No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

  “If you wanted to redesign the line, could you afford to?”

  “Right now? Is that what you’re asking? We’re moving into Europe. At this very moment our resources would be a little slim.”

  “Has anyone made such a suggestion?”

  “Within the company? We’re always getting those kinds of suggestions! Listen, we invented a market niche: the low-fat, organic ingredient—wholesome soups, frozen dinners, desserts. For a while we existed there in a vacuum; we owned that niche. Not so anymore; we’re under attack from every major out there. There’s always someone within our ranks who thinks we’ve got the wrong look or that we’re missing a major play that could be accomplished by a few subtle changes. I encourage that kind of independent thinking. There are some who want a more unified labeling to our products, others who understand the success of our diversity. Inventing a new look for our cans. You name it, I have heard about it.” He studied her. “You’re suggesting that, meeting my resistance, someone may have gone to this kind of extreme to see their ideas through to fruition. I don’t believe that for a second. Absolutely not. We’ve lost market share, sure we have; this push into Europe has strained our pocketbooks, no question; but resort to something like this? Forget it!”

  Another large salmon entered at the left of the window and swam forward, crowding out the one that was resting and sending it out of view, off to the nineteenth step. They watched it, the narrator’s voice going on about breeding grounds.

  “Tell me about Longview Farms,” she said, facing the Plexiglas viewing window, but alert for any other early-morning visitors. The tourists wouldn’t get here until mid-morning, and if it rained, maybe not at all.

  “That’s going back,” he said. “Did you dig up that name in the files?”

  She did not answer. She saw how scarred and beat-up this latest fish seemed to be, and thought that the sea was a much more hostile environment than she had envisioned it. The jaws of the big fish opened rhythmically, followed by a fanning of the gills.

  “A supplier back in our New Leaf days. A family venture. Poultry farm. Good people to work with. Good product.”

  “Tainted product.”

  He nodded. “You’re speaking of the salmonella contamination,” he stated. “So you were able to find that, were you? That’s what you wanted, right?” he asked reproachfully. “Honestly, that surprised me at the time. Mark Meriweather produced good birds, ran a solid operation. That’s why I used him in the first place.”

  “That was also chicken soup, Owen. And that’s the kind of coincidence that cannot be ignored. A company put out of business—bankrupted—by a series of lawsuits directly connected to your former company.

  “Owen, I need an absolute point-blank answer …” She waited and then asked, “Are you aware that the State Health lab report that blamed the Longview Farms poultry for the salmonella contamination may have been altered?”

  “Come again?”

  “Altered. Forged. Changed.”

  The blank expression on Adler’s face was all the convincing she needed. She felt the knot that had formed in the center of her chest loosen as a drip of perspiration skidded coolly down her ribs, sending a chill down her side. She told herself that he did not know anything about this. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

  “I don’t have proof,” she said. “Not yet.” She stepped closer to him. “But if someone at State Health altered that report in order to frame Longview Farms, then we have some serious motivation that may help to explain or even identify your blackmailer.” She added, “Even if there was only the perception that Longview Farms was unjustly accused, it could be enough to set someone off.”

  “That was four, maybe five years ago.”

  “Part of the thrill of revenge is in the plotting, the planning. Strangely enough, the execution of the plan is often a letdown. It’s one of the reasons the individual will stretch it out, given half a chance. Revenge-motivated crimes are unpredictable that way.”

  A young couple entered, hand in hand. Daphne studied the transparencies of the varieties of fish that might be seen in the viewing window. The woman said to her, “Pretty neat, isn’t it?” Daphne mugged a smile and waited the full five minutes until the couple left. Alone again, she approached Adler.

  She said, “I need access to the New Leaf archives—the hard copies of what I saw on the computers at the Mansion. I need the original of that lab report.”

  “What about getting it from State Health?”

  “If someone at State Health altered the file, I’d rather know that before paying them a visit. We may get some arrests out of this, and if we do, we may get some answers.”

  The big salmon grew active as smaller fish crowded the tank. After a few minutes they settled down, their mouths moving as if talking, as if mocking Daphne Matthews and Owen Adler, she thought.

  “Can you get me in?” she asked.

  “Hmm?” Adler was lost in thought.

  “Without a lot of hassle.”

  “Of course I can.”

  “Without Howard Taplin knowing,” she clarified.

  “But you don’t think—”

  “Don’t ask,” she interrupted. “It’s part of my job to be suspicious. Not that I always like it.”

  “I suppose it ruined Meriweather, something like that. Busted him, probably. What about the wife?” he asked. “Where did she end up in all of this?”

  Daphne hesitated a second, reluctant to answer, but then decided that honesty was a two-way street and that she owed him hers. “At the top of my list,” she said.

  The salmon turned viciously and bit one of its smaller cousins. The water clouded with an explosion of activity, and when it cleared again the big salmon was all alone and the bench at the viewing station was empty.

