At one in the morning she called both numbers again, now taking to pacing while she thought this all out. Another aspect of Melissa’s native pride was her professional secrecy; she had once worked on an independent environmental piece for three weeks before finally letting Stevie in on its subject matter—salmon poaching by Native Ameri65
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cans—as if by being let in on it Stevie would have sent a camera crew out on the story. In the week since the auditor had leaked the LSO
information, Stevie’s only real knowledge of what Melissa was up to involved the surveillance of Gwen Klein. Beyond that and the financial information they had collected on the couple, she had few other leads to follow if needed.
Stevie finally fell asleep out of the exhaustion of being consumed in worry. When she awakened, she immediately called Melissa’s numbers from bed, but only to hear that awful sound of endless ringing. She skipped the Nordic Trak, skipped the lazy morning routine of four newspaper subscriptions and the audio wallpaper of continuous CNN
that typically occupied the first few hours of any day, and headed directly to Melissa’s apartment in Pioneer Square, an apartment for which she had co-signed the lease, an apartment for which she held a spare set of keys warm in her hand.
t
The apartment offered nothing. She rang the buzzer on the ground floor, then let herself into the building, then knocked on the door to 5B and opened it when Melissa failed to answer. A modest one bedroom with a small living/dining area, it offered a poor view of a side alley and no cross-ventilation had the windows been open, which they weren’t. It was, in fact, the slightly stale scent of the place that told Stevie Melissa hadn’t been there recently. Melissa lived for fresh air; this contradiction spoke volumes. She found fresh food in the refrigerator and a garbage can filled to overflowing. It felt dangerous all of a sudden, like realizing the noise downstairs is not the dog at all because the dog is lying by the bed. This was not merely an empty apartment, it was an apartment that had not been visited in recent hours. The bed was unmade—Melissa in her usual hurry. A toothbrush stood in the drinking glass on the sink and alarmed Stevie almost more than anything else about the empty apartment. Melissa was obsessed with clean teeth. The discovery of the toothbrush meant she had not taken a planned trip. Her stomach clenched painfully in a combination of remorse and
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guilt, she left the apartment in something of a daze, her imagination running wild with possibility. At what point did she react publicly to the woman’s silence? At what point did she go to the police or Brian Coughlie at the INS and seek help? At what point did she simply relax and take a deep breath, trusting that Melissa was on to a hot story and didn’t have the opportunity to call? She left with that sickening feeling still plaguing her.
t
Stevie climbed back into the saddle, the anchor desk chair bouncing slightly as she sat. She scanned the pink pages of script for the N4@ 5 news hour, but somehow she couldn’t focus and she kept losing her place.
‘‘Thirty seconds!’’ the floor director called out. The daily ritual had grown so familiar to her as to be second nature, but on that day it felt entirely unnatural, all because of Melissa’s ensuing silence. She felt simultaneously angry and worried. That call had never come. As independently as they both lived their lives, neither ever broke the promise of such a call. Not ever. Either Melissa was making a statement about her chosen lifestyle—or she was in trouble.
Of immediate concern to Stevie was Melissa’s occasionally impatient ambition. She was competitive with Stevie’s success, always hoping to ignite the spark that would accelerate her own career from occasionally employed to in demand. Stevie blamed herself for both encouraging Melissa to dig for the story, and for handing her that digital camera without a better understanding of what kind of undercover work she had planned. If Melissa was in fact on to the illegals story, Stevie didn’t necessarily want to raise a red flag with authorities after just one undelivered phone call. She attempted to practice her own advice to exercise patience, but it didn’t come naturally to her. She wanted control, and Melissa had taken that away from her.
‘‘Fifteen seconds everyone! Ms. McNeal, you with us?’’
Stevie twisted a professional smile across her face and once again studied the script.
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‘‘Ten . . . nine . . .’’
Stevie would give Melissa one more night. After that, story or no story, the police had to be told.
‘‘Four . . . three . . . two . . .’’
A red light illuminated on top of the camera directly in front of her. Stevie heard herself speak as she read the lines, but she had no idea what she said.
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C H A P T E R 1 2
For the man in the back row of the smut film house, time seemed to slow down as the big Mexican next to him loudly blew his nose into a napkin and then threw the napkin onto the floor. Just being here with this man was a risk, and he’d come only because it had seemed unavoidable.
‘‘So what’s so important?’’ he asked Rodriguez.
‘‘The count is off.’’
‘‘An escape?’’ It wouldn’t be the first.
‘‘We’re long by one.’’
‘‘Long?’’
