“You know her personally?” Boldt asked, recalling Sharff’s comments.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just what it sounds like. Personally. Get it?”
He hesitated too long. “No. No. That’s not the way I do things around here.”
“I hear she was pretty cute.”
“They’re all cute, pal. And they all got curves like Italian race cars—big deal—that doesn’t mean I get personal with them.”
“Not from what I hear.”
His jaw muscles flexed again and he said, “That so?”
Boldt nodded. “I hear maybe you and Betsy were close.”
“That’s bullshit. Who told you that?”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
The muscle man seemed to realize this was more serious than he had initially thought, and he considered this question carefully. “I’d say about two weeks ago. I could check my book. My billings. I’d have a record of it.”
“Would you do that?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now.”
“Shit.”
“There are other ways we could go about this,” Boldt explained.
“Okay, okay. Hold your water.” Sam leaned his head back into the room. His voice echoed as he said, “Gimme two five-minute workouts. I’ll be right back.”
Boldt heard the swimmer whine a complaint but the trainer barked at her stiffly and shut the door. “Bitch,” Sam said under his breath. Boldt followed him upstairs.
***
The trainer’s records showed it as two weeks and three days since Betsy Norvak had kept an appointment with him, which approximately matched Doc Dixon’s dating of the body. Boldt let him go back to the woman.
He asked around for another half hour, keeping one eye out for the trainer’s departure. The man had struck Boldt as a liar and he wanted to keep an eye on him. A woman named Candy Langholf, no taller than five feet, with too much hip and thigh, claimed to know Betsy Norvak well. Boldt offered to buy her a fruit smoothie in the small health bar Coconuts. There were posters on the wall of oiled body builders, male and female. They turned Boldt’s stomach. There were also shots from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar, which Boldt found positively erotic.
“I haven’t seen Betsy around here in a couple of weeks,” she said.
He asked her when exactly and Candy Langholf said she couldn’t remember. Betsy had been having trouble with her elbow again—a recurring injury. Two men wearing muscle shirts entered the bar and ordered fresh-squeezed orange juice. They were talking loudly, and it distracted Boldt. One of them kept checking Boldt out with sideways glances.
“Did you ever meet a guy name Montrose, a Canadian from the University?”
“Her flame? Sure. He used to lift here. He made a real scene once. Came in looking for her. He was a little drunk and tried to literally drag her away. He had the wrong impression. It’s a club, you know, and we all get to know each other, and it doesn’t matter if a little hair escapes now and then or a boob pops out. We’re all adults. We’re all here for the same reason, most of us, and we all help each other come along. That crazy Canadian thought Betsy was trying to get laid all the time. Jeez! What an attitude problem. He didn’t understand us at all.”
“He made a scene?”
“Tried to take her home.”
“And?”
“And Sam threatened to rearrange his body parts if he didn’t vamoose. He took one look at Sam and hightailed it out of here.”
“So Betsy didn’t flirt?”
“‘Didn’t’? Why the past tense? Say, just what kind of cop are you, anyway? Come to think about it, I better see your badge.” She hopped off her stool and stood away from him. “After what’s been happening lately…”
He fished out his I.D. wallet and opened it for her. The badge sparkled in the overhead light.
One of the guys at the bar saw the I.D., and a minute later the two were gone. Good riddance, thought Lou Boldt. “Homicide,” he told Candy Langholf.
“Betsy?” she gasped in a whisper. “The Cross Killer?”
“No,” he stated emphatically, and she seemed relieved. He wondered if it was the truth. “But we’d like to speak with her,” he told her.
“She lives up past Carkeek.”
“Yes.”
“I really didn’t know her all that well,” she said, changing her story.
“How much truth is there in that she flirts a lot?” He changed the tense to reassure her.
“A lot of the girls come here for the guys. Vice versa too. But not Betsy.”
“Meaning?”
