Undercurrents

by Ridley Pearson

  He was a young weed with his mother’s hair and his father’s drawn features. He had size-twelve feet that he had only partially grown into, long spidery arms, and sloping undeveloped shoulders.

  “Justin, this is Mr. Boldt from the police department. He’d like to ask you a few questions if that’s okay.”

  Justin shrugged and remained standing.

  Justin appeared to be about thirteen, heading into some of the most difficult years of his life. I wish I had one like you, Boldt thought. I wish the situation was reversed, and I was part of a moderately happy, middle-income family with two children and an eye on a motor home. The grass may always be greener, but right now it looks positively emerald.

  “I’m curious,” Boldt began, eyes locked on those of the young man. And indeed he was curious. Boldt’s wife, Elizabeth, had gone off in search of her career, denying him—in his way of looking at things—the opportunity to have children. Had things been different, he might have had a son of his own, a son this same age, the first inkling of manhood seeping into the stalk and coloring the leaves. I’d play basketball with you on the weekends, and go trout fishing in the summers way up into Alaska where the rainbows run several pounds and fight like banshees. We would argue and I would secretly complain to Elizabeth, all the while loving every minute of it.

  He wondered if Douglas Levitt knew how lucky he was.

  “Yeah?” asked Justin.

  “I wonder if you’ve seen anybody on the phone pole. The one in front of the house.”

  “No,” the boy replied harshly. “Why should I have?”

  “He might have been dressed like a phone man or an electrician or—”

  “I told you I didn’t.”

  “Justin!” his father scolded.

  “Douglas,” interjected the wife, “leave him alone.”

  Boldt had seen the boy blush. He had seen him check both parents before answering. You’re nervous as all hell, he thought, and it’s not just because I’m a cop. You saw something, or you know something and you’re afraid to say so. “You didn’t see anyone? Anything? Don’t you have the room facing the street?” Boldt guessed. “The one with a telescope in the window—”

  “I don’t have a telescope.”

  Douglas Levitt sat forward, studying his son. “Sure you do, Just. We gave you one last Christmas.”

  “Justin,” the mother said sympathetically, “you should think carefully before answering. Mr. Boldt’s a very busy man, a policeman,” she said childishly, “and I’m sure he has other things he needs to tend to.”

  Answering his father the young man said, “Oh yeah. I’d forgotten all about that thing. That’s in my closet, I think. Remember, Dad? We tried it out but the light from the city screwed everything up.”

  “Watch your language, Justin,” his mother scolded.

  The young man’s eyes darted nervously between Boldt and his father.

  “But that is your room?” Boldt asked. “Facing the street,” he added.

  “Yeah.”

  “And the pole.”

  “Sure.”

  “And you haven’t seen anyone at all on the pole? No one? It would be a tremendous help if—”

  “No one,” the kid interrupted. “This is about that lady getting killed over there,” he said, “isn’t it? You think the killer used our pole?”

  Boldt didn’t want to scare the kid. “Probably someone from the utilities. It was a long shot.” To Douglas Levitt he said, “We go after anything. Anything at all. I hope you understand.”

  “Certainly, Lieutenant,” Levitt said.

  Everyone calls me by the wrong rank, Boldt thought. They watch too much TV and don’t listen carefully enough when I introduce myself. If I was getting a lieutenant’s pay, I’d have a new jacket and a graphite fly rod. I’d have extra cash for everything I don’t have any extra cash for, and my wife wouldn’t be the one who pays for dinner every time we go out. If I was a lieutenant, I’d give this case to a sergeant and point my finger a lot when things dragged down.

  “You didn’t have that telescope aimed out your window a few minutes ago?” Boldt asked Justin quickly.

  The kid blushed and his mother stepped in with, “He answered you already, Lieutenant. Really! Do you think he’s lying, or something? He told you the telescope’s in his closet. Isn’t that right, Justin?”

  “Is that all?” the kid asked with the same strength of conviction Boldt might typically see in a prosecuting attorney.

  “Did you ever see the woman over there?” Boldt asked. “Cheryl Croy, the one who was killed? Did you ever see her in her backyard, maybe with a boyfriend or something?”

