The Body of David Hayes

by Ridley Pearson

  “Danny Foreman said if you’re our line of defense, heaven help the enemy.”

  “Got that right.” LaMoia understood when to rescue Boldt from his own misgivings. “Talk to me about Foreskin.” LaMoia had nicknames for everyone.

  “I’ve got some problems of my own,” Boldt said, grateful for the bridge LaMoia offered him. “One I could use your help on.”

  “Go.”

  Boldt explained his situation-Miles needing to be picked up, and the greater need of finding Liz. He didn’t go into details on Liz’s current situation or the case in general because LaMoia would have picked up most of it already. The ferry surveillance had involved too many people not to get talked up in the department.

  “I can cut out of here in ten. I’ll hit all the hot spots, though I can’t exactly see Mrs. B. in a fern bar.”

  “I was thinking you could check with Danny Foreman. You should know he’s fresh out of the hospital himself. Make up some excuse that you screwed up surveillance on my wife and don’t want me finding out, and wondered if he knew her ten-twenty.”

  “Me screwing up. That would fit. That’s good cover.”

  It was generous of him; LaMoia was no screwup. But his reputation as a rogue player would make just about anything he said believable. Ironically, Foreman, of all people, a class-A Lone Ranger, would understand his situation.

  Clearly deeply concerned, a different LaMoia asked, “How worried are we here, Sarge?”

  “There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s in play. Their first mark, a guy named LaRossa, a friend of ours through the bank, keeled over of a heart attack this morning and is in Intensive Care. The way it plays for me is that the tune-up that Hayes took-this is the night we found Foreman lying in the bushes outside that trailer-was to win some cooperation from him. He ends up accessing a safe-deposit box, where he’d probably hid the software that had cloaked the embezzled money. That software gets passed to LaRossa by whoever’s now running Hayes, because LaRossa can get to the bank’s computers. LaRossa didn’t get the job done for them, so Liz moves to the top of their list. She, too, has access to the bank computers. And now she’s missing.”

  “That sounds like something worth a little more than a chat with Foreskin.”

  “Danny’s lead on this-at least in his mind he is-and he’s more than a little crazy with it. It’s all tied up with Darlene for him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was running Liz in some covert op that only he knows about.”

  “Peachy.”

  “That’s why I think we look there first.”

  “Got it.” LaMoia hesitated before asking the obvious. “And if that’s not happening?”

  “Let me get the kids home. Get them safe. You check with Danny. Then we’ll worry about the next phase, if there is one.” Boldt emphasized, “Lean on him, John. We don’t want to waste resources and energy if Danny’s hiding something from us.”

  “Me and Foreskin, we got some history, Sarge. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  Bruce Lavin met Boldt out on the curb, Miles in tow. As Miles climbed in the back and buckled himself in, the piano teacher came around and stepped up to Boldt’s window. Boldt prepared himself to be lectured, something he didn’t need right then.

  “We need to talk.” Lavin spoke in a whisper, an urgency, his body language punctuating his words. He was a small man with wild, curly hair and piercing eyes. His voice crackled like the sound of a cheap radio.

  “Is there a problem?” Boldt spun around to look at Miles so his son could feel the depth of his concern. Miles had been endlessly briefed about the level of privilege these lessons represented.

  “Quite the contrary,” Lavin said, his edgy voice still hushed. “Your son, Lieutenant… your boy… is perhaps the most musically gifted child I’ve ever taught, and believe me,” said the teacher, “I’ve taught plenty. He needs testing-mathematically, musically. If he is what I think he is, although I’d be honored to work with him, you can and should do better.”

  Boldt felt a father’s pride engulf him. A child prodigy. He’d seen the same aptitude at home, which had inspired these lessons in the first place. He’d been so prepared for Lavin’s abuse about bad parenting that this complete reversal caught him off guard. His throat constricted and he choked out, “You can arrange the testing?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll have to speak to my wife. Is it expensive?”