“Betsy is real serious about her body, about her workouts. She races windsurfers. She wants to get on the international circuit… France, Hawaii, you know. She spends a lot of time at the Gorge during the summer months. Works out fall and winter here. But you couldn’t call her a flirt. Not like some of the girls.”
“Did Betsy have anything going with Sam?”
She chuckled. “You do get around.”
“Is that a ‘yes’?”
She shrugged. “Listen, Sam takes an interest in certain people. You hear all sorts of rumors, you know what I mean? Personally, I don’t put much faith in them. Betsy bought herself some home gear. You know, tanning lights, a couple of weight machines. What the hell, she can afford it. So Sam has to spend some time over there setting up the stuff. He moonlights as a distributor, you know. That’s how rumors get started. I wouldn’t put much faith in them. There are enough rumors in a place like this to burn your ears off.”
“But there was a rumor about Sam and Betsy?”
“It’s inevitable. Sam comes to her rescue from the drunk Canadian. He drives her home. That’s enough for most people around here. The truth is, since the AIDS thing, people are a lot less casual about sex. I’m not saying at one time there wasn’t a lot of bed-hopping going on around here. Jeez, it was musical pillows for a while. But those days have passed. You can’t be sure anymore. It makes for a lot less sex. There’s a lot of dating still, but that’s about it.”
Boldt thanked her and paid for the smoothies. The drink helped his gut. He thought it might be smart to stop at the store and buy some yogurt and fruit and try making one at home. He stopped in and said good-bye to Mike Sharff before leaving, thinking it important to keep good relations with the ME’s office. Boldt’s pager beeped, drawing the annoyed attention of nearly everyone in the room. On his way out the door he placed a call downtown. Bobbie’s efforts had located Betsy Norvak’s minivan at Carkeek Park.
Before he left, Boldt asked the receptionist when Sam was through for the night, and was told ten o’clock. It gave him a little over two hours. The woman stopped Boldt as he reached the door, her provocative torn T-shirt tempting his eyes as she bounced down the stairs and caught up to him.
She handed him a rate card.
The door jerked open. He stood face-to-face with Daphne Matthews, and behind her, John Kramer. She wore a pink velour sweatsuit and had her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. With her hair back her jaw seemed stronger and her eyes bigger. She had tiny gold studs in her earlobes, which were red from the cold. Kramer was still in his office clothes, a flight bag in hand. Smiles fell from their faces and for a moment the three of them stood there in absolute silence. Boldt stared at her and felt the color drain from his face. What now? he wondered. Kramer mumbled, “Hi, Lou,” and tried to act casual, which was like a politician trying to sound funny. Lou Boldt didn’t take his eyes off of Daphne. A smile finally twitched across her face, forced and unnatural.
“See ya,” Boldt said. He brushed past, his bad knee bumping Kramer’s flight bag in just the wrong place. He limped down the cement steps, feeling embarrassed, frustrated, and alone.
24
Wind howled off the sound carrying a heavy salt mist, slapping Boldt’s face, lifting his collar and finally untucking his shirt. Alongside the minivan, illuminated in profile by the blinding blue-w
hite headlights from her car, Bobbie struggled to keep her skirt from flying. As Boldt approached, the back of the skirt jumped up around her shoulders and Boldt had a quick flash of her panty hose.
She slapped down the fabric and caught sight of him. She lifted her hands, showing him how her skirt danced in the wind, and said, “Wonderful night to be wearing a skirt. I was just headed out to dinner.”
“What have we got?” he asked in an all-business tone of voice.
“It had been tagged here ten days ago. Was supposed to be impounded. We sifted through the paperwork and discovered it was still here. Towing contractor messed up. I’ve got a truck coming down to tow it into our garage.”
Boldt called in on his radio and asked that Chuck Abrams meet him at the garage in thirty minutes. He got a flashlight from his trunk and walked back to the minivan. “Abrams’ll meet us downtown,” he said.
