Undercurrents

by Ridley Pearson

  He scribbled some notes on the fancy paper napkin, and reminded himself to talk over his ideas with Shoswitz and Kramer. This being the largest departmental investigation in years, Boldt was well aware of the chance of mistakes and oversights. A multiple-review system involving all three detectives would increase their chances of catching any such mistakes. Boldt’s plan called for each detective to regularly check the other’s work. It would increase their workload but might reduce the chance of losing a court battle. When the napkin had filled with notes, arrows, and asterisks, the soft gray pants appeared by the table’s edge.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said the concierge. “She’s leaving.”

  Boldt stood quickly, fetching the napkin and sliding a ten-dollar bill into the man’s hand. “Just now?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Boldt walked into the lobby just in time to see a glimpse of her profile as she reached the street. He debated following her but decided against it, electing instead to take a seat in the far corner, hidden partially by a group of insurance salesmen collecting for a group lunch.

  An attractive man came down the stairs alone only a few minutes later. He was about thirty-five, blond and broad-shouldered. He crossed the lobby, heading straight for the side doors. Boldt followed.

  When, a few minutes later, this man entered the Rainier Bank Tower, Boldt wasn’t too surprised. He climbed back into his car, checked in with the dispatcher, and drove away, heart pounding from the gradual climb uphill. Or so he tried to believe.

  5

  Cheryl Croy’s boyfriend, Craig Marquette, worked as a butcher in a Safeway five blocks off of Forty-fifth Street. Boldt arrived at fifteen minutes past one. He found Marquette on the loading bay just lighting up a cigarette. A Marlboro, Boldt noticed, introducing himself. He could scratch that off his list. The young man nodded but didn’t offer his hand. Boldt was put off by the sight of bloodstains on the man’s apron.

  “I already talked to you guys, didn’t I?” complained Marquette.

  Boldt explained his position on the case and his need to hear some things firsthand. “You understand,” he finished explaining, “that in these cases the victims are all we have. It’s up to the victims to tell us who did this.”

  “That’s a little bit tough, isn’t it?” Marquette sniped.

  “Now you’re getting the idea,” Boldt returned in an equally condescending tone. At this point, Boldt couldn’t rule anyone out as a suspect—even a boyfriend. Physically, Marquette didn’t fit the BSU profile—he appeared healthy and strong—but he was an apprentice butcher by trade, a man accustomed to the sight of blood, a big man, and he didn’t seem too fond of the police.

  Marquette turned and peered at Boldt through squinting red eyes. “If you assholes had arrested the right guy in the first place, then this whole thing would be different. Cheryl had stopped jogging because of the murders. She had become security-conscious. She’d done a damn good job of things. But she relaxed after the killer was nailed in court by that guy. Everybody did. This whole city relaxed. And now look at how things turned out. Shit.”

  He seemed younger than Boldt had first guessed. “Friday night was the last time you saw her alive?” Boldt asked, purposely avoiding any implication in his tone of voice.

  “Yeah, Friday. That’s right.”

  “You had dinner at Guido’s?”

  “We ate a pie at Guido’s, went back to her place, and watched some tube.”

  “Anything unusual happen while you were at Guido’s? Strange guys, anything like that?”

  “You think this guy hunts them in restaurants?”

  “It’ll go quicker if I ask the questions,” Boldt commented. “We both have a lot of work to do.” Boldt’s bedside manner differed according to whom he interviewed. With guys like Marquette—he had seen a hundred Marquettes—he preferred to cut through the shit and get the job over with. The image of this guy dropping a cleaver down onto raw meat didn’t sit well.

  “Nothing unusual,” Marquette answered, lighting another Marlboro.

  “You’ve been seeing Cheryl for how long?”