  “Wickedly. As is Juilliard,” the man said, an impish grin satisfying his sense of humor. “And that may be where he’s headed someday.”

  “Sorry about the pickup,” Boldt said. “We must have gotten our wires crossed.”

  Lavin patted him on the arm-a shocking gesture from what Boldt knew of him-waved good-bye into the backseat, and walked back into the house.

  Boldt sat motionless, the tingling sensation only now receding, well aware that this was one of those moments in life he would never forget-a minute-long conversation through a car window. An entirely new world unfolding before him: his son, a musical wizard.

  He couldn’t wait to tell Liz.

  By midnight, Boldt, LaMoia, Bobbie Gaynes, and Daphne Matthews had all made calls, had driven the streets, had checked with Liz’s friends. LaMoia reported that he’d spoken to Danny Foreman, who had professed to know nothing of Liz’s whereabouts. “But the way he said it, Sarge. He may not be lying, but he isn’t solid. Something’s up with him.” Boldt had the same feeling about Foreman, though there wasn’t much to be done about it. Initiating anything like a formal complaint would require a good deal more than suspicion and bad feelings.

  The Boldt kitchen served as the command center, with Boldt acting as both dispatcher and babysitter.

  Memories of her imposed themselves, an involuntary reaction to her absence: making a vegetable face for the kids, cucumber eyes, orange mouth. Driving Miles and Sarah amid fits of laughter; to school, to church. Arriving to bed playful and daring. A woman who attacked life, sometimes to the detriment of her popularity. A woman unafraid. Tested, by cancer, by faith, by degrees. Her resolute composure inspired him like wind to a sailor. Not long ago she had suggested that should he want to retire from policing and take up his jazz piano full-time, she would support such a decision even if it meant downscaling their lifestyle. A partner, in full.

  Matthews and Boldt shared a volatile history as co-workers who had, for a single night, been much more. The lingering sensations of that night had carried forward years into their relationship. With Matthews now testing a live-in arrangement with LaMoia-no two more opposite people existed on earth, in Boldt’s opinion-new lines had been drawn. The teasing and subtle flirtation was gone for now, and that somehow didn’t feel right. Boldt considered her his closest female friend after Liz, a person he could share himself with honestly. There was no end to his appreciation for her and what she gave back to him. But the spark that existed there now flickered instead of glowed.

  Matthews stopped by the house, running out of ideas of where to find Liz. A blue Gore-Tex rain jacket, tight jeans, and a crisp white shirt. Her hair damp, but not stringy. A little more fatigue around her eyes than her office hour cosmetics allowed. She stood just inside the kitchen door, having turned down a chair, not wanting to stay. Boldt knew this had more to do with the current state of their friendship-tested by her decision to be with LaMoia-than it did her schedule. They knew each other a little too well.

  When she brought up the unmentionable, he thought it so appropriate to come from her. Only she could ask him such a thing.

  Daphne asked, “Have you tried her doctor-the hospital?”

  “I’m still hoping Foreman knows where she is.”

  “Lou? Have you checked? Have you called?”

  “Is that the psychologist or the friend asking?”

  She fired back, “Is that the detective or the husband asking?” her skill at twisting things around second only to her ability to keep a straight face.

  “I have not.”

  “Listen, Lou
-”

  “Don’t!” he said sharply. “She would have told me. That’s not something she would hide.”

  “You have to turn cell phones off in hospitals,” she explained, repeating an argument he’d given Liz earlier that same day. Emotional mirrors. “Things drag out and take twice as long as you thought.”

  “She and I went over the arrangements for picking up the kids twice. This is not something she would have forgotten to do. It’s not that it’s just unlike her; it’s impossible.”

  “Maybe the first place you should have called was her doctor.”

  He checked his watch to see that only a few minutes had passed since his last check. He’d never learned how to wait well. He assigned other people to wait in place of him; he ordered people to wait for him; but he did not wait himself.

  “Now it’s midnight, and you’re not going to reach her doctor even if you tried. And you know that,” she said, interpreting his expression.

