Boldt - 03 - No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

  The door hissed open.

  Boldt recognized the agent from the live surveillance video. She boarded first, and took several seconds to come up with the right amount of money. Then Cornelia Uli stepped up and called out, “Excuse me!” to the woman agent. Boldt’s heart pounded heavily. He wanted that door closed, and Uli trapped inside the bus. The agent turned. “Do you have change?” Uli asked. She waved a crisp twenty-dollar bill, and Boldt realized this had come from the cash machine. The woman agent seemed paralyzed.

  Boldt silently urged the driver to shut the door.

  The younger man sitting ahead of Boldt jumped up and said, “I do,” fishing his wallet from his back pocket. He gave her an assortment of bills, accepting the twenty from her, and Uli fed one of the ones into the driver’s pay machine. Uli asked the driver, a KCP man, about the route. Fortunately, someone had thought ahead to have a local in the driver’s seat, and the man informed her about the line change that Boldt had just mentioned at the outset.

  Everyone took separate seats.

  The door hissed closed.

  Boldt’s sense of tension increased with every mile. His stomach grumbled noisily. He glanced up just once to look at her. No staring. She wore tight-fitting jeans and that black leather jacket. She had brown eyes, no makeup, and full, pouty lips. She scratched the back of her neck, and when she did this, Boldt’s first reaction was that he had seen this woman before, somewhere other than in the surveillance video, and this continued to trouble him as the bus drove on.

  The driver announced a stop, and handled the bus poorly as they slowed. Boldt faced himself so that he looked out a window, when in fact he was using the reflection to watch the suspect’s profile. If she moved toward the rear exit door, he intended to follow. There was no one at this stop, and without a call signal, the front door never opened. The bus gained speed and continued on.

  At the third stop, an agent disembarked. Another boarded, a pretty woman: FBI, with a simple face and inquisitive eyes. She sat directly across from Uli, who occupied one of the front wall benches. This agent took a look around for any leftover papers, then pulled out a nail file and went to work on her nails.

  As a signal of their identity, all agents had been instructed to touch their left ear prior to boarding, which was why Boldt occupied a seat on the right side of the bus—and he was grateful that Uli had her back to this same side. In this way, Boldt knew ahead of time the status of his passengers. At the fourth stop, a civilian boarded: a portly, toothless man. He showed his pass and asked the driver, “So where’s Danny tonight?”

  The driver answered, “You’re stuck with me.”

  “Never seen you before,” the man said.

  In the window’s reflection, Boldt studied Uli’s response. She seemed to take no notice. The driver handled himself well, though the bus poorly. He lunged ahead too quickly, sending the teetering newcomer charging down the aisle, barely keeping his balance. He smelled of cigarettes and booze as he passed. “Nice job!” he hollered. He took a seat immediately behind Boldt, which made the sergeant uncomfortable. He leaned forward over Boldt’s shoulder and said, “Got a rookie behind the wheel, friend. I can drive blindfolded better than that. Hmm?”

  Boldt made a point of not engaging in any conversation. This man had the feel of a nonstop talker, and that was the last thing he wanted at this point. One of the agents, sensing this, rose and came to this man’s seat. “You mind?” he asked, and without awaiting a response, took the aisle seat next to this man and started him talking, taking him away from pestering Boldt.

  The bus motored along, whining and hissing, one red light to the next. The following bus stop was again void of passengers. At the next, another agent disembarked. The one after that, two more boarded—both agents.

  The bus driver announced the stop. He turned to Uli and said, “Here’s your connection.” Boldt hesitated. He did not want to commit to leaving the bus until he was sure Uli was also.

  As the bus slowed, she rose. Boldt came out of his seat and headed for the front door. Three of the others joined him. They all disembarked, receiving transfers from the driver. They joined two others at this stop. Boldt guessed them both as agents, though there was no easy way for either to offer the signal, so he could not be certain. The bus drove away.