“You do have clout.” He shrugged and shined the flashlight under the vehicle. She crouched down alongside him, gathering the hem of her skirt in a ball. “What are we looking for?” she asked.
“Keys,” he said. He covered the entire area under the vehicle twice. Then he walked to the front of the van, slid underneath, and shined the light up into the bumper and suspension work. He climbed out and went to the rear of the van and repeated this. “Got ’em,” he said. He fished a paper bag out of his coat pocket, opened it awkwardly, still lying down, and used his Bic pen to pry loose the magnetic Hide-a-Key box. It dropped into the bag. He climbed back out, carefully sealed the bag, and with Bobbie holding the flashlight, worked on forcing the small box open while it remained in the bag. It slid around like a wet bar of soap. He forced it into a corner and pushed with his thumb. “It’s rusted shut, which means it’s not where she kept her keys.” He handed her the bag, took the flashlight, and crawled back under. He had her turn off her headlights—they overpowered the flashlight on the right side of the car—and he searched in vain for another hidden set of keys. He came out damp and dirty.
The tow truck’s blinking orange light appeared in the distance. The driver was accustomed to working with detectives. He connected his towing rig without so much as brushing against the van, avoiding any chance of removing prints. Ten minutes later they were on the road.
***
The garage below the Public Safety building was a large indoor parking facility with rows of bright, overhead lights. Oil stains covered the smooth cement floor like spots on a leopard. Boldt looked through the side window of the van. “Nothing in there,” he said to Bobbie. “No clothes, no sails, no nothing.” He added, “Call Montrose. See if he knows what she did with her keys. Depending on what he says, check with the property room. See if that wetsuit had any inside pockets, any way we might have missed a set of keys.”
“Now?”
“When did you have in mind? We’ve got his home phone, right?”
She hurried into the building.
Another car arrived. It was Chuck Abrams. He told Boldt, “You’re aware it’s dinnertime, I suppose.” As Abrams went about the task of dusting for prints, he told Boldt, “Crime lab sent the report on those ashes over to us for some reason. I’m not sure those bozos will ever learn to read paperwork.”
“And?”
“A blend of polyesters and a blob of neoprene.”
“Meaning?”
“You’re in a charming mood tonight.”
“What’s it mean, Chuck?”
“It means,” Abrams said with an unusual harshness to his voice, “that you probably have a bathing suit and a wetsuit set afire with some of the Penta that was in those barrels.”
“Penta?”
“Pentachlorophenol—the red stuff in the barrels. Wood preservative. In her case, it helps keep the wet ground from rotting her fenceposts. As far as the clothes are concerned, I asked state lab for an infrared spectrograph because I didn’t think you’d know how to pronounce it. It may help narrow down the manufacturers, maybe even the original colors.”
“Fantastic.”
“And one other thing,” Abrams said. “The paper on top of the burn pile was from two ninety-pound bags of dry cement. Portland cement, manufactured outside of Bremerton. Stuff’s available all over the city.”
“Cement?”
“That’s right.”
Boldt looked over at the empty van. “Oh, Christ.”
“My sentiments exactly. It doesn’t look good, Lou.”
Boldt shook his head, still staring at the van. “Check the back for rust or cement dust, will you please?”
“You think he dumped her?”
“Those posts on the ground on the far side of the garage could have been in another barrel.”
“We’ll check the ground for Penta, too.”
Boldt nodded. If someone had killed Betsy Norvak, burned her clothes, and stuffed her into a fifty-five-gallon drum which he then filled with cement and dumped, then who had washed ashore at Alki Point? And was it a coincidence that, in Norvak’s backyard, a wetsuit and a bathing suit had been burned—the same two articles of clothing that Jane Doe had been wearing? What was the connection? More to the point, who was the connection? He said, “I read your report about the shoe prints.”
“Sorry, Lou. I know you were hoping for something there. No way it’ll hold up in court.”
“Why not?”
