‘‘A private showing,’’ LaMoia said, starting the tape rolling.
‘‘Who’s buying the popcorn?’’
Boldt wasn’t in a joking mood.
The sound and picture were of a city street by day, the camera held about waist height. The video title stamp was set incorrectly to January 3. The time was 6:19 P.M. Boldt didn’t trust that either. The two discernible background conversations were of a couple discussing a Native American festival and another two or three men all complaining about their jobs.
‘‘The camera’s concealed,’’ Boldt said softly.
‘‘In a briefcase, maybe.’’
‘‘Agreed.’’
.......................... 7400$$
CH34
04-20-01 09:28:47
PS
184
RIDLEY PEARSON
The scenery suddenly blurred and a city bus was seen approaching.
‘‘It’s a bus stop,’’ LaMoia said.
‘‘Yup.’’
‘‘That make sense to you?’’
‘‘Let’s watch,’’ Boldt suggested.
The air brakes hissed and the bus pulled to a stop. Shot from the hip, as the video was, the scene played out from a child’s height and perspective. Boldt thought about his own kids, Miles and Sarah, and worried that he wasn’t seeing enough of them. He was barely seeing Liz either, for that matter—unless he counted the hours she was sleeping. With his insomnia back in full swing, he saw a lot of Liz while she slept. He lay there and worried—it didn’t seem to matter about what; his kind of worry was a world unto itself. They caught their first glimpse of Melissa in a shiny piece of steel or aluminum, or maybe even a mirror inside the bus. It happened so quickly that it was hard to tell. But there she was—twenty-something, almost pretty, blue jeans and a Wazoo sweatshirt—climbing the stairs of the bus. There was too much noise to pick out any particular conversation, but the camera seemed intent on the left side of the bus. It was obvious that she had worked at maintaining that angle as long as she did, given that she was walking the center aisle the whole time.
‘‘What do you think?’’ LaMoia asked.
‘‘Idon’t know,’’ Boldt answered. He didn’t like the man interrupting every few seconds. He wanted to watch the video, to get inside the images, not be constantly yanked back into the viewing room with his sergeant.
‘‘Someone on the left side interests her.’’
‘‘Let’s just watch it one time through. You think?’’
‘‘Yeah, sure.’’
Melissa took a seat about two-thirds of the way down the bus, across from the vehicle’s rear door, but the lens remained aimed on the same side of the bus. Images streamed by outside the windows. LaMoia said immediately, ‘‘She wants to be able to leave in a hurry.’’
.......................... 7400$$
CH34
04-20-01 09:28:48
PS
FIRST VICTIM
185
Boldt said nothing. Lead by example, he was thinking. After only a few more seconds there was an abrupt jerk in the image, and the time stamp advanced eleven minutes. She had stopped and then restarted the recording. Boldt made note in the dark of the eleven-minute break.
‘‘You trying to intimidate me, Sarge? Should Ibe taking notes?’’
‘‘I’ll take the notes,’’ Boldt said.
The bus turned and lumbered up a downtown street. The change in architecture said as much. It was noticeably darker outside—
twilight. The nose of the bus lowered, all the passengers thrown slightly forward in their seats.
‘‘Third Avenue bus tunnel,’’ LaMoia said.
‘‘Yup.’’
‘‘She’s following someone. What do you want to bet?’’
‘‘Let’s watch.’’
LaMoia snorted, excited by what he saw and disappointed in Boldt’s stubborn silence.
The bus pulled to a stop inside the tunnel and a dozen passengers stood to disembark. The camera continued to record as one waist and torso after another passed by. It then swung and Melissa carried it off the bus and into the bus stop where some passengers headed for exits and others awaited connections. For the first time, the camera clearly singled out one man in particular.
‘‘There he is,’’ LaMoia said anxiously. ‘‘Whoever he is.’’
The man grew increasingly larger as the camera approached. For an instant, he was held in profile, but an overhead ceiling lamp burned a bright white hole into the image and erased the man’s face.
‘‘Damn!’’ LaMoia gasped. ‘‘We had him.’’
