Middle of Nowhere

by Ridley Pearson

  The bedroom where Detective Maria Sanchez had been discovered naked and tied to the bed still smelled of sweat and fear. Sanchez’s shoes, clothes and undergarments lay strewn across the pale carpet: gray blouse and dark pants heaped together to the left of the bed, underwear up on the foot of the bed, which remained made but rumpled. The woman’s bra lay up by the pillow. An SID tech was working the adjoining bathroom for evidence and prints. Boldt studied the layout carefully, snapping on a pair of latex gloves almost unconsciously. He circled the bed carefully, like a photographer planning a shoot.

  “No evidence of fluids,” he observed, “other than the blood on the pillow. Not much of it.”

  “The ligatures?” Gaynes inquired, pointing to the head of the bed.

  Boldt noticed the two bootlaces tied to each side of the headboard. He glanced back down to the floor and the ankle-high, black-leather-soled shoes missing their laces. His stomach turned. The scene was confused. It didn’t feel right to him.

  “Ling cut the shoelaces himself, before the ambulance arrived,” Gaynes explained. Both laces had been cut with a sharp knife, though remained knotted where they had been tied to the bed.

  “Photos?”

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  The SID tech answered from the reverberating bathroom, “We shot a good series on her.”

  “Close-ups of the ligatures?” Boldt inquired loudly.

  “Can’t say for sure. You want it on the list?”

  “Please,” Boldt answered, now at the head of the bed, studying one of the cut shoelaces himself. He’d had a case earlier in the week involving rape and a young girl bound by shoelaces. The similarities were obvious. He regretted that. A serial rapist was the last thing anyone needed—and most likely the first thing the press would suspect.

  “Done,” the tech answered from the bathroom. Boldt glanced around. “Tied the wrists, but not the ankles?” His earlier rape had been tied by all limbs. The similarities suddenly lessened. A copy cat? Boldt wondered. The Leanne Carmichael rape had made the news.

  Gaynes replied as if it were a test. They worked this way together—pupil and student. “I caught that too, and I could almost buy it if the bed were more of a mess. But a woman left with her legs untied? The bed covers should be a mess.”

  “Boyfriend? Lover? We want this wrapped and cleared,” Boldt reminded her. The department was grossly understaffed because of the Flu, and they each had too many cases to handle. A so-called black hole—

  an unsolved case—would incite the media and make trouble for everyone concerned—Maria Sanchez most of all. She deserved closure.

  “You’re looking a little sick, Lieutenant.”

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  11

  “Feeling that way.”

  Gaynes, standing on the opposite side of the bed from Boldt said, “On Special Assaults I worked dozens of rapes, L.T.” Unlike Detective John LaMoia who out of habit addressed Boldt by his former rank of sergeant, Gaynes at least paid Boldt the respect of his current promotion, though called him not by name, but by his rank’s initials. “Maybe in one out of ten, the clothes are still in one piece. Usually torn to shit. No fluids? Listen, if the stains aren’t in the middle of the bed where you expect them, then you find them on the pillow or the bedspread or the vic’s underwear. But a clean scene? You ask me, this is date rape. Look at those clothes! Not a button missing! Spread out in a line, for Christ’s sake.”

  Boldt studied a large dust ring on the dresser. A television had been removed. A small, gray electronics device bearing a set of wireless headphones lay in a heap to the side of the same dresser. He picked the headphones up in his gloved hands.

  Gaynes said, “You use ’em so the spouse can sleep while you watch the tube.”

  “She was single,” Boldt reminded.

  “A visitor maybe,” Gaynes said. “Date rape,” she repeated with more certainty. “Guy ties her up and gets too aggressive. Accidentally snaps her spine and takes off.”

  “The television?” he asked his former prote´ge´.

  “Stole it to cover up it was him. Make it look like 12

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  someone broke in. The papers have been filled with stories about all the break-ins since the Flu hit.”

