“Get him,” Boldt ordered. LaMoia hurried from the room.
They stood facing each other, Boldt and the woman. He didn’t see her as beautiful at that moment, not like other times. There was no beauty compared to Liz’s. There was only an empty darkness.
“So Garman has a child,” Boldt said, voicing what the tax records confirmed. “Does that fit?” he asked.
“You don’t want to know,” she answered ominously.
“A father would certainly cover for his child,” said Boldt, the father.
“And a child would vent anger against the father. Given the right circumstances, a child might symbolically kill the mother, repeatedly kill the mother-or the mother’s look-alikes. Send the father threats. Do the kills on the father’s turf, using what the child learned from the father: fire.”
Boldt felt a chill, not heat. “Why?”
“Anger.”
“That’s a lot of anger.”
She nodded, then shook her head. “Perhaps Garman’s only guilty of being a protective father,” she whispered. “Probably thought the killings would stop if he took the fall, if he ended up in jail.”
“Will he talk to us?” Boldt asked.
“I’d like hear what Bahan has to say,” she answered. “The more we hit him with, the better our chances. If we go in fishing, he’ll lock up on us. If we go in swinging, it’s a whole ’nother matter.”
“He’s targeted another woman,” Boldt said, referring to the latest mailing. He checked his watch; it wasn’t getting any earlier. “Jesus God. We’ve got to do something.”
“Put someone undercover in the tunnel park. Have them watch the bike path,” she advised. “We have the artist’s rendering. He visits that park, Lou. He must live nearby.”
Boldt reached for the phone. The door swung open: Neil Bahan with LaMoia. Bahan spoke before Boldt had a chance to dial. “It was something that happened in North Dakota,” he said. “One hell of a fire.”
A decade before, City Jail had expanded out of Public Safety across the street to the basement of the Justice Building. Extreme cases were held there, leaving the group lockups in Public Safety for gangs and the homeless, drunks and druggies, car thieves and burglars. The murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults were, for the most part, kept separate.
Although it was equipped with four bunks, Steven Garman had his cell to himself. It had a simple sink, a single toilet, an overhead light protected by a wire cage, and graffiti on the walls.
Daphne shivered. She had never liked jails.
Garman wore an orange jumpsuit, usually a humiliating look, but Daphne thought him handsome. His cheeks were florid, his eyes a keen dark brown, and though she didn’t care for facial hair, the dark beard and mustache looked good on him.
“I don’t see my attorney,” he said, as Boldt and Daphne stepped through the cell door and it was closed behind them. LaMoia remained on the other side of the bars, holding them and pressing his face close between the coldness of their steel. “I’ve got nothing to say without my attorney present,” Garman added.
Daphne and Boldt sat down on the bunk opposite. By agreement, no one spoke. Daphne would be the first to break the silence. They would take turns after that; it was arranged.
They remained perfectly still for the better part of five minutes, Garman looking between them and over at LaMoia as well. As the minutes passed, the arrested man looked increasingly nervous. He finally said, “You’d think they would paint the walls, get rid of the graffiti every now and then. It’s offensive stuff.”
She said, “We can’t match a single letter in any of the notes with your handwriting.”
Boldt told him, “The individual committing these arsons weighs sixty pounds less than you do.”
LaMoia chimed in. “All the quotes used in the threats are collected in a single source. Maybe you might enlighten us as to what that source is.”
Garman’s eyes continued to tick between them.
LaMoia said, “What is the common source to these quotations you mailed yourself?”
Garman blurted out “Bartlett’s,” with some authority.
LaMoia made the sound of a game-show buzzer, indicating error.
Garman appeared shaken by his mistake.
Daphne said, “The lab has identified the chemical composition of the ink used in the threats. You don’t own a pen that comes close. You don’t own the paper. We could only find three stamps in your place, and they aren’t the kind the Scholar uses.” She studied the man’s eye movements and body language. She watched for a busy tongue or other indications of a dry mouth.
