Beyond Recognition lbadm-4

by Ridley Pearson

  Without looking back, Boldt broke into a jog and shouted into the hallway, “I’m going to get a description of the pen for you. I’m going to get you the model.”

  Kotch was already at work at the video monitor when Boldt entered the smoke-filled room. The big man waved the air. “Hasn’t anybody here heard that this building has been no smoking for about seven years?”

  The offending cigarette dangled from Kotch’s pinched lips. “So arrest me.” He exhaled.

  On the large monitor, Boldt saw a portion of the grainy video shot inside Garman’s rooming house. “Fast-forward,” Boldt ordered.

  “I was just-”

  Boldt interrupted, repeating the order. He steered him to the section of tape where the contents of the desktop were revealed. First the envelopes, then the cards. In the background, Boldt saw the tin can filled with pens and pencils. He directed the man to freeze-frame.

  “Can you enlarge this?” Boldt asked.

  “We’ve got some cool toys, Sergeant. We can enlarge anything, though we’ll lose resolution pretty fast on a tape this small.”

  “Give me the pens and pencils,” Boldt said, pointing to the screen. Static sparked off the tip of his finger, and Boldt jumped back with the spark.

  “A little tense, are we?” Kotch inquired.

  The can of pens and pencils grew ever larger on the screen. What writing may have been on the pens was lost immediately, but it became quickly apparent that of the few items in the can, three of the pens were the same-button-operated ball points, short and thick. Cheap pens. Just what Lofgrin needed.

  “Can you print that?”

  “It’s not a very clear image. I can doctor it up some.”

  “No time. Print it. It’s gorgeous. It’s exactly what we need.”

  “The pens?” Kotch questioned earnestly. “You’re interested in a bunch of junk pens?”

  “Interested? With those pens, the Scholar just signed his own death warrant.”

  The printer began to sing.

  Boldt smiled for the first time in days.

  66

  Ben pressed his face closer to the chain link fence outside the automated gate to the U-Stor-It facility, his fingers laced through the metal webbing. The Face had evidently used the keypad to open the gate, which was now closed. And although Ben was curious to find out where the guy had gone to, once inside, his eye was not on the endless rows of storage units but on the pay phone outside the door marked OFFICE.

  That pay phone called to him. Up and over the fence, a quick run across the open pavement (that to Ben seemed a mile wide), and over to that phone. Call Daphne. Tell her the Face was here at the U-Stor-It on Airport Way. A hero. Back over the fence. Ride like hell. A plan. Pretty simple at that. Hardest part would be the climb over, and again on the way back, but he could climb sixty-foot trees so why not a ten-foot-high chain link fence?

  He looked around for some options. Airport Way seemed about a thousand miles long in both directions, and with virtually no traffic. The industrial businesses that lined the street were closed, every one of them. He remembered passing an old rundown hotel way back there, but it looked a lot scarier than that telephone only twenty yards away.

  The thing that tore at him was he knew it was wrong. He could feel it clear down in his stomach. Climbing the fence was no different from climbing into that blue pickup truck. He wondered where to draw the line between just doing something wrong and doing it in order to do good. He didn’t need any more trouble. He had plenty. He was all through with trouble.

  He checked for traffic and began to climb.

  It surprised him how loud the fence was. It rattled like a bunch of cans. Scared the life out of him the way it made so much noise. The more noise, the faster he climbed; the faster he climbed, the more noise. His brain told him to slow down, take his time. His legs went like mad. But the faster he went, the worse his toeholds; his feet kept slipping out from under him, leaving him dangling and scraping for purchase, his toes attempting to run up the fence, his fingers pinched against the wire and hurting badly.

  Finally, he reached the very top and threw a leg over, but the fence was cut ragged along the top edge. His pants caught and the wire bit into his thigh, stabbing him, and before he could stop himself he let out a shout that cut off halfway out when his brain kicked in and told him to shut up. He threw himself over to the other side, clawed his way down a few feet, and then bailed out, letting go and dropping to the blacktop.