  Studying the headphones, Boldt said, “Maybe she just appreciated music or maybe she subscribed to the cable music channels.” He pointed to the stack of recent best sellers on Sanchez’s bedside end table. Boldt walked around the bed with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He and Gaynes traded places. Police ballet. Since the advent of the Flu, reports of robberies and burglaries were up exponentially. “We’ll want to check our sheets,” he suggested. “See if this fits any patterns.”

  “Got it,” she replied. She lifted the top book off the end table, an Amy Tan novel. “Bookmarked with a receipt dated two days ago. And she’s . . . a hundred and seventy pages into it—”

  “And we’re in the midst of a Flu,” Boldt pointed out. “Not like she has a lot of fun time.”

  “Maybe six, seven hours a night at home, max.”

  “So she didn’t watch much television,” Boldt concluded.

  “Which means you’re probably right about the cable music. A hundred and seventy pages in two nights? You think she’s been entertaining a lover?” she asked rhetorically. “Sounds more like insomnia.”

  “Ask around the house about current boyfriends.”

  “I’m telling you, a rapist wouldn’t undress her like this, L.T. He tears her clothes off. It’s rage, not courtship. And if he goes to the trouble to tie her up, he rapes her hard or fires juice all over the place. We’re M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  not seeing real good evidence here.” She hollered to the SID tech, “What’s that bathroom like?”

  “It’s light,” the tech fired back. “My guess? The guy wasn’t in here at all.”

  Boldt migrated over to check the windows—all locked—so he didn’t have to look at the bed while Gaynes talked so calmly about raping and beating and masturbating. Sex Crimes—Special Assaults—conditioned a detective in ways even a homicide investigator had a difficult time understanding. He looked out the window to where light from the house played on the small patch of backyard and the separate garage.

  “Her underwear’s clean,” Gaynes reported. “So’s the bra. This looks like someone she knew. And using shoe laces to tie her? A necktie maybe. A belt. Something handy and fast. What’s the guy do: ask her to lie still while he unlaces her Hush Puppies and ties her wrists?”

  “Maybe her neck was already broken,” Boldt suggested. “Maybe she wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “Then why tie her up at all?” Gaynes asked, confusing the issue. An uneasy silence settled between them. Not a black hole, he pleaded.

  Gaynes continued cautiously, “And that’s another thing. . . . The trauma supposedly occurred after she was tied to the bed? Is that the general consensus? Is that what we’re thinking here? That’s what’s logical, right? He ties her up to keep her still. Goes for oral sex or something. Yanks her head a little too hard and snaps 14

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  her neck in the process? Something like that? But he doesn’t tie her ankles?” she said skeptically. Boldt’s only mental image was of the other case—

  little Leanne Carmichael, thirteen years old, the crotch of her pants cut away, her legs tied open. A dark basement. “I worked a rape-kidnapping earlier in the week. He tied up the girl with shoelaces.”

  “Carmichael,” she said. The case remained open; continued to make a lot of noise.

  “We’ll want the SID lab to make comparisons. The same knots? Anything connecting the two crimes?”

  “The lab, sure,” she agreed, “but not the media. So make the request that they do it quietly.”

  He said, “True enough.”

  Someone must have finally been moving the SID van, for headlights spr
ead across the wet backyard. Boldt didn’t like what he saw there.

  “I’m going outside to look around,” Boldt said.

  “It’s nasty out there,” the SID tech cautioned from the bathroom.

  “Check her boots and meet me outside,” he told Gaynes. She cupped her hands to the window, peering into the backyard. She knew Boldt well.

  “Now,” he reminded, his voice urgent.

  “Got it,” she said.

  M

  “Nasty.” Gaynes tugged the GORE-TEX hood over her head. Boldt made a similar move with the collar of his green oilskin. He switched on a flashlight borrowed M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  from a patrolman—one of the ones with six D-cell batteries inside—enough weight to club a skull to pulp, the flashlight’s second function. Hunched over, he and Gaynes approached a disturbed area of mud in the backyard. They walked single file, electing to avoid the well-worn route leading from the separate garage to the house’s back door.

  “This is where he intercepted her?” Gaynes suggested, dropping to one knee.

  “Looks like a possibility,” Boldt said. “But there’s no sign of dragging.”