  THIRTEEN

  At eight-thirty Daphne arrived at the Public Safety Building flush with excitement over her discovery of the State Health lab report. She grabbed Boldt firmly by the arm, and without another word dragged him into her office, kicking the door shut behind them. Standing close to him, she searched his eyes and said, “Five years ago New Leaf Foods was accused by State Health of selling contaminated chicken soup. Lab tests placed the blame with a poultry company called Long-view Farms out in Sasquaw.” She passed him the photocopies of one and then a second newspaper report she had gleaned from a computer service since her meeting with Adler. “Longview Farms went bankrupt and folded as a result of lawsuits brought against it.” As he shifted to the second article, she narrated for him: “Its owner, Mark Meriweather, went off Snoqualmie Pass in his Ford pickup. The fatality was ruled accidental—but what if it was suicide?”

  Boldt looked up. “Are we supposed to believe they’re coincidences? Chicken soup? A suicide?”

  “Especially when you add in this.” She handed him the laser-printed copy of the State Health lab report. She explained what it was, and informed him of her suspicions that it may have been altered.

  “A copy won’t prove that.”

  “I know that. I’m working on it.” She searched his eyes again and said: “You like this, don’t you?”

  “Very much.” Boldt’s mind was racing. “If they went bankrupt, then tracking down whoever once worked there may be tough.”

  “I put Meriweather’s widow on the top of my list. Loses her husband, their income. She sours and hires someone to threaten Owen.”

  “Do we have her?”

  “No. I ran her through DMV. No current operator’s license, no current vehicle registration. I thought I’d ask LaMoia to try his contacts at State Tax—see if we can find a paper trail.”

  A knock on her door was followed by the head of one of the civilian staff. “Sergeant, we’re holding a call from Gaynes for you. Says it’s urgent.”

  The call was placed from Nulridge Hospital. Hearing Boldt answer the call, detective Bobbie Gaynes said in a frightened voice, “Sergeant, I’ve got two more.”

  Nulridge Hospital was the kind of small
community hospital that was unlikely to survive health care reform. It had not been remodeled in years, though it felt clean and well kept.

  Gaynes explained that via a credit card payment, she had traced one of the Foodland receipts to a woman who had purchased Adler soup on the same day as the Lowrys. The woman’s husband and child had recently been admitted with what she described as “the stomach bug,” but the symptoms—severe diarrhea, headaches, and mental confusion—matched those of Slater Lowry.

  Boldt spent the next forty minutes attempting to convince the supervising intern to test for cholera—this, while also avoiding any direct mention of a product tampering. The doctor, refusing to be told his job by a gumshoe, remained hostile and distant until Boldt connected him with Dr. Brian Mann, after which point his attitude changed completely.

  The senior Kowalski was responding well to fluids but his teenage daughter, already weakened from a two-year battle with bulimia, was listed as serious.

  There was seemingly nothing to gain from visiting the two patients, but Boldt stopped in on the father. The man was lethargic and untalkative, but he was alive, which put him well ahead of Slater Lowry.

  The daughter was unconscious, her medication being changed as Boldt arrived. The doctor caught up to Boldt in the hall, apologized for his earlier attitude, and thanked him, adding, “At least we know the enemy now,” the irony of which was not lost on the detective.

  At eleven-thirty that night the anonymous State Health van pulled in front of the Kowalski home. Once again Boldt ushered the field agents inside the home and stood by as an exhausting search, so familiar to him from the Lowrys’, began anew.

  At 12:45 A.M., summoned back to the office, Boldt met up with Daphne, whose frantic behavior unnerved him as she explained, “Longview Farms has long since defaulted on their property taxes, but from what I can tell, it hasn’t changed hands.”

  “It’s vacant?”

  “It’s worth looking into, but it’s well outside of our jurisdiction.”

  “And the widow?”

  “I’m working on it. LaMoia got the property information, but he doesn’t have anything on Meriweather’s wife or the Longview business. What I want is an employee roster.”

  “That sounds like a better shot than driving a two-hour round-trip out to a vacant farm. You stay on the widow Meriweather, I’ll ask a local uniform to check out the farm.”

  Boldt contacted one Sheriff Turner Bramm, within whose jurisdiction Longview Farms was located. He sounded like a smoker, and maybe a drinker, too.

  “I don’t appreciate being woke up at three in the morning.”

  “It’s urgent,” Boldt informed him.

  “It always is. I’m not on call tonight, Sergeant.”

  “I know that, Sheriff. But this can’t be entrusted to anyone but you. I need this done. I need it done right. And I need it done now. It’s an active homicide investigation with a repeat offender at large.”

  “I got me deputies for the graveyard shift. What the fuck do you suppose they’re there for?”

  “I’m not KCP,” Boldt reminded him. Bad blood existed between King County police and some of the local law enforcement of the smaller municipalities within King County. It stemmed from a budget-driven decision that required payment for KCP’s services or the establishment of an independent police force.

  “Don’t give a shit you are or you aren’t,” Sheriff Bramm said. “You got any errand-running need done this time of night, then my deputies do it. Period,” he said. He hung up.

  Boldt called him right back.

  “You’re pissing me off,” Bramm said answering, without waiting to find out who had called him.

  “You get your butt out of bed and over to Longview Farms or you’ll be answering to Klapman,” Boldt warned, referring to the state attorney general.