  Justin blushed again, and again his mother objected, but Douglas Levitt barked back at her and silenced her, giving Justin a chance to answer.

  “I’ve seen her before, sure. I know who you’re talking about.”

  “Justin,” the mother said, surprised and disconcerted.

  “Mom, we’re up on the hill. I see lots of people from my window. What’s a window for, Mom? Jeez, so I look out my window now and then. What now?” he asked. “You don’t want me looking out my window? Give me a break, would ya? You treat me like a goddamned five-year-old!”

  “You watch your mouth, young man! You won’t speak that way to your mother!” Justin Levitt fled the room, thundering upstairs, and slammed his door.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant,” Douglas Levitt apologized.

  “It’s sergeant. That’s all right. I understand. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “You certainly should be,” complained the wife, attempting to force a sprig of hair back in place.

  Just then several cars pulled up outside the house. Lou Boldt noticed them and apologized once more before excusing himself. He put the I.D. man to work and then headed back down Seventy-third Street, alone, still wondering what it would have been like to have children. He told himself not to think about such things. What’s past is past. Except that for Lou Boldt the past kept coming back around like the brass ring on a carousel. Young women dead, their eyes taped open. And he missed that damn ring every time. It was not in his nature to dwell on what might have been. He concentrated instead on Justin Levitt’s blushing face. He wanted to speak with the boy again, to get him away from his doting mother. He intended to organize an extensive house-to-house—or pole-to-pole—investigation of all the prior victims’ streets and neighborhoods in case his people had overlooked something. The discovery of the light pole had given him a second wind, a renewed optimism, a reminder that the killer was as human as his victims.

  Boldt saw a car stop at a stop sign and watched as the driver lit a cigarette. It triggered a vision of Craig Marquette standing alongside rotting vegetable matter and wearing that bloodstained apron, and he wondered if it could be that easy.

  Was anything ever that easy?

  He didn’t think so.

  8

  Lou Boldt didn’t head home that Tuesday night. Didn’t call. His wife wouldn’t expect him home from Portland until the weekend, and he convinced himself he needed the quiet. He took a seedy room on First Avenue and charged it on his MasterCard.

  For the next three days Boldt oversaw the second search of Green Lake’s surrounding neighborhoods, including all phone poles. He was working eighteen-hour days in an effort to keep up with the dozens of reports streaming across his desk. Kramer was living at the office too, and for the same reasons—he and Boldt had split the victims into two groups, and despite Shoswitz’s objections to the increased overtime hours, each was running a thorough recanvassing of the areas. The same element of conflict between the two sergeants returned. Boldt wished Kramer had never been assigned to the task force; he was quite certain the feeling was reciprocal. He remained at his desk for days, swamped with paperwork and scheduling demands.

  The press was kept at bay. Yet the leaks had begun again. KING news radio was already “theorizing” that the Special Task Force was withholding new evidence. The local papers carr
ied it a step further, suggesting to their readers the police were close to apprehending the Cross Killer. It was pressure no one needed.

  Kramer cleared his throat and stepped into Boldt’s office area uninvited. Boldt was on the phone and unable to stop the man. Kramer slid his butt onto Boldt’s desk and in doing so knocked a pile of papers onto the floor. He collected them absentmindedly, randomly, slapped them back onto the desk in a scattered heap and sat back down on them. Boldt waved him off the desktop and indicated in a crude sign language that he should get a chair. Kramer stood impatiently. Boldt hung up.

  “Jesus, John. What the hell?” he complained, attempting to sort out the pile.

  “You ought to keep your desk neater.” Kramer’s office area was typically spotless. Too clean for a cop who was supposed to be busy, as far as Boldt was concerned. Kramer stuck too close to regs. Triplicate this, duplicate that, everything in on time. But worthless most of the time. Void of any substantial content. Kramer was best at moving paper. He would have made a perfect IRS agent, Boldt thought. As a cop he lacked ideas and initiative—prerequisites for good detective work. To everyone but Kramer it was no wonder he was behind a desk.