‘‘She had him,’’ Boldt corrected. ‘‘The question that has to be asked: Did he have her?’’
‘‘You think he made her?’’
‘‘We know he made her, John,’’ Boldt reminded. ‘‘We just don’t know when.’’
‘‘This shit gets on my nerves.’’
‘‘Ican tell.’’
.......................... 7400$$
CH34
04-20-01 09:28:48
PS
186
RIDLEY PEARSON
‘‘Film, I’m talking about.’’
‘‘Yes,’’ Boldt said.
She stopped at a city map, turned and sat down, presumably on a bench. The camera turned ever so slightly and held the man’s back in frame.
‘‘She’s good at this, you know? A good aim.’’
The image jumped. In the lower right-hand corner, seven minutes had elapsed. The man’s back was still on the screen. He wore an old moth-holed sweatshirt with a hood, black jeans and waffle-soled boots. The man’s black wavy hair and build suggested ethnic blood—a big Hispanic or South Pacific man. It meant nothing without a better look.
‘‘Why this guy?’’ LaMoia spoke aloud.
‘‘That’s the relevant question,’’ Boldt agreed.
‘‘Klein? Did she connect the missing skirt with this Frito Bandito?’’
‘‘That’s a racial slur, John. You’re a sergeant now.’’
‘‘This rice and beans gentleman,’’ he said, correcting himself.
‘‘Tommy Taco?’’
‘‘Way to go.’’
‘‘Thank you.’’
A bus pulled to a stop. Passengers disembarked. The suspect boarded, followed a moment later by the camera and the woman carrying it. The image didn’t last long. She established the man’s location on the bus. Another cut. Elapsed time, seventeen minutes. Boldt was thinking about timing specific bus routes. He wondered how many they would have to deal with.
‘‘Exit, Tommy, stage right,’’ LaMoia said, as if directing the film. The broad-shouldered sweatshirt descended the steps. The camera moved toward the door, but then abruptly stopped. Only the sweatshirt disembarked. Melissa had apparently thought better than to join him out on a darkened stretch of sidewalk in the middle of nowhere.
‘‘Well, she’s not completely stupid,’’ LaMoia said, picking up on the obvious.
‘‘Recognize the area? The location?’’
.......................... 7400$$
CH34
04-20-01 09:28:48
PS
FIRST VICTIM
187
‘‘You kidding? Those doors were open for maybe five seconds,’’
LaMoia complained.
‘‘Rewind,’’ Boldt instructed.
Imitating a sports announcer, LaMoia said, ‘‘Our bus-cam will now perform instant replay as the star of our show descends the rear steps.’’ He was as nervous outside as Boldt was on the inside. The missing woman had followed a man—a big man, a laborer perhaps, maybe not Caucasian. She had followed him for the better part of an hour, at night, on two different buses while carrying a briefcase concealing a camera. They made three successive attempts to identify any landmark or piece of skyline when the bus doors opened, but to no avail. The next cut was equally as abrupt as the others.
‘‘We’re a day later,’’ Boldt
observed. ‘‘That last shot. Rewind . . . Yes. See?’’
The camera panned left to right. Small white lights glowed in the darkness. As the aperture adjusted, both men rocked forward at the same moment. Dozens of Chinese women—all with shaved heads, all wearing jeans and T-shirts—sat behind large industrial sewing machines, frantic with work. Others manned cutting tables, busy with razor knives and scissors chained to the tables. Melissa’s rapid breathing mixed with the roar of machinery and played loudly from the television’s stereo speakers.
‘‘Jesus,’’ LaMoia muttered.
The screen zoomed and the lighting improved as a few of the women seamstresses were captured in close-up. They appeared bruised and beaten. ‘‘Oh my God,’’ Melissa remarked in a dry whisper. The next shot was of a chained ankle, blood raw. She gasped as the camera focused. Then another shackled ankle, and another. ‘‘The graveyard,’’ the woman’s voice whispered hoarsely.
‘‘Hilltop?’’ LaMoia asked.
Boldt shot him a look. Had Melissa made a connection to their Jane Doe? How? When?
