Middle of Nowhere

by Ridley Pearson

  “Our point is,” Daphne continued, “that going the attorney route is your legal right, and even if we could help you out here, we can’t do anything to stop you from exercising that right. And, in fact, you’ve already invoked that right, which is perfectly acceptable to us, though in my opinion not in your best interest.”

  In a calm voice, he answered Daphne. “But you are in my best interest? A couple of cops? I don’t think so.”

  “Ten to twenty,” Boldt informed the man. Daphne echoed, “You need to be thinking about turning fifty here at Etheredge.”

  Boldt reached across the table and forced the man’s hands up in plain view.

  Flek said, “I was scratching, is all,” still not breaking his eye contact with Daphne.

  Daphne allowed the facility’s forced air system to account for the only sound in the room. It swallowed the three of them. She asked, “Maybe you want to put the idea of an attorney aside for a moment and at least listen to our offer.”

  “What can it hurt to listen?” Boldt asked.

  “So talk,” Flek said.

  Boldt felt a minor victory. He knew from the man’s file that Flek had graduated from junior college, and decided to approach him in a businesslike manner. Boldt informed him, “We’d like to start with the phone solicitations you made and then continue on to the sub-230

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  sequent pay phone calls made to the cell phone based in Washington.”

  Daphne added, “The more details you provide . . . the more they prove out for us . . . the stronger voice we’ll have in your sentence recommendation, which for you translates to fewer years the judge tacks on to your time here.”

  “No matter what, you hold out on us and you’re looking at more time,” Boldt explained, “including the possibility of accessory charges to a felony assault. So the smart money says cooperate before the attorney arrives and screws it all up.”

  “Wasting your time,” Flek told him, his words spitting across the table. He motioned toward Daphne, “I enjoy the scenery. But all the small talk I could do without. I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  What she knew about his background didn’t jibe with the man in that chair, making her psychologist side immediately suspicious. He was hiding behind his inmate persona. Why?

  “We have the phone logs,” Boldt countered. “The phone solicitations are all tracked on computer. The pay phone calls to the cellular number—we’ve got those too. Are you dumber than you look, or what?”

  “I’m represented by a public defender,” he said. “All inquiries should go through her.”

  “What happens in places like this,” Daphne said, meeting eyes with him, “is you get tunnel vision. You get so you can only think like everyone else thinks. And the everyone else I’m talking about are not exactly the M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  cream of the crop, you know? They’re losers. You start to think like a loser. Don’t be a loser, Ansel,” she said, switching names. “We’re talking about adding twenty years to your time in here. You’ll be forty-nine years old before you’re eligible for parole.”

  The man’s nostrils flared and his eyes shone wetly. He repeated, “All inquires should go through my public defender.”

  “You don’t win anything,” she pleaded, “by playing tough.”

  Flek shook his head.

  Boldt asked the man, “Why would you willingly add twenty years to your time here? You answer a half dozen questions and maybe we just walk out of here as if none of this ever happened? You can’t be that stupid.”

  “We wait for my attorney.”

  Boldt stood from his chair. Daphne followed his lead. “Wrong answer,” Boldt said.

  The events of the next few hours unfolded in a way that he never would have expected.

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  Boldt’s official complaint, which he filed with the Colorado Department of Corrections, clearly touched off a nerve. It took the spotlight in news reports—politicians quickly attempting to distance themselves from state-sanctioned phone solicitation programs involving inmates. At first it seemed nothing more than electionyear candidates seizing an opportunity to grandstand. How else could Boldt’s one-page report have mushroomed into a media feeding frenzy? No doubt some clerk had leaked the complaint within minutes of its filing. That leak had spread through media, and the media’s subsequent outrage had caught fire when combined with the ulterior motives of politicians seeking reelection.

  By the time Boldt and Daphne returned to the hotel at mid-day, a half dozen press and radio reporters were already waiting for them in the lobby. Boldt and Daphne issued, “No comment,” pushing toward the elevators.