  What a mess, he thought, sprinting for the phone. A person would have to be deaf not to have heard that. What a stupid jerk! What a mess.

  It was one of those things he knew without needing anyone to tell him: He’d screwed up big time. He’d screwed up so badly that halfway across the vast sea of blacktop separating the fence from the phone, he chickened out and froze, feeling the urgency to get back over that fence and flee. But then his legs moved again and the phone drew ever closer, looking to him like an oasis to a man too long in the desert.

  He scooped a hungry hand down into his pocket and came up empty. No quarter. No way to make the phone call. He punched in 911-a number he was getting kind of used to.

  “Emergency Services,” a man’s voice said.

  “This is Ben … Ben Santori.” He hated using that last name; his father’s name had been Rice, and it seemed more right to him. “You gotta get a message to Daphne Matthews. She’s a cop.”

  “I’m sorry, fella, we don’t-”

  “She’s a cop. Listen to me!” he hissed in a whisper. “She’s at my house: S-A-N-T-O-R-I.” Ben spelled it for him. “Call her. Tell her I followed the guy with the face. The face-remember that. It’s an emergency-” He broke off. It sounded like a garage door. The Face! he thought. There it was again, the same sound, the door closing maybe. He dumped the phone into the cradle and debated sprinting for the fence. The Face had heard him come over that fence; he was coming around to check it out.

  The storage units were built in long rows, Ben closest to the end near the gate. He spied more fence at the far end of the units and wondered if it wouldn’t be safer to try getting over down there, somewhere away from the entrance. He sneaked off along the side of the building, in the building’s shadow, more scared than he had ever been of Jack Santori. He moved a few feet and paused, listening, looking, his heart hurting in his chest.

  And then he saw a man’s long thin shadow stretch across the pavement to his right. It was the Face, out prowling the grounds.

  Out looking for him.

  67

  Bernie Lofgrin came through. An 800 number for the St. Louis pen company’s twenty-four-hour catalog had in their possession a phone number for the manager. Marv Caldwell kept his client information on a laptop computer that he took with him everywhere, even home at night. Along with relevant contact information, the client list also showed what product had been ordered and the quantity and date of the last order.

  Within fifteen minutes of Lofgrin’s first call, the printout from the rooming house video that showed a close-up of three similar pens had been faxed to Caldwell’s laptop and the manager had identified the product as most closely resembling their model AL-440 ballpoint. His client list showed eleven Washington State customers as having ordered AL-440s, four of them in the Seattle area: a golf course north of town, a dry cleaner in Ballard, a self-storage company on Airport Way, and a Japanese restaurant on 5th Avenue.

  Without hesitation, Boldt, sitting at Lofgrin’s side, took the self-storage company. Marv Caldwell had three phone numbers on his client list for U-Stor-It, including the supervisor’s home number. Boldt telephoned that number but got a message machine.

  He double-checked with both of his detectives on surveillance, LaMoia and Gaynes. Neither reported any activity at their locations. He filled them in on the most recent lead and left them both with the address of the storage facility, a nagging sense of urgency getting the better of him. He couldn’t free LaMoia from his post, because he couldn’t put Martin
elli at risk. Likewise, he wanted Gaynes to keep an eye on the rooming house in case Garman returned. He debated calling Shoswitz at home and requesting additional manpower, but knew in advance the lieutenant would want some confirmation of Garman renting at the site before committing any additional manpower or resources. He could practically hear the man saying, “Scout the place and let me know. We’ll reassess at that time.”

  He decided to place the storage facility under surveillance for a few hours, though he didn’t want to drive too close without a first look. He stopped three blocks short on Airport Way and shut down the car’s radio and turned off his cellular phone so it wouldn’t suddenly ring and announce his whereabouts in the middle of his poking around. He left his pager on but switched it to vibrate.

