Undercurrents

by Ridley Pearson

  “He doesn’t know us very well,” Boldt blurted out.

  She glanced up at him. Dull, dying eyes. “No.”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  She said, “He’s unpredictable now. Obviously. It may occur to him that killing the boy is the safest way out. His killing the man—the father—may start a new pattern in him. His anger has been directed solely at the women up until now. I wouldn’t count on that any longer. The disembowelment is evidence of an increased anger. What’s next?—I can see it in your faces. He’s near the end, I think. We’ll see more violence, a change in the ritual. He’s bound to see that things can only get worse now. The only sign of encouragement is the message he left us. He’s communicating. That’s new. That’s a good sign.”

  “A good sign?” Shoswitz grunted. “You weren’t in that living room.”

  “Phil,” Boldt said.

  “Well, she wasn’t, dammit! A good sign?” He addressed Daphne. “Have you ever seen a woman’s guts spread across a living room? This guy’s out of his fucking tree, lady! As mad as a hatter! A good sign?”

  “A man who has gone mad and a madman are two different people in my way of thinking, sir. This is a man who has gone mad, and as a professional I urge you to keep the distinction foremost in your mind.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Shoswitz interjected.

  “Let’s not forget that this is a sick man. It’s my duty as a professional to stress this to both of you. I despise this man’s actions as much as either of you—as a woman, perhaps even more so. But we mustn’t confuse actions and deeds with responsibility. This man is no more responsible for what he is doing than you and I are.”

  “I don’t buy that,” Shoswitz yelled. “He knows damn well what he’s doing.”

  “No, he does not.” She looked to Lou Boldt for support. “My duty is to express my opinion.” Suddenly indignant, she rose from the chair. “Is that all, Lieutenant?” She refused to look at the man.

  “Daphne,” Boldt pleaded.

  She left the room without acknowledgment.

  “I like her,” Shoswitz said innocently enough. “She’s got balls.”

  Boldt sat watching the door. He regretted their intimacy now. The hollow feeling of having made a mistake sank into him. He didn’t fully understand Daphne. Had it simply been his way to get back at Elizabeth?

  “So,” Shoswitz asked, “what do you suggest?”

  Boldt said dryly, “Suggest? We do whatever it takes to get Justin back, that’s what! Right?” he overemphasized. “If we negate some evidence, then that’s what happens. Damned if I’m waiting around for the goddamned brass’s approval—”

  “Lou…”

  “I’m serious, Phil. The captain is going to hand us the typical shit…. ‘We have to move slow. We have to watch the evidence, protect the investment.’ Well, no sale. We start kicking down doors as far as I’m concerned. He’s thirteen years old, Phil. How old is William?”

  Shoswitz glanced over at the family photo. The boy was holding a baseball bat. The lieutenant was speechless.

  ***

  The report from the crime lab stated that the right thumbprint lifted from Judith Fuller’s gas cap matched the print gleaned from the paper plate found in Betsy Norvak’s trash. It did not match the print from the burned match found in the carport behind Croy’s. Although the driver of Fuller’s car had “wiped down” the vehicle thoroughly, he had overlooked his own stopping for gas, leaving the opportunity for a print match. With the Rockport shoes connecting DeHavelin to the missing Betsy Norvak, and a thumbprint connecting Norvak to Fuller, Boldt now had a link between all three women and a killer, a man he believed to be the copycat. At last, Boldt’s and Abrams’s efforts to collect every shred of evidence had paid off. But he didn’t have long to savor the moment.

  He spotted LaMoia out of the corner of his eye. It didn’t register at first, but then it struck him that LaMoia was supposed to be keeping an eye on Bobbie Gaynes. He hurried over and took the cocky young detective by the arm, from behind.

  LaMoia bristled at the contact. He, like half the people in the office, had been awake for over twenty hours. He was on edge. “Hey, what the fuck!” he barked, spinning around to find himself facing Boldt. “Sorry, Sergeant,” he quickly apologized. “Nerves.”