Another edit jump. The screen stole his attention. The ominous groan of machinery continued throughout, grating
.......................... 7400$$
CH34
04-20-01 09:28:48
PS
188
RIDLEY PEARSON
and annoying. The camera closed in on a black surface, where there suddenly appeared a small hole the size of a silver dollar. The lens approached that hole and then focused automatically. It was a small room, poorly lit by a construction light. The sound of running water. Naked women—their heads and genitals shaved—hose water running down over them. They whispered amongst themselves. It sounded Chinese. For once, LaMoia knew to keep his quick-witted adolescent comments to himself. Another edit. A woman—Melissa?—stood in a dark bathroom working a razor on her scalp. The scene was only seconds long. She turned to face the camera and smiled. She said in a whisper, ‘‘This is Melissa Chow for KSTV News. I’m going undercover now. I will join the sweatshop’s general population. This is where Ibecome one of them.’’
‘‘Oh, shit,’’ LaMoia said.
The woman reached out and turned off the camera. The screen flashed black.
‘‘The sound is so hollow,’’ Boldt remarked, his musician’s ears ever sensitive.
The sounds were of women’s voices speaking Chinese. The camera faded in from black to an extreme close-up of a woman’s face. She was bald. She spoke in whispered Chinese. The interview lasted close to a minute, the camera cropped at the crown of her head and the peak of her chin, the close-up dramatizing her words. Even without a translator, her message was of horrid conditions and fear; the tears told that much. Another fade to black, and then faded back in at yet another close-up of a different woman. There were three interviews in all. All done in whisper. All in Chinese, not a word of English spoken. The third was interrupted by a woman’s voice speaking harshly. A warning perhaps. The camera aimed down to show a dormitory of woven mats and polarfleece blankets. Several women slept. Most of the mats went empty. The screen went black and then fuzzy. LaMoia and Boldt sat watching a gray sparkled screen. LaMoia
.......................... 7400$$
CH34
04-20-01 09:28:49
PS
FIRST VICTIM
189
turned down the sound. He fast-forwarded the tape, making sure they missed nothing. ‘‘You feel sick to your stomach?’’ he asked.
‘‘Did you ever play with Chinese handcuffs when you were a kid?’’
Boldt asked. ‘‘The woven tubes? You stuck your fingers inside?’’
‘‘Sure. Iremember those. What about them?’’
‘‘The tube constricted. You could slip your fingers in, but you couldn’t pull them back out.’’
‘‘Those were chains on those ankles, Sarge.’’
‘‘It’s what happened to her,’’ Boldt said. ‘‘She got herself inside, but she couldn’t get back out.’’
‘‘Like Chinese handcuffs.’’
Boldt nodded. He felt better than he had in days. ‘‘The good news is, she can speak the language, and with her head shaved, she looks like everyone else.’’
‘‘You’re thinking she’s still alive,’’ LaMoia said, his troubled voice barely rising above a whisper. The tape had set a mood, had captured them.
‘‘Ithink she is, yes,’’ Boldt said, equally softly. ‘‘The camera surfacing challenges that, Iknow. But the reason we haven’t found her?’’
he asked rhetorically. ‘‘Is because they haven’t found her, either.’’ He turned to LaMoia in the dark, his silhouette captured by the light from the sparkling gray screen, making him look sickly and pallid. ‘‘Who knows?’’ Boldt said. ‘‘They may not even know she’s in there.’’
.......................... 7400$$
CH34
04-20-01 09:28:49
PS
C H A P T E R 3 5
‘‘Can get you nice suit cheap,’’ Mama Lu told Boldt. She occupied most of the doorway of a building marked only in Chinese characters. She wore a red cotton tent dress, and leather sandals and she carried a rubber-tipped bamboo cane that didn’t look right on her. In the daylight, out of her dim lair, Boldt saw her as much younger, mid-fifties perhaps.
‘‘You don’t like this one?’’ Boldt complained.
‘‘It okay. A little big on you I think. Bad color. Too dark for skin tone. Ihave cousin.’’