  He parked in a parking lot for a helicopter maintenance company, locked the car, and headed off on foot, the U-Stor-It sign dimly visible a hundred yards ahead. The optimism that had begun with the discovery of the rooming house, and then spread to Lofgrin’s identification of the ink, built to a drumming of adrenaline through his system. He experienced an increasing sense of certainty with each step that brought him closer to the storage facility. Garman could keep his father’s stolen pickup truck there, could have his lab there, or both. Self-store units were the perfect anonymous address. Used in drug deals, as chop shops, and even as body storage in homicides, they proved to be fertile ground for criminal activity of every sort. That Garman might have an unknown quantity of rocket fuel stored there did little to settle Boldt’s nerves.

  He moved along fence lines and detoured into parking lots whenever possible, in an attempt to avoid being seen by traffic on Airport Way on the off-chance Garman was in the area. As distant as it seemed, he couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that Garman was at the facility. The man had not been home in several hours. Without a fire reported, Boldt believed that Daphne might have been right after all: Garman could have taken the bait offered at the car wash. That suggested the possibility-however remote-that he might be preparing for another arson. And where better, Boldt wondered, than at a self-storage facility late at night?

  The telephone rang, filling Daphne with anxiety. Her hand hovered above the cradle. At last, on the fourth ring, she answered. “Hello?”

  “Daphne Matthews, please.”

  She wasn’t sure how to answer. She was playing the roll of Marianne Martinelli, and it occurred to her that Garman might verify his victims by placing a call. How he might know that she was here was beyond her, but she wasn’t going to fall prey to a ruse.

  “My name’s Marianne,” she answered. “May I help you?”

  “Listen, I’m calling for a Daphne Matthews. This is Seattle Communications Center. My name’s Victor.” He gave her the number.

  She knew the number. She cut him off. “This is Matthews,” she answered, her system charged with expectation.

  “Is it or isn’t it? I got a weird message for a Daphne Matthews. And I gotta tell you, I’m not in the habit of playing receptionist, okay?”

  “Lieutenant Matthews, Seattle Police. You can verify that with the department, if you want.”

  “The message was from some kid named Ben San-”

  “Go ahead.” She sat down, her legs no longer capable of supporting her.

  The man read her Ben’s exact words. “We’ve got it on tape, of course,” he added.

  “An address? Do you have an address?” she called out hysterically.

  “Sure do.” He read her the address.

  “Airport Way?” she asked, writing the address onto the table with the only thing available to her: red lipstick. “Is that a business of some sort?”

  “We only show physical locations,” he informed her. He repeated the address for a second time.

  She scribbled the name Victor on the table as well.

  She went out of the Santori home at a full run, not caring who might be watching. The car started effortlessly and her cellular phone engaged. The tires cried out as she shoved the accelerator to the floor. She dialed the number she knew by heart. She wouldn’t request backup from a patrol car, wouldn’t put the boy at risk until she knew what was going on. She needed to talk to him.

  For once she was going to do something right.

  The more Boldt looked at the possibilities, the more adrenaline filled him, the more convinced he was that Garman could very well be at the U-Stor-It. He increased his pace, removed his weapon from its holster, checked its load, and returned it to the leather.

  It was that inspection of the gun that rattled him. With Liz’s illness, the importance of his own health, for the sake of their children, suddenly loomed large. He understood clearly, for the first time, why Liz was urging him to drop the field work. How long had she known about the cancer? How long had she sensed it? Given that his children were home in bed, what was he doing on a deserted stretch of industrial roadway, alone, sneaking up on a storage facility that could be the laboratory of a serial arsonist? Seen in this light, his present situation seemed an act of foolishness. Shoswitz be damned, he thought. Regulations called for backup and Boldt wanted it.

  He pulled into shadow, flipped open his phone, and turned it on. It was the graveyard shift; there was certain to be a number of detectives bored at their desks, counting the minutes. He wanted two pair of plainclothes backup in unmarked cars. He wanted them now-right this minute.