  “Her shoes show mud. The tech bagged them. Black leather jacket, presumably hers, had a partial shoe print on the chest. A set of keys and a garage clicker in the pockets.” She added, “And yes, I’ll have the shoe print typed, if possible,” anticipating the request. Gaynes poked a raised rib of mud and grass with her gloved finger. “It’s recent enough.”

  Boldt kneeled beside her, the flashlight illuminating the disturbance. The grass looked like a rug scrunched up on a hardwood floor. Boldt tore some grass loose and sealed it into an evidence bag for lab comparison. He lived for such work—his lifeblood. He heard more chaos around in front of the house. More press. More pressure.

  Gaynes said, “I can see Sanchez stumbling upon him unexpectedly, surprising him, a struggle and she goes down.”

  From behind them, Daphne spoke. “At first it’s a matter of survival for him: get her to shut up and get 16

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  the hell out of here. But then there’s a change. Something primitive takes over. Primal. It’s about dominance now, about her struggling and him overpowering her. He finds he gets off on it. He wants more than to simply subdue her. He has to possess her.”

  “You’re buying the burglary?” Boldt asked, peering up at her into the rain, the flashlight following. Even in the rain, Daphne Matthews looked good.

  “Help me out,” Daphne said.

  “Shoelaces on both wrists. Same as Carmichael, my thirteen-year-old rape victim.”

  “But not the ankles,” Gaynes said.

  “Not the ankles,” Boldt agreed, meaning it for Daphne. This was a jigsaw, with three players picking at pieces.

  “The burglary is intended to mislead us?” Daphne asked.

  “We’ve got a crime scene with two MOs,” Boldt said.

  “A burglar. A rapist. Neither fits perfectly. Why?”

  Gaynes announced, “We’ve either got ourselves a twisted burglar, or a greedy rapist.” She tugged on her hood. A trickle of water slid down her cheek and dripped off her chin. Knowing full well it would be his next request, she asked, “You want SID to work this site?”

  “It’s a start,” Boldt agreed.

  Daphne said, “Leanne Carmichael was raped. There’s no medical evidence yet that Sanchez was.”

  “And if she wasn’t, then you’ve got yourself a couple of contradictions,” Boldt suggested.

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  “I don’t want contradictions. I want a suspect. I want to clear this before it gets out of control.” Daphne sounded unusually nervous. She wasn’t used to leading a high-profile case. The Flu had caught up to her as well.

  Boldt shined the light over toward the garage. “She parked in the garage and headed for the back door. She either ran into this guy—”

  “Or he was out here waiting,” Daphne interrupted.

  “I want to assign a guard outside her hospital room,” he said.

  “L.T. . . . You’re right, but who we gonna get to do it?” a frustrated Gaynes asked. The Blue Flu had taken four out of every five officers off the force.

  “Notify hospital security. Let’s move her to a private room away from a stair entrance. We’ll require checkin at the nurse’s desk. Some guy realizes he hit a woman cop, and maybe he decides he doesn’t want any witnesses. Or maybe it’s a boyfriend, and the same thing goes. I want her under protection.”

  “Got it.”

  Boldt felt the pressure of the investigation then—a sixth sense for a black hole and a case that wouldn’t clear. He knew from the look in her eye that Daphne sensed this as well. “Contradictions,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Not this case, okay?” she pleaded.

  “We’ll each have six more cases on our desks by the time we get back,” Boldt reminded.

  Gaynes chimed in, “And then our phones’ll start 18

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  ringing and Dispatch will dish out another couple each.”

  “We need the sickout over with,” Boldt said.

  “Dream on, L.T. They’re firmly entrenched.”

  Daphne saw her investigation headed for a black hole. “With Sanchez gone,” she said, “we’re down to sixteen investigators left—detective or higher.”

  Boldt felt sick inside. A thirteen-year-old, raped. A policewoman paralyzed. A burglar on the loose. The public was certain to panic. The Emergency Communication Center’s 911 lines would be crippled with hundreds of bogus reports and sightings. Seventeen detectives had become sixteen.