  Busted.

  “You did this intentionally, didn’t you? Waited like this?”

  “She turns her phone off when she’s praying, too,” he said. “She could have gone to a reading room, a library, any place quiet.”

  “And you believe that.” Daphne made it a statement, just to sting him.

  When a pair of headlights bumped into the driveway at 12:15, and they both identified Liz’s minivan, Daphne offered to leave by the front door, her car parked out on the curb. She said, “I’ll call off the others,” already moving for the front door. “She won’t be thrilled to discover you called out the bloodhounds. I’ll make sure it’s zipped up on our end, and left between the two of you to handle as you want.” She’d reached the front door, talking softly for the benefit of the sleeping kids. Daphne could juggle a dozen balls at once while riding a unicycle.

  “I owe you,” he called out.

  “Shut up.” She closed the front door quietly behind her.

  Boldt was about to charge out back when he thought better of it, schooling himself to show concern, not anger. Waiting up for her was fine-expected even. Attacking her was unforgivable.

  Five long minutes passed and Liz had still not appeared. Boldt finally succumbed and headed outside. On the back steps, he stopped abruptly as the garage door pushed open and Liz staggered out.

  As drunk as a skid-row bum.

  Liz sputtered as she walked unsteadily forward, unable to enunciate, barely able to walk. “If I don’t pee in about five seconds… ” She looked up, took in Boldt as if just now noticing him, and cocked her head, saying, “Oh, shit.” She crushed a hydrangea on her way to hoisting her skirt and running her panties down to her ankles. She squatted right there and urinated in the garden, then rocked forward, falling onto her knees, and vomited.

  He’d nursed her through the evils of chemotherapy, the drain of radiation, the indignities brought on by childbirth, but he’d never seen her stone-cold drunk. Inside the back door he got her out of her suit coat and shirt, both messed with vomit, and left them at the top of the stairs for the basement laundry. He undressed her in the bedroom and placed her sitting up in the tub with a warm shower running. She never said a word, resigned to a dull, stupefied embarrassment. She threw up again in the tub, and yet again into the toilet after he made her drink a full glass of water. When the water finally stayed down, he got three more glasses into her as well, shunning the aspirin that would have helped a good deal but went against her convictions.

  She passed out in bed as her head hit the pillow. Boldt stayed awake another forty minutes, adrenalized, making sure she slept on her side in case she vomited in her sleep. He drifted off some time past three.

  When Boldt awoke to Miles shaking him at 7 A.M., Liz was already gone from the house, having fled the humiliation.

  Flipping pancakes, washing faces, changing clothes, making sandwiches, Boldt worked himself into an angry lather. Isolation. Desertion. Betrayal? Was this about David Hayes? Thirty minutes late for work by the time he’d dropped the kids, he felt he deserved an explanation, believed it up to her to call.

  He snatched up the receiver with every incoming call, barking into the phone while expecting to hear Liz’s apologetic voice. Over the past twelve hours, burdened by little sleep and challenged by an emotional abyss, Boldt had traveled through concern, worry, anger and into the depths of infuriation. It now spilled out of his pores as an acrid smell and registered in his bloodshot eyes as venom. Quickly moving silhouettes slipped by the glass wall of his office like shadow puppets, his squad desperately avoiding him.

  And then the call came.

  ELEVEN

  LIZ PICKED A SPOT FAMILIAR to her, one where she felt safe, comfortable, and emotionally protected, a place where she had come to meditate and pray during her convalescence. The weather-worn bench in Golden Gardens Park aimed toward the Sound, offering a wide-angle view of green water, lush islands, and a steel-wool sky that moved inland swiftly overhead.

  Boldt came around and sat down next to her.

  “Thank you,” she began, knowing what she had to do, and grateful he would do this on her terms. “I know you’re busy.”

  “I don’t need an apology as much as an explanation.”

  She heard him holding back as he always did, afraid to expose himself, to speak too quickly and later regret what he said. The trouble was that in trying to play it safe, he didn’t play at all.

