Undercurrents

by Ridley Pearson

  “As in. It’s the right color for it.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “Yes. Any other ideas?”

  Boldt looked down at the Bible, which was covered in print dust. “What about the pages?”

  Chuck Abrams smiled. “Amen.”

  ***

  A partial thumbprint was gleaned from the upper right-hand corner of page five. It matched a cross section of the other partial print they had, and was enough to convince Abrams that whoever rented this room had most likely been in the carport behind Croy’s. It was not enough to hold up in a court of law, he reminded. The prosecutor would want at least five matching ridge characteristics; Abrams could identify but three.

  It took Abrams nearly an hour to clean the fingerprint dust and leave the room as they had found it. He convinced Boldt it was worth the risk of discovery to cut the page from the Bible, which is what he did. Boldt oversaw the superintendent relock the room, and then told the man to avoid Lange at all costs, warning that even a wrong look could negate their investigation. A two-man surveillance team would arrive shortly to wire and stake out the room.

  Boldt had hoped to find Justin Levitt. Worry worked at his stomach. He reached into his pocket, but the Tums were all gone.

  48

  It took Boldt’s, Kramer’s, and Shoswitz’s mutual efforts to arrange protection/surveillance for Bobbie Gaynes. The second floor of her apartment building was evacuated—hotel rooms provided compliments of SPD. In the apartments adjacent to Bobbie’s, two teams of plain clothes detectives, one male and one female each, both dressed casually, waited as backup. Care was taken to stage them as couples in case the Cross Killer was more careful in his surveillance than they now believed him to be. There was no room for mistakes. In both of these adjacent rooms the male detective was equipped with a hidden radio receiver and miniature earphone, enabling him to receive instructions from outside the building, or to overhear activity in Gaynes’s apartment, where an open-mic transmitter had been hidden. In the apartment directly across from Gaynes’s was another detective in plainclothes. Like everyone on this floor, he was within two paces of a standard-issue shotgun. The Beretta 9mm was hidden on his person. He too could overhear the goings-on in Bobbie’s apartment and the constant chatter of the rest of the stakeout. In all, some nine plainclothes detectives were committed to the stakeout, with another five patrol cars placed strategically in the surrounding neighborhood. When combined with the officers assigned to Lange’s surveillance, it added up to the single largest operation Homicide had staged in three years.

  At two-twenty, forty minutes before Lange was scheduled to return to the Forty-sixth Street Market Video, all officers in position, Bobbie Gaynes was given the go-ahead to request delivery of the film. She placed the phone call.

  Chuck Abrams called Boldt on the phone. He confirmed that the mud found in the cracks of Lange’s closet contained the same percentage of motor oil and gasoline that had been found at earlier death scenes. Again, it was only circumstantial evidence, but it could help link Lange to the crimes in the eyes of a jury, and Boldt was beginning to believe this was going to be a murder trial based largely on just such circumstantial evidence. Lange had covered himself well, and unless they could lure him into their trap, Boldt feared they would have to pick him up and book him with little to hold him on. The system was wrought with pitfalls, and Boldt feared Milo Lange would be able to wiggle through the cracks.

  Daphne caught up to Boldt as he was putting on his sport jacket. She too seemed exhausted, her forehead lined with concern, her lips pursed.

  “Hi there,” Boldt said.

  She grinned at him sadly. “How are you holding up?”

  He shrugged.

  “Me too.” She reached out and briefly brushed her hand against his, hooking little fingers and then letting go. “I need to bend your ear a minute.”

  “Nothing would give me more pleasure.”