  When they returned to the lobby thirty minutes later to check out, the reporters had been joined by two television crews, three state representatives, the staff of a United States senator, and two mayoral aides. The M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  hotel had requested and received crowd control from the Denver police—two of whom pressed through the reporters to help Boldt and Daphne reach the registration desk. The shouting from the reporters was nearly all the same: “Is it true that inmates at Etheredge’s Jefferson County facility were engaged in a phone sales campaign?” “Do you know who authorized such a campaign?” “Has the governor had any comment, to your knowledge?” “Is it true that inmates conducted crimes from within the privately operated prison?”

  It amused Boldt that neither he nor Daphne answered these questions, but instead the various politicians and their assistants. Facts surrounding the private commerce program at Etheredge unfolded. According to a congressman’s aide, the program had been approved by a handful of politicians and had been kept quiet these many months under the pretense of it being a test program. As such, a statement had been made to the voting public that Etheredge Corporation was paying both the county and the state substantial fees on a commission basis—no mention that certain influential state politicians had been generously entertained, and their campaign coffers padded, prior to the subcommittee’s closed-door vote that had authorized the program in the first place. Boldt’s letter of complaint to the state’s Department of Justice lit a fuse that would burn for many months to come, finally destroying more than a few in the hotel lobby.

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  “Is it true this program was initiated under the guise of prison reform?” a reporter shouted.

  “What was David Ansel Flek’s role in your investigation?” a well-informed woman called out from the crowd. Boldt and Daphne met eyes. How had that leaked? “And what does your trip here, to Denver, have to do with your ongoing investigation of the tragic assault of Seattle police officer Maria Sanchez?”

  Daphne grabbed him by the arm, stopping him.

  “We need to deal with this. We need to head it off. If the Flek investigation leaks home, we lose our jump on his possible accomplice.”

  “Agreed!” Boldt said. He assumed this reporter had searched the Times’ Internet archives for one or both of their names and had uncovered their participation in the Sanchez investigation. A guard or someone in the warden’s office had Flek’s name.

  Daphne spoke up loudly, and as she did, the crowd quieted down for the first time. “Ladies and gentlemen!

  Please! Thank you! Lieutenant Boldt and I are with the Seattle Police Department, investigating a string of bur- glaries.” She looked this woman reporter in the eye to drive home her point. “We came to Denver to follow up on possible leads that may or may not be connected to the Etheredge facility in Jefferson County. We spoke to a variety of individuals at the facility, including inmates and administrative personnel, none of whom has been charged with any crimes. I want to stress that point: To date, no one in Colorado has been charged with any crime associated with our investigation. This M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  was, and is, a fact-findi
ng mission and nothing more. The lieutenant and I are returning to Seattle now to follow up on what we’ve learned here. Any forthcoming charges or connections to our investigation will be released to the press in a timely fashion. We are working in cooperation with the Colorado Department of Corrections, and the justice department. That is all we have for you at this time. Thank you.”

  Boldt and Daphne exited the room, following a pair of patrol officers. A reporter pulled at Boldt’s overnight bag, and the lieutenant elbowed the man away. Camera flashes blinded him as they staggered out into the daylight, expecting their rental but instead finding themselves shoved into a waiting stretch limousine bearing the hotel logo. Moments later, they were on their way to the airport.

  When the two weren’t calling out on their cellular phones, the devices were ringing. ABC radio broke the story nationally ten minutes into the ride, ensuring that even more press would be awaiting the two at the Denver airport. Two cars and a television van dogged the limousine, pulling alongside, reporters leaning out of the cars and shouting for one of them to put the window down and answer questions. The limousine’s cellular phone rang; it was the television van following right behind them. The driver hung up. Boldt’s cellular rang. “Lieutenant Boldt?” a man’s voice asked.

