Undercurrents

by Ridley Pearson

  “Lou!” Shoswitz called out from the back of the van. Lou Boldt heard, but he didn’t hear; he was tempted to turn around, but he wasn’t tempted—if he paused even for a second the press would surround and detain him. How had the press gotten here so quickly anyway? “Detective Boldt!” Shoswitz thundered. Boldt reached his car and opened the door. He looked up just once—time enough to meet the eyes of the lieutenant, who was joined by the paramedics at the back of the van. White, sterile flashes peppered them as the reporters shouted loudly. Shoswitz shielded his eyes against the agonizing glare of a television minicam. Boldt pulled the door shut and turned the key. The wipers squeaked on the glass.

  He no longer had the color images of the killer’s victims in his mind.

  Instead, he saw the terrorized face of Justin Levitt, and the dead, colorless eyes of a cornered killer.

  46

  Boldt caught up to John LaMoia in the smoking room outside of I.D.—the caves. LaMoia looked as tired as Boldt felt. They were both drinking instant coffee Boldt had bought from a vending machine. It tasted like weak, lukewarm broth. Boldt set his aside and watched in amazement as LaMoia slurped his down.

  “His name is Milo Lange,” LaMoia said. “He was signed up for van three last night. He delivered Summer Knights to the Fabianos. He also drove number three on the nights Heuston and Croy were killed. He’s got to be our boy. The address on his driver’s license is out-of-date—the same address he used on his employment application to Market Video. No current address. No way for us to easily track him down. But get this. He’s listed as one-forty, five-foot-seven. But the owner says he’s thin as a rail.”

  Boldt asked, “Back up. What about the others?”

  “Only dates I could remember were Heuston and Croy. Haven’t checked the others.”

  “Do it.”

  LaMoia bumped into Abrams on his way out.

  The I.D. man puckered his lips and asked Boldt, “You want the good news or the bad news?”

  “I think I better have the good first. It’s late.”

  “Amen to that,” the balding black man said. “Okay. Good news is that we lifted a partial thumbprint from the outside of the video box and a piece of it matches the partial we lifted from the burned match you found.”

  “And the bad?” LaMoia asked.

  “Bad is that we have two partials. Nowhere near enough to convict. Add to that that this guy worked for the store, and there’s a reason for his print to be on the outside of any video. Okay?”

  “So we got, but we ain’t got?” Boldt said.

  “I couldn’t have said it better.” Abrams nodded. “Sorry, Lou.”

  “Enough to get a warrant though, wouldn’t you say, Chuck? Would you back me up there?”

  “I saw the Fabianos, Lou. I’ll back you up as far as you want to take this.”

  ***

  Shoswitz was frantic, but remained sitting behind his desk. LaMoia waited outside the office area.

  “I have a plan,” Boldt said.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “We know the news about the chase will hit the papers this evening. It will hit the radios in a matter of minutes.”

  “I tried, Lou.”

  Boldt raised his hand to silence Shoswitz. It was not a gesture he used very often. “And we have to assume Lange follows the investigation in the press. We should probably assume he listens to the radio as well.”

  “Which means we may have lost him.”

  “Not necessarily. Chuck says we don’t have enough to press charges. Not yet. The palm print would help—”

  “Anything would help.”

  “We could bring him in. No question about that, but it could backfire on us. So anyway, I think we should try this. We offer the owner of the stores a trade. We drop the bootlegging charges if he’ll cover the van story for us. We supply him a rental van to replace the one that got wrecked. We put a pigeon on it.” (A “pigeon” was an electronic homing device more frequently used by Narco.) “The owner makes up a good story for us, to cover the loss of his van. That should be agreeable to him.”

  Shoswitz nodded, less frantic now. “Go on.”

  “The van we give him happens to have a busted radio. We know Lange goes on shift at just after noon. We make sure he has a busy schedule. We don’t give him much time to be out of that van. No time to pick up on the media’s version of what happened this morning. We keep this bastard under tight surveillance.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And we gamble. A big risk, actually. Something you won’t like, Phil, but it’s the only way I—”

  “Lou! Screw the sales pitch.”

