‘‘What?’’ Boldt repeated irritably.
The interpreter then reported, ‘‘She said you Americans must have big prisons.’’
.......................... 7400$$
$CH4
04-20-01 09:27:40
PS
C H A P T E R 5
The following day, for five hundred dollars in cash, the state auditor supplied Melissa with the name Gwen Klein, and the Greenwood Licensing Service Office—in Washington State the equivalent of a Department of Motor Vehicles—where Klein worked. Melissa spent hours in the back of her van with a bulky broadcast-quality video camera and battery pack perpetually prepared to record. She shot tape of Klein leaving the LSO and running errands, tape of Klein picking up her kids from day care, tape of Klein grocery shopping. Her first
‘‘report card’’ was delivered in Stevie McNeal’s sumptuous penthouse apartment over a pair of salads that Stevie had ordered by phone. The wine was an Archery Summit Pinot. Stevie drank liberally, Melissa hardly at all.
‘‘About the only thing Ihave to report is that the husband is driving a brand new pickup truck and the house appears to have a new roof.’’
‘‘Extra cash,’’ Stevie suggested.
‘‘Or a dead relative or a generous banker. The husband pounds nails. She’s a state employee. That’s a thirty-thousand-dollar truck he’s driving, and new roofs aren’t cheap.’’
‘‘Let’s find out how he paid for that truck,’’ Stevie suggested.
‘‘That would help us to pressure her.’’
‘‘She’s not going to talk to us,’’ Stevie said. ‘‘Not without hard evidence of her involvement.’’
‘‘Driver’s licenses are small. She could make a drop anywhere.’’
‘‘So you stay close to her,’’ Stevie suggested.
‘‘Ican stay close, but Ican’t stick to her.’’
‘‘Sure you can.’’
26
.......................... 7400$$
$CH5
04-20-01 09:27:41
PS
FIRST VICTIM
27
‘‘Not and get tape. At least not with that camera. It’s the size of a school bus.’’
‘‘Let me look into getting you the digital,’’ Stevie said. ‘‘There’s a briefcase for it that we use on all the undercover stuff. You can go anywhere with it.’’
‘‘That would certainly help.’’
‘‘Not anywhere dangerous, mind you,’’ Stevie informed her. ‘‘I want you to remember that.’’ Melissa had been a risk-taker all her life.
‘‘And if we don’t get something more positive out of her in a day or two?’’ Melissa asked.
‘‘Then our friend at the dim sum doesn’t get his second payment.’’
‘‘And the women in that container? We forget about them?’’
‘‘Don’t do this to yourself,’’ Stevie said.
‘‘Do what?’’
‘‘Work yourself up. Go righteous on me.’’
‘‘We have two options,’’ Melissa said impatiently, brushing aside Stevie’s concerns. ‘‘Journalism 101. The first is to confront her oncamera with what we know. The second is to make something happen.’’
‘‘Journalism 101?’’ Stevie objected. ‘‘Since when? Confront her, sure. But entrapment?’’
‘‘If you can’t break the news, make the news,’’ Melissa quoted.
‘‘That’s not you and we both know it. Make the news? Fake the news? That’s not you! Corwin maybe, but not you.’’
‘‘Not make the news— bait the news. We solicit a fake ID,’’ she suggested.
Stevie stood from the couch and paced the room. ‘‘That’s dangerously close to entrapment.’’
Melissa reminded, ‘‘Who was it that said: ‘Real news is never found, it’s uncovered’?’’
‘‘Don’t take what Isay out of context.’’
‘‘Three women died in that container. The others were stripped naked, de-loused, shaved head to toe and will be on a plane back to China in less than a week. If I approach Klein and she offers to sell
.......................... 7400$$
$CH5
04-20-01 09:27:42
PS
28
RIDLEY PEARSON
me a driver’s license, then we’ve got her by the thumbs. She’s ours. She either leads us up the next rung of the ladder or—’’
‘‘We extort her?’’
‘‘We pressure her.’’
‘‘What’s gotten into you?’’ Stevie asked.
‘‘You hired me to get a story.’’
