Boldt 03 - No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

  Adler checked his watch, turned to Taplin, and said, “You know who comes to a place like this—a planetarium? Kids. Kids like my Corky, like your Peter and Emily. Kids like Slater Emerson Lowry. What if we push this guy over the top? What if there are a couple hundred Slater Lowrys that we’re directly accountable for? How do we live with something like that?”

  Taplin’s expression was sullen. “I don’t have an answer for that, Owen.”

  “I do,” Adler said. He said, “Kenny?”

  “Boldt’s right,” Fowler answered. To Taplin he said, “I understand where you’re coming from with this. We do open ourselves up to all sorts of nightmares—but they are financial nightmares, not human ones. It’s just like Boldt says: He’s giving us the chance to switch tracks. Money instead of lives. I think we jump on that kind of opportunity.”

  “So do I,” Adler agreed.

  Taplin, a look of resignation overcoming him, shuffled papers into his briefcase and snapped it shut, refusing to meet eyes with Boldt. “I’ll arrange the necessary deposits.”

  “We should start small,” Fowler said, directing this to Daphne. “Half maybe. Make him keep the communication coming.”

  “I can support that,” she agreed.

  “I’ll speak to the bank,” Boldt said. He thanked Adler, adding: “It’s the right decision.”

  Adler rocked on his heels and said, “We’ll see.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Boldt’s hopes rode on a meeting he had set up with Pac-West Bank. Perhaps in setting up this bank account—which for good reason was presumed to be a dummy—the Tin Man had inadvertently left them a clue to his or her identity. It was for this reason that Boldt invited Daphne along: to look for psychological clues in the facts of a bank account application.

  As agreed, they all left the Seattle Center separately. Boldt met Daphne at her houseboat, where they shared a pot of tea and planned the bank meeting.

  Boldt filled her in on the burning of Longview Farms. “I can hear it in your voice that you blame yourself for sending him there. You can’t do that, Lou. We need you at a hundred percent.”

  “Something bothered you about the second fax.”

  “You’re changing the subject. The subject is Lou Boldt.”

  “What was it?” he asked, refusing her.

  “It was a little thing: no placing of blame. All the others made a point of putting the blame back onto Owen. Not this latest one.”

  “And that’s significant?”

  “The assumption of responsibility is extremely significant, yes. He or she doesn’t want to assume responsibility for these poisonings. They are Owen’s fault. As long as they remain Owen’s fault, they can continue. Strangely enough, the day they stop being Owen’s fault, we’re in trouble. The guilt for these deaths could unravel him. We don’t want that to happen.”

  “And you think this fax indicates that it has already happened.” He made it a statement.

  She did not want to commit herself. She blew on the tea and looked out her window at Lake Union and a pair of windsurfers, like butterflies on the surface.

  “I think that receiving two faxes on the same day, with one of them significantly different from all the others, may just be enough to attract the interest of Dr. Richard Clements. And if it does only that, then we’re all better off. He’s the best, Lou. We could use him.”

  “There’s something else,” he said noticing that look of hers.

  “Which one of us is the psychologist?”

  “Is that an answer?”

  “I’ve changed my mind about the wife. She certainly didn’t kill Sheriff Bramm. And from the way you describe it, that wasn’t the work of a hired gun. That was someone extremely angry. A male.”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew that,” she stated.

  “Yes.”

  “Someone with a personal stake.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She moved restlessly on the stool. “Chances are when he killed the sheriff, he was symbolizing on Owen. It shows us the kind of anger we’re dealing with. It shows us how volatile he is. He wants to see him dead, Lou. He’ll stay with this until he does—or until we catch him.” She looked away, not wanting to show him her eyes.

  “Maybe the bank can help us,” Boldt said. “Razor’s going to join us.”

  “That should be interesting.”

  Prosecuting Attorney Michael Striker was of average height, but he looked small because he had a small head and a small mouth. He might have had his ears pinned as a child, but they were fanning back out in middle age, bent like leaves stretching for the sun. People called him “Razor” because his voice sounded like someone humming into wax paper wrapped around a comb. At the end of his right arm he carried a metal claw that served as his hand. As a barroom stunt, Razor would stack matchsticks into four-inch-tall wooden chimneys using only his prosthesis. When he was nervous it chattered involuntarily, sounding like an eggbeater hitting the side of the bowl.

  The support of the prosecuting attorney was critical to any investigation. A PA did not run an investigation, but he steered it in the necessary legal directions that winning convictions required. The lead detective—the “primary”—and the PA formed a team that was sometimes comfortable, sometimes not. Most warrant affidavits went through the PA or were hot-rodded directly to a judge with the PA’s approval. Being around Michael Striker when he was nervous took some getting used to, as did adjusting to his volatile temper, but Boldt enjoyed the man. He was among the top five PAs in King County, and some people had him picked for a Superior Court appointment within the year.

  Boldt, Matthews, and Striker were escorted to an elevator and shown up to the sixth floor, where a set of fake trees and the faint twinge of disinfectant welcomed them to an executive wing.

