Boldt - 03 - No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

  Clements said, “I have little doubt that the intelligent thing to do is to keep as many Adler products on the shelf as possible. We would also like to keep the news media at bay for as long as possible, though we may have lost that battle. The point being—as I think Sergeant Boldt will concur—with these ATM withdrawals, we have our first real chance to trap our Mr. Caulfield.”

  “And we are making some progress there, I think,” Boldt interjected. He told them about the limited success of the time-trap software.

  “So I suggest we advise your public information department to issue a series of no-comments, and that we staple down the tongues of anyone associated with this investigation. If there are no sources, there is no story; it is that simple. This should include our friends at State Health, this infectious diseases lab,” he said to Boldt, and turning to Shoswitz: “And anyone within your division who may be privy to this.” He sipped the drink. “I will work a little while longer here, and by morning I will hopefully be armed with enough of a profile to convince our Captain Rankin of his ineptitude, and the certainty of his own fall from grace should his orders be carried out. Seeing you work as a unit, I believe in you—in all of you—and I must confess to you now that my secondary role in coming here was to act as a kind of spy, if you will, in assessing your abilities to handle this investigation. I hope you will be pleased to know that my initial report and subsequent follow-ups have been glowing, and they will continue to be. But I should warn you that there are those looking over your shoulders, and they will pounce if given half a chance.” Clements sipped more of the Cognac.

  “What about Special Agents?” Boldt asked, spotting an opportunity. He addressed Shoswitz: “What if we requested the Bureau’s assistance with the ATM surveillance? Fifty or even a hundred Special Agents to place in the field? Equal partners, with us drawing on what is admittedly a formidable expertise in ransom situations. This allows them in on perhaps the most critical aspect of the investigation as it now stands, perhaps defusing any later attempts to take over the investigation completely and, at the same time, seems to satisfy a great need of our own, namely a shortage of field personnel.”

  Shoswitz considered this.

  Boldt said, “I don’t mean to put you on the spot—”

  “No, it’s not that,” Shoswitz allowed.

  “Perhaps something to give some consideration to,” Clements said genially. “No hurry. Sleep on it.” Boldt sensed immediately that Clements approved of the suggestion and that it might help his own position in walking a line between the two agencies.

  “I like it,” Shoswitz admitted. “My only real concern,” he directed to Clements, “is that if we let them in a little, do we give it up completely somewhere down the road? This is our town, our citizens, our investigation. We have our own political concerns. The Bureau has two faces: one is cooperation, one is complete control. Surrendering control of this investigation would not go over well, and is not what we want.”

  “I understand. It is one reason I like Sergeant Boldt’s suggestion. Working as equals on the surveillance—and I’m sure that can be arranged, might indeed fend off any …”—he searched for his words—“hostile takeover.” He added, “I can explore such a relationship, if you like.”

  Shoswitz thought a long time, checking with Boldt repeatedly by firing off hot glances in his direction. “If we catch him at an ATM, we all win,” Shoswitz said. It was his way of giving his approval.

  On their way down in the elevator together, Daphne and Boldt agreed to meet on her houseboat for a recap. It was not very far out of the way for Boldt, and he wondered if she wanted someone to escort her inside and make sure the place was empty, and so he agreed. At one-thirty in the morning, she made a pot of herbal tea and poured them each a mugful.

  She began in a tone of voice that placed Boldt on attention. “I completed my affidavit, Striker obtained a warrant, and we made an inquiry with Norwest National to obtain the checking records for New Leaf Foods.” Norwest National was Liz’s bank, renamed after a string of acquisitions, and this was certainly not lost on Daphne, he thought. “I want to see what checks were being written on and around the date of the altering of that State Health report, because I firmly believe someone was paid off, and maybe there’s a paper trail.”

  “I have no objection to that. But my focus remains on Caulfield.”

  “It’s not that,” she interrupted him. “The bank told me that they had already cooperated with us, had already turned over that information to us with no warrants involved. They complained at having to do so again.”