  “I’m trembling all over.” The line went dead. When Boldt called back for a third time, the line rang endlessly: Bramm had unplugged his phone.

  Lacking any jurisdictional authority in the area, Boldt returned a call to the sheriff’s office and politely solicited the cooperation and assistance of one of Bramm’s wet-behind-the-ears deputies. He wanted the local buzz on Longview Farms and he wanted this deputy personally to inspect the premises, getting the names of anyone and everyone currently or formerly associated with the property and the business conducted there. He tried to impress upon this deputy the urgency of his request. He needed this done immediately, not tomorrow or the next day.

  “Sure,” the man replied listlessly. Boldt hung up the phone, anything but convinced.

  Some days his own people were his worst enemies.

  When Boldt arrived at work the following morning, he was briefed by Shoswitz on an agreement reached with State Health. Should the Kowalski illnesses become the focus of media attention, the statements to the press would be that the symptoms were consistent with E. coli contamination. The early symptoms were in fact similar, which precluded the necessity to lie outright, and the city had been through a bad spread of E. coli the summer before, lessening the alarm caused by any such statement.

  The first telephone call Boldt made was to Sheriff Turner Bramm, from whom he had received no report.

  The phone was answered by the same gruff, raspy voice. Boldt reintroduced himself and asked for an update on Longview Farms.

  Bramm informed him impatiently, “Listen, Tommy did a drive-by last night, didn’t see nothin’. Gone sick with a summer cold now, so I’m what you might call shorthanded, Sergeant. I got me a grand theft auto and the DEA telling me I got a crack house operating in my village. You hear me? A crack house out here in the goddamn nowheres. You think I’m running errands for you city boys, keep on dreaming. And as for waking me up last night—”

  “A drive-by?” Boldt interrupted. “A drive-by is all?”

  “More than you shoulda got. More than you gonna get. You hearing me?”

  “A grand theft auto?” Boldt inquired, perplexed. “I’m talking about murder one. A repeat offender at large. I’m trying to stop a killer, Sheriff,” he said through his teeth, managing a modicum of control in his voice, “a killer who may or may not have a connection to a residence in your jurisdiction. I need someone to knock on that door and ask some questions, and if you’re not up to it, then I’m going over your head and getting permission to send one of my own people out there and do it. Is that registering with you? I’m not looking to make you any trouble, but I will in a heartbeat if you’re going to go on playing southern cracker with me.”

  “Southern cra—”

  “Final warning,” Boldt said, interrupting loudly, and drawing Shoswitz’s curiosity, which focused onto him. Boldt was not one to lose his temper. “Either you knock on that door and ask questions or one of my people does.”

  “I am not inviting you out here,” the sheriff made clear.

  “It’s going to mean trouble for you,” Boldt warned in an ominous voice that rang with authority.

  Silence on the other end. It lasted so long that Boldt finally said, “Sheriff?” thinking he had been hung up on again.

  “Give me your phone number,” the sheriff said. “I’ll call you right back.”

  “Ten minutes, Sheriff. Then I move without you.”

  “Give me your fucking phone number!” the man hollered into the receiver.

  When the sheriff called back ten minutes later, Boldt couldn’t help but wonder if he’d taken a drink of something, his mood had changed so noticeably. “You coulda told me who you were,” the sheriff said. He claimed to have made a few phone calls.

  “I did,” Boldt reminded.

  “No. I mean who you were,” the sheriff attempted to clarify. “Fuck it. It doesn’t matter. You need a hand, you got one. I didn’t know, that’s all. You’ve got my respect, Boldt, that’s all I’m trying to say. I didn’t know it was you. Get it?”

  “Maybe not,” Boldt admitted, thinking that the man probably had him confused with someone else, but appreciati
ng the change of tone and not wishing to challenge it. “But if you’ll help, then that’s fine.”

  “I’ll head right over there. Right away while the coffee’s still warm, right? Check the neighbors first, huh? Maybe the postman?”

  And a good cop to boot. Surprise. “Sounds good,” Boldt said.

  “Be back to you by noon. That okay with you?”

  “Just right,” Boldt answered. “The sooner the better.”

  FOURTEEN

  The wind blew swiftly from the southwest, changing the way the air smelled—or perhaps, Daphne told herself, it was just that she had not been out to Whidbey Island for a long time. She had driven here. After work on a Wednesday, no less … She felt irresponsible for having agreed so quickly and spontaneously. But Owen had that effect on her. He and Corky had arrived via his yacht, making it virtually impossible for him to have been followed. The home belonged to a friend of his. It was a split-level modern in the school of Frank Lloyd Wright—flagstone and glass, cut into a carpet of green lawn that spilled down to the shoreline.

  The beach was steeply inclined and consisted entirely of fist-size smooth rocks. Huge cedar logs had been rolled up and deposited by storm tides, creating an obstacle course that Corky used for hiding places.

  “We keep saying we can’t do this, and yet here we are again,” she observed.

  “It’s only for the one night, and besides, Corky insisted,” Owen Adler explained. “She wants to invite you to her party, and there are some things a father cannot say no to, regardless of the so-called rules.” He added, “Not my rules, anyway.”