Middle of Nowhere

by Ridley Pearson

  Dispatch reported that Phil Shoswitz had arrived to act as the surveillance team’s coordinator. Shoswitz knew his way around mobile surveillance. The bicyclist kept up with the eastbound city bus without much trouble due to the vehicle’s frequent stops. Shoswitz deployed the Ford, the van and four cruisers around an extended perimeter as a safety net. The chess match had begun. Boldt’s team had to prepare for Samway’s departure at any bus stop; at the same time they had to be prepared to follow a moving bus.

  The strategy paid off. Courtney Samway disembarked the 7 line and gathered with others awaiting the 60, unaware that just fifteen feet away, a plainclothes 298

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  policeman monitored her every movement. Samway placed a quick call from a corner pay phone, a call that was not monitored, but would be the cause of much legal wrangling immediately following. Deputy prosecuting attorney Lacey Delgato would battle with the courts to be given access to the pay telephone’s call sheet, a situation that had legal precedent on her side, but a liberal court’s policy toward expectation of privacy working against her. Boldt believed absolutely that the call had been placed to Flek, in all probability to a cell phone—across the street, across town, across country, he couldn’t be sure until that call sheet was made available.

  “What does it matter?” Gaynes asked. “It’s bound to be a cloned phone. It’s not like we’ll lift a physical address.”

  “Triangulation,” Boldt answered. “It’s got to be a cell phone. That works in our favor.” Cellular service providers possessed software to locate an individual cellular phone using radio triangulation methodology developed for the military in World War II. Currently the technology was used to locate 911 emergency calls placed from cellular phones. Law enforcement had been quick to take advantage of the existing technology, tracking down drug dealers and gang members. The technology was currently slow however, and Boldt was caught unprepared to deploy it.

  “What do you want to bet,” Gaynes replied, “she’ll lead us to him anyway?” Then she added, “Oh, yeah. I forgot. You don’t bet.”

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  Boldt said, “I think he’ll park her for a while—an hour, an afternoon, a day. Keep an eye on her himself. Maybe just let her stew. The guy knows us. Knows the way we think. He’s been in and out of the system his whole life. His brother’s dead. He’s wanted and on the run.”

  “Pissed off.”

  “That too. Depending on that temper of his, he could exercise some patience at this point. There’s no real rush, other than staying away from us.”

  “You overestimate him,” she disagreed. “He’s an impatient, wild man. And if we believe Samway, his one purpose at the moment is to take you out for getting his brother killed. That’s urgent. That’s pressing. Ask Daphne—he’s irrational, unpredictable and impatient. That call she just made? He called her in. We’ve got this skel.”

  Samway rode the Broadway bus north for eleven blocks—a cop sitting a few rows behind her—and then disembarked in front of a Seattle’s Best Coffee, where she drained the next hour off the clock. Jilly Hu entered the same establishment, wearing a scarf over her head, and read the paper and sipped tea for this same hour, one eye on the suspect, another ready with her cellular phone.

  By the time Samway departed the coffee shop, Shoswitz had unmarked cars in place—ready to continue the game of chess. Boldt and Shoswitz remained in constant contact. The radio hummed with activity. Boldt lived for these moments.

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  When an hour had expired, Samway reboarded the 60—the northbound Broadway bus. Jilly Hu remained behind in the coffee shop.

  “You’re biting your nails, L.T.,” Gaynes said. “You don’t normally do that.”

  Boldt glared. Her timing was off. He envisioned the movement of the various cars as Shoswitz re-deployed them, fully aware that Flek could be on any street corner, or waiting in a car nearby.

  “You’re thinking he’s a planner,” Gaynes said, reading well his steadied concentration.

  “I am.”

  “That he’s waiting out there, watching for us.”

  “Tracking her,” Boldt said, “like a stalker.”

  “And if he spots us—”

  “He’ll never make contact with her again. It’ll be the last we ever see of him.” He sensed something from Gaynes. “What?”

  “I have a hunch you’re gonna hear from him, L.T. The rest of us, maybe not. But you? He’s not through with you.”