“Only a partial impression; a photograph of a dust pattern on an uneven cement floor versus a plaster cast. Defense could tear us apart. But, as I said, it’s as close to a match as you can get. Odds are they’re from the same shoe. The same guy.”
“But not for court.”
“That’s right.”
“Damn.” Boldt watched as the man dusted the windows with the black powder. I.D. used white or black, depending on the background color. The black powder was horrible; it always got all over everything and made a mess of your clothes.
“I’ve got a partial thumb on the outside mirror,” Abrams said.
Boldt stepped closer and Abrams pointed. “It’s a good partial,” he said. “Left thumb, male. That’s too bad.”
“Why’s that?”
“The print we lifted from the paper plate is from a right thumb. Same with the partial we lifted off that burnt match you found by Croy’s. And we already know those two didn’t match.”
“Speaking of which. What about the prints on my wallet?”
“Your friend Montrose did not have a barbecue with Norvak, if that’s what you’re asking. The prints on the paper plates didn’t match.”
“My lucky day.”
“What can I tell you?”
“You want to know where this stands, Abe?” Boldt answered before Abrams could reply: “I’ve got a corpse that washes up on Alki. The fingers have been chewed to the bone by sea life, so even if we could lift prints from her belongings, we’ve got nothing to match them with. Same with the feet. No way to match a baby record. So I have one of my people check out a missing-person report. We find a shoe print that may match an earlier death scene and a burn barrel that I find out contains clothes intentionally burned up. Now we locate the woman’s missing van and it appears to have been wiped clean, only whoever was driving it last adjusted the outside mirror.” His eyes lit up. “Do me a favor, let’s estimate the driver’s height from the angle of both mirrors. That may help.”
Abrams liked the idea. He continued to dust around the outside of the van.
Bobbie appeared through a door at the far end of the garage, and a moment later was at Boldt’s side. “Inside the gas flap,” she said. “Montrose claims she left the keys inside the gas flap whenever she went windsurfing.”
Boldt checked for himself. “Not there,” he said. “I want you to speak with the Coast Guard in the morning and see if they have any reports of windsurfer debris off of Carkeek.”
“No problem.”
“And then I want you to make an appointment with a…” He searched for the name Dixie had given him a few days earlier. “Bainbridge�
� no, no…” He moved into better light and checked his spiral pad. “Rutledge. Dr. Byron Rutledge over at the University’s Marine Sciences department.”
“May I ask why?”
He nodded. “Dixie says Rutledge may be able to tell me what the sound had done with Jane Doe for the two weeks prior to our finding her. We’ve found Norvak’s van at Carkeek, her body down at Alki. I want to make sure that makes sense.”
“You don’t think it does. I can tell by your tone of voice.”
“Listen, Abrams came up with some evidence that suggests the possibility of foul play.”
“Like?”
“Like maybe Norvak’s body is at the bottom of the sound in a few cubic yards of cement.” He glanced at his watch.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I have a date,” he said.
“So do I,” she said, pointing out to him again that she was dressed up.
“Mine’s with a body builder,” he said.
“Mine’s with James Royce.”
He wasn’t particularly surprised. “You be careful of him. I saw that look he gave you the other day.”
“Yes, Daddy,” she mocked. “And I promise not to tell anyone about the body builder.” She turned and walked away from him, giggling. “But I’d say you have more to worry about than I do.”
25
At seven minutes past ten Sam DeVito left The Body Shop. Boldt followed at a good distance. The body builder stopped first at his apartment, left the car running, and returned carrying something. He then stopped at an all-night diner that catered to the health-food set and picked up some takeout. Boldt assumed he had called in the order from his apartment, or even perhaps from the club.
As he turned north, in the direction of Carkeek Park and Haller Lake, Boldt knew where he was headed. He allowed him a good distance and followed patiently. When the man pulled to a stop at Norvak’s a few minutes later, it came as no surprise. Boldt stopped a block away and approached on foot.
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