  “We force his hand,” Boldt said softly. “If the store can keep him busy enough we may be able to keep his nose out of the evening papers. No way we’ll keep him from reading the morning papers. By then he’ll know we’re after him and we may lose Justin, may lose the chance at getting Lange on anything substantial. We’ve come too far to miss him, Phil. Circumstantial evidence isn’t going to buy us shit with this guy.”

  “But… I can hear it in your voice.”

  “We can’t abandon Justin. And we have to avoid a hostage situation at all costs. I can’t go along with turning Justin over to SWAT. They’ll get him killed.”

  “Lou.”

  “It’s a possibility I can’t accept.”

  “So?”

  “Bear with me. What I suggest is that we wait until we know he’s on shift and then Gaynes rents the video. The Summer Knights video. The one that triggers him. She has it delivered. He delivers it. We sit on her good and wait him out. And we hope to high hell he goes after her like he went after the Fabianos. Meanwhile I try and find where he lives. We search his place and see if we find the boy, see if we can’t find something to tie him to the kills. If we can, then the Gaynes thing is moot. We only use Gaynes if all else fails. But we can’t wait to put it in motion. Timing is the key. He has to deliver the video, has to see her alone, has to have all the pieces fall into place or he may not be suckered in. It all goes down this afternoon, and we work like hell to keep him away from the evening papers.”

  Shoswitz sat silently and absolutely still, staring at Boldt. It was a rare moment. “This is a joke, right?”

  “Phil.”

  “You know damn well what our departmental philosophy is on this kind of thing. If the federal boys want to sting and toy with entrapment, that’s their business. Not us. We don’t lure killers in. That simply isn’t done here. Never done here.”

  “We have extenuating circumstances, don’t we? The boy for one. The press. I’m not suggesting we go ahead with the plan, only put it in motion. The question is the same one we faced before. Do we sit around only to find out that someone else has rented Summer Knights and we have an innocent he’s after? I’d much rather we take control than leave it in his hands.”

  “That’s part of this, isn’t it, Lou? He’s had us by the balls for months, and now we have our chance. That’s what’s really going on here, isn’t it?”

  “Oh come one, Phil! I thought we had a better understanding than that.” Boldt rose from his chair. His knee hurt and his head felt heavy. His ears continued to buzz and whine from fatigue. He had never used a tactic like this on Shoswitz. He had no idea if it would work or not. Two steps from the entrance to Shoswitz’s office, he believed it had failed.

  “I’ll talk to the captain,” the lieutenant said.

  “I’ll be in my office,” Boldt replied, without turning around. He didn’t want the lieutenant to see his smile.

  47

  LaMoia and Boldt were sitting in Boldt’s car across the street from Brett Hill Veterinary Clinic. Traffic was light. It was still raining heavily.

  “You sure this is right?”

  “This is what Market Video had as Lange’s reference.”

  “Loiter for a minute. I’ll go inside. You see him come out of the place, keep an eye on him, but don’t tip your hand.”

  The two men climbed
out of the car and Boldt went into the reception area. He had never liked the smell of a veterinarian’s, and he hated to hear animals whine. He asked the receptionist if he could speak with Doctor Hill. She was a thick-faced woman with large eyeglasses and broad shoulders. She reminded Boldt of a boxer, a cartoon of which was taped to the cash register. Her voice sounded like she had swallowed sandpaper. She looked around for his pet. “Is this your first visit?”

  An overweight woman came out of a room carrying an overweight lap dog. Boldt caught a glimpse of a lab coat.

  “Is that the doctor?” he asked.

  Hill was a black-bearded man with white teeth and a flat nose. He had a genuine smile.

  Boldt pulled out his identification and introduced himself.

  “Homicide?” Hill exclaimed.

  “I need a minute of your time.”

  The two men stepped inside the examining room. There was a picture of a collie on the wall, a stainless-steel table in the middle of the room. “What the hell’s going on, Sergeant?”