“You never reported your pickup truck stolen,” Boldt said.
LaMoia added, “You never applied for the insurance money. How is it you lose a seven-thousand-dollar pickup truck and don’t apply for insurance?”
“Curious,” Daphne said.
A sheen of perspiration glowed on the skin knitted beneath Garman’s eyes. He rubbed his index finger against his thumb so tightly that it sounded like crickets chirping.
“My attorney,” he mumbled.
“We’ve called him. We’ve notified him. He’ll be here,” Boldt informed the man. It was the truth. What Garman apparently did not know was that his attorney was, at that moment, in court. It would be hours before he made it down to lockup.
“Tell us about the fire,” Boldt said, intentionally ambiguous.
“Which fire?” Garman asked, finding room for a slight smile. “I’ve seen a few.”
“But how many have you started?” LaMoia asked.
“Nick Hall sold me the hypergolics,” Garman began, repeating his radio performance. “I knew about their destructive power from my work at Grand Forks.”
“The North Dakota Air Force base,” Daphne said. “Your service record shows you as fire suppression, some demolition work.”
“That’s right. It was dangerous work.”
Boldt began to enjoy the process. Little by little, Garman was talking more than he intended. Coming apart. Little by little, they were zeroing in on the questions they wanted answered. Daphne had devised the order of questioning. “Tell us about the fire,” the sergeant said.
Garman’s eyes flashed between the three.
“The trailer,” LaMoia said. “Your trailer. It burned to the ground, burned down to nothing, according to the reports. Listed as accidental. But Fidler-you know Sidney Fidler-spoke to a couple of folks who remembered that burn quite well. It was extremely unusual in that the water hoses appeared to add fuel to the fire. The thing just got hotter and hotter. That’s hypergolic rocket fuel, Garman, the same thing we’re seeing here. You understand our curiosity.”
This time it was footsteps down the hall, not Garman’s nervous fingers. A guard approached, signaled Boldt, and passed a piece of paper through the bars. Another trick of Daphne’s. Bahan had come through with the name of Garman’s son only moments before the questioning. He had pulled it off of medical insurance records that painted an ugly picture. She had decided some theatrics wouldn’t hurt any. There was nothing written on the piece of paper passed to Boldt, but he read it with great interest. He looked up from the note with wide, expressive eyes of pure shock.
Garman leaned a little forward with expectation.
But Daphne spoke, not Boldt. “Was Diana unfaithful? Was that it?”
The suspect’s jaw slacked open, and his cheeks lost their color. For a moment he didn’t breathe, didn’t move. He said vehemently, “You don’t know anything about it.”
She glanced at Boldt and offered him a faint nod, though Garman’s comment churned in the pit of her stomach.
Boldt said softly, “Jonathan Carlyle Garman. He was admitted to the hospital on the Grand Forks base, June 14, 1983. Third-degree burns to the face and upper body. Seven months of reconstructive surgery followed.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” LaMoia asked.
Daphne pleaded, “Tell me it was Diana you meant to harm. Tell me you didn�
��t mean for the boy to be hurt.”
“Mother of God!” the suspect said, hanging his head into his huge hands, his back shaking violently as he cried.
Daphne took the opportunity to glance over at Boldt. She nodded. But she, unlike LaMoia, was not proud of their accomplishment. A contagious sadness surrounded her and infected Boldt.
Through his sobs the suspect said into his hands, “She took him with her. Kidnapped him. And not out of love, but because of the things he knew, because of the things she had done to him…. What kind of woman is that?” He pulled up from his hands and looked Daphne directly in the eye.
“We’re not here to judge you,” she whispered. “Only to find out the truth. To help Jonathan. It’s the boy who needs our help.”
Garman sobbed for five of the longest minutes in Boldt’s life. Would he cooperate or demand an attorney? The minutes ticked by, the evening drawing ever closer and the promise of another arson along with it. Another victim.