‘‘That’s what I’m saying,’’ said Rodriguez. ‘‘An escape I can handle, you know that. But this?’’
‘‘You counted wrong.’’
‘‘Idone this count six times. We’re long.’’ Rodriguez’s voice was rough and scratchy. He kept sniffing back snot into his throat in a vulgar disgusting sound.
‘‘Well it’s off.’’
‘‘It’s not off,’’ Rodriguez objected.
‘‘You know what you’re saying? Are they all Chinese?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘Did you strip them?’’
‘‘Of course.’’
‘‘And they’re shaved.’’
‘‘Every last snatch.’’
‘‘So the count is off. It’s the only explanation.’’
‘‘It wasn’t off last week. I done the count six times.’’
‘‘So you said.’’
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‘‘Just so you know.’’
‘‘Now Iknow.’’ The idea disturbed him, but he didn’t let Rodriguez know this. It was his job to worry—most of the time Rodriguez simply did as he was told. Inventory was off; it was as simple as that.
‘‘Maybe one of the ones in quarantine . . . maybe that threw the numbers off,’’ he suggested.
‘‘Igot them into the count. I’m telling you—last week we done the count and the numbers was right.’’
‘‘Use your squirrels, your snitches. See what you can find out.’’
‘‘Got it.’’
‘‘Tell your boys to keep their eyes open.’’
‘‘Done already.’’
‘‘Well, do it again,’’ he snapped, regretting the tone. It wouldn’t help matters to piss off Rodriguez.
The big man sneezed again. This time he forgot the napkin entirely.
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T H U R S D AY , AU G U S T 2 0
3 D AY S
M I S S I N G
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C H A P T E R 1 3
Boldt gripped the white rubber lip of the Boston Whaler, a flatbottomed fiberglass skiff used as a Port Authority launch, as it tossed in the substantial wake of an arriving passenger ferry. LaMoia didn’t react to the movement whatsoever, having grown up on the waters of Narragansett Bay. Seagulls followed high above the ferry’s foaming stern, diving into the prop wash after the pretzels and popcorn tossed there by unthinking tourists who were doing the shorebirds more harm than good. The captain of the Visage had refused to come ashore to be interviewed. His ship had been called back to port, and he was furious with authorities. With the political and legal Ping-Pong match continuing at a fevered pitch, Boldt instructed Port Authority to inform Visage that a pair of Seattle policemen were coming aboard to interview crew members. Boldt correctly guessed that a shipping captain’s greatest enemy was not the Coast Guard or the Port Authority, or a homicide cop, but time. He would not want to be delayed again from weighing anchor, and he would not want to leave any crew behind. By combining Rutledge’s data with the Port Authority docking schedule and interviews with the Port Authority’s radar station personnel, the Visage appeared to be the vessel in question. It had been well outside the shipping lanes the night of the storm, a night every navigator had been glued to his radar scope hoping to make it into port without incident. The Vis- age had gone radio dead for more than three hours—inexplicable in such traffic and high seas. The Port Authority radar controller distinctly recalled the ship’s return to the southern shipping lane on scope but off the air, and how, predawn, it had slipped back into the 73
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lane, causing all ships behind it to give berth and thereby experience delays, forcing them to endure even more of the storm—something no one forgot.
Boldt and LaMoia climbed up a noisy steel ladder suspended from heavy chains, a crew member behind them, presumably, as a backstop should they slip. The pungent odors of a ship ripe with a three-week ocean crossing struck them—seaweed, diesel fuel and a tangy metallic rust that formed in the back of Boldt’s mouth like the scent of blood at a crime scene. He gripped the chain, steadied himself and looked back toward shore and the noble city skyline that gave the Emerald City its jewels.
Nostalgia tightened his chest—he had devoted his life to service of this city, and was now considering plans to abandon it. At fortyfour, with over twenty years on the force, the possibility of a job in the private sector insinuated itself. The unspoken evil of Liz’s cancer treatment was the lingering debt, caused not by medical bills—all paid for by the bank’s health care—but by loss of their double income for over a year. The bank had paid her full salary for three weeks of
‘‘vacation’’ and had then reduced her to one-quarter pay for her ‘‘leave of absence.’’ But their lifestyle, which included day care and a housecleaner, had left more going out than was coming in. Even Boldt’s advancement to lieutenant had not made up the gap. He was seriously considering a private security position that paid nearly double his city salary. He had an interview scheduled, though he had not told Liz. With the captain of the Visage on ‘‘shore leave,’’ and therefore unavailable, the crew was all they had. A list of fifteen names was provided by the ship’s first mate, an Asian with few teeth and a leathery face. Boldt and LaMoia divided their energies. Boldt was led below deck through cramped hallways, the gray steel reminding him of prisons, to a game room that contained an oversized projection TV and an enormous video library.