  “Couple of months. We met at a friend’s house in the middle of summer. I wasn’t always a butcher, you know. I worked for Boeing up until eighteen months ago. Assembly crew. Laid off along with twelve hundred others. Couldn’t find any assembly work except in southern Cal and I grew up there, no way I’m going back. This was the best I could find. Cheryl, being a vegetarian, wasn’t too fond of my change in employment.” He looked down at his apron. “And politicians have the nerve to say the economy is healthy again. What the fuck do they know?”

  “How did she spend her time when she wasn’t with you? You know anything about that?”

  “Some. Sure. Her job took up most of her time. That lawyer worked her butt off. Sixty-hour weeks sometimes. She did some stuff with her girlfriends, shopping, that kind of thing. She took a cooking class—”

  “Remember where?”

  “University. One of those night things for people already through school.”

  Boldt took a note.

  “She read a little. Liked movies. She was normal, as normal as anyone you’ve ever met. We had a good thing going. You catch this guy and I’ll save the state the cost of a trial.”

  “It would be prudent to withhold that kind of comment, Mr. Marquette. That’s not going to get you anywhere. Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. I got it.” He took a long drag on the cigarette.

  “Did she use the facilities at Green Lake? The jogging track, anything like that?”

  “Sure. Everybody who lives around there uses that stuff. We went on walks, that kind of thing.”

  “Had she, or had both of you together, been at the lake in the last week?”

  “I’m sure she had. She jogged there every day.”

  “I want you to think about this real carefully.”

  “I told you, I’m sure.”

  “She shop regularly at the same stores?” Boldt asked, thinking about the paperback he had found under her bed.

  “For food?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Last few months she shopped here whenever I pulled a shift. I don’t know. She had a couple of stores nearby her place. There’s a small grocery up on Greenwood. Got ice cream there, things like that. You know how it is. She shopped the neighborhood like anybody else.”

  “I’m making a list as we go along. When we’re done I’d like you to go over it and fill in any specifics when you have some free time. You mind doing that?”

  “I’m up for catching this guy—same as everybody else. You want me to fill something out, I’ll fill something out.”

  “She had bought a new paperback on Saturday. Any idea where she might have done so?”

  Marquette shrugged and smoked some more. “Can’t say. Like I already told you, she liked to read.”

  “Think a little harder on that, would you please, Marquette? Where would she have bought a paperback? Any place in particular?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “It’s important,” Boldt reminded.

  “I hear ya, okay? I’m thinking.” He took a deep drag on the cigarette and shook his head. “I don’t know. I’d say here, but she didn’t come here last Saturday.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure, I’m sure.” Another drag. Long exhale. “I don’t know, a drugstore maybe? You’re the cop. She do any other shopping on Saturday?”

  Had she? Boldt made himself a note. “See, you gave me an idea,” he said.

  “Gee whiz, ain’t that swell, Mr. Detective.”

  Boldt pursed his lips.

  “You know what she might have done? Anything favorite she like to do weekends?”

  He shook his head and exhaled a cloud. “Listen, I stayed with her Friday night. Had to be here by eight on Saturday. We had another date for tonight.” He turned and faced Boldt fully, his bloodied apron screaming out. “How do you like that?”

  Boldt lo
oked away into a crate of rotting produce and then back at Marquette. “What can you tell me about her home life? Her habits. Did she draw the curtains at night?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “How about windows? Was she in the habit of leaving windows open? We found two open upstairs.”

  “That house is tiny. It has a way of getting too hot upstairs when the heat kicks on. She was paying four bills a month, utilities extra. She shoulda had a roommate. She held back because she wanted the roommate to be me. Anyway, the heater had a mind of its own. You have to open a couple of windows to keep the place balanced. Downstairs needs more insulation.”

  “She shut them when it rained?”

  “Wouldn’t you? Shit! ’Course she did. Listen, she only turned the heat on now and then. Said when I wasn’t there she had trouble keeping warm. Maybe I’m to blame for all this,” he added.

  Marquette’s tone of voice bothered Boldt. “You nervous?” Boldt asked.