  “Why aren’t you watching Gaynes’s place?”

  “Easy, Sarge. Back off a minute, would ya? Kramer spelled me. I can’t work ’round the clock, ya know.”

  “Kramer?”

  “As in Sergeant Kramer,” the young detective said sarcastically.

  Boldt hadn’t seen Kramer all night. From the sound of it, Kramer had finally found a way to get some fieldwork. “What’s her address?” he asked.

  ***

  Bobbie Gaynes’s apartment building was on the north fringe of the U section, east of I-5. He parked a block away and came on the building’s main entrance from the west. LaMoia had assured him that the rest of the building’s entrances were self-locking—only this front entrance allowed access. The apartment building was a large, nondescript, rectangular cement block painted a cream color. A jet silently broke through the scattered gray cloud cover overhead, aimed toward the airport. A white light blinked from its belly. Boldt wondered if Justin Levitt had ever watched the jets in the night sky through his telescope.

  He approached the apartment building’s front door. It was locked. He wondered how long it would take Kramer to let Bobbie know that someone was at the front door. He pretended to fool with the lock, as if attempting to break in. Then he walked fully around the building once and stopped again at the front door. He buzzed the apartment listed as B. Gaynes. No number. It took her several minutes to respond.

  “Hello?”

  “Bobbie, Lou Boldt. You okay?”

  “Fine, Sergeant.” She must have pushed a button because the door’s lock buzzed.

  “I’m not coming up,” he told her. “Any calls?”

  “Nothing,” she replied. “What is it?”

  “Call me tomorrow. I’ll fill you in. Sorry to bother you. Go back to bed.”

  “Good night,” she said.

  He looked around for Kramer’s car and spotted it quickly. He imagined he might hear Muzak playing. He crossed the street. Kramer was asleep behind the wheel, leaning against the door.

  Boldt yanked the door open. Kramer caught himself at the last moment, shoving an arm out and bracing his fall to the pavement.

  “What the fuck?” Kramer wondered.

  Boldt dragged him out of the car onto the pavement. “I could have killed her.”

  “What the fuck?” Kramer repeated, struggling to his feet, blinking.

  “Who makes the field assignments?” Boldt shoved him into the side panel of the car. Kramer landed hard. “I ought to bust your head open!” Kramer winced as Boldt pushed him again, took hold of him, and stuffed him into the driver’s seat behind the wheel.

  “You’re a desk cop, Kramer. You could have gotten one of our best cops killed. What were you thinking? What the hell goes on inside of that head of yours? You try something like this again and I’ll have you busted down to traffic. Get the fuck out of here!” He slammed the door—dented the side panel with a hard kick and watched the car roar away.

  Kramer switched on the lights a block later.

  43

  Boldt radioed LaMoia and had him assign Paul Browning to keep Gaynes under surveillance for the rest of the night. Less than an hour later Boldt drove away, confident the job was in good hands. He met LaMoia back at the office as planned.

  “Christ, it’s past three, Sarge.”

  “What about that list?”

  “The master list of employees is on your desk. Got it about eight o’clock. That asshole took his sweet time about it. Cost me a goddamned dinner date with my woman—”

  “John!”

  “I dropped all the girls from the list. That cut it down from thirty-eight to twenty employees. I put in a request with our computer pe
ople to pull licenses on those twenty. Stats on the driver’s licenses will give us a look at the physical characteristics of these guys. That should knock it down to just a couple of guys who are close to matching the profile. That’s how you wanted it, right, Sarge?”

  Boldt nodded. “Have you heard back from DMV?”

  “Shit, I didn’t put the request in until after nine. No way we’ll get that stuff back until tomorrow sometime.”

  “Lean on them.”

  “At three in the morning?”

  “Someone’s running those computers. How much can they have to do at three in the morning? Better yet, why don’t you go see them in person.”

  “Now?”

  “Now!”

  LaMoia turned tail and left the office at a brisk pace.

  ***

  Boldt was thinking of lying down for a few minutes—the office floor was the only place available—when his extension rang. The exhausted voice of Chuck Abrams said, “Lou? You got a few minutes?”