  She led him to her office and left the door open. They both sat away from her desk. She said, “I’ve gone over the Levitt evidence again, and the Fabiano case in detail. I’ve just come from a twenty-minute meeting with Shoswitz where he outlined what you have planned and he wanted me to speak to you—he felt it important I speak to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “I have to be honest with you, Lou. I don’t like it. It’s a bad plan. Let me explain why—explain from my perspective—and tell you what I told the lieutenant. You’re crossing a very fine line here. I realize the law reads one way, but from where I’m sitting this is essentially entrapment. That’s my concern as a doctor. You are creating a psychological stimulus that you know has the possibility of inciting the suspect to a violent act. Now, to my knowledge there’s no legal precedence—I’m still looking into that, in fact we have Bob Shol over at the Prosecutor’s office digging around for us—but this could very well backfire on you. What makes it worse is that you know he’s likely to attack her. Incidently, I have to agree with you. From everything I can tell he has changed his ritual, not abandoned it. He is more driven than ever now to punish these women, and I think you can count on him going after Detective Gaynes. I’m almost certain of it. And therein lies your dilemma. You’re certain of it, too. You’re counting on luring him to another attempted kill, and a clever attorney may be able to turn that right around on you and get a dismissal.”

  Boldt closed his eyes. He had not considered that he might be creating a psychological entrapment case, had not considered he might be establishing some kind of legal precedence, and the whole thing made him mad. “Shit, Daffy, I don’t know what to say.”

  She reached out and touched his knee. “I’m not trying to stop you, Lou. I know your concern is for the boy, and believe me, I’m with you there, but the lieutenant thought it added something to the case he had not considered and he wanted you to hear it as well. Lange’s going to go after her, Lou. Count on it.”

  She suddenly seemed young to him. Naive.

  “Anything I can do?” she asked.

  He thought a moment. “Yes, I think there is. Contact Quantico and run all this latest stuff by them. The mud, don’t forget the mud, and the cleanliness of his rented room, the Jesus poster, the clothes we found in his closet. Give them everything we have on the Levitts and the Fabianos and let’s see if they can give us any parameters to help us narrow the search radius for Justin. You add up all this stuff and it must tell us something.”

  She nodded. She obviously didn’t share his confidence. “I’ll give it a try.”

  ***

  When Boldt received word from the mobile surveillance team that Lange was presently at Market Video, he drove to Gaynes’s apartment, parking several blocks away, and joined her. She was dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, no bra, and was barefooted. She looked positively stunning—a real heart-stopper—like something from a Bruce Springsteen song. Boldt thought of this because Springsteen was pounding out a piece of rock from her home stereo. Elizabeth was a Springsteen fan as well. Boldt knew the Springsteen album, Born to Run. It was an old one and Elizabeth had worn it out a few years back. Boldt suggested they turn it down so the hidden microphone would not be drowned out.

  She said casually, “Hey, it was the guys next door who requested some tunes,” and smiled at him. Boldt didn’t smile back. He was about to suggest she put a bra on, and a shirt made of thicker fabric, and pants that didn’t cling to her quite that way, but realized he would be defeating his own purpose. If Lange didn’t go after her, he was out of his mind. An ironic thought, it occurred to him.

  Boldt looked around the apartment. He picked the doorway into her postage-stamp kitchen. From here, with the door ajar, he could peer through the crack and see the front door. He moved a chair into the kitchen then—if Lange followed his pattern, he would use a knife from the victim’s kitchen—and sat down at his post.

  Bobbie stood in the kitchen doorway for a few minutes, passing the time with him. She was nervous, and he couldn’t blame her
. The police-issue .38 was tucked between the small of her back and her pants, the T-shirt hanging out over it and concealing it. He still thought the music was too loud, and after prodding, she shut it off and they waited in silence. After a few minutes she left him and read a Newsweek, sitting on the edge of her bed.

  The minutes seemed endless to Lou Boldt and he couldn’t help but believe these minutes were more torturous for Justin Levitt, wherever he was. He knew he was only minutes away from seeing Milo Lange for the first time face-to-face. The thought made his heart race, his palms sweat, and he felt an unrelenting anger building up inside of him.

  The click in his earphone brought him back. One of his detectives said, “We have a positive on the van. It just pulled up out front. Stations confirm.”

  Boldt checked his watch: four-fifteen.

  Bobbie wasn’t equipped with a radio. “Okay,” he announced. “Here we go.”