  “The press is going to screw us on this one,” Gaynes whispered. “This is fuel to their fire.”

  “Yes,” agreed Boldt, “that’s just what we don’t want.”

  He had come here hoping for evidence. Perhaps the contradictions were the place to start. They didn’t offer him much.

  Daphne remained angry about the Flu. “It’s a fellow officer! They’ve got to come back on the job now! It’s time to circle the wagons.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Boldt and Gaynes said nearly in unison.

  C H A P T E R

  2

  “Whatexactly didSanchez’sdoctorsay?”Daphne Matthews moved fluidly, like a dancer. She set the pace, climbing the hospital fire stairs faster than Boldt might have liked. Sanchez’s room was on the fourth floor.

  Boldt was relieved to be able to tell her that the rape kit had come back negative. He had made the call to the hospital while Daphne was reporting back to headquarters, where a reduced, overworked staff attempted to cope with a growing number of reported crimes.

  “Is there any eye movement? Limb movement? What exactly did the doc say?” she asked. He didn’t answer right away, preoccupied with thoughts of the threatening phone calls he’d received in the last few days and what to do about the risk they posed to his family. Liz, his wife, was not easily moved out of her home.

  Daphne asked, “What’s this about your knowing Sanchez personally?”

  “I know her,” Boldt confirmed. “She lost her sister and her sister’s two kids to a traffic fatality—”

  “That Sanchez?” Daphne exclaimed, interrupting.

  “The same.”

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  “I thought she transferred out when she graduated.”

  “She did, but only for a few months, after which we met at a couple crime scenes. She met Liz and the kids at one of Phil’s baseball games.” Phil Shoswitz had been Boldt’s immediate superior for nearly a decade. Currently he was captain of Crimes Against Property. “Offered to sit the kids. I suggested off-duty uniform work paid considerably better, only to find my foot in my mouth. She wanted to be around the kids. It had nothing to do with money.”

  “She baby-sat Sarah and Miles?” Daphne asked incredulously.


  “I know,” Boldt said, understanding her concern over such financial fraternization. “But it wasn’t for any favors. It wasn’t for promotion consideration. It was simply that Miles and Sarah were the same ages as her niece and nephew had been, and she wanted the contact. It didn’t last all that long, but I’ve got to tell you: The kids loved her. Liz will be crushed when she hears.”

  Slightly winded from the climb, he added, “This should never happen to any officer. But in particular this should have never, ever have happened to Maria. She’s a great person.”

  “You’re a great person,” Daphne said. She added reluctantly, “You and Liz—for taking her in like that.”

  Boldt stopped his ascent, as did she. It wasn’t all sweet and innocent between them. They shared a past rarely discussed.

  They hugged the steel rail as a flurry of white and green hospital uniforms blurred past. Their eyes met, M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  and briefly an energy passed between them that they both felt. “Liz and I,” he repeated, echoing her. But from his lips it sounded more like a statement.

  “Right.” Color rose in Daphne’s long, elegant neck. Boldt took the lead. Daphne followed up the stairs and into the busy hall.

  M

  “Eye movement,” he whispered before opening the door to Sanchez’s hospital room. This was the information she had originally sought from him, and he chose his timing intentionally, for the woman in question now lay on the other side of this door. “She apparently has some eye movement.”

  Daphne nodded solemnly. Boldt swung open the door. “It’s your case,” he reminded. “Your lead.”

  As she passed him, she whispered, “I know that.”

  A fogged plastic tube, inserted through a surgical hole at the base of her throat, supplied Maria Sanchez’s oxygen. Her torso was held fast by a white plastic brace that was itself connected to the bed frame, preventing movement of any kind. Too many tubes to count. A modern Medusa. Blinking lights and flashing green numbers in black boxes on rolling stands of stainless steel. A bag of intravenous fluids. Drip, drip, drip. A blue plastic clip over her index finger ticking out her pulse and measuring her blood oxygen. The glare of tube lighting. The hum of machinery and the disturbingly symmetrical rhythm of her computer-controlled breaths.