  “Speaking,” Boldt answered into his cellular. 236

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  “John Ragman, Colorado Department of Corrections. We spoke this afternoon.”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s something here I wanted to share with you. It concerns . . . the inmate you interviewed out at Etheredge.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You run the man’s surname through our system and you get more than one hit. You follow me?”

  “Yes, I think I do.”

  “You’re on a cellular—I can hear it. Digital?”

  “No.”

  “So maybe I shouldn’t say much more. The reporters—often scan the analog frequencies.”

  “Yes, I understand. The person you want to talk to is a Sergeant John LaMoia.” Boldt gave him the direct number. “I’ll call LaMoia from a land line out at the airport to be caught up, or I’ll call you directly if I can’t reach him . . . if you two haven’t spoken.”

  “Got it.” Ragman added, “You’re gonna like what I’ve got. Or maybe not, I guess. But either way, you need it, Lieutenant.”

  Boldt disconnected the cell, waited for Daphne to get off her own phone, and told her, “There’s another Flek in the Colorado system, maybe a relative.”

  “Maybe currently living in Seattle?” she deduced.

  “One has to wonder,” Boldt agreed.

  “Hence Flek’s reluctance to cooperate with us,” she said. “Protecting a brother, a cousin?” She had felt M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  something odd about his demeanor. Now, maybe she had an explanation for it.

  “Worth pursuing,” Boldt said.

  “That call I just hung up from?” she said. “The number called from the pay phone at Etheredge? It looks like maybe it’s a cloned cellular phone. That bill has dozens of calls being disclaimed by the customer.”

  “A cloned number offers anonymity. It makes sense,” Boldt agreed.

  “Which means we’d have to catch this guy in the act to connect him to Flek—relative or not. And we’ll lose that chance, because he’ll be warned off by all this media attention.”

  “Beat the Clock, ” Boldt said. He remembered the quiz show from his youth.

  “You think we made a mistake, Lou? Interrogating him? Tipping our hand? Maybe we’d have been better to sit on him. Intercept the activity.”

  Boldt believed she was probably right, but also knew there was no looking back during an investigation. He didn’t answer directly. Instead he said, “We work this relative of Flek’s and we work this cell phone that was called. We work it fast before too much of this makes it onto the evening news. Maybe we get lucky.”

  “Since when?” Daphne asked.

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  Upon returning to his job, LaMoia thought the excessive workload facing him must have been some kind of cruel joke, perhaps cooked up by Boldt to prove how hard things had been for him during LaMoia’s absence. There were nine active investigations on LaMoia’s desk. He had responded to two of the crime scenes and taken reports from the other seven. At the same time, he was wearing the hats of Burglary detective, Special Assaults detective, and Homicide sergeant. And he’d only been on the job for two days. When some guy identifying himself as Ragman called from Colorado Corrections and mentioned Boldt by name, LaMoia focused his attention on the message being relayed—the name of a possible accomplice. He scribbled the name Bryce Abbott Flek into his notebook Ragman said, “Brother Flek owns a pink sheet the length of your arm. A juvie gone bad. His more recent history here puts him in double jeopardy. One more felony conviction and the guy does fifteen without parole.”

  “Flek,” LaMoia repeated, reading from his notes. Having spoken to Boldt earlier, he knew about the M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  failed interrogation out at Etheredge. He had asked a friend at InterCel to identify the cellular phone number called from the prison, and then had spoken with Matthews ten minutes earlier to deliver the bad news: The number had indeed been cloned.

  Ragman warned, “His jacket is littered with references to what one officer called ‘the volatile nature of his personality.’ There’s also a reference to a psych evaluation in here, although I don’t have my hands on it. Way it looks to me: This is a dog that bites. Little brother is tame by comparison. This one took out two uniforms trying to arrest him back in ninety-three—

  both hospitalized, one with a broken neck.”

  “Broken neck?” LaMoia repeated, yanking his feet off his desk and sitting upright in the chair. “You have aliases for this mope?”

  “You got a sharp pencil? It’s a long list. Better yet, what if I fax you as much of this as I can?”