  “’Course I’m nervous. You’re a cop, aren’t you?” he replied. “Listen, Lieutenant, last time I was with Cheryl, we were in bed together watching the tube.” Boldt didn’t bother to correct the mistake in rank. “Next thing I know I’m reading about her in the papers.” He paused, examined the short cigarette, and then crushed it with the toe of his boot. “A couple of weeks back she asked me to move in with her, like I told you. I turned her down. She knew things were rough for me, financially, and I wasn’t sure what her motivation was. I didn’t want charity. I’m divorced. My wife ditched out after Boeing laid us off. I liked Cheryl a lot. I’m not sure I loved her. Not in the commitment sense of the word. She felt the same way, I think. We were working on it, testing it out. But I couldn’t see moving in with her. It wouldn’t have been fair to either of us. But if I had…” He shrugged again. “What the hell. Who knows?”

  Boldt waited a few moments before asking, “Did she wear a nightgown to bed? Did she wear a robe?”

  “You’re all heart, eh, Lieutenant? I know, I know, you’ve got a job to do. Don’t let me slow you down.” Marquette fished his last cigarette from the pack, and lit it before answering. “She had a nightgown hanging in the bathroom I think, but to be honest, I didn’t see her in it too much.” He smirked.

  “We found a glass of milk by her bed.”

  “Her snack. She ate a bedtime snack—cookies and milk—every single night. A real routine for her.”

  The word routine caught Boldt’s attention. “What time? Any time in particular?” Boldt could hear the excitement in his own voice.

  “Bedtime. I don’t know. Why?”

  “She eat it in the kitchen or up in her room?”

  “She’d kind of nibble on a cookie, you know? Drag it out, chase it with some milk. Up in bed usually. What’s the big deal?”

  Boldt tore the handwritten list from his pad and handed it to Marquette. “Fill in anything you can, will you? If you can do it tonight, that would help us out.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “Give us a call. Someone will stop by and pick it up.”

  “What’s so important about the snack, Lieutenant?”

  “Sergeant,” Boldt corrected, reintroducing himself. He shoved out his hand. Despite a quick attempt by the butcher to wipe his hand on his apron, as they shook hands, Marquette’s felt greasy and warm.

  The smell of dead meat remained with Boldt for the rest of the day.

  6

  The King County Medical Examiner’s office was housed in the basement of the Harbor View Medical Center. Boldt had been here often enough. He didn’t like coming here. More often than not it was to oversee an autopsy, or discuss gruesome details of a case. And since the start of the Cross Killings, he had left here time and time again with no more than he had arrived with—empty hopes.

  Doctor Ronald Dixon, chief pathologist, owned a deep, powerful voice but spoke softly and casually. He was a big bear of a man, with large, clean hands. A fastidious man, Dixon took great pleasure in constantly cleaning his nails. He wore gray pants and a white laboratory coat with his ID badge clipped to his pocket. The two men shook hands and Dixon sagged into a chair that seemed to swallow him. “Damn tough luck,” he said, locating a small screwdriver in his middle drawer and going to work on his nails.

  “Yeah,” said Boldt.

  “Not a hell of a lot to tell you about Croy. She died of suffocation: strangulation, same as the others. I’ve listed the stab wounds as perimortem. More this time—seventeen. I’d like to be able to tell you for certain when he inflicted those wounds, but I can’t. Time of death was sometime Sunday night. That’s about the best I can do. We didn’t get the body for two days, you know. No way to really narrow it down very well. We sent the hand bags over to the lab, didn’t pick up anything on the fingers or the nails.”

  “No red fibers?”

  “Not on her.” He paused. “Abe tells me he lifted some of that same mud from her doormat.”

  Boldt nodded. “Oil and gas mixture embedded in the mud. Probably from an outboard engine. Could be from a hundred different marinas. Doesn’t help us much.”

  “We found some sperm inside her tubes. Nothing vaginal. I assume from the report that it’s the boyfriend’s.”