‘‘Ihired you to pursue a lead. There’s a big difference.’’
‘‘Not to me.’’
‘‘Since when?’’
‘‘Look at me. Look at my face. If not for you and your father, that could have been me in that container. Those women are my age and younger! Are you going to walk away from them because we have to work a little harder to get the story?’’
‘‘You see?’’ Stevie said. ‘‘You see what happens with you?’’
‘‘Me? What if it’s a strong enough story to run nationally?’’ She raised her voice. ‘‘We may have different reasons, but we both want this story.’’
‘‘Don’t confuse the issue.’’
‘‘The issue is three dead women and more coming in behind them every week. The issue is the deplorable conditions that allowed those women to die.’’ Melissa added, ‘‘The police are investigating those deaths as homicides. That’s the story I’m interested in: bringing down whoever’s responsible. And I’ll tell you what: I’m willing to bend the rules for the right cause. If Klein sells me a fake ID, that’s her problem.’’
‘‘It’s our problem too if we handle it wrong, Little Sister. These people—’’
‘‘See? What people? Who? That’s exactly my point!’’
‘‘Let’s exercise a little patience, shall we? You’ve been on this a day and a half. Keep up the surveillance. If you want a partner, I’ll—’’
‘‘No! This is our story, yours and mine. No one else!’’
‘‘And I’m in charge,’’ Stevie asserted. ‘‘Keep an eye on her. One day is nothing.’’
‘‘Try telling that to the women trapped in those containers.’’
‘‘Patience.’’
.......................... 7400$$
$CH5
04-20-01 09:27:42
PS
FIRST VICTIM
29
‘‘Yeah, sure,’’ Melissa snorted.
‘‘I’ll work on getting the digital camera. That’ll help, right?’’
Melissa beamed. ‘‘Then you do want this!’’
‘‘Of course Iwant it, Little Sister. Ibrought it to you, remember? But we talk it out, work it out together. We’ve got to set aside our personal agendas. Iwant this as much—’’
‘‘Yeah, yeah,’’ Melissa said interrupting. ‘‘You don’t always have to mother me, you know?’’
‘‘Old habits die hard.’’
‘‘Get me that camera.’’
‘‘Work with me,’’ Stevie said. ‘‘A team,’’ she suggested.
‘‘A team,’’ Melissa echoed.
t
Through one day and into the next, Melissa Chow sat impatiently in her brown van, following and videotaping Gwen Klein’s movements, from home to the grocery, and for the second time in three days, to a car wash.
Mid-morning, Melissa received a phone call from Stevie. Stevie informed her, ‘‘A friend who works with a credit rating service says that there are no loans, no liens on the Dodge 4X4 registered to Joe Klein.’’
‘‘Where’s that camera you promised?’’
‘‘Are you listening?’’
‘‘They own it free and clear?’’ Melissa asked, her eyes on Klein’s taillights as the van sat parked in the automatic car wash. Stevie said sarcastically, ‘‘That’s just a little unusual fo
r a couple with a reported combined income of sixty-seven thousand a year.’’
‘‘A little unusual?’’ Melissa exploded. ‘‘That’s damn near impossible. That’s a thirty-thousand-dollar truck.’’
‘‘There’s more. The Kleins’ credit cards, which for seven years had maintained balances in the mid–four thousands, were all paid off over the last eighteen months.’’
‘‘So, if nothing else shapes up we threaten to turn the Kleins over to the IRS.’’
.......................... 7400$$
$CH5
04-20-01 09:27:43
PS
30
RIDLEY PEARSON
‘‘There you go again,’’ Stevie said.
‘‘Just trying to think ahead.’’
‘‘Don’t. Stay where we are.’’
‘‘You’re not the one chasing the All-American mom from the grocery store to the—’’
When Melissa failed to complete her thought, Stevie checked that they still had a connection.
‘‘I’m here,’’ Melissa acknowledged. ‘‘Okay, so I missed the obvious.’’
‘‘Little Sister?’’
‘‘You know those trick posters that are all color and pattern, and you stare at them long enough and suddenly this three-D image appears?’’