  “Is he on WestCrime?” LaMoia inquired.

  “NCD,” Ragman said. The National Criminal Database. “You guys lined out with that yet?”

  “You bet. We’ve got access to WestCrime, NCD, and all the federal databases.”

  “Then you’re set on the aliases,” Ragman said. “I’ll still fax you the liner notes, in case that stuff didn’t get posted to the database. The way it shakes out: He’s a thief with a fondness for anything electronic, a violent son of a bitch when he wants to be, and I guess that’s most of the time. Just so you and your boys know to wear vests.”

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  “Got it,” LaMoia said, drawing a thickening ring around the name Bryce Abbott Flek to where it dominated the page.

  He called Boldt, who said, “Can’t talk on the cellular. I’ll call you back from the airport.” The line went dead.

  He accessed the NCD database and downloaded both Flek brothers’ criminal records. Bryce Abbott Flek operated under six aliases, all ending in “ek,” or “eck.”

  LaMoia typed in the various names, all separated by commas. He tried SPD records, King County records and state records. No arrests. He tried the man’s Colorado motor vehicle registration—a 1991 blue Dodge van. A subsequent request with the licensing bureau kicked five unpaid in-state parking tickets, all within a three-block area of Ballard. The first of these parking tickets was dated a year earlier, the same month as David Ansel Flek’s conviction. The pieces started falling into place. LaMoia grew increasingly excited. Fingers drumming, he considered various means to pinpoint the address and locate Bryce Abbott Flek. One option was to drive around the three-block area looking for that blue van with Colorado plates and put it under surveillance when they found it. He would then wait for Flek to show up and hope to follow him back to an apartment, put that under surveillance. The time and manpower requirements seemed enormous. He tried a friend at US West. No go: Not one of
Flek’s aliases kicked for a current listing. No great sur-M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E 241

  prise—if the man was using a cloned cellular, why bother with a Ma Bell installation?

  If Flek was renting a room or an apartment, LaMoia had no way of finding out where. There were no tax records and no utility bills, at least not that he could locate. He racked his brain for some other way to find the guy, and to find him fast, before the news leaks Boldt had warned of reached Flek, and he heard of his little brother’s contact with Seattle police. If and when that happened, Flek was certain to go underground, perhaps not surfacing again. He debated whether to put out the word on the street—he had Flek’s mug shot, courtesy of the NCD database. He thought of liquor stores and Domino’s Pizza, delivery boys. He called a friend at a credit bureau—no credit cards, no loans, no bank accounts under any of the aliases. In the end, using the patrol force to search Ballard for any blue vans appeared the best choice. He put the word out over the Mobile Data Terminals network—

  notifying nearly two hundred patrol cars simultaneously. M

  An hour before Boldt and Daphne’s plane touched down at SEATAC, LaMoia was notified by an SPD radio car that a blue van with Colorado plates was currently fueling at a gas station in Ballard, not five blocks from LaMoia’s current location. LaMoia had issued the Be On Lookout for the van with little hope. To his surprise, he had been notified of four blue vans in the past thirty 242

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  minutes. This radio call represented the first mention of Colorado plates. Within minutes, LaMoia confirmed the registration: Bryce Abbott Flek.

  About that same time he double-parked his fire-engine red 1968 Camaro with a view across the street. The gas pump’s black hose hung from the van’s tank like an elephant’s trunk, the driver nowhere to be seen. He spotted the cruiser patrolling a block away, hailed them over the radio and ordered them to park out of sight. He then radioed dispatch and ordered all SPD patrol cars kept out of a ten-block area surrounding the gas station. He didn’t want anything, anyone, alerting Flek to their presence. When he requested additional unmarked cars, the dispatcher had the audacity to laugh at him. “Request is noted,” the uncharacteristically amused dispatcher announced. LaMoia understood the subtext: In terms of winning unmarked cars and plainclothes detectives as backup, he was in this alone. M