"Matthews," she answered.
"I thought we had a deal." Walker.
"We do," Matthews said, gripped briefly in a moment of panic, the result of surprise. She tried not to be too obvious about her looking around for him, but felt her senses winning out as she rotated a little too quickly, inspecting every corner, every shop window, every vehicle. Where the hell are you? The temperature felt like it had dropped about thirty degrees. Then, a calm overcame her as she reminded herself that she need not allow him any authority over her. The eye of the beholder, she thought. She warmed. She had a job to do-Boldt wanted her to bring him in by accepting his earlier offer. This, while allowing him to believe he still maintained the upper hand.
Walker said, "Sure doesn't seem like it to me. Let's see ... I offer to help you, and you agree ... then all of a sudden you take off from your place, half dressed, like some ghost is chasing you .. . then you hook up with Dirty Harry. What is wrong with you?"
"I think we should get together and talk about it," she said calmly, her experience and training finally able to separate out her personal stake in this. Their discovery of the peepholes at the Shelter had profoundly affected her, forcing her concern away from herself and onto the girls. Her determination now was to bring Walker in for questioning, as Boldt wanted. "I'm disappointed in you, Daphne." "I need your help, Ferrell. I want your help." "Believe me, you don't want to disappoint me. Life's little lessons come so hard sometimes." Like something his mother might have said to him.
"No." It was all she managed to say. "You lied to me ... about helping each other." "No. We can work this out, Ferrell. It's not what you think. Let's get together and discuss it." She racked her mind for some carrot to hold out as an offering to him. "There's a possible witness to Mary-Ann's murder." She let that sit there a moment. "A truck driver passing over the bridge at the time. We may be able to put Neal in a lineup. Let's talk about that-you and I." She continued to search every crack and cranny for sign of him. She didn't believe he had a cell phone-to her knowledge he'd never used one in calling her-so where was the land line he was using? She heard the unmistakable sound of spitting steam, and she immediately spun in a circle. Through a window of a coffee shop on the next corner of the same block, she spotted a figure on a pay phone.
"Hello," he said. He'd seen her turn around. She lost her breath for a moment. "Hello," she answered. One-handed, she worked her purse open, and her fingers frantically searched its contents for her wallet, wanting the thirty-five cents necessary to operate the pay phone. If she could call through to LaMoia, if she could allow him to overhear this conversation, he might make the connection and send a surveillance unit. She hoped in the next few minutes to trick Walker into sitting down with her to discuss Hebringer and Randolf. If successful, she wanted backup.
She said, "My colleagues don't think you could possibly have information about the two missing women."
"They're wrong," he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
She allowed that change in tone to get to her, and again reminded herself not to yield to him. She said, "You need to know that we're still determined to build a case against Neal that will stick."
"Just because he lied about the time doesn't mean he didn't do it."
"I understand that," she said, "but our legal case was fashioned around that lie, and we lost ground in the hearing because of that. We haven't given up, believe me." In fact, she didn't think anyone had done anything on the Mary-Ann Walker case since the probable cause hearing-although the lab work continued.
"The forensics will be convincing. It takes awhile."
"You're bullshitting me," he said. "You're waiting for me to give you what I've got before you actually do anything."
"That's not how it works." She placed a quarter onto the small stainless-steel shelf. She dug for a dime.
"If you start lying to me, Daphne, then what's left?"
"We have a witness," she repeated. "A truck driver who saw him on the bridge."
She heard only his excited breathing, and realized the seductive role that hope played in his small existence.
Walker said, "You would have used him already."
"No ... It was night, don't forget. That bridge is dark." Her mind reeled with how to make this sound convincing. Her fingers pinched a dime. She adjusted her position so he couldn't see her lift the receiver and let it hang. She placed her thumb over the cell phone's tiny microphone hole and slipped the two coins into the guts of the pay phone. They rolled noisily inside. She punched out LaMoia's direct line, brought the receiver to her ear, and heard him answer. "Don't talk! Listen!" she said into the pay phone. She awkwardly joined the two phones, inverting the pay phone's receiver, wondering if LaMoia could hear any of this.
She said, "Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, Ferrell. We always thought of this guy as a last resort, but we're ready to play that hand now-we could arrange a lineup-and we just might do that if you agree to share what you know about these missing women." God how she hoped LaMoia was getting this.
"You're going to suggest we meet, no doubt."
"Yes, I was."
"Are you lying to me again, Daphne? Would you risk something as stupid as that? Playing your little games. Teasing me, like walking around that houseboat in that tight T-shirt and underwear, but never getting naked? What's with that, anyway?"
Her throat went dry. He could be making that up, she said, unable to recall walking around her place dressed like that. How could she turn this around back on to him? Why wouldn't her mind get off that image of him looking in on her half-naked?
"Is that how it was with Mary-Ann, Ferrell? You've got us confused, don't you? Was it out on the boat? Did you watch her? You've got us confused, don't you? Did you watch your own sisterl By herself? With Lanny Neal? What?"
"Shut... up."
His tone told her she had scored a hit, and this actually surprised her, for she'd brought it up only as a distraction, something to fill his head with a different image. But that tone of his ... Children saw, or overheard, their parents making love and were never quite the same for the experience. With no parents left, had Ferrell Walker spied on his own sister, peeped his own sister? Even with someone else killing her, the guilt over having done that would torment him.
"Where was it, Ferrell?"
"You-"
"At Lanny's apartment? You saw her, didn't you? Saw them, however that happened. Accident or not. Saw what he was doing to her."
He spoke, barely above a whisper, but just enough to be heard. "How could you know that?"
Her arms prickled in gooseflesh. She had him going now her dentist's pick probing the cavity and striking the nerve. She thought of LaMoia and how he unexpectedly put the accelerator down in the turns in order to avoid skidding. She, too, put down the accelerator. "He was getting things you never got from her and she liked him in a way that she didn't like you, and that hurt, didn't it?"