The phone company had no record of a Jonathan Garman; there was no driver’s license or vehicle registration in Motor Vehicle’s database. Other sources were being checked, but it appeared that the arsonist either existed outside of the paper shuffle or within an alias.
“I never meant it the way it happened,” Garman finally gasped. “She had been selling herself. Made the boy a part of it.”
Boldt released a huge sigh and sat back on the bunk. Sometimes he hated the truth.
The footsteps suddenly coming down the hall were not part of the plan, and all three police officers looked in that direction as they drew ever closer, wondering what in the world they could possibly mean. The guard handed Boldt a second message.
Boldt looked up from this second note. “It’s a car wash,” he said.
The building momentum that captured Boldt’s investigation had exercised its influence on Bernie Lofgrin’s identification technicians. In the same afternoon, the lab techs determined that the blue and silver cotton fiber evidence collected from the insides of the windshields on the cars of two of the arson victims matched, not only one to the other but to the fibers found on Boldt’s kitchen window and those collected at the base of the ladder at the Enwright fire. It was just such evidence that gave a lock on a case, and as Lofgrin was pursuing Boldt to give him the good news, his assistants were tracing the sale of that particular silver ink to a total of only five silk-screen printers in the Northwest.
The fifth printer contacted, Local Color, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, recognized the order by its color combination: hand towels ordered by Lux-Wash and Detailing, Inc., Seattle, Washington, printed in silver and green ink on a blue background-Seahawk colors. The towels carried the Lux-Wash logo and the addresses of the chain’s three locations. On the reverse side was printed, GO SEAHAWKS! Local Color was on their third printing, of fifteen hundred towels.
Back in the conference room, which was churning with activity at a deafening roar, Boldt sat down heavily into a chair. He said to Detective Bobbie Gaynes, “So it could be any one of fifteen hundred Lux-Wash customers.”
“One thousand,” the detective corrected. “The last five hundred haven’t been shipped yet. And no, I don’t think it’s a customer. This is a yuppie scrub. Eleven bucks a wash, if you can believe it. Customer gets out and goes inside and drinks espresso while the wheels go down the line. Total vacuum, full wash and optional wax, and windows inside and out. The line finishes with a drying crew out the other side-and yeah, the towels the drying crew uses are these promo towels. Hence the fibers found inside the windshield.”
“Three locations,” Gaynes said.
“Two in the city, one in Bellingham,” LaMoia informed him, reading a briefing note.
There was so much talk, so much urgent excitement in the room that Boldt felt tempted to stand up and call for a time-out. But better judgment intervened, for he could see the same desire on Shoswitz’s face, and he learned from seeing that expression. The team had worked long, hard, unthankful hours, both as individual detectives and combined as a squad. To mute that enthusiasm was to rob them of energy; they were running on vapors as it was. Boldt assessed the situation and contained his impatience, grabbing as much as he could from the words hurled at him.
“We’re pulling employment tax records,” Gaynes announced.
“He may not be on the payroll,” advised Daphne. “He’ll work part time, possibly for cash.”
Lieutenant Shoswitz, listening in, cautioned, “We run everything we have. There’s no jumping to conclusions. Acquire and assess. Collect and evaluate. Don’t assume anything.”
A uniform agreed with Daphne. “If he’s drying windshields, he’s working for cash and tips. That’s the bottom of the food chain at a car wash. Those guys aren’t on payroll because they don’t last long enough.”
LaMoia added his opinion. “Our boy Jonathan has been at this awhile.”
Daphne said, “He may have worked part-time at several car washes. The car wash is his trolling phase.”
Considering this important, Boldt asked, “Do we have a list of all full-service car washes?”
“We do,” called out a uniformed patrol officer. She waved a piece of paper in the air. A hand snatched it away, and it came down a series of passes to reach Boldt. She said, “Seven that we’ve identified within our jurisdiction, including the two belonging to Lux-Wash.”
“He moves around?” Shoswitz asked.