‘‘You missed what?’’ Stevie asked.
‘‘She washed her car two days ago. Imean, what was Ithinking? Isat right in this same spot! Talk about lame!’’
‘‘You missed what?’’ Stevie repeated.
‘‘She’s rolling. Igotta go,’’ Melissa said. The phone went dead.
.......................... 7400$$
$CH5
04-20-01 09:27:43
PS
C H A P T E R 6
Boldt sat on the back porch on a warm Friday night, the kids in bed, waiting for Liz, the slide projector at the ready, aimed at the only smooth white surface available, a door that had once led into what was now the kitchen pantry. Painted shut. Lately, he had felt pretty much the same way as that door: closed off, stuck. He might have set up the projector in the living room; there was a wall there, pretty much of it white if the framed watercolors were removed, but the noise of the carousel’s clicking was certain to wake Sarah, who was as light a sleeper as her father, and if she awakened it might be an hour or two before she could be coaxed toward slumber again. So the carousel sat out there on a wicker table, the yellow Kodak box alongside. Boldt blinked in an attempt to decipher the firefly mystery: He couldn’t figure out whether he was actually seeing fireflies or if those spots of white light before his eyes were simply another sign of his total exhaustion.
‘‘Ithink we have fireflies,’’ he told Liz when she finally joined him.
‘‘We’ll need to cover Miles before we go to sleep. Remind me, would you?’’
The wicker creaked as she sat into it. Boldt wanted her twenty pounds heavier. He wanted that wicker chair to cry when she took to it, not simply moan.
‘‘Ididn’t think we had fireflies. Six years in this house, Ican’t remember ever seeing a firefly.’’
‘‘Idon’t see any fireflies,’’ she informed him.
‘‘Give it a minute,’’ he said. ‘‘Over toward the back fence.’’
She eyed the projector. ‘‘If we’d bought more carousels we wouldn’t have to load it each time.’’
31
.......................... 7400$$
$CH6
04-20-01 09:27:44
PS
32
RIDLEY PEARSON
‘‘Don’t use it enough to justify two carousels.’’
‘‘We should have the slides put onto video.’’
‘‘Then what would we use the projector for?’’ he asked. She stared out into the lawn. ‘‘Idon’t see them.’’
‘‘That’s what Iwas afraid of.’’
‘‘What are we looking at?’’
‘‘On her seventy-fifth birthday my mother gave each of us slides of old family photos.’’
‘‘Iremember these.’’
‘‘Right.’’
‘‘Old, old family photographs.’’
‘‘Right. That’s what Isaid.’’ He got the projector up and running and focused the image of a gray-haired lady onto the overpainted door.
‘‘Ilove summer evenings,’’ she said. ‘‘The charcoal in the air, the fresh-cut grass. Shouldn’t ever take any of it for granted.’’
‘‘My mother’s mother,’’ he said. ‘‘She died in her sleep. Iremember her clothes smelled like mothballs. Hair like cotton candy. But what sticks in my mind is that she died in her sleep.’’
‘‘That’s the cop in you. You’re always more concerned with how a person dies than how he lived.’’
He didn’t like the comment. He sensed she might apologize for it, and he didn’t want her doing that, and he wasn’t sure why. ‘‘Ithink it’s strange I’d remember that about her.’’
‘‘How’d your grandfather die?’’
‘‘No idea. They never told me, Iguess. He came over first. He was the one who brought us here.’’ He fast-forwarded through a dozen slides. Liz wanted him to stop at a few, but he plowed through them with the determination of a man who knew where he was going. He landed on a photograph, a sepia print, of a young boy of eighteen standing by the butt end of a huge fallen timber. He said, ‘‘We were Polish. My father called us Europeans.’’
‘‘This is about the container,’’ Liz stated. ‘‘This is about the women who died.’’
Boldt worked the projector through two more slides of his grandfather. ‘‘We all crossed an ocean at some point,’’ he observed. ‘‘Your
.......................... 7400$$
$CH6
04-20-01 09:27:45
PS
FIRST VICTIM
33
people came in the early 1800s. Mine, during the Great War. You think our people would make it in now? All the qualifications and requirements?’’