  He heard the other stations verbally acknowledge having received the notice. There was an established order to the acknowledgments, to avoid jamming the radio channel. Boldt was last, and his confirmation was nonverbal. He clicked his SEND button on his walkie-talkie twice. The static popped in his ear.

  “All in,” said the same voice. “He’s out of the van and moving toward the front door.”

  The buzzer rang. Bobbie depressed the CALL button and asked, “Who is it?”

  A bland male voice, made small and thin by the speaker, said, “Market Video. Delivery.”

  She depressed a second button that unlocked the building’s main door.

  Boldt heard in his ear, “He’s inside.” He noticed his own hand was shaking.

  He listened carefully as Lange’s every move was detailed.

  “Up the stairs…” said one.

  “Coming down the hallway…” said another.

  Station by station the reports came in. Bit by bit, Boldt felt his anxiety level rising.

  Bobbie glanced over at him. Her forehead was shiny with perspiration, a vein there pulsed wildly.

  “He’s at the door. Right across from me…” came the announcement.

  Then the knock on the door. “Just a minute,” Bobbie said loudly. She wiggled her face, and locked a smile onto it like an actress preparing to take the stage. She straightened up, suspending the thin T-shirt from her pert breasts, and opened the door. “Hi!” she said ebulliently.

  Boldt could see him through the crack. He was a pale man, with drawn features, narrow red lips, and thin hair. He was wearing a white Oxford shirt, blue jeans, and old black Converse sneakers. He had long arms, a narrow waist, and a chicken neck. He looked right through Bobbie Gaynes. “Summer Knights?” he asked.

  She nodded. “That’s right.”

  “Pickup’s tomorrow before three, or you’ll have to return it yourself.”

  “Okay.”

  He handed it to her. Nothing unusual. Nothing weird.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  He turned and left. She hesitated a moment, then closed the door, studied the brown video case in her hand, and looked back at Boldt’s single eye peering through the crack at her.

  49

  Boldt held up his hand to keep her from speaking. When, a few minutes later, he was informed via radio that Lange’s van was on its way again, he nodded at her.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “He’ll be back,” he told her.

  She looked at him curiously.

  “Ground crew reports he placed a piece of duct tape on the latch of the side-door fire exit before leaving.”

  She crossed her arms tightly, as if she was cold. The apartment was anything but cold. She had the heat cranked up. “Looks like I don’t get any flowers,” she tried to joke.

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Boldt said. “I have a feeling that side exit is just in case he can’t trick you. He’s determined to get to you. He’s just leaving himself an option.”

  “Is it cold in here?”

  Lou Boldt shook his head.

  ***

  She cooked him fish sticks for dinner. Boldt drank a half pot of coffee all by himself. She played Steve Winwood and finished the Newsweek before attempting a paperback she apparently couldn’t concentrate on. She turned on the television and watched a rerun of a “National Geographic Explorer.” White-water rafting in Indonesia. Red apes and rainforests. Boldt watched from the kitchen door until he felt himself nodding off, and then spent several minutes splashing cold water on his face in the kitchen sink. LaMoia had offered to spell him, but Boldt had declined. He had been waiting for months for this opportunity.

  Boldt became restless and began to pace the apartment, parting the blinds and looking down on a rainswept street. He watched the rain stream past the streetlamps, the silver rainwater rush in black opal gutters toward thirsty drains that swallowed it up. He saw a couple watching television in their apartment across the way. Each time an umbrella passed below, he anticipated word on his walkie-talkie and turned up the volume, only to turn it back down as a voice described and dismissed the possible suspect. Cars sped past, people on their way home from dinner, people on their way home from a movie or a night out with friends, people totally unaware of Lou Boldt and the fact he was awaiting the Cross Killer. There were people out there, Boldt knew, who would gladly pay hundreds of dollars—thousands perhaps—to know about this police operation. Boldt wondered if this operation would be compromised as so many had been lately. Would they get this close to the killer only to lose their chance?

  The roof of a van passed below, and Boldt heard her say, “What is it?”

  The van vanished into the blanket of rain. “What do you mean?”

  “You stopped breathing for a second there. What did you see?”