  Lucille Guillard, a cream-skinned black woman in her late twenties with a glorious French accent, an exceptionally long neck, and penetrating black eyes, wore a blue linen suit and white blouse combo that could have been stolen from Liz’s closet. An overriding confidence permeated a smile that was at once both expressive but controlled. She shook hands all around, offered them seats, and got right down to business. An assistant delivered three photocopies of the computerized account information.

  “A woman!” Daphne was the first to notice.

  Boldt felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. The Shop-Alert video had suggested the involvement of a woman, but the torture-homicide of Sheriff Turner Bramm had convinced him that he was after a man.

  “No such address,” Striker declared. “I’ve got a cousin who lives in the fifty-nine-hundred block on the even-numbered side. There’s a park across the street from him. There’s no such number as 5908.” To Guillard he said sharply, “Do you people ever check these things?”

  Guillard bristled. “I am not New Accounts,” she clarified, as if it were a banking disease.

  “Well, let’s see the original application. We’re a little rushed.” Striker’s prosthesis began chattering.

  “We’re okay, Razor,” Boldt said, trying to calm him.

  Guillard reread her copy of the computerized sheet. “This account was opened last week. That means that the original application would be destroyed by now.”

  “Destroyed?” Striker inquired, leaning forward in his seat. “What the hell do you mean, ‘destroyed’?”

  “Razor,” Boldt said. He could feel the man about to explode.

  She complained, “Pac-West is a paperless workplace. We’re all E-mail and voice mailboxes around here. Not that I like it. The bottom line for you guys is that the original application would have been scanned and downloaded to the mainframe in San Francisco five working days after the account opened. I can get you a facsimile of that original—the quality is exceptional—but not the original itself, I’m afraid.”

  “Fucking bean counters,” Striker complained. “You can’t develop latent prints off a copy, lady. You know what we’re up against here? A facsimile? You think
a facsimile is going to help the sergeant?”

  Boldt said, “It was a long shot anyway, Mikey. This is hardly Ms. Guillard’s fault. We had expected a bogus address, a bogus name.”

  “I would doubt that,” Guillard said. To Striker she said sternly, “The applications are checked out.”

  Striker objected. “You want to know what you’re looking at here? Ten to one this name belongs to a recently deceased female. The false identity gives this person a Social Security number that matches the name just in case your bank actually does run a check—which I still doubt. Federal agencies have taken steps for years to automate and cross-reference their orbit databases in order to prevent what we call mortuary fraud, but, like banks, they are a bunch of bureaucrats, and they move about as fast as slugs and are about as intelligent—”

  Daphne interrupted. “She would need a current mailing address, wouldn’t she? For the statements?”

  “Absolutely. If more than two statements are returned to us, we suspend the account immediately.” For Boldt, Guillard’s French accent turned her words into whipped cream.

  “But that means she has two months before you close the account,” Daphne pointed out.

  Striker said, “That’s what I’m telling you: slow as slugs.” His right hand sounded like a fence gate in a strong wind.

  “If this address is fraudulent, as Mr. Striker is suggesting, we will cancel the account today.”

  “No,” Boldt cautioned. “You mustn’t do that.”

  Guillard eyed him curiously, confused.

  Daphne explained, “If an exception can be made, we would prefer the account remain open.”

  “I don’t understand,” Guillard complained.

  “Of course you don’t!” Striker hollered. “Jesus!”

  Boldt grabbed Striker by the arm and led him into the hall, shutting the office door. “Enough, Razor!”

  “I’m sorry, Lou.” His metal claw ticked loudly. “You can see what she is: a foreigner, a minority, a woman—that’s a quota position, for Christ’s sake.”

  “She’s an executive vice president, Razor. One of twelve. You’re way out of line here.” Striker was breathing heavily. He nodded.

  “Things have been shitty for me at home, Lou. You’re probably right.”

  “Why don’t you talk to Legal—see if we can’t get any documentation on this account without jumping through the hoops. And be professional about it, Razor. We need these people.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay?”

  “Apologize for me.” Striker headed to the elevator without another word.

  Boldt returned to the office and apologized profusely to Ms. Guillard. He said, “It’s personal problems.”

  “We all have them,” Guillard replied understandingly. “Still, I am glad he is gone.” She allowed a warm smile. Her eyes met the two of them. “This is something serious, is it not?”

  “For the moment I’m afraid you’ll have to go mostly on faith.” He hesitated and then informed her. “I’m with Homicide. Mr. Striker is a prosecuting attorney. And Ms. Matthews is the police department’s forensic psychologist. We’re after a person who is committing particularly heinous crimes.”

  “And this is the person you’re after? This Sheila Dan-forth?”

  “Possibly,” Boldt conditioned. “We don’t know that for certain.”

  She appeared more than a little overwhelmed. In her smooth French accent, Guillard said, “Very well. How may I help you?”

  “The application was made in person?” Boldt asked hopefully.

  Checking the printout, Guillard said, “No. By mail.”

  “Mail?” Daphne asked.

  “It is done all the time. Nothing unusual there.”

  “Avoid the cameras,” Daphne said to Boldt.

  “Exactly,” he answered, then inquired of Guillard, “and the opening deposit?”

  She located a code on the document and used her computer terminal to look it up. “Postal money order.”