  If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right.

  He closed the phone, feeling better about his decision.

  At that moment, a red Honda blurred past, slowed, and pulled to a stop a quarter mile past the U-Stor-It. Daphne had a red Honda, but for once he uncomfortably had to acknowledge the role of coincidence.

  When a female form hurried from the car, Boldt, recognizing that particular female form even from a hundred yards away, realized his plans had changed again.

  Backup be damned. What the hell was she up to?

  Boldt began to run toward her.

  68

  Ben had cowered in his hiding place while the Face walked over to the fence, grabbed hold, and shook it. It rattled loudly, at which point he glanced around the facility, surveying it. He seemed to know.

  He patrolled the place then like a soldier, walking along the first row of storage units, occasionally leaning an ear against one of the doors, passing not twenty feet from Ben, who held his breath, his one good eye fixed on the man in full concentration. The man with the strange face walked on by, his attention seemingly attached to the storage units. A few minutes later he rounded the far corner, and Ben guessed he was going to check each and every row of units-there had to be ten or fifteen of them total.

  He didn’t dare make his break for the fence with the Face out patrolling. It wasn’t until several minutes later, when he heard the same sound of a garage door opening and shutting, that he decided the man had gone back inside his unit. Ben waited another several minutes, every pore of his skin alert for the slightest activity. Nothing. But then a feeling of dread came over him. What if the garage door opening and shutting for the second time was a trick? What if the man had done it to fool Ben into thinking it was safe to make for the fence? What if that was exactly what he wanted?

  The possibility froze Ben where he was, about dead center between the two fences, both feeling miles away.

  It was only as Daphne’s red Honda pulled past out front-missed the place! — that Ben realized it was time to do something. He ran toward the fence, but only about fifteen feet before stopping, hiding once again in shadow.

  Where was the army of cop cars like in the movies? he wondered. The helicopters? One car? Daphne, alone? Had 911 screwed up the message?

  And what if the man with the Face was in fact in hiding, waiting for whoever had climbed the fence? What if he saw her? What then?

  There was only one thing to do, Ben decided: He had to make his move right away, before the whole thing came apart.

  He couldn’t see her car, but he cut to his r
ight, away from the gate, as far away from his last sighting of the man as possible, around the office, past an unmarked building, around that corner-and straight into a pair of arms that gripped him like a vise. Daphne! he thought. But then his brain quickly adjusted to the strength of those arms, and he looked up into the white, shiny skin and hollow eyes of that face and his world began to spin. A deep blue haze crept in from the edges of his vision, like the end of a cartoon where the screen collapses to a center speck of light. For Ben, the end of that light, the beginning of total darkness, came as a dry wind issued from the throat of the man who held him. “You?” the voice gasped, as if he too had seen a ghost.

  69

  When Boldt crept up on Daphne, he scared her half to death. She lifted off the ground from a squatting position ten yards away from the southeast corner of the storage lot where she hid behind a beat-up U-Haul trailer with two flat tires.

  It took her a full fifteen seconds to recover. She hissed at him angrily, “I might have shot you.”

  Boldt disregarded the comment, his attention fixed on the facility. “I didn’t use the radio,” he said, “so you didn’t pick it up there.”

  “It was Ben,” she explained, solving the puzzle for him. She told him about the call from Emergency Services.

  “He’s in there?” Boldt asked incredulously. The kid seemed to have a knack for trouble, especially where Jonny Garman was concerned.

  She pointed off into the darkness. It took Boldt a moment to spot the bicycle on its side, tucked under another decrepit trailer. He had seen that same bicycle in the shed behind Santori’s. “The metal on the wheels is still warm,” she said, reminding him that she had a lot of cop in her to go along with the psychologist. “He claimed in his message that he had followed Garman here,” she whispered angrily. She seemed ready to cry. Boldt knew that feeling.