  Boldt had no desire to go down to I.D.’s offices, several floors below, but Abrams hated phones and always demanded this of detectives, even at three in the morning. Boldt knew better than to suggest that Abrams simply tell him whatever it was.

  Abrams’s office area was a ruin. The bookshelf was disorganized, his desk cluttered. Boldt sank into a padded chair. Its springs were shot and it was uncomfortable. Abrams was drinking coffee. He offered Boldt a cup and the detective accepted.

  The black man sat down and sipped his coffee. He said proudly, “We just confirmed the tire tracks.”

  “Come again?”

  “The tire tracks.”

  “Didn’t know we got any.”

  “We lifted a set of beauties, right where you told me to look.”

  “Behind the house?”

  “Yup. One block over from the Levitts’.” He smiled broadly. “It rained earlier, so those tracks couldn’t be over three hours old. The set we got matches the tire impression we lifted from behind Croy’s. It matches perfectly. Just confirmed it. Same vehicle. No question about it.”

  “Any footprints?”

  “Great minds think alike.” He shook his head. “No. Not by the tire tracks. We struck out there. I was hoping for something too. The mud was along the curb—that’s how we got such a good print. Whoever drove it away would have entered the vehicle on the driver’s side, over by the pavement. No impressions.”

  A few sentences over the phone would have had the same results, Boldt thought.

  Abrams added, “One more thing of interest. We lifted more of what appears to be that same mud from the Levitts’ doormat,” he said, grabbing Boldt’s attention. “Must have scraped off as he came through the door. Motor oil and gasoline mixed in. Almost certain it’s the same. One of my people is checking it out now.”

  “Outboard motors?”

  “More than likely. State lab will be able to tell us the manufacturers, same as before. It’ll take a couple of days. Listen, Lou, it’s still circumstantial stuff. I know that. But I’m prepared to take the stand and say that the same vehicle that was at Croy’s was at the Levitts’, and that the same mud links the Levitt kill to the second kill—Reddick, I think it was. The red fibers connect another three, Bailey, Croy, and Shufflebeam, and we’ve got the palm print and the partial thumbprint off the burned match.” He paused. “I’m saying two things. One, you bring me a suspect or a good set of prints and I now have enough to link him, at least circumstantially, to several of the death scenes. Two… I’m willing to go along with your copycat theory. I can buy that. The shoes, the different prints we’ve got, the discrepancy in body weights between the sneakers and the Rockports—you’ve got yourself two different killers.”

  “Swell,” Boldt said quietly.

  “I thought you’d be happy.”

  “So did I.”

  ***

  At seven o’clock that same morning he received word that the diving team he had assigned to search the waters off Carkeek Park had found no sign of Norvak’s body. It came as no surprise. Nor did it spark much interest in Boldt. His attention was focused on finding Justin Levitt.

  Shoswitz entered Boldt’s office area tired and angry. “You had no authority to order that search team. Come with me.”

  “I know,” Boldt said, walking furiously to keep up with the lieutenant, who was rubbing his elbow and scratching his scalp simultaneously.

  The comment stopped Shoswitz, who paused briefly and then hurried on toward his cubicle. “Who’s going to pay for it? It wouldn’t hurt if you cleared a few things with me from time to time. Right? You left me all alone, Lou, and I don’t appreciate it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It would help if I knew just what the hell this department was up to. Right? Christ, you can be a pain in the ass.”

  Boldt sat down. The lieutenant paced the small office space, keeping his voice low. “The captain called me in. He wanted the Jane Doe connection explained to him. Right? He asked if I always allowed ‘renegade detectives’—his words—to carry out their own investigations without my prior knowledge.”

  “Oh boy.”

  “He suggested my leadership is anything but noteworthy.”

  “My fault.”

  “You’re damn right it is! So where the hell do we stand on this thing, anyway? My attention’s been on the Cross Killings.”