  Daphne said, “Difficult if not impossible to trace. She thought of everything.”

  “And this number?” Boldt asked, leaning over her desk and pointing it out to Guillard. “A credit card?” If it was a credit card, the charges could be traced—just the kind of paper trail he was hoping for.

  “No. It begins with the digit eight. That is an ATM card,” she replied.

  “She ordered an ATM card?” Boldt said uneasily.

  “By now she has it,” Guillard informed him. “Our latest marketing campaign. Have you not seen the advertisements? We guarantee an ATM debit card within two business days of opening a new account. No usage fees, no service fee for the first six months. Our competitors take several weeks to issue the cards, and most charge a variety of fees.”

  “Two days?” Daphne questioned.

  “Two days if you pick it up at a branch office. That is part of the marketing, you see. It provides our customer service representatives an opportunity to cross-sell. It has been an enormously successful campaign.”

  Boldt knew that unlike retail outlets, bank video surveillance systems worked on continuous twenty-four-hour loops, erasing the last twenty-four hours as they went—stopped and reviewed only in the event of a security problem. The timing of the application, the pickup of the ATM card, and the threat sent to Adler all ensured the establishment of an anonymous bank account, and a way to get at the funds that seemed to the layman nearly impossible to stop. “There have to be thousands of ATMs,” Boldt let slip.

  “What is it?” Guillard asked.

  Boldt rushed his words. “We’ll need a full accounting of the ATM card activity and the card’s personal identification number.” He added quickly, “Do we know if the PIN was generated by your computers or selected by the customer?”

  She referenced her computer terminal, typing the request.

  An ATM card seemed to Boldt an ingenious method of collecting the ransom, because they would have so little time to locate and prevent the withdrawals. And with this thought came a sickening feeling in his stomach that boiled up into his throat and forced him to excuse himself and seek out the bathroom.

  When he returned to Guillard’s office, he felt no better and he knew by Daphne’s troubled expression that he must have been very pale. He lost more of his color when Guillard informed him that she did not have the PIN information immediately available.

  “It’s time,” Boldt said.

  Daphne understood immediately. She said to the woman, “Ms. Guillard, we need to tell you something in the strictest of confidence. When we asked to see an account executive, that eventuality was made perfectly clear, so obviously you are a person to be trusted or your name would not have come up. Before we go any further, however, you should know that by coming into our confidence you are, by default, committing to what may be a long-term assignment, possibly with a great deal of hours involved. Long days. Long hours. There’s no way to know—”

  “But that’s how it looks,” Boldt said. “If you would prefer—for any reason—for us to work with someone else at the bank, now is the time to say so. You should think about this carefully.”

  “You’re with Homicide,” she directed to Boldt. He nodded. “And you’re a psychologist dealing with the criminal mind.”

  “That’s one aspect of my work, yes,” Daphne conceded. She felt like telling her, I try to keep the burnouts from eating their barrels, I try to keep the marriages from falling apart, and I try to help the junkies and alcoholics to save their badges. She continued: “Right now I’m trying to piece together a possible profile of whom we are after.”

  “I will help you,” said the French woman. West Indies perhaps, Boldt thought.

  “You’re sure?” he checked one last time. “This isn’t ‘Murder, She Wrote.’ This can get ugly.” Daphne nodded. Briefly, it seemed to him that none of them was breathing.

  “I want to help. It is either a ransom or an embezzlement or a suicide. Am I correct?”

  “O
r maybe all three,” Daphne said.

  “May I?” he asked, indicating the door. He didn’t want anyone to overhear what it was he had to say.

  Lucille Guillard’s face registered shock, concern, and terror. She hung her head and then looked at him with impassioned eyes and said, “She’s going to get her ransom through the ATMs.”

  “Unless we use the ATMs to catch her,” Boldt proposed.

  The woman’s eyes began to track behind her thinking. She did not look too convinced.

  “Can we do that?” he asked.

  Daphne asked, “Can she withdraw enough money for this to make sense?”

  “She has one thousand dollars in her opening balance. That does not qualify her as a Personal Banking Customer. Mind you, with this ransom demand of one hundred thousand dollars on deposit, she will qualify for Personal Banking. PBCs have a user-defined daily ATM ceiling. The card is really a debit card. Withdrawals are made against the account balance.”

  “Withdrawn from the same machine?” Boldt asked.

  “The same machine, yes. The same transaction, no. Do you see the difference? The physical limit of any one transaction at an ATM is four hundred dollars. That’s all, four hundred. That is not something we can override, but is imposed by the manufacturer of the machine for a variety of security reasons. So: per transaction, a total of four hundred. But the number of concurrent transactions is dependent entirely on the imposed ceiling, or the account balance, depending on the type of account.”

  “So it is possible—technically possible—to get at the ransom through the ATMs,” Boldt verified.

  “If the account is structured properly, quite possible. Yes. Thousands a day, I suppose, if the customer set it up that way. The highest daily ceiling that I’m aware of is ten thousand dollars. That was requested by a rug merchant who uses the card for international buying. In his case, however, he uses the machines infrequently. It’s used more as a cash advance card.”