  Boldt made a note to check Marquette’s blood type. “I think she ate a snack—some cookies—right before the incident. Any way to tell how long before? It may help us with the timing.”

  Doc Dixon excused himself and when he returned a few minutes later he said, “We’ll know shortly.”

  “Anything new, Dixie?”

  “No. Nothing new. Same as all the others.”

  “Could it be the work of a copycat?”

  The question caused Dixon a moment of thought. “Hard to say, I guess. Depends. In my opinion we’ve got the same guy as before. I’ve been to what, nine of these now? You and I both know that two, maybe three of them looked a little bit different, but not enough to raise any kind of suspicion. A person could read about some of this in the papers, but not all of it, not the specifics. They would know about the cross, but not exactly what it looked like, how deeply it was cut, the angle of incision. They would know about the eyes being taped open, but that’s not an easy thing to do, and this guy does it the same way every time. Same with the ropes, the timing of the stab wounds. I don’t think so, Lou.”

  Boldt nodded. Among other things he had been testing whether word of his discovery of a red fiber on the porch step had reached the Medical Examiner’s department. He was glad it had not. One of the big problems with this case was the press leaks. He and Shoswitz had tried to close down the communication conduits in an effort to reduce the leaks, and it seemed to be working.

  Dixon said, “We do have one promising lead, but we haven’t gotten the lab results back yet.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Royce, one of my autopsy assistants, had the bright idea that the killer might have used his teeth to tear the duct tape from the roll. We removed all the tape very carefully this time and sent it over to the lab. If we’re lucky, they may pull some facial hair.”

  “Lab should have thought of that. That was good thinking.”

  “I’ll pass that along. These new guys need the strokes. They need something. This department has been turning over personnel at a ridiculous rate. Pay’s lousy, working conditions minimal, and they’ve got me for a boss.”

  “That’s one out of three in their favor, Dixie. They’re batting three hundred.”

  “You’ve been around Shoswitz too much. You’re starting to talk like him.”

  “Tell me about it,” Boldt said. “I have to listen to that baseball shit day in and day out.”

  “Have you heard the new Hamilton album?” Like Boldt, Dixon was a jazz enthusiast.

  “Didn’t even know one was out,” Boldt admitted.

  “You feeling all right, Lou?”

  “Tired.”

  Dixon nodded. Tired was one thing he understood. “I wish I could give you something new. Not
much, I’m afraid. He wore latex gloves, same as before. No prints anywhere.”

  “Still no indication as to why he ties them facedown first?”

  “No. Not from me. Not my department. We did find indication of torn hair. We don’t have the other bodies, so we can’t make comparisons. We could exhume, but Jesus… It may be he ties them facedown and then pulls on their hair. Something like that.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t know if that helps you any.”

  “No sign of rape?”

  “No bruising. Nothing vaginal, as I said. I wish I had more.” He paused. “Incidentally, Croy’s family is already screaming for us to release the body. I know you want us to hold each body a month, but I don’t see any reason to hold on to this one that long. I told them another week at least. What do you think?”

  “She’s evidence. I want to hold on to her.”

  “Medically speaking, there’s no reason for it. We’ve been over her. But if you want it that way, that’s okay with me. Just don’t make it too long, will you? We’ve got limited space here.”

  A knock on the door preceded a head poking inside. The man had narrow-set blue eyes and a heavy five o’clock shadow. He had a pair of headphones from a Sony Walkman slung around his neck, a Mozart concerto issuing forth. He looked as tired as Boldt felt. The man said, “Mike checked on that for you. Food was still in the stomach. Couldn’t have been eaten more than twenty or thirty minutes before death.”

  Dixon nodded and thanked him. “Lou Boldt, James Royce, the guy I was telling you about.”

  “Good call on that tape,” Boldt said, standing quickly, shaking hands enthusiastically, picking up on the hint Dixon had dropped. “That’s the kind of heads-up thinking we could use more of.”