Thirty minutes of frustration left Boldt’s patience brittle and his nerves raw. The first two crewmen had not spoken a word of English, replying to Boldt in some Balkan-sounding tongue. The third crewman listed as a deckhand, a young man with a stubble head and dark eyes
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that contained a tinge of fear, marched in wearily and, like his fellow seamen, spoke this same foreign language.
‘‘English,’’ Boldt instructed, knowing that at least someone on this ship spoke the language—the international language of the sea and a Coast Guard requirement. The young deckhand shook his head and prattled on in his native tongue again.
It was then that Boldt’s eye landed on the wall of videos, and the titles there—all in English—included Super Bowls and NBA title games. He said to the deckhand, ‘‘Michael Jordan! Now there was a player!’’ He paused. ‘‘Even so, Sean Kemp is a better shooter.’’
‘‘No way!’’ the young man protested.
Boldt did not so much as flinch. He said, ‘‘Kemp’s jump shot?’’
‘‘Jordan was the best play—’’ the boy caught himself as Boldt’s grin surfaced.
Boldt said, ‘‘Do you know that refusal to cooperate with police is a crime here? Icould have you locked up.’’
The boy’s eyes went wide and he shook his head as if not understanding.
‘‘You think I’ll tell the others? Is that it? Do you think I would say anything? How does it benefit me to expose a possible witness?’’
‘‘Iwitness nothing,’’ the man returned.
‘‘You are a deckhand. It says so right here. You spent the last three weeks up on deck. Hong Kong. Hawaii. Three weeks with that container. You know the one I’m talking about.’’
The boy’s upper lip shone as he said, ‘‘The trip it takes longer to expected. The storming.’’
Boldt understood the malnutrition and dehydration then. ‘‘How much longer than expected?’’
‘‘Normal, ten days. This crossing, two times that.’’
‘‘The people in the container?’’
The boy shook his head.
‘‘Ican detain you here in Seattle. The ship leaves without you.’’
‘‘There was nothing us people able to do. It was shut up.’’
‘‘Locked.’’
‘‘Yes, locked.’’
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‘‘But you heard them?’’
The young man looked back suspiciously and shook his head again, a familiar response.
‘‘We have laws about lying to police.’’
‘‘We hear them. It bad, all the crying. Locked,’’ he confirmed. He crossed himself.
‘‘Food? Didn’t you feed them?’’
Again, the young man shook his head no.
‘‘Water?’’
Another.
‘‘You heard them,’’ Boldt pressed, remembering the shrill cries and haunting pounding. ‘‘And did nothing?’’
The man’s eyes glassed under a tightly knit brow exaggerated by his nearly shaved head. He mumbled, ‘‘The captain.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ Boldt said, seizing upon this. ‘‘The captain.’’ The captain, who no doubt had taken the bribe; the captain, who had the connections to make the drop; the all-important captain. ‘‘You were paid extra because of this container.’’
The man appeared angry.
‘‘How many times before?’’
‘‘No. Not me. The others, yes. Not me. This, my first crossing with Visage.’’
‘‘No food, no water.’’ Boldt hesitated. ‘‘People died. Three people died. You understand?’’
A small nod, the man’s first.
‘‘Murder. You understand ‘murder’?’’
Terror-stricken eyes. Moist lips from a nervous tongue. A faint nod.
‘‘Iarrest you,’’ Boldt said.
‘‘No!’’ the man protested.
‘‘The captain,’’ Boldt suggested.
A reluctance in the eyes. A stiffening of the spine. Then the slumped shoulders of resignation. The man mumbled, ‘‘The captain not open the container. He said, ‘The sea plays tricks on the ears.’ ’’
‘‘It’s blood money,’’ Boldt said. ‘‘You understand?’’
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A nod.
‘‘Jail,’’ Boldt stated.
A nod. ‘‘The captain, he is not talk to you.’’
‘‘We’ll see about that.’’
‘‘He not talk. No. And I? I not talk against him. Jail?’’ he shrugged. ‘‘Better than to talk against this captain.’’
Boldt saw crew members ‘‘lost at sea.’’ He saw bodies caught in the ocean’s midnight swells fading into blackness, a hand crying from the waves. A crew kept loyal through fear. A silent captain. He saw a brick wall ahead of him.
‘‘The transfer during the storm. Something went wrong. Tell me about it.’’
‘‘Bad seas.’’
‘‘Your people lost the container?’’
The First Victim Page 8