  Boldt filled him in for what seemed like the fourth time. “We know Jane Doe is Judith Fuller. She rented the wetsuit; her car had the rented rack. Her car also held a fingerprint that matched one found at Norvak’s. So DeHavelin, Norvak, and Fuller are all linked to the same man. He wears Rockports and is too big to be the Cross Killer.”

  “So we do have a copycat.”

  “Absolutely no question in my mind.”

  “And how do we flush him out?”

  “I’m reconstructing Fuller’s last two weeks through some receipts I found in her car. They take me up to September thirtieth, the same day Fuller rented the windsurfer. Early afternoon, she took a ferry over to Vashon, presumably to windsurf. Though I found a receipt for the way over, there was no receipt for the return ferry, and her car was found back over here at SeaTac, so I assume she didn’t drive her car back, or she would have saved the receipt. Someone else did. He parked her car at SeaTac to delay us finding it and to suggest she had taken a plane somewhere. We think he probably got into her apartment with her keys, took some of her papers, and packed some of her belongings—again, probably trying to sell us on the fact she’d taken a vacation.

  “Vashon checks with what the oceanographer, Rutledge, told me about the undercurrents,” he added. “If she went in off of Vashon, she’d stand a good chance of washing up at Alki a couple weeks later.” He paused. “No question it’s Fuller.”

  “And who is she?”

  “We’re looking into it. Someone’s been reimbursing her for expenses. Everyone’s been cooperative so far. The credit-card people at Wells Fargo, her bank, have traced her payments to a checking account she has with them. Deposits into that account may tell us who she’s been working for, which may or may not help us.”

  “I want to know who she is, what she does. I want to know if there are any similarities to DeHavelin. Anything like that. If this guy’s in my department, Lou, I want him by the balls.”

  The phone rang. Shoswitz answered it, listened, and frowned. “Shit,” he said and hung up. “Two more victims, Lou. A man and a woman this time. He crossed ’em both. Disemboweled her. Just like Daphne warned, he’s flipped out.”

  44

  The house overlooked Green Lake. The couple were in their forties. He was wearing a blue terry-cloth robe partially tied at the waist and his throat was slashed. He had evidently taken backward steps, knocked over the five-foot ficus, and died, bent backward across the armrest of the couch. His chest was lacerated in the symbol of the cross—breast to breast, throat to navel. How many times had Lou Boldt seen that mark? He looked away, closed his eyes, and t
ook a deep breath.

  The uniformed cop at his side told Boldt and Shoswitz, “Member of the car pool found them. Back door was unlocked. The wife’s upstairs,” he said, pointing, stopping, not wanting to continue.

  Shoswitz dismissed him. “Abrams and Dixon say it had to have happened before midnight. Somewhere between eleven and midnight.”

  “That’s only minutes after the Levitts,” Boldt said.

  “He must have headed straight here. Abe’s looking around for tire impressions. Street’s too clean. We’re not going to get any.” Shoswitz stopped for Boldt to lead the way upstairs.

  Boldt glanced up, hesitated, and then climbed the stairs slowly, heart pounding. What would it be like to open your front door and have your throat slit? He wondered now if the wife had gone to the top of the stairs to see who was knocking on the front door at eleven-thirty at night. Had the husband turned around to tell her it was a flower delivery? Had the Cross Killer gone in the back door and foregone the formality of his ritual? Had the husband gone downstairs curious about a noise he had heard?

  Boldt reached the top of the stairs and stepped into the hallway, the bedroom door open at the end. Lights on. Scores of family photographs lined the walls, big and small, color and black-and-white, snapshots and professional quality intermixed. There was happiness here, and that blend of upper-middle-class Americana: picnics, ten-speed bikes, sporting activities, the history of raising a single child from baby to high school. Eastern prep school, Boldt noted. “We better notify the kid,” he told the empty hallway before him. Shoswitz cursed from behind.

  He stepped into the bedroom. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to be here. He wished someone else would take the case. He wished someone else would take over his life for a while. He wanted a vacation from being Lou Boldt.