  “You had an employee by the name of Milo Lange?”

  “Had? Milo works our night shift. He cleans the pens and baby-sits any of our intensive-care animals.”

  “Night shift?”

  “Midnight to nine. An hour off for breakfast.”

  “Midnight to nine?”

  “A couple days a week when we need him.”

  “Are you sure about that?” LaMoia had told Boldt that Lange’s schedule at Market Video was roughly noon to midnight, six days a week. If he worked nights here, then he never got a chance to sleep. Psychotics often suffered from insomnia—Boldt was well aware of that—but this degree of insomnia was so far from his experience that the thought actually frightened him. He knew what a single night of insomnia did to him. How would a person cope with weeks of no sleep? Leaving the profile and beginning to piece together an actual personality, Boldt began to see a living, breathing human being instead of a few descriptive paragraphs on a piece of paper. And despite Daphne’s arguments to the contrary, the closer Boldt got, the more Lange seemed like an animal.

  “Maybe that’s why he worked here,” Boldt said aloud, confusing the doctor.

  “What’s this all about, Sergeant?”

  “Last night. Did Lange work last night as well?”

  “If you’re not going to tell me wh—”

  “He’s not here now?”

  “No. He left around opening time. Same as always.”

  “Cleans pens?”

  “And keeps an eye on our real sick animals.”

  “Skinny guy. Wears jeans and sneakers?”

  “Is Milo in trouble with the police? I find that hard to believe. Very hard to believe. He’s a quiet man, you know. Very soft-spoken. And a good, hard worker.”

  “Answer it.”

  “Jeans and sneakers. Yes. That’s Milo, all right. Always a white shirt, jeans, and sneakers. It’s kind of a joke around here.”

  “Do you have an address for him? You’re required to have an address for him, aren’t you? I’d like to see any of your records that might concern Lange.”

  “Sergeant, unless you—”

  “Now, Doctor. I’d like to see those files now. I’m bigger than a mastiff, I’m tired, and I’m running out of patience.”

  “And manners.”

  “That too,” Boldt apologized. “I’ve been up thirty-plus hours, Doctor Hill. I’m working on a deadline”—Boldt grimaced at the double meaning—“and I need some answers I think you can provide.”

  “Now I’ve placed it,” Hill said. “You’re the one with the Cross Killer investigation.” Then he looked stunned. “Oh my God, no…”

  “I need your help.”

  The doctor nodded.

  ***

  “Same address,” Boldt told LaMoia.

  “So what now?”

  “I had them pull a couple canceled paychecks. Lange cashed them all at the Rainier over on Stoneway.”

  LaMoia nodded. Boldt called in by radio and checked on the surveillance teams. Still no sign of Lange. A team was waiting near the Forty-sixth Street store. Lange was scheduled to report for work within a few minutes. They hoped.

  ***

  The bank’s branch manager was a woman in her early fifties with a shock of blond hair streaked into her natural brunette. Her blouse was buttoned at her neck and she wore a man’s tie, double Windsor. Boldt explained his position very carefully. It was the first time in a long while that he introduced himself as part of the Special Task Force dealing with what the media had labeled the Cross Killings. There was no time to go through proper channels and he needed her assistance immediately. She placed two phone calls and then they sat back and waited. She attempted some small talk, but must have sensed Boldt’s fatigue, for she quickly gave it up in favor of silence. Boldt took a five-minute “nap,” eyes closed, listening to the annoying drone of elevator music coming from somewhere high above them. Her phone rang. She listened carefully. She doodled a squiggly image of a flower arrangement—no talent whatsoever—and then hung up. “It’s all okayed. I’m at your disposal.”

  A few minutes later Boldt had the same outdated address staring up at him. The phone number was crossed out, however, and one had been written in by hand. Boldt made note of it. He was about to leave when he thought of something. “You mail him monthly statements, don’t you? You must have a more recent address.”

  “It’s possible. The central office might,” she said. “We’re a branch office. Downtown handles all the statements, all our mailings, that sort of thing. We handle transactions. That’s all.”

