Free The Art of Deception by Ridley Pearson Page A

later. Probably for a smoke. Right? I saw her out there, yeah. I just said I did.” Confusion fanned the edges of his eyes.
    “Approximately what time was this?”
    “Later.”
    “Can you be more precise?”
    Neal glanced first to Matthews, then to LaMoia, as if hoping one of them might help him out. He pinched his temples between the fingers of his right hand and apparently appealed for divine intervention. She was beginning to put more faith in Walker’s suspicions. Lanny Neal was a self-centered egotist who had a record of abusing his girlfriends. He didn’t lie very well, despite what must have been a great deal of practice.
    “I remember her out there … seeing her out there. I didn’tlike it when she went out there dressed like that. She never seemed to give a shit what she was wearing. Claimed no one could see her, so high up and all. And that’s another thing—she don’t even like heights, but for a smoke, shit, she’d climb the Space Needle. Anyway, she’d go out there in like a T-shirt and underwear, showing skin and all.
    “She was talking,” he continued. “At first I wondered who the fuck was out there with her. Then I saw the cordless phone was missing. She was out there on the fire escape on the goddamn phone with someone. Maybe it was the phone ringing that woke me up in the first place. And I
do
remember what time it was.” This seemed to dawn upon him, and Matthews thought he was making it up as he went. “All twos flashing at me. Two twenty-two. The clock by the phone on her side of the bed. I remember that. Two, two, two. Flashing away. And I looked out the window, and there she was on the goddamn phone.”
    “Two twenty-two A.M.”
    “You ought to be talking to that brother of hers. Always begging her for money, bugging her. Punk-ass kid, blaming her for everything bad happening to him. Probably him on the phone. Probably him who did this to her.”
    “What exactly do you think happened to Mary-Ann?” LaMoia asked.
    “How should I know? All disgusting like that, the way she was. Looked like she drowned or something. Is that right?”
    “What exactly was Mary-Ann wearing at the time? Out on your fire escape.”
    “I just told you! Next to nothing.”
    “A description of that clothing could prove useful to the investigation.”
    “Well, she sure as shit wasn’t going to go out there bare-ass again, you understand. Not after the last time. I’d caught her again—”
    He stopped himself.
    LaMoia met eyes with Matthews, communicating that they had their first real look at Langford Neal’s inner workings. Interrogators lived for such moments.
    LaMoia supplied, “You’d smack her around, let her know who was boss.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “Did you smack her around that night, Lanny? Hit her upside the head, or knock her off the fire escape, or what? She was bleeding, wasn’t she? She was bleeding and you didn’t know what to do.”
    “That’s bullshit. I seen her out there and I went back to sleep. End of story. She would’a had on butt floss. White butt floss. She always wore the same thing.”
    Matthews said, “Thong panties. And what about on top? A T-shirt? A blouse? A robe?”
    “One of those camel-things.”
    “A camisole.”
    “Two humps right where they belong. Nice and tight.”
    Matthews cringed at his reckless confidence. “A camisole and thong underwear. No sweatshirt, no robe?”
    “She’s hot-blooded, I’m telling you. Went out there all the time in next to nothing. For a smoke. A sweatshirt—how the hell should I know? Does she own one? Yes. But that night it was a freak show anyway. Warm for a change. You can check that, right?”
    LaMoia said, “We’ll check all of your statement, Lanny. Every last word.”
    He looked briefly bewildered, but then regained his confidence and restated that the last time he’d seen her she’d been out on the fire escape. “Woke the next morning and she wasn’t there. Not that that was all that unusual.