  The night was calm, the air warm. Above them in the darkness two white seagulls swooped over the street and one cried at the other, then they disappeared. Two of the agents discussed a Mariners game. The woman with the paperback found some street light and opened her book. Boldt said to one of the strangers, “Is this the line going into the city?” This man scratched his ear as he thought about it. “International district and downtown,” he said. “You want the U, you gotta change downtown.”

  Boldt thanked him.

  Cornelia Uli asked the woman next to her for the time. She looked restless, and the way she guarded her purse, Boldt assumed it contained the ransom money.

  By now a police car would have pulled alongside Uli’s Datsun. On the off-chance Caulfield was coming for the car while Uli headed home, this was handled in a straightforward manner. The patrolman wrote up the citation and called in a tow truck. The truck took ten minutes to arrive. It would be towed via a combination of the highway and streets—intentionally avoiding the bus route—to the police garage, where it would be given the full treatment by the grease-monkey division of Bernie Lofgrin’s ID unit.

  The bus pulled up to the stop. The driver was cleaning wax out of his left ear with his index finger. As Boldt climbed aboard and showed his transfer, the driver met eyes with him, revealing absolutely nothing in his face, but in the eyes themselves there was a keen energy.

  Bobbie Gaynes was in the fifth seat back.

  There were six others on the bus, all SPD. Seeing these familiar faces, Boldt felt an immediate sense of relief. No matter how much he respected the other agencies assisting him, nothing felt quite as good as seeing family again.

  Uli took the first seat. It faced the front window. The bus bounced over broken roads and sagged through dips and rounded corners clumsily, cutting them a little too tight.

  As it slowed to the third stop, Boldt looked out the window and felt a rush of heat up his spine. There were two people waiting for this bus. One of them was Digger Shupe, a retired Major Crimes detective. He would recognize at least half the faces on this bus. The other man Boldt did not recognize, and there was no move toward the left ear. He carried a pair of grocery bags in his arms.

  The doors opened and Digger Shupe climbed aboard. The driver shot Boldt one quick, intense look, and then averted his own face so that Shupe would not recognize him. An electricity sparked inside the bus. The two new passengers paid, and as Shupe looked up and saw Boldt he said, “Well, I’ll be damned—” But the driver hit the gas, the brake, and the gas again, and sent the two newcomers sailing. Danny Levin feigned an attempt to help Digger Shupe to his feet, and in the process bent and pressed his lips close to the man’s ear, and Boldt saw him say something. Shupe’s head nodded, and when he climbed to his feet and collected himself, he walked to the rear of the bus, ever the professional, and took his seat.

  The bus driver apologized profusely, especially to the man who had spilled his groceries. The groceries were gathered up, and this man took a seat by Bobbie Gaynes. The bus set off.

  Two stops later Boldt saw LaMoia waiting in the shelter, and again felt a sense of relief to see one of his own people. There was a push to the back as several of the agents selected this stop to disembark.

  LaMoia paid, walked right up to the suspect, and sat down next to her. Boldt, two seats back, felt his stomach roll. Only LaMoia would hit on a suspect.

  “Finally some nice weather,” LaMoia said to her.

  She offered him a weak smile.

  “Of course, summers are the best anyway,” he said.

  No reply.

  “You do any windsurfing?” he asked her.

  She shook her head, but smiled a li
ttle at the attention he gave her.

  “Terrific sport,” he told her. “Better on the lakes because they’re not as cold. Spend any time on the lakes, do you?”

  She looked ahead, paying him no mind.

  “Do you ride?” he asked. “The jacket … Is that a fashion statement, or do you ride?”

  “A Sportster.”

  “A Harley. I can’t believe this! You ride a Harley?”

  Boldt turned to the window and smiled to himself. They passed another stop, the driver swooping in but not stopping.

  Cornelia Uli peered out the window, reached up, and signaled the driver with the obnoxious electronic call.

  Again Boldt felt the tension inside the bus, despite the passive faces and the casual expressions.

  One hundred yards to go.

  “This your stop?” LaMoia asked, indicating by body language that he could get out of her way.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  LaMoia stood.

  The driver’s eyes caught Boldt in the rearview mirror. He gave a faint nod, gripped the stainless steel bar tightly, and reached in for his weapon.

