If Boldt hadn’t seen it a dozen other times, he might have been shocked to see the suspect nod.
Daphne, clearly amazed, said, “I could study LaMoia for a decade and never write a comprehensible paper about how he does what he does. It’s not simply intimidation, it’s something beyond that.”
“It’s LaMoia,” Boldt said.
“That’s what I mean,” she agreed. “He’s despicable, and yet he’s lovable.”
“I’m just glad he’s on our side.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” she said.
“He called me,” Hall said, the first break in his silence.
Suddenly quiet and a fellow conspirator, LaMoia said, “Give us what we need, Nicky, and you just might walk out of here. No promises. But the flip side is that we can make life hell for you. It’s like a game show, Nicky. Choose the door. Go ahead and pick. But don’t waste any more of my time, and don’t make them send me on any more errands to clean up your shit for you. You got into this shit all by yourself. Now you need me to get out of it. The doors are right in front of you: Truth or Dare. Your choice. Pick one, Nicky, and pick fast, because I’m running out of time here. I’m going home at the end of the day, just remember that. You’re not. Not yet. I’m going home to my own bed, my TV, and a warm little friend from Puerto Rico with a pair of cheeks that just sit in the palms of your hands, you know? Sweet stuff. Truth or Dare, Nicky? Time’s up!” LaMoia was out of the chair, leaning across the table at the suspect. “Buzzer’s ringing. Nicky Hall: Come on down!”
Even without seeing the detective’s face, Boldt knew that the man looked insane and ready to crack. LaMoia lived on the edge, and at times like this it was impossible to tell how much was acting and how much was real.
Daphne said, “I can’t believe this. It’s going to work.”
“Yeah,” Boldt echoed. “I know.”
LaMoia pounded the table again. “Truth or Dare, Mr. Paddle Paw! You start talking or I start walking. Matthews can’t save you. Boldt can’t save you. Only I can save you. What’s it going to be?”
“He knew that both parts of the stuff were stored on the base,” Hall explained. “He had to have either been stationed there or worked there at some point. I figured that out right away.”
“Brilliant. Pray continue, my man.” LaMoia kicked his feet up onto the table, stretched his hands behind his head, leaned into the cradle, and said, “I’m listening, Nicky. I’m listening.” He glanced toward the glass and winked.
Boldt reached down and turned on the tape recorder.
As if cued to do so, LaMoia said, “My name is Detective LaMoia, Mr. Hall. Tell me what you know.” He did this for the sake of the tape, which he knew was running by then.
Hall picked up where he had left off. “I was working MP duty. I’d driven by those buildings for years and never did know what was inside.”
LaMoia glanced back at the window with a cocky, proud expression and grinned widely.
“Sometimes I hate LaMoia,” Daphne said.
“Yeah,” Boldt answered. “I know what you mean.”
40
On Saturday Daphne took Ben to the Seattle Aquarium. He’d never been, and it was a place she enjoyed so much that she often went there simply to relax, to stroll and think in what to her was another world. She never took notice of the tanks, rarely read the descriptive labels; it was the fish that captivated her attention, the unflinching eyes, the pulsing gills, the gentle-paced wandering through the kelp and imitation coral. Despite her frequent visits, she didn’t know one fish from another, couldn’t tell a dolphin from a porpoise, a pilot fish from a pike.
Ben, on the other hand, was a product of TV documentaries and knew the names of the various species, as well as their feeding and mating habits. “I taped most of them late at night, once Jack had passed out, because he only liked sports and sitcoms.” He said it as if this was to be expected, and it cut to Daphne’s core. He would toss such things her way, slowly opening the door to his existence, and the wider that door opened, the more she glimpsed of what Ben accepted as a normal life, the more she ached to change his existence. It was this mutual desire to improve his environment that connected Daphne, however indirectly, to Emily Richland.
“Have you ever felt that way?” Ben said, pointing at a red snapper kissing the transparent walls of the tank. They were in what to her was the most exciting section of the aquarium, a large open room exposed to several large fish tanks that housed entire communities of oceangoing species.