Daphne spoke up. “Not by choice.” She met Boldt’s eyes. “He carries that face around with him. He’s not comfortable meeting new people, establishing himself in a scene. He moved around a lot as a child. It’s not his way to move around as an adult.” She added, “If it were, he would be gone by now. He’s a loner, a man who does what he pleases. He’s been getting his way a good long time now. That works for and against us. He was feeling quite confident until we got Hall. That upset him. On the other hand, his father’s confession has probably angered him. It’s hard for him to punish his father if we’ve beaten him to it.”
Boldt found the way she seemed so familiar with the suspect unsettling. It was as if she had interrogated Jonathan Garman. Boldt told the gathering, “The plastic mask our young witness thought he saw was this guy’s skin. No known photos, but the reconstruction was crude. He’s believed to be badly disfigured.”
“We initiate surveillance of the three Lux-Washes immediately,” Shoswitz stated, as if this were an original idea. A couple of the detectives suppressed their smirks.
Boldt said to the gathering, “Special Ops will establish clandestine video surveillance on the two Lux-Wash operations within our turf.” He pointed to the young uniform. “You have the addresses,” he stated, passing along the sheet containing the information. “Run this down to Special Ops, fill them in. We need a minimum of two teams. I want audio and video, real time and taped. If this guy so much as clears his throat, I want to know about it. Have them contact me when they’re ready.”
The kid took off at a run. Boldt remembered having that kind of enthusiasm for the job. To LaMoia he said, “Contact Bellingham and ask if we can post this car wash. If not, they cover it for us. But we want that thing under a microscope as soon as possible. Today, not tomorrow, not day after tomorrow.”
“Got it,” LaMoia answered. He spun in his chair, scooted across the small space, and grabbed for a phone. He wasn’t going to leave the room, wasn’t going to take a chance he might miss something. Boldt knew then that the man would make a hell of a squad sergeant. He experienced a sense of relief, and this both surprised him and told him something about himself.
The phones in the room rang regularly. Each time one purred, Boldt hoped it was Elizabeth but then realized he had not forwarded his calls to the briefing room. He ordered one of the uniforms to take care of this for him. The guy seemed thrilled to be given a job.
“Meanwhile,” he said loudly, in order to win the attention of those at the table and beyond, “just to cover our bases, we need employment records for the
other five luxury car washes.”
“He’s at one of the Lux-Washes,” Daphne interrupted, contradicting him.
Boldt overrode her. “All five. The name of every owner, every employee, from the present back six months. No tears,” he added, meaning he would take no excuses for failure.
The deputy prosecuting attorney spoke up for the first time. Samantha Richert was in her early fifties, pale, grayish-blond hair thinning, a not unattractive face on a not unattractive body, but the kind of appearance that got lost quickly in a crowd. She wore black leggings under a gray suit. Richert was herself gray in every way; she had succumbed to the skies a decade or two earlier. She had spent fifteen years as a public defender but had switched sides seven years ago after an inmate beat her up badly in a failed attempt to rape her. She had gray eyes and wore a white gold wedding band that she had taken to wearing some months earlier, though to Boldt’s knowledge she was unmarried and wasn’t even dating.
Richert said, “What evidence do we have against this man?” She looked at Shoswitz, Boldt, and then across the room at Daphne. “I smell a lynching party here. Not these towels, I hope. By your own admission,” she said, looking at Gaynes, “over a thousand of these towels have been given away for free.”
“He’s a suspect is all,” Boldt explained. “All we have to do is justify surveillance.”
“Agreed, and you’re fine there, but we’re going to need some positive linkage. If we’re going to walk this guy all the way to death row, we’re going to need some serious evidence along the way.”
“We’ll get it,” Boldt answered.
Shoswitz watched the events transpiring as would a spectator at a tennis match, his eyes darting left, right, left. Boldt could feel the man’s eagerness to enter the debate and knew that, typical of Shoswitz, he would not wade into the water but jump, causing something of a splash. The lieutenant, like everyone else in that room, was clearly feeling the pressure.
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