  “What is it, John?”

  “I got the most recent I.D. report.” He handed a copy to Boldt. “Just came across my desk. Yours is probably here somewhere,” he sniped, leafing the papers on Boldt’s desk. “Some other things I want to go over with you, as far as assignments.”

  “I read it,” Boldt said, handing the copy back to Kramer. “We bagged red fibers from the throw rug inside the front door and from the carpet beneath the chair in her bedroom. The crumbs in the sink were from the chocolate chip cookies she had stashed in the cupboard. They pulled a trace amount of powder from the duct tape Dixie supplied. The powder’s from the latex gloves. Same make as the other hits. Where do you want to go with all of it? What’s next?” Boldt tossed out, puzzling Kramer. The man’s face bunched in on itself. He looked as if he might cry.

  Kramer whispered childishly, “I want some of the fieldwork, Boldt. You and Shoswitz are burying me in god-damned paperwork and I’m sick and tired of it. I’m just as competent—”

  “John, it’s out of my hands. You know that. This is absurd. You’re going to have to talk with Shoswitz.”

  “Bullshit. A couple hours on this receipt thing, something like that—”

  “Out of the question,” Boldt interrupted. “That’s LaMoia’s baby. We’ve been over this…”

  “I outrank LaMoia, dammit!”

  “Rank has nothing to do with it. It’s LaMoia’s baby, and that’s that. Are you going to get a chair, or am I going to get one for you?” With Kramer towering over him, Boldt felt uncomfortable. Kramer was essentially unpredictable, which made him all the worse for fieldwork. Although no one seemed to know about Daphne Matthews’s past, everyone knew John Kramer’s. His father, who had held a seat on the State Supreme Court until his death two years before, had peddled his influence to assure son John a place on Seattle’s finest. The same influence had been used to obtain a series of undeserved promotions. John LaMoia deserved that office space a few paces down the hall, not Kramer, and Boldt still bristled every time he thought about it. Injustice within the ranks of those hired to serve and protect. What kind of system was that?

  Boldt found him a chair and returned to his office. Kramer was gone. He wheeled the chair next door to Kramer’s area and found the man at his clean desk. A nudie poster calendar hung on the wall. The woman—about eighteen—had breasts the size of healthy eggplants. She was sitting naked on an elegant buffet table, her legs wrapped around a huge bowl of fresh red cherries. “That’s revolting,” Boldt said. He hadn’t seen Miss October yet.

  “Each to his own,” Kramer replied.

  “Listen, John, team effort, right?”

  “Stuff it, Boldt. I don’t need it from you. I thought you might understand.”

  “You’re whining. You’re actually whining, John.”

  “Fuck off!” Kramer barked.

  “I didn’t make the assignments.”

  “Oh pleeease!”

  “You want to go over the report or not?” Boldt said bluntly.

  “Not.”

  “There are things we should cover.”

  “Later,” Kramer insisted pathetically.

  “Where have I been for the last three days, John? Answer me that? I’ll tell you. I’ve been stuck to my goddamned chair just as you’ve been. Well, haven’t I? Haven’t I?”

  Kramer shrugged, not looking at Boldt.

  “We’re running what, ten, twelve cops on this, you and I. We don’t do it right, we waste time. We don’t work together, then we don’t do it right. I can’t change our assignments, and I wouldn’t if I could. Here’s what I want you to do. You listening?”

  Kramer was red in the face, rage in his eyes, holding himself stiffly upright, like a child expecting to be struck. “I have my friends,” he said. “I know people you couldn’t wish yourself onto. You’re pathetic, Boldt. Look at you. You look like a fucking bum. You shouldn’t be seen in public.”

  Boldt ignored it. When Kramer got on the defensive he made references to all his late father’s connections. But Kramer was not his father’s son. He had none of the spine of Judge Kramer. He was soft and seemed almost frightened most of the time. “I want you to put someone on the psychiatric hospitals, or handle it yourself if you have time. I want a list of any and all patients admitted voluntarily or otherwise into state or private institutions for the weeks immediately following Labor Day, and who were discharged anytime prior to last Sunday night.”