“Which way is that?” she asked. She wanted to see the world through his eyes, experience the world through his developing senses.
“Trapped like that,” he answered pensively, stopping at the tank and studying the fish that appeared to be kissing the boy. “What’s it like for him, banging up against that wall? He probably can’t figure it out. And what’s he think of us? This whole other place he can see but can’t get to. Like that.” He looked deeper into the tank at the lumbering fish. “They flush seawater in here at night. It has the nutrients and stuff. It feeds them. And then they filter it out to make the water clearer so we can see them.”
“Do you feel like that, Ben? Trapped?”
“Not by you,” he clarified. “Not you. But yeah.” He pointed to the snapper, which continued to push on the clear barrier. “That’s me at my window at night, you know? Looking out at other people’s houses. Wondering what it’s like. If their lives are any different.” He led her a few feet forward but stayed with the same tank. “Emily says it doesn’t have to be that way, but I’m not so sure. People are different than what they seem. That’s just the way it is. Not Emily. Not you. But most people.”
“I don’t think you can group people together, lump them together like that.” She wondered why she and Owen discussed the next party they were supposed to attend, and here she was with a twelve-year-old discussing the hard points of life. “I think it’s possibly better to take people as individuals, weigh them on their own merits, and try not to be too judgmental.”
“Yeah, but how do you do that?” Ben questioned. “First thing I do when I meet someone is size them up. You know? Like that guy,” he said, pointing into the tank. “See him checking everyone out? Looking over there, over here. On the prowl. That’s me. He’s thinking someone’s going to sneak up and try to eat him-that’s what he’s thinking. And that’s right too, because one of those fish probably is thinking that. I’m telling you. That’s how it goes out here, too, pal. You look the other way, someone’s after your ass.”
“Watch the language,” she scolded, but Ben didn’t respond. He walked on and Daphne followed. If Owen had been here, she would have tried to lead him around, she realized. Why was she willing to follow the boy, when she didn’t like to follow anybody?
He glanced back at her. “Are you crying?”
“Allergies,” she lied.
“I wonder if fish have allergies,” he said innocently, turning back to the tank. “Check out that guy’s fin. You see that? Someone womped on him, took a chunk. That’s what I’m telling you, D. You turn your back, someone womps on you.”
He had been using this nickname for her occasionally, and she had cautioned herself not to allow its use to draw them closer-to remain professional-but in this she had failed. Boldt called her Daffy. Everyone else, even Owen, called her either by her first or last name. Only this little bundle of energy called her by that nickname. It endeared him to her.
“Can you swim?” she asked.
“Nah. Not so you’d notice. Sink to the bottom if you put me in there. I’m a retard in water. Scares me, and I start flapping around, and that’s pretty much it. Down she goes. You?”
“Yes. I swim.”
“Teach me sometime?”
“Yes,” she answered softly, wondering if this too were a lie. She thought him so special, and though it occurred to her that there were perhaps dozens, hundreds, just like him, she thought it wrong to lump people together. She refused to see it.
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“If you could pick,” he said, “which one would you be?”
Such a simple question, but for her it seemed profound. She studied the inhabitants of the tank. One was long and thin and exceptionally beautiful and she singled it out for him.
“But he’s small,” Ben complained.
“She,” Daphne corrected, not knowing the fish’s sex.
“Not me. I’d go for size. Speed. That guy, maybe. I’d pick the shark, but that kind doesn’t eat other fish, only that stuff-what’s its name? — in the water.”
“Plankton.”
“Yeah, that stuff. So what’s the point of being a shark if you only eat that stuff? Maybe that guy over there,” he said, pointing. It was a big, ugly fish that looked menacing.
“Do you love her?” she asked him, having no idea where the question had come from and wishing immediately that she could withdraw it.
“Emily? Yeah. She’s the best. I know you don’t like her, but she’s really cool.”
“I never said I didn’t like her.”