  “Not me,” Boldt admitted.

  “Obviously not me,” she agreed.

  “Danielson,” Boldt said, guessing. “How is it that Caulfield manages to always be where our ATM surveillance teams are not?”

  “Danielson is in bed with him?”

  “Do I believe it? No. Can I rule it out? Also, no. Providing he’s not criminal, what would motivate Chris?”

  “Money?”

  Boldt nodded. “An offer from the tabloids, TV, a book deal, a movie deal—there are a lot of temptations out there for a cop these days. Different than when I was coming up.”

  “Chris, sell out? He’s the department’s number one overachiever.”

  Boldt hesitated before dropping his bomb, feeding Daphne’s earlier suspicions. “What if Taplin was paying him for inside information? What if Taplin had promised him Fowler’s job if Danielson could settle this affair without the publicity certain to surround a police arrest?”

  “Which one of us is the psychologist?” she asked nervously.

  “Do you like it?”

  “I can see it, if that’s what you’re asking. Yes, it’s possible. It explains a hell of a lot of what’s been going on, and it fits with Taplin’s defensive position. Taplin’s name is in and around all of the communication on the New Leaf contamination. You want to look for someone with a lot to lose if Caulfield blew the whistle on State Health, Howard Taplin tops the list. We need Caulfield for more than these murders,” she suggested.

  “We need Caulfield, period,” Boldt said.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I READ ABOUT THE TWO BOYS YOU KILLED.

  AND YOUR FRIENDS WITH GUNS

  SHOULD NOT WANDER THE WOODS.

  YOU JUST WON’T LISTEN, WILL YOU?

  I MEANT WHAT I TOLD YOU—YOU WILL PAY.

  SOONER THAN LATER.

  AND MORE WILL DIE UNTIL YOU DO.

  MANY MORE.

  Two newspaper articles were included at the bottom of the fax—one about the boys, and one, the mysterious murder in Golden Gardens Park. Technical Services informed Boldt that the articles had been scanned into a computer and pasted into the fax, which had been transmitted electronically from a pay phone on a side street near the King-dome. This was all supposed to mean something to Boldt, but it did not. His entire interest lay with the words at the top of this page, and the implication that Clements was right: Harry Caulfield was running out of patience. Time was almost up.

  Like water seeking its own level, Boldt sought out the evidence, calling Bernie Lofgrin and complaining to him about the delay in the FBI report on the Longview Farms evidence. Lofgrin suggested he lodge the complaint with Clements; Boldt did so, and Clements promised to do what he could.

  For his part, Clements believed he had convinced Captain Rankin to rescind the Adler recall that he had threatened, though the psychiatrist admitted to Boldt that Rankin was “a difficult bastard to read.”

  There was a lot of talk and little action. Public Information called repeatedly, frustrated by a press corps that sensed a much bigger story than two boys dying in a tree house. Boldt issued a string of denials and no-comments but could see the inevitable coming. The story was going to break, and when it did there would be a recall. According to Clements, if anything was certain to push Caulfield into following through on his threat of mass murder, it was this combination of events.

  MANY MORE.

  Bo
ldt could not get the words out of his head. Again he waited for his phone to ring with the news of more murders. Again his mood went sour and his squad steered clear of him. Again his appetite deserted him. His bowels bled, and the Maalox did nothing more than make his breath smell like lemon creme.

  He did a quick turnaround at the dinner hour—refusing food, but swallowing down a Zantac—and prepared to join Ted Perch at NetLinQ where tonight, for the first time, Lucille Guillard’s monitoring of the Pac-West ATM network had been brought on board. The time-trap software had been expanded to cover 60 percent of the NetLinQ system.

  Liz was ironing a pleated skirt for the following morning.

  “I owe you a champagne dinner for that software,” he told her.

  “Make it in Rome and you have a deal.”

  “Rome it is.”

  She laughed.