  “Just a van. A roof.”

  “You’re eating yourself up, Lou, and you shouldn’t be peeking out the window.”

  He turned and glared at her.

  “Hey, I’m only repeating orders, Sergeant.” His orders.

  He left the window and returned to the kitchen.

  “We can talk, you know,” she told him, unseen.

  “About what?” he asked sarcastically. “What the hell do you talk about in a situation like this?”

  “You talk about fun things. You talk about pretty things. You talk about whatever you can that will take your mind off of it.”

  “Nothing will do that,” he said, rounding the corner and noticing that she wasn’t watching the television. She was lying back on her bed, head on a pillow, staring at the ceiling. “Sorry. Nerves.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  ***

  At nine forty-five the crackling static of the earphone popped and a voice said, “Car nineteen. We have visual contact with suspect. Headed your way, station nine. Over.”

  “Roger, nineteen,” said the voice of Billy Beacham, who was coordinating surveillance from the back of a green van parked down the street. “Stand by, everyone. You got that, nine?”

  “Beach… This is Chubby in mobile thirty-five. We’ve got a visual. Repeat, we’ve got a visual. Suspect heading east. Over.”

  “East. Roger, Chubby. Over,” confirmed Beacham.

  Boldt felt his scalp prickle as he began to perspire. It was hot in here, damn it. He tugged at his collar and wiggled the earphone. “They’ve picked him up,” he called out. Bobbie’s anxious face appeared around the corner.

  “Billy, this is Don, station four. Suspect is stopped at a red light. We got a blue Chevy wagon in front of him, red Volvo behind. Anyone confirm that? Over.”

  “I’m with you, Don,” answered Chubby. “We’re a couple cars back of the Volvo. You have us?”

  “Roger,” replied Don. “I got you now, Chub. Good. Just wanted to make sure I had the right van. Okay, he’s turning right. Confirm?”

  “Roger. Wish this rain would let up. Billy, we’re going to drive by and let Pete pick him up. That okay with you, Peter?”

  “This is nineteen. Roger, thirty-five. I’ve got him
.”

  “Affirmative,” Billy Beacham interjected, okaying the trade.

  “Mobile nineteen. Suspect turning left; I’m going to have to drive by. You want me to drive by, don’t you, Billy?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “We’ll lose him,” said a worried voice.

  “Affirmative. Drive by affirmative.”

  “Bastard’s checking for tails,” said Chubby from car thirty-five.

  “Drive by affirmative,” Beacham repeated. “Confirm mobile nine.”

  “We let him go, Billy. Car nine confirms drive-by.”

  The line popped loudly then and Boldt twitched in his chair. Someone had set their squelch too hot and it screamed in everyone’s ear. A variety of voices complained and Billy Beacham called for order. There was much cursing before Beacham’s request of, “Protocol, gentlemen!” silenced the line. The entire operation was being tape-recorded, and Beacham clearly wanted this handled as cleanly as possible.

  The rain began to pound strongly against the apartment window. Boldt had to turn up the volume.

  “Okay, I got him, Billy. Station six. I got him, Billy. Over.”

  “Direction, station six?”

  “Okay. This is six. Turning left again, heading back toward you. Moving real slowly. Anybody confirm that? Over.”

  “Confirm,” said the distinct voice of Michael Dundy, one of the Southerners on the force. Dundy was stationed in a dance studio across the street and down one block. He was one of two detectives equipped with “night-scope” infrared binoculars, though the binoculars weren’t much good in heavy rain.

  Boldt gained control of his breathing to try and slow his heartbeat. He inhaled deeply and exhaled. “Closer,” he told her.

  Over the radio he heard, “Billy, this is Quinn, station five. He’s parking it. Over.”

  “Roger, five. Parking the van. Back to you.”

  “Roger. This is five. Okay, he’s coming out. Stuffing something under his coat. He’s wearing a blue raincoat. Repeat: blue raincoat. Over.”

  “Affirmative, five. All stations. Suspect is wearing a blue raincoat. Direction, five?”