  “Don’t you have it on computer?”

  She shook her head. “No. We’re in the process of going fully on-line with downtown right now. By Christmas the system should be up and running. Which is not to say that we aren’t computerized. Of course we are. But only hard copy—printouts—and only in so far as account information is concerned. What you’re looking for would be handled by downtown.”

  “Could you call?” Boldt asked, his impatience obvious.

  She frowned and knitted her brow. “All right,” she said. “If it’s really that important. But you know, this is highly irregular.”

  “Please.”

  She placed the call, made the request, and curled the blond shock of hair around her index finger as she waited. A moment later she pursed her lips and nodded, as if to say, “I’ll be damned,” and began writing. She hung up and handed the piece of paper to Boldt. “You were right,” she told him. “It’s a different address. I had better update our records.”

  “I wouldn’t bother,” said Lou Boldt.

  ***

  LaMoia rolled down his window. The search warrant flew toward Boldt, who snagged it as word came over the police radio that Lange had just arrived at Market Video. It was five minutes past noon. Lange had been given his pickup and delivery manifest, and had driven off in the replacement van, seemingly unconcerned at the change in vehicles. A pair of patrol cars had followed, as did an undercover cop on a ten-speed bicycle who had been given a photocopy of the delivery manifest. Any problems with surveillance or inconsistencies in his timetable would be reported immediately. Lange was scheduled to pick up another manifest and additional tapes sometime between three and four. Bobbie Gaynes’s request for Summer Knights would be among that batch.

  The apartment building was more like a rooming house. There were five rooms for rent on the first floor and three on the second. Milo Lange’s was on the second floor, overlooking the canal, not far away. The superintendent unlocked the door for Boldt and then stepped back. Boldt dismissed the man, and LaMoia accompanied him back downstairs, repeating the necessity to keep this visit secret. Chuck Abrams was only minutes behind. He entered the building with an oversized briefcase and stopped at the door to the room.

  Boldt was standing in the center of the small room. In the far corner was a single bed, gray blanket, neatly made. The only artwork was over the bed: a reproduction o
f Jesus on the cross, a crown of thorns spreading blood onto his forehead. Legs and arms nailed to the crucifix. Beside the bed was a thumb-worn copy of the Bible. A single metal folding chair was positioned in the opposite corner by the curtainless window. An oilcloth window shade hung coiled above the closed window. The floor was bare. Abrams dusted the doorknob to the closet and shook his head. Lou Boldt turned the handle slowly, shyly, fearing he would find Justin Levitt balled up inside.

  The closet was sparkling clean. Folded on the shelf were three pairs of equally faded blue jeans, a half-dozen pairs of Jockey shorts, and a pile of black socks. Hanging from the curtain rod were three permanent-press white shirts, two of them quite new. A raincoat hung alongside the shirts—plastic, sold by J. C. Penney. A sweatshirt hung on the hook on the inside of the door.

  A bare bulb shone from the ceiling.

  Boldt stepped back and let Abrams go to work. The I.D. technician spent nearly thirty minutes checking every logical spot in the room for a print. Then he tried the hard-to-reach places. Then he turned to Boldt and said, “You’re not going to like this, but this guy keeps this place so damn clean that I can’t find a single print.”

  Boldt had witnessed the man’s thoroughness and had prepared himself for this outcome. How much worse could it get? he wondered. How much could Justin Levitt endure? “The closet?” he asked.

  Abrams went to work on the closet. After another twenty minutes he said, “No prints. Not even on the zipper of the rain jacket.” His voice sounded hollow in the closet. “Wait a second,” he said, dropping to one knee. “Here we go.” He removed a thin, knifelike instrument from his case and dislodged a tiny bit of gray-brown dirt from between the cracks in the closet flooring. He deposited it into a plastic container and closed the lid.

  “What have you got?” Boldt wondered.

  “Dust. Dirt. By the color of it, quite possibly dried mud.”

  “Mud as in our mud?”