  The idea sparked Kramer’s attention. For once, Boldt thought, he reasoned quite well. “You’re thinking that’s why nothing happened in September,” Kramer said.

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “We put him away for a few weeks.”

  “It’s possible.”

  Kramer nodded. “Jesus, God, can you imagine that? Can you imagine the irony if we had him at some point and let him walk?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Okay, I got it.”

  “I don’t want you going anywhere with this until we have all the data in, okay, John? And don’t go spreading it around this office.”

  “With the leaks we’ve been having?” Kramer said. “No way.”

  “Speaking of which, you said you’d check with your press contacts and try to find the source that’s been compromising us. Any luck along those lines?”

  “Jury’s still out,” Kramer replied. “Haven’t made any headway at all.”

  “I want a name, John. Whoever it is was indirectly responsible for Jergensen’s death. And that cost Croy her life. Find me a name.”

  Kramer nodded.

  “Keep me in mind for some field work,” Kramer reminded.

  Boldt didn’t nod. He purposely avoided any acknowledgment. “Keep me up to speed, John.”

  “Oh, one other thing, Boldt,” Kramer said, stopping the detective at the door. “I did like you said and checked out the 911 call that ended up getting you stopped on foot over on Seventy-third.”

  Boldt nodded. He had asked Kramer to find out if the caller had left a name, curious whether or not this had anything to do with Neighborhood Watch programs as he had suspected. “And?”

  “Caller didn’t leave a name. I checked the tape myself.” All tapes containing 911 calls were filed and archived for ninety days, before being bulk-erased and recycled into the system again. “Our operator asked the kid for a name, but he chickened out and hung up.”

  “A kid. A boy?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You still have the tape?” Boldt asked.

  Kramer pulled open a drawer. It was so neat it belonged in a mail-order catalog. “Right here,” he said.

  ***

  Detective John LaMoia pulled up a wheeled office chair and waited for Boldt to finish listening to the cassette. Boldt chewed vigorously on a fresh
bear claw and washed it down with hot coffee. “What have you got, John?” Boldt asked, turning the machine off and removing the headphones.

  “The Krantz paperback is available at sixty-two stores within the city area. The make of cash register has narrowed it down to just five. I haven’t seen my woman in four days. She’s been working the split shift at the hospital. I wonder if I could have the afternoon off—our schedules overlap today.”

  Boldt glared at the man.

  “Hey, I was only asking. Okay. Fine.” He continued, “I’ve been working on the other victims, cross-checking their checking accounts and credit-card records to see if they shopped any of these five stores. No luck so far. Of course, we wouldn’t know anything if they paid cash, which means a lot of shit could slip through the cracks.”

  “So?”

  “So, I checked out what they were up to. Like you said, we had tried that back around the Saviria kill, but we have a lot more data now. Not just stores—not just where they spent money—but what they were doing. Paul and I both have cauliflower ear from all the phone calls. We reinterviewed everyone. Boyfriends, family, co-workers, and we got ourselves a list of what these women did on the day the killer did them. Where they were. It’s a shitload of stuff, Sarge. But it’s something.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Okay, here’s what we got. We stripped it down to the area of the BSU profile. Threw out the places outside the three-mile radius. We know these babes spent time at a beauty parlor, two health clubs, several department stores and gas stations, a car wash, six different supermarkets, a toy store, a bookstore, and a pair of video-rental stores.”

  “And a partridge in a pear tree.”

  “You got it.”

  “It’s good work, John. I don’t mean to put it down.”

  “Thanks. I wish we had something a little more concrete.”

  “So essentially these women were all over the place on the days of their murders. But no matches.” Boldt paused and then said, “I want you to start again, John. Go back four days from each of the kills this time. Try to find where they might have gone, where they might have shopped. Let’s find a connection between several of them. They all live pretty close to each other. Chances are they may have frequented the same places. Maybe stores that sell paperbacks have something to do with it, maybe not. But a store could be where he spots her. Try those malls. Maybe our boy spots them in mall parking lots and gets a look at their vehicle registration while they’re shopping.”