  The bus slowed toward the stop, then pulled a power turn to the left and sent Cornelia Uli hard up against the window and wall. LaMoia, reacting with the reflexes of a cat, planted his shield practically on her nose, spun her around violently, and pinned her, shouting: “Seattle Police! You are under arrest! Do not move! Don’t do it!” he added, driving his knee into the small of her back to hold her steady.

  The bus pulled off into a vacant lot.

  Cornelia Uli screamed for help and glanced over her shoulder, only to be faced with the sight of a half-dozen handguns trained onto her. Some of the agents were shielded by the seats, some standing and fully exposed. A set of handcuffs clicked onto her wrist. “You fuckhead!” she shouted at LaMoia, wiggling to break free.

  “The purse!” Boldt shouted.

  An agent dropped to her knees and scouted under the seat.

  “The purse,” Boldt repeated, worried now. The evidence: the money, the cash card. He saw LaMoia, still holding the suspect, looking everywhere for the all-important purse. Two others now searched the floor of the bus. One came up slowly, met eyes with Boldt, and hoisted it in the air. The purse.

  A cheer went up spontaneously.

  Boldt shouted out loudly, “Drive this thing downtown.”

  LaMoia added, “And watch the goddamn brakes!”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Deputy prosecuting attorney Penny Smyth was on her third cup of coffee. She winced every time she sipped the police brew, but took it as medicine against the hour of 2:00 A.M. On the other side of the one-way glass, a handcuffed Cornelia Uli sat at the Box’s cigarette-marred table between the NO SMOKING sign and the ashtray. The suspect looked restless and agitated. Looking at her, Daphne said, “She’s going to talk, this one.”

  “You both know the rules,” Smyth said. “I don’t have to tell you the rules, and I’m sure as hell not coming in there with you, or you might have to observe them.” The one area in which police were allowed a significant amount of latitude was in the interrogation of suspects. The interrogating officer could blatantly lie and make as many false promises as he or she wished, so long as the suspect kept talking. Silence and time were a suspect’s only real defense in the opening twenty-four hours of confinement. A suspect could demand a court-appointed attorney, but the officer did not have to deliver that attorney for as long as the suspect continued to communicate. This being an arresting officer’s only clear opportunity to quickly clear a case, many detectives had perfected the interrogation, promoting it to an art form. As a team, Daphne Matthews and Lou Boldt were among the best, and they were known on the fifth floor as “Sweet and Sour.”

  Smyth explained, “She has a long pink sheet, which at twenty-one speaks volumes. Convictions on gang activity, drugs, check kiting. Arrests, but no charges, on a handful of others, including second-degree murder. She has seen a lot of us. I’d keep that in mind. We’ve got her cold on this extortion, and with the connection to the threats and the murders, maybe on an accessory charge. If she doesn’t talk, she may be going away forever. That’s your carrot and whip.”

  The Box smelled of human fear. They could wash it, even repaint it, but within a week it smelled the same. Like an old worn-down railroad terminal, it was the end of the line, the last stop. For many who entered these walls, this was their last time in civilian clothes for years to come. The more experienced—the guilty—knew this. No matter his anger at what crime a suspect had committed, Boldt rarely entered this place without pity lurking somewhere in his heart. He had to wonder what events in people’s lives had combined to deposit them here in this cheerless, vapid, dreary space, where a bulldog of an overworked public servant went to work on them like a butcher with a sharp knife.

  She might have been pretty once, he thought. But the streets had aged her prematurely, drying her skin and creasing her eyes and placing torment and fear inside so that it bubbled out in a twitchy nervousness that kept Boldt on edge.

  Daphne pulled up a chair. Boldt remained standing. Sweet and Sour got down to business. Daphne stared at the young woman. Boldt paced the tight room, in long, heavy strides, hands clasped behind his back. Neither spoke. They waited out their suspect, who finally said, “I want an attorney.”

  “An attorney?” he asked. To Daphne he said, “She wants an attorney.”

  “I’ll make a note of that.”