  “Thanks,” Boldt said. “That’s reassuring.”

  “I call ’em as I see ’em. Which is on account of why I’d like to see us catch him first.”

  “Well, at least we’re in agreement there.”

  Broadway teemed with college kids: restaurants, record stores, grocery stores, moviehouses. On foot it would prove far more difficult to follow her, given the environment. Thankfully, Samway remained onboard the bus at the busiest stops. When she did disembark, M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  it was to transfer from the 60 to the 43—a move that left Shoswitz hustling through bus route schedules. But Gaynes knew the 43, putting their van a jump ahead of the rest of the surveillance teams.

  “It goes through Montlake to the U-District.”

  Boldt speculated, “He wants her in areas where there are a lot of kids her age. First Broadway, now the U.”

  “We can beat the bus there, L.T. And get me into the field—onto the street. If she tries to use the crowds to lose us . . . I’m already on the ground and running.”

  Boldt felt somewhat obliged to let Shoswitz orchestrate the manpower, but Gaynes was right: They had a window of opportunity, and though a gamble, it seemed worth taking.

  Reading his thoughts, Gaynes said bluntly, “This woman is not getting off in Montlake, L.T. He wants her in the U.”

  Boldt turned away from his assigned route without reporting in, while the radio spit static as Shoswitz hurried to comprehend bus route 43. Gaynes reached for the radio’s microphone.

  “We gotta call it in, L.T.”

  “Wait,” Boldt instructed. He continued north on 10th Avenue, making for University Bridge. As Shoswitz began to bark orders, Boldt keyed Gaynes to report that they were already under way to the University bus stop.

  “We don’t know she’s headed to the U,” Shoswitz objected over the radio.

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  Boldt took the microphone from Gaynes, and said,

  “Yes, we do, Captain. I’m getting there ahead of time to put Gaynes on foot.”

  “You’ll stay in formation,” Shoswitz ordered.

  “We’re crossing University Bridge. I’ll report when we have Gaynes deployed.” He put his foot to the gas, in part to cover the sound of Shoswitz screaming. M

  By the time the 43 pulled to a stop and Samway disembarked, clutching the box given her by Manny Wong, Boldt was parked across the street from the University’s transit hub while Gaynes watched from inside a nearby KFC. For all his efforts, Shoswitz had outsmarted himself. With two cars stuck in traffic he’d been reduced to Boldt’s van and a couple of cruisers. With the cruisers unable to show themselves for fear of scaring off Samway, Boldt and Gaynes led the surveillance. Samway headed out on foot into the crowds of college kids. “She keeps checking her watch,” Gaynes reported, now following on foot. Ten minutes passed, by which time Shoswitz had reassembled his crew. The Ford, driven by Lee and now once again with Jilly Hu as passenger, parked on 45th Avenue. Danny Lincoln amazed everyone by arriving on his bike, his messenger’s backpack strapped on tightly.

  “We’re coming back toward you,” Gaynes reported.

  “I smell another bus. This guy is careful.”

  Boldt relayed the information to his team, believing Flek may have used the stop as part of his plan: While M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  Sam
way walked around the U, Flek could buy himself time to move to the next location and set himself up with a viewpoint. Thankfully, no one from Boldt’s team had followed her off the bus—something Flek may have been watching for. Boldt reported his theory to Shoswitz, warning that Flek might be a step ahead at each phase of Samway’s progress, suggesting the cruisers be pushed out well away from the center of the action. Shoswitz concurred. The team now came down to Boldt’s van and the Ford.

  Samway led Gaynes right past Boldt’s van, reentered the transit hub, and boarded the 67, whose electronic display carried the words “Northgate P & R.”

  Gaynes slipped in beside Boldt. “Now he wants to lose her in the mall,” she said.

  “He’s watching,” Boldt warned. “It gets tricky now.”

  Boldt drove on. The bus headed north. Again, traffic became the nemesis. To part the traffic with a light or siren was unthinkable, and yet both Boldt’s van and Lee’s Ford fell farther and farther back as traffic worsened.