‘‘Skin tone?’’ He had bought the suit on sale too many years ago to remember. Her comments made him self-conscious. He worried about how his suit might play in his later appointment. She struck Boldt as something of a Chinese Winston Churchill the way she held the cane and faintly bowed to him as he spoke. Boldt had sandwiched the stop between the conclusion of the video session with LaMoia and his upcoming job interview, intending to work the woman for information on the location of sweatshops. But she had other ideas.
Sensing his impatience and urgency, Mama Lu demanded they meet at a location of her choosing: a nondescript building on a busy street in the heart of the International District.
‘‘Ihave an appointment,’’ he continued.
‘‘This not take long,’’ she told him. Mama Lu set her own pace, her own tempo. In the world of jazz, she was a ballad, not bebop. ‘‘You will be so kind,’’ she said, indicating the door. Boldt opened the door for her, stepping close enough to smell a faint trace of jasmine and was reminded of her gender, something 190
.......................... 7400$$
CH35
04-20-01 09:29:07
PS
FIRST VICTIM
191
easily forgotten when enveloped by her commanding presence. As she passed, he said softly, ‘‘Another woman was found dead. Another Chinese. Head shaved. Bad shape.’’ He caught himself slipping into her clipped mode of speech.
‘‘Chinese, or Chinese-American? You see, to us there is much difference, Mr. Both. Ishow you.’’ She led Boldt down a short red hallway and through a bright pink door into a large, open room filled with fifty or more Asian children. They sat at low tables in groups of five or six. Finger paintings hung from the fabric-covered walls; a hand-drawn English alphabet was draped above the blackboard like a banner. There were beanbags, dollhouses, plastic forts and a wall of books. It was busy but not loud. Xylophones hammered out halftone Chinese melodies.
Boldt read a modest plastic sign mounted to the wall and understood immediately that she was playing politics. Beneath the prominent Chinese characters on the sign were the words Hongyang Lu Child Center and Woman’s Shelter. Mama Lu was sole proprietor. As if on cue—and he had to wonder about that—several adorable children ran to greet the great lady, clutching to her tent dress and jumping for her arms. Little dolls. Boldt thought of his own Sarah, and how quickly her childhood was slipping away. He was working long hours again, a pattern he had broken during Liz’s illnes
s, and though there were a million justifications for it, he suddenly wondered if he was working or running from something. Daphne had put these thoughts in him, and he couldn’t get away from them. Mama Lu interrupted his thoughts. ‘‘These my children: American citizens. They born here, live here. Grow up, make money, pay taxes.’’
She spoke in Chinese to the half dozen children crowding her and they ran back to their stations. ‘‘Older girls upstairs,’’ she said, pointing to the ceiling. ‘‘Different problems.’’
Boldt counted ten young adult women supervisors, far more per child than at his own children’s day care. One of these young women approached and spoke softly and cordially, welcoming them. Unless a well-conceived act, Mama Lu was no stranger here. The woman shook
.......................... 7400$$
CH35
04-20-01 09:29:07
PS
192
RIDLEY PEARSON
Boldt’s hand and asked if the police would ever consider coming and talking to the students. He offered to do so himself. Mama Lu glowed with his offer. The woman headed back to her kids and Mama Lu said to Boldt, ‘‘This girl once part of shelter. Now teacher, give back to community. This free day care. Anyone welcome.’’
‘‘You’re a very generous woman.’’
‘‘Not point! Pay attention! Children American. No illegal. Born here means American citizens.’’
‘‘Whether or not their parents were or are legals, yes, Iunderstand the way the laws work.’’
‘‘The laws not work,’’ she countered. ‘‘Pay attention. These children are alive, Mr. Both. They grow up, pay taxes. American citizens.’’
‘‘Iunderstand,’’ Boldt replied.
In a menacing tone she hissed, ‘‘You understand nothing.’’
Boldt told her, ‘‘We have evidence. A videotape. Other evidence as well. There’s a sweatshop. . . . The people doing this will be caught and punished.’’ He allowed that to hang in the air along with the clanging xylophones and the joyous squeals. ‘‘Those who cooperate with us,’’ Boldt told her, ‘‘are treated differently in the eyes of the law.’’
The First Victim Page 19