“No, you didn’t say it, I guess,” he offered in a voice that bordered on complaint. He attempted to quote her: “I think it’s better to take people on their merits.” He crossed over to the opposing tank then, carefully picking the moment so as not to have to look at her. She felt herself slip into his path, obediently following behind. Felt herself reach out and nearly take his shoulders in her hands. But she was tentative in this approach and she never did actually touch him. Instead, she lowered her arms in unison, a drawbridge going down but not quite connecting, and allowed him to slip away from her, like a prayer silently spoken, wondering if the words had found a home.
41
The rock that Boldt and his investigators had started downhill began to run away from them, momentum and gravity prevailing.
The arrest of Nicholas Hall was broken by KOMO television and within minutes was the subject of talk radio. Both papers proclaimed Hall’s arrest in splashy front-page headlines. For Boldt, the public euphoria was subdued by a memo received by him the Monday morning after the arrest.
TO: Sergeant Lou Boldt, Homicide
FROM: Dr. Bernard Lofgrin, SID
RE: Nicholas Hall, # 432-876-5
Lou: FYI, Hall’s weight and
height do not agree with our
assessment of ladder impressions
dated Oct. 4th this year. The suspect
is twenty to thirty pounds heavy and,
by our estimates, three to five inches
tall (based on average weights) for
whoever climbed that ladder.
Furthermore, as so noted per our
recent telephone conversation, the
individual that climbed the tree at the
Branslonovich killing was most
definitely right-handed. Hall’s
disfigured right hand would suggest
he was not a viable suspect for
attendance at that crime scene. I will
write this all up for inclusion in the
file, but wanted to give you a first
look. Any questions, I’m
around.
— Bernie
They had the wrong man. An accomplice perhaps, a co-conspirator possibly-but not the man the papers had dubbed the Scholar. Boldt and Daphne had both sensed this from the start of the sting operation and had felt more certain of it throughout LaMoia’s interrogation, in which Hall detailed the theft, transportation, and sale of the binary rocket fuel. Worse, Hall’s story hung together well. A search of his Parkland mobile home, on the north boundary of the base, revealed no notepaper, no storage of hypergolic fuel, no ladder. Hall had given up most, if not everything, of what he knew about the hypergolic fuel. The man appeared to be a dead end. One positive note of the follow-up investigation was lab man Bernie Lofgrin’s decision to run an analysis of the ballpoint pen ink used in the threats, in hopes of discovering a like pen in Hall’s possession.
But Boldt knew the truth: The killer remained at large. The one blessing was that the publicity of Hall’s arrest had apparently scared off the arsonist-no fire had followed the most recent poem. Or had it merely delayed him?
He experienced an overwhelming bout of depression and frustration: so close, only to fail. He wanted an hour with a piano. He wanted Liz home. The kids.
The investigation rolled on, regardless of his wants. He took a walk downtown for forty-five minutes, up past the Four Seasons and down 5th Avenue’s fashion stores and office malls. He wanted a shot at what the kid knew. Kids saw a lot more than adults. Maybe a lead to the accomplice. Open him up with a lineup, something to jog his memory, work him into the smaller details. Pick his brain. He bought tea to go at a coffee stand by Nordstrom’s and came back up 4th, stopping to window-shop at Brooks Brothers, where a gray cashmere sweater costing most of a week’s pay teased him. He moved on, weary and worried. Pedestrians avoided him.
He used such walks to try to jog loose a fresh idea. He needed a fresh idea, if another life was to be saved. He mentally reviewed the most recent note:
You cannot look for the answer, you must be the answer.
Daphne had traced it to Rita Mae Brown. The ATF’s Casterstein had told them to let the next fire burn itself out-no water, no overhaul. Boldt understood that the fire could come any night, that another life could be lost. The responsibility he bore for that life was but one of the pressures he endured.
His present worries were twofold: the publicity generated by Hall’s arrest might invite copycat arsons; or it could push the Scholar either into hiding or, worse, into a frenzy of activity-as Daphne predicted-fearing his own arrest imminent.
Boldt’s best ideas came to him at strange times, so it was no real surprise to him that while coveting a gray cashmere sweater in a storefront window he hit upon a realization: With Hall’s arrest, the arsonist’s supply of accelerant would stop.