  “This keeps up,” Gaynes warned, “and we lose her.”

  “Suggestions?”

  “We slip over to Eighth or Fifth, running parallel, and use our stuff if we have to.”

  “I like it,” Boldt said. He nudged his way left, his blinker flashing. A Navigator let him through with a polite flash of its headlights. The Ford remained behind the bus. Gaynes called in the change of plans. 304

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  “Was about to suggest that,” Shoswitz said. It was the only time Boldt had smiled in the last two hours. Boldt ran red lights on Eighth Avenue and quickly passed the bus’s reported parallel position. Gaynes suggested she leave the van upon their arrival at the mall. “I can be in that parking lot ahead of her.”

  The 67 made one stop after the mall. “We don’t know the mall is her destination,” Boldt said. Gaynes pushed. “Is he going to have her ride the bus all the way out here, and then skip the mall? He can get her lost in there, L.T. It has to be the mall.”

  She hesitated. “This is one time you’re going to have to gamble.”

  Boldt pulled to the curb. To his right, he spotted the bus two blocks away, also slowing. “Go!” he shouted. Gaynes popped the passenger door open. Boldt watched as she entered the mall’s vast parking lot. A moment later she looked like just another person walking from a parked car toward the mall. To his right, Boldt saw passengers disembark the 67. He studied body types, tortured by the agonizingly long stream of people—until finally he spotted Samway among them. To his relief she still carried the package. They had guessed right. Gaynes would call it gambling—he might never live this down.

  He looked on as Gaynes made visual contact with the mark from a hundred yards away and quickened her pace accordingly. Keeping an eye on Samway, Gaynes made it into the mall ahead of the young woman, a M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  position where marks seldom thought to look. Russ Lee and Jilly Hu pulled up on the far side of the mall, announcing their position to Boldt over the radio. Boldt felt his stomach knot. A mall. The crush of a thousand shoppers. The perfect place to either disappear, make a drop, or spot a tail. All Flek had to do was watch from an upper balcony to see if anyone was following Samway. Jilly Hu had been used in the coffee shop. Shoswitz sent Lee into the mall as backup for Gaynes, on strict instructions to keep use of his cell phone to a minimum, and then only in believable situations, fearing the phone might catch Flek’s eye.

  Five minutes passed in relative silence. Agony. Six. Boldt’s throat stung of heartburn. Ten. Shoswitz wondered aloud over the radio if they should risk sending Hu in to assist. Boldt suggested not. “It’s Gaynes, Captain.” His only explanation of his confidence. Twelve minutes. He felt ready to go in there himself. Fourteen minutes. Boldt’s cell phone rang. He let out a long breath. It was Bobbie Gaynes.

  “She’s moving again, L.T.”

  “Where?”

  “West side. You should have her . . . right . . . now.”

  “Got her.” Boldt saw Samway push through the wall of doors. She seemed struck by the warm air.

  “Get this, she bought herself a thong swimsuit. You suppose she deducts those things off her taxes?” She added, “What now? I don’t want to stick out.”

  “We see who picks her up,” he answered. 306

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  The area surrounding the mall was not a place for pedestrians; cars were the preferred mode of transport. Samway wasn’t headed for a car, as it turned out, but the sidewalk beyond. If Gaynes followed she would be easily spotted. The same applied to Danny Lincoln, who had arrived on the scene, riding his bike, only moments before. The unmarked cars were a possibility, but not a good one.

  Gaynes made for Boldt’s van. Lee reported in, having returned to the Ford. Boldt’s team collectively held their breath.

  Samway walked behind the mall and north on Fifth Avenue NE, where Lee and Hu made visual contact. She crossed Northgate Way with the light and walked west. Boldt and Gaynes sat in the front seat listening as Lee reported the woman’s progress. Gaynes caught sight of her briefly and pointed far off into the distance. Boldt looked past the interstate, worried there might be a car waiting, worried it was about to get ugly.

  “The motel,” he said to Gaynes, as he noticed the tower and sign placed to advertise on the highway.

  “You think?”