  The sea breeze blew some stray strands of hair off her face. That wet wind felt surprisingly good to her.

  He looked out into the gray. “You and this bench.”

  “Yes.” She gathered her strength, knowing she wouldn’t find a way to cozy up to this. She had to inch to the edge and then jump. The only way. “There’s a tape.”

  The sounds were the wind and her husband’s breathing.

  “Go on.”

  She looked up into the gray wash of sky. “I’m on the tape. With David. It’s video, and it’s awful.”

  “Awful.”

  He would drag it out of her of course, because he couldn’t help himself. Twenty years of questioning people.

  “They surprised me in the van. In the underground parking. They taped me to a seat and made me watch.”

  He turned and touched her, and she felt a jolt of electricity with the contact. “Are you all right?”

  She felt a wash of relief come with his concern. In a rush she described the terror in the van, the fact they’d cut the tape to allow her to fight her way free.

  “They?”

  “Two of them. But don’t do this, please. Don’t interrogate me. Please, don’t. I need a husband, not a detective right now.”

  He pulled closer to her on the bench. She despised herself for everything she’d done to him and the marriage. Briefly, she wished she’d died from her illness and spared them both all of this.

  “It’s how I think,” he said.

  “Two of them. It happened quickly.” She told it all to him again, hoping he wouldn’t make her go through it for a third time.

  “And where’s the tape now?”

  “In the van. I haven’t touched it. I don’t want you to see it, Lou.”

  “I don’t want to see it,” he said. “But I do want to run it through the lab for fingerprints.”

  “No. Someone will play it, and I couldn’t bear that.”

  He put his right hand on her leg and threw his left arm around her and pulled her to him. From behind they looked like a pair of lovers, but that was not how it felt to her as she shook in his hold. He said, “Bernie will handle this however I want it handled. Not to worry.”

  “I feel awful.”

  “I understand that, but we can and will protect this. The point is that I need to know as much about this tape as possible. Bernie can work magic with things like this. Trust me to handle this discreetly. I’ll do what I have to do and nothing more.”

  “They knew it wasn’t me with the money.” She couldn’t remember if she’d told him about the cell phone call that came a
fter. Her brain wasn’t functioning correctly. “Said I had to do it myself next time-that no one would see the tape if I did as they said. I’m to be ready ‘at a moment’s notice.’”

  “Who has your cell number?” asked the detective. “Hayes does. We know that. But who else, outside your circle of friends?”

  Her recall of the events inside the van suddenly included the beeping of her cell phone as they had that hood in place over her head. She told him she thought they’d switched her phone off and back on again, the chimes familiar to her. He said that would explain them knowing her number-some cell phones displayed their numbers on start-up.

  “It also seems to put Hayes in the clear,” he said. “For all we know, Hayes doesn’t know about the tape himself.”

  “How can that possibly be true? Of course he knows about it: He made it.”

  “That’s an assumption,” he corrected. “We don’t have the luxury of assumptions.”

  She released a contemptuous laugh. “I can’t do this. I can’t play Watson. I’m on that tape, Lou. Someone has that tape. And if I cooperate with them, if I help them get this money, that’s breaking all sorts of laws. I’m a sworn executive of the bank. I cannot do what they ask. And yet if I don’t-” She mulled this over for the umpteenth time. “Do you realize what happens if that tape gets out? The date’s on it. I told you that, didn’t I? David must have been involved in the embezzlement by then. Every way you look at this, it’s bad. I don’t see a way out of it. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”

  “If it’s not Hayes extorting you, then we need to know who it is. That’s where we start, and we don’t get ahead of ourselves. No one has asked you to do anything. Not yet. By the time they do, maybe we know who they are. You’d be surprised how things can turn around, even in something like this. The challenge for you and me is to stay above it. Our feelings, our emotions, work against us. They’re probably counting on that. They’re probably counting on it dividing us. We can’t let that happen.”