‘‘Don’t do this to yourself.’’
‘‘Technically they died of malnutrition, but Dixie says that some kind of flu was a contributing factor. If they had lived longer, the flu might have killed them. How’s that for irony?’’
She pointed. ‘‘Ithink Isaw one!’’ She craned forward. ‘‘Ididn’t think we had fireflies!’’
‘‘Not over there. Those are those Christmas lights that they never take down.’’ He pulled off the carousel, leaving a blinding white box on the old painted door. Liz jumped out of her chair with the enthusiasm of a little girl and made hand shadows of birds flying. She wore shorts. Her legs were tan but too thin. She made a duck’s head and her voice changed to Donald Duck. Donald told him he worried too much. She wouldn’t have jumped up like that two years ago before the illness. She’d become unpredictable that way. He didn’t know what was coming next. She wouldn’t deprive herself of a single moment of joy. She seized each and every one unabashedly. He envied her that freedom, that allowance of youth. She was no longer painted shut.
‘‘Can you imagine leaving Christmas lights up all year?’’ she asked.
‘‘There ought to be an ordinance.’’
‘‘Always the cop.’’
He loaded the carousel with shots of a vacation they had taken years before.
‘‘If your grandfather had never made the crossing, we wouldn’t be here,’’ she said.
‘‘That’s what’s bugging me, Ithink. If those women had lived . . . At least for a while they would have had a legitimate chance at freedom.’’
‘‘They found a different kind of freedom,’’ she said. He wasn’t going to go there. He wasn’t going to touch that one for anything.
.......................... 7400$$
$CH6
04-20-01 09:27:45
PS
C H A P T E R 7
‘‘Whatdoweknow?’’BoldtaskedLaMoiabeforethemanever sat down. Boldt’s office had been transformed int
o an art gallery, the present exhibition finger painting and crayon coloring by daughter Sarah and son Miles. He treasured each and every drawing, had invented titles for most; the scientists were wrong about the world spinning on an axis—it revolved around his two kids.
‘‘Ibeen following up on that fabric. Spent the weekend with dockhands, Customs and my face in the Yellow Pages. That’s the part of this job you forget, Sarge. When you went up to Lieutenant you got your weekends back.’’
‘‘The polarfleece,’’ Boldt said.
‘‘Yeah, the bales we hauled out of that container along with the body bags,’’ LaMoia answered.
Boldt spoke with great but unfounded confidence, for he was only guessing. ‘‘There’s no bill of lading that can be connected to it. No record of the container number. No import company on record.’’
‘‘Two out of three ain’t bad, Sarge.’’
‘‘Where’d Imiss?’’
‘‘ Officially there’s no import company that we can tie to that container,’’ LaMoia corrected. ‘‘No paperwork—true enough. But unofficially?’’ When LaMoia got something right, which was more often than not, he enjoyed dragging out the success like a kid retelling an old joke he’s just heard for the first time. Bernie Lofgrin in the crime lab had the same bad habit of turning what could be a one-line answer into a ten-minute lecture. Boldt felt no obligation to egg him on by responding, so he waited him out. ‘‘After Istruck out IDing that container, Idecided to put the word out on the street. Nice and gentle 34
.......................... 7400$$
$CH7
04-20-01 09:27:46
PS
FIRST VICTIM
35
like . . . nothing too severe. There’s an art to working the street, you know?’’ he said, fishing for a compliment.
‘‘Uh-huh,’’ Boldt agreed.
‘‘It’s like lovemaking: You start slow and easy and let things develop of themselves.’’
‘‘Try to get around to your point sometime today, if possible.’’
LaMoia didn’t so much as flinch. He was on stage; he was performing. Nothing could rattle him. ‘‘So rather than make an issue out of this, Ijust let it be known that we would be interested in whosoever might be ordering polarfleece by the container load. Okay? Iknow it’s not Eddie Bauer or REI’cause I’ve already checked with them. Can’t be a mom-and-pop with that kind of quantity. So what the fuck, chuck?’’
The First Victim Page 4