  In the corner by the dryer was piled a gigantic stack of clean laundry that was his responsibility to iron, and he looked away from it because it made him feel guilty to see so much of it. In his exhausted state, it seemed to him a physical manifestation representing his total failure as a father and husband.

  “If you leave, what do I tell poor Michael Striker?”

  “What about Striker?” His shirt tucked in, he leaned for a kiss.

  “He called when you were in the bathroom. Said he was coming by. He was checking to see that you were here, and I told him you were.” She tugged at the skirt and said down to the ironing board, “My guess is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with work. He feels a lot closer to you than you do to him.” She looked up at him. “That’s true of a lot of your friends, you know.”

  He knew her well enough to know when she was concealing something from him. “Liz?”

  She said calmly, “I thought that he probably wanted to talk to you about whichever detective of yours is screwing Elaine.”

  “What!” Boldt bumped the ironing board, and the spray bottle fell to the floor. Miles, who should have been in bed two hours earlier, began pounding the floor with a spatula. Up until that moment, his father had not realized the boy was on the other side of the inverted laundry basket, although it helped to explain Liz’s constant distraction, Boldt realized. This discovery that he had overlooked his son’s presence for the last five minutes hit him hard. Boldt asked Liz, “Are you sure about this?” knowing that she had to be. Liz was not a gossip.

  “I’m sure he’s coming over.” She added, “And it’s kind of an odd time to talk shop. Are you telling me you really hadn’t heard anything?”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “No. Only that he’s fifth floor and that he’s on your squad. They met when whoever it is came knocking on the front door one Saturday afternoon looking for Michael’s approval for a warrant—something like that. Only Michael was on the back nine and Elaine was feeling pretty mad at him for spending his weekend with a golf club, and maybe she was feeling a little bit creamy as well, and anyway: She jumped your boy’s bones. The way Suzie tells it, makes Elaine sound like she knows how to pick them. Evidently, your boy is a rocket in the sack. And it didn’t end with the back nine either—just in case he asks. It’s a near-regular thing now.”

  “LaMoia?”

  She laughed. “That’s exactly who I guessed,” she admitted. “Great minds.”

  Boldt had often accused Liz of having the hots for LaMoia, though it had always been teasing.

  “Suzie doesn’t know who the mystery man is, only that it’s incredibly hot sex and that Elaine claims to be in one of those self-discovery phases.”

  Liz had had her self-discovery a few years earlier, though they never discussed it anymore.

  “Jesus. Razor will kill the guy if he finds out. Talk about having a short fuse.”

  “Laws of nature, love. Survival of the fittest, and all that. We have no place in this.”

  “Can’t you talk to Elaine?”

  “Me? I hardly know Elaine. And besides, Suzie promised she wouldn’t tell a soul, so I’d just be getting her in trouble. If Michael says anything about it to you, you had better look surprised, buster.”

  “I am surprised.”

  “Laws of nature.”

  “I can’t hang around for him,” Boldt complained.

  “Oh no you don’t. You’re not sticking me with him.” She suggested, “Why don’t you put ‘himself’ to bed. He’s up late as it is.”

  Boldt spent the next twenty minutes with his son. He changed the boy’s diapers—knowing they neared the day when they could do without—gave him a quick sponge bath with a warm hand towel, and had another of those limited-vocabulary conversations with him that amounted to listing quite a few nouns and the occasional verb: “Wa” meant both “water” and “wash”; “bunky” meant “bunny”; and “mama” meant that it eventually required Liz alongside to coax him to give sleep a try. They returned to the laundry room, where Liz was still ironing the same skirt. Clearly sensing a comment coming, she said, “I’m not very good with pleats.” And when Boldt offered to give it a try, she kissed him on the cheek and started folding what was just coming out of the dryer.

  As he ironed, watching her fold the clothes, he wondered if she felt envious of an Elaine Striker with her young lover, the fawning and attention, and the hot-blooded romance. He felt tempted to ask, but decided against it. There were some things a husband should not know.