  “Flek takes a room near the mall. It gives him access to public transportation, a lot of cover if he needs it—

  the mall being so close, the interstate in his front yard. Flek is inside that motel watching her approach from a window.”

  Shoswitz barked an order for Lee to follow. Boldt cut in and suspended the order—overriding a captain.

  “Send Lincoln on the bike,” he said. “Flek is watching. She’s heading to that motel.”

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  She was inside the motel.

  Following the resolution of the sickout, Special Operations—Special Ops—continued under the command of Patrick Mulwright, a forty-something binge drinker, part Irish, part Native American, who looked about sixty. The man’s two different-colored eyes—one green, one almost brown—lent him a crazed, mongrel look that forewarned of his disposition. Boldt and Mulwright’s histories went back too far, overlapped too much, which happened in any organization, but was particularly difficult in a police department where lives depended on reaction and response time. Special Ops gained access to leading-edge technology far in advance of any other unit, the way the FBI always had the cool toys ahead of any city law enforcement. Mulwright passed out digital cellular phones with walkie-talkie capability to each of the operatives involved, although the method of their distribution—having an undercover “street person” drunkenly wander the area surrounding the motel pushing a grocery cart (in which were hidden the communications devices)—

  took an inordinate amount of time. The digital devices could not be scanned, nor the conversations overheard, 308

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  meaning that all parties surrounding the motel could monitor and communicate via the same walkie-talkie channel without concern that Flek would hear them. At the same time, the secure police frequencies remained available for communication back and forth between the field and headquarters at Public Safety. Mulwright brought with him long-distance video and audio surveillance, high-powered binoculars and monoculars, which included night vision capability if needed, and four Emergency Response Team officers prepared to put their lives on the line and kick Flek’s room if and when required to do so.

  The slightly chaotic and scattered attempt to keep Samway under surveillance quickly streamlined and took on the feel of a well-run operation. Mulwright swallowed his dislike of Boldt, not allowing it to interfere with operations.

  The police net was carefully structured in concentric circles. Well out of sight, positioned at key intersections several blocks away in every direction, four police cruisers—radio ca
rs—occupied the four corner posts of a “contained perimeter.” Included within this perimeter were Boldt and the Ford, with the wild card, Danny Lincoln, still pedaling, but now with a police vest hidden beneath his Nike windbreaker. Everyone involved kept a weather eye on the sidewalks, in case Flek approached on foot. The good money had Flek already inside.

  Mulwright and his Special Ops Command Center personnel occupied an Ore-Ida panel truck, its painted M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  sides and roller door advertising a NEW! thick-slice potato chip with thirty percent less fat. It was parked on the curb immediately in front of the motel, offering the ERT team quick access to the motel, if needed. A lone police sniper, under Mulwright’s authority, was positioned on a rooftop west of the motel, covering the building’s back side. Seventy minutes after Samway headed inside, operation “Baywatch” was in place—so named by Mulwright because the motel’s small indoor pool happened to be peopled to overflowing with bikini-clad women who, according to a welcome marquee, were attending a press-on nail and cosmetics conference. Judging by the pool, not many were attending the seminars. When Courtney Samway was spotted inside the pool area, slipping into the hot pool in the recently purchased lime green thong and matching top, it was Boldt, not Mulwright, who formulated a plan to discover which room she was in, and thereby concentrate Special Ops’ considerable assets.

  “You feel like a swim?” he asked Bobbie Gaynes. Although Boldt and Gaynes had both been at the stripper club the night they had brought Samway in for questioning, Gaynes and the girl had not met face to face. Gaynes had gone backstage to the dressing rooms, but Samway had come out into the club offstage, leaving Boldt to detain her and get her into one of the cruisers. He needed someone in that pool area, and he wanted it not only a woman, but a woman he trusted.

  “In front of all these guys? With twenty-power mon-310

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  oculars?” she returned. “My thighs? Forget it. Try Jilly. She’ll knock their socks off.”

  Boldt disagreed. “We used Jilly out front of Wong’s store, and again in the coffee shop. She’s used up. I could probably pull a woman from one of the radio cars, but the inexperience could burn us.”