors going about everyday life. She lay there, ears ringing slightly, as she "stretched" to hear beyond the walls. She couldn't be sure what she heard, or whether or not it was just a bad case of nerves. Those phone messages had rattled her. So had her experience at the parking garage. More than she had thought. She promised herself that she wouldn't let this get the better of her, yet she glanced across the room to her purse, which hung by its strap from one of the three ladder-back stools-her handgun, cell phone, the small can of pepper spray, and a mini Maglite. Barbara
Kingsolver drew her eyes back to the novel as she told herself that noise carried well and did funny things across water. No reason to get all worked up.