  They hadn’t talked about her pregnancy in days, so he asked her about it, but she immediately changed subjects, mentioning something about a yoga class she wanted to attend, and he was reminded of his wife’s superstition about pregnancy in the first trimester.

  Striker pulled up out front just as Boldt held the freshly ironed skirt at his waist and asked, “What do you think?”

  “You’d look better in something brown, and below the knee,” Liz fired back, deadpan.

  Striker’s steel claw clicked like a telegraph key, and he circled the small front porch like a dog searching for a spot to lie down. “Awfully late for you,” Boldt observed, trying to initiate some kind of dialogue. Watching a colleague bounce off the railing of his front porch was not great sport. He glanced at his watch, impatient to get downtown. An air force of small black bugs convened around the porch light.

  Striker explained, “I didn’t want you to think that I had let you down on this cellular phone thing. All three companies searched their calling logs for a call placed to Adler’s home number, and all came up blank. Since we’re pretty confident about how this went down—Caulfield making the call while up in that tree—I pushed hard for some results, and two of the companies actually tried the search for a second time, but they still came up dry. About an hour ago I talked to a supervisor in data control and she said their lack of record could be explained technically, but I didn’t ask.”

  “He burned us,” Boldt summarized.

  “It looks like that, yes.”

  Striker stared, his eyes dead and distant, his prosthesis chattering like cold teeth.

  Boldt asked, “So? You heading downtown?”

  Striker’s face contorted into an unforgiving knot.

  “Razor?”

  “Better than going home,” Striker said.

  “Problems?” Boldt asked as innocently as possible.

  “She’s never where she says she is, Lou. And she’s smelling a little too good these days when she leaves the house. She’s a little too happy. You know? And worse, her friends are doing a shitty job of covering for her. It’s like everyone knows the secret but me. But eventually you figure it out.”

  Striker met eyes with Boldt, who saw the anger and hurt in his friend’s expression and offered what he hoped was good advice. “Forgive her, Razor. In the long run, it’s the only thing that works.”

  He said, “You’ve been there, right?”

  “Right,” Boldt confirmed. “I feel for you, buddy—I want you to know that. But at the same time, this stuff happens to all of us. And sometimes what we think is happening isn’t ha
ppening at all. It’s pretty easy to allow your emotions to give false reports.”

  “She’s definitely screwing someone,” he said bluntly, giving in to the anger. Chewing his upper lip, eyes downcast, he repeated, “She’s screwing someone—and in our bed—in my bed, if you can believe that shit!” He turned away. “And I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”

  “Have you confronted her?”

  Striker looked over with tears in his eyes. He was pale and his nostrils flared as he spoke. “I’ll knock her head off.”

  “Razor … You want to think before you do anything. On second thought, maybe it’s better you don’t confront her,” he said, backtracking. “Maybe it’s better if you do some counseling together. Work this thing out with a professional. Hell, I’m no professional.”

  “In my own fucking bed!”

  No pun intended. “Maybe it’s not like that,” Boldt tested. He wondered if Liz was right about the lover being one of Boldt’s detectives. He hoped not. He also hoped that Striker didn’t know anything about who it was, did not have a name, because where Striker might restrain himself from hitting his own wife, he would go after her lover with a vengeance. Boldt had no doubt about that. “Listen, I need you on this investigation,” Boldt said honestly, selfishly. “You want to watch yourself.”

  “You want to talk about watching?” Striker asked, following his own skewed logic. “I can picture her, you know, in the act with him. Enjoying it. Getting off. She used to really get off, you know? Not so much anymore—pretty bored, really. I bet she gets off with him.” He grew paler. His eyes fixed on a stationary object and his lower lip trembled. Boldt could hear the bugs striking the glass bulb around the light. Down the street someone had their television too loud. He felt it weird to have this discussion with a laugh track running faintly in the background.

  Striker snapped his head toward Boldt so hard that his neck cracked loudly. “What the hell did you do when you found out Liz … you know?”