  “Now.”

  “You want your attorney now?” Boldt asked.

  “I just said so.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want? Because I was about to give you a chance to skate this whole mess you’re in. And if you insist that I get you an attorney, well then, hey! that’s all she wrote. An attorney is yours, and I’ll see you in court. On the other hand, if you keep you wits about you, Ms. Cornelia Uli, I might turn out to be your knight in shining armor.”

  “Fat chance.”

  “She called me fat.”

  “You look all right to me,” Daphne said.

  “What? You’re a comedy team? I want an attorney.”

  “And we will assign you one, Cornelia. It’s taken care of.” To Daphne, Boldt said, “You wrote it down, right?”

  “It’s right here,” she informed him, pointing to her stenographer’s pad.

  “It’s right there,” Boldt told the suspect. “It’s taken care of.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He slapped the table with an incredible force. Uli jumped back. Daphne did not flinch. “Listen to me!” he bellowed. “I am your last chance.” Effecting a noticeable calm, he said, “You play or you pay. It’s that simple. You know what we’ve got you on? Do you know what we intend to charge you with?” To Daphne he said, “Go ahead, tell her.” Boldt checked his watch. Two-thirty. He could not remember ever feeling this tired. Any minute LaMoia should have the preliminary results of the search of Uli’s loft apartment. Boldt had been present when a SWAT team had kicked the place—hoping for Caulfield—but he had left the detail work for the ID unit and LaMoia.

  Daphne read an incredible list of charges, including extortion and concluding with first-degree murder.

  When this final charge was read, Uli’s eyes flashed darkly between them and she said, “That’s bullshit.”

  “She doesn’t know,” Boldt told Daphne. “We’re supposed to believe that this woman is some innocent runner, some accomplice, when in fact we know it was her all along.” To Uli he said, “The account number is listed in one of the threats, young lady. That is a direct connection to you and these threats, to you and the poisoning deaths of ten individuals. Ten. And believe me, if you’re thinking you will somehow get life instead of lethal injection, you have not been paying attention to what’s been going on out at Walla Walla. This state is in the killing mood, Ms. Uli. And crimes like this are exactly the cases that I’m talking about.”

  “On the other hand,” Daphne said, before Uli could issue
the prerequisite string of denials, “if you have something to tell us, your cooperation might keep you off death row.”

  “It might let you walk out of here,” Boldt said.

  “She’s not that smart,” Daphne told him. “Girls like this always think they know better than us,” and to Uli, “which is bizarre to me, since we spend all of our time putting people like you away. And people like you spend all of their time behind bars. Isn’t that strange?”

  “I want an attorney.”

  Daphne said to Boldt, “I told you she’s not that smart. She can’t even remember that I already made a note of that.”

  Boldt said seriously, “You can probably sell sex to the guards for cigarettes. I hear that oral sex is worth a pack. The real thing, a carton. At least for a couple of years you can. You have a nice body. You’re young. But others come along younger than you. And then it gets tough in there, because the guards are through with you. We try to police that, you know. We don’t like it. But it’s the prisoners who keep it going. They get a little desperate in there. Women liking other women. Are you into that stuff?”

  “She’s into it all,” Daphne said.

  “Fuck you!”

  “She understands the topic,” Boldt said.

  “Definitely,” Daphne replied.

  Boldt looked at his watch again. “I’m tired, how ‘bout you?” he asked Daphne.

  “Exhausted.”

  “She’s not going to cooperate.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “Who says?” asked Cornelia Uli.

  Boldt told her, “You’re not exactly being forthcoming here, Cornelia.”

  “Can I stand up?” the suspect asked.

  “Please,” Boldt said.

  “I think better on my feet,” she said.

  “By all means, think better,” Boldt encouraged.

  She wandered the small room for a few minutes, and after a short time Boldt observed that Daphne was tracking her with an increased intensity and interest. Confusion knitted the psychologist’s brow, and she squinted, saying suddenly to the suspect, “Put your arms over your head again. Like you just had them.” Uli stopped walking the floor. “Clasp your hands over your head.”