His cellular phone pressed to his ear, Boldt shouted people out of his way as he sprinted back toward quarters. Panting, he gasped through the phone to Shoswitz that they needed to conduct an immediate inventory of all fuel storage at Chief Joseph Air Force Base. Until that moment, under orders from the Captain of the Criminal Investigations Division, they had been intentionally leaving the Air Force in the dark, fearing a bureaucratic nightmare of jurisdictional infighting. “We blew it, Lieutenant. We had the trap all set, all perfectly baited, and no one was there to watch, to spring it.”
“What trap?” Shoswitz demanded.
“If I’m right, there has been a break-in at the Chief Joseph base within the last forty-eight hours. After the news broke the story of Hall’s arrest.”
When Boldt walked into the office twelve minutes later, Shoswitz was waiting by the elevators. “How in the hell did you know about that break-in?”
Boldt answered, “I’m going to get LaMoia. Tell Bernie to rally some technicians. We treat it as a crime scene. We share it, no matter what kind of heat we take.”
“Yeah, but how the hell did you know?” Shoswitz barked at his sergeant.
Boldt didn’t stop to answer, but he turned and said, “Supply and demand.”
Chief Joseph Air Force Base was right out of a film studio back lot: parklike grounds interspersed with ugly shoe-box barracks and tightly grouped three-bedroom ranch-style brick houses for officers. With nine hundred family units and over one thousand dorm units, it had once employed or played home to 4,800 military personnel, 6,200 dependents, and 2,400 civilians, meaning its average population had once been over thirteen thousand people. It had its own movie theater, bowling alley, golf course, day-care center, beauty shop, bookstore, and PX. Base population was currently two hundred military, one hundred sixty dependents, and seventy-six civilians. A ghost town covering over two thousand acres, including what had once been the third largest airport in the state. The streets were straight and curbed and deserted. Grass grew out of cracks in the pavement. Boldt and LaMoia rode in the front seat, Shoswitz a
lone in the back. They followed a sheriff’s vehicle that followed an FBI vehicle that followed an ATF vehicle that followed a Military Police Jeep complete with camo green, black, and brown paint.
The base commander was a surprisingly soft-looking man in his fifties. The FBI team, led by a man named Sanders whom Boldt knew well, did most of the talking. The negotiations began to bog down, at which point LaMoia, uninvited to participate by anyone, said, “We’ve got several people dead, sir. We think we know exactly what was stolen-hypergolic fuel, but we need to know in what quantity. I for one would just love to listen to you guys jaw all day, but meantime we know for a fact that this wacko is preparing yet another fish fry. So what say we cut to the chase and you give us some keys to the appropriate buildings while you gentlemen rub the gums?”
Everyone in attendance stared at LaMoia dumbfounded. To which LaMoia, who could never keep his mouth shut, said, “Ah, come on, people! This is bullshit. We haven’t got the time.”
Boldt caught himself holding his breath. The base commander nodded to a uniformed aide standing at his side, and the young kid hurried inside and returned with a ring of keys, which he passed to his superior. The commander clasped his thick hand around the keys and said, “We will certainly cooperate to our fullest with an active homicide investigation, but at the same time it is imperative that we share, gentlemen. Our Ordnance Recovery Division is responsible for returning to base any stolen ordnance. Our Criminal Investigation Division will take the lead and report directly to Special Agent Sanders.”
Shoswitz objected bitterly to military CID attempting to lead the investigation. Boldt grabbed his lieutenant firmly by the elbow and squeezed, expressing an attitude of cooperation-an act for which the hot-headed Shoswitz would later thank him.
The first of the buildings was called Arsenal D and was on the far western side of an enormous airstrip. Arsenal D was, in fact, a former jet aircraft hangar, in all appearances an oversized Quonset hut, ribbed galvanized sheet metal walls and roof, the latter with dull ivory skylights, the former with a minimum of windows. There were nine men involved in the fact-finding expedition, including Lofgrin’s three-member forensic team and a pair of base MPs. In private, LaMoia whispered to Boldt that once CID arrived from McChord the trouble would begin. Special Agent Sanders led the way. A bright shiny padlock came off a bent and rusted door that swung open on complaining hinges.
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