No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

  Boldt turned in time to see Caulfield leaning toward Corky with the Big Dipper.

  The little girl accepted the ice-cream cone and tore at the wrapper.

  “No, Corky!” Adler exclaimed, but not in the voice of a father worried about spoiling an appetite.

  Caulfield reacted instantly, by reaching out for Corky—wanting a hostage. “Motherfucker,” Caulfield muttered, looking at Adler.

  Boldt went for his gun, but it hung up in the coveralls.

  Caulfield took hold of the child. Daphne’s purse came at his face like a wrecking ball, and as it connected, she yanked Corky away, threw her down onto the pavement, and covered her.

  The children behind Boldt screamed.

  Boldt charged the man. Caulfield went up hard against the side of the truck, and Boldt felt a knee implode into his gut, the wind knocked out of him. His head swirled as he heard more screams from behind him—screams of children—and the unmistakable sound of weapons being drawn from holsters as the voice of John LaMoia hollered, “Hold your fire!” Boldt was going down to the pavement in slow motion as LaMoia appeared in his peripheral vision, diving through the air.

  He saw Sheriff Turner Bramm’s shotgun then: It had been sawed off, the metal a fresh silver on the end of the barrels, and must have come from inside one of the freezers.

  “Down!” he heard shouted in the midst of the pandemonium.

  “Drop it!” came a stern voice from behind.

  LaMoia dove at Owen Adler and carried him down hard to the pavement.

  Boldt, still falling toward the pavement in an indescribable slow motion, touched the chest of the coveralls and said, “Take him.”

  He heard a dull pop—like hands clapping together—and the side of the truck sprayed with Caulfield’s blood. It was a shoulder shot, and though Caulfield’s eyes rocked in his sockets and seemed to acknowledge the hit, the sawed-off never faltered for a moment. Mechanically, he pumped the weapon. Boldt, in midair, kicked out hard and caught the toe of his shoe under Caulfield’s kneecap. Caulfield twisted and screamed.

  The sawed-off blew the mirror off the truck and sprayed the front windshield into powder.

  Two of Boldt’s people swarmed on top of Caulfield.

  Boldt’s head slammed into the pavement and the lights went out. He heard the words, “Paramedics! He’s hit!” “Get these kids out of here!” Coming back, Boldt pulled himself up to sitting. Caulfield was buried under a pile of police. A pair of handcuffs sparkled in the afternoon sun as they disappeared into that pile. The Miranda was being spoken.

  A moment later the pile parted slightly, revealing a clown without his nose and wig—just bright red cheeks and eyes filled with hatred. His shoulder was bleeding badly.

  Daphne was hugging Corky and stroking her hair. Boldt could not see LaMoia or Adler.

  But he did see Diana. She was weeping, her shepherd down and still. She held to it as a mother to a child.

  Boldt’s heart tore in two. Too close. Too big a risk. And yet the joy of triumph as well. The Tim Man was in handcuffs, his glassy eyes fixed rigidly on a point beyond Boldt, fixed on a man whose voice rose above all others as he called out joyously for his daughter.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  While surgeons at Harborview Medical Clinic stitched up Caulfield’s left shoulder, Boldt and six others went through several hours of debriefing. The Scientific Identification Division’s second-floor lab, under the direction of Bernie Lofgrin, began testing each and every one of the sixty-one ice-cream products recovered from the freezer van.

  Despite the fatigue of everyone involved, there was an ebullient bounce in the step of all those who walked the fifth floor. A press conference, scheduled so that footage could be included in the eleven o’clock news, was held in a conference room at the Westin, with over eighty journalists and news crew personnel in attendance. Captain Rankin, the police chief, and the mayor fielded questions, assuring the public that “this terrible man” had been apprehended, that a “nightmare of carnage had been avoided,” and that Seattle’s supermarkets were safe once again.

  Bobbie Gaynes, John LaMoia, Freddie Guccianno, and dozens of others involved in the incident were given a six-hour break to go home and sleep. Some of them took it, some did not.

  The emergency surgery took forty-five minutes, finishing up a few minutes before six o’clock. The chief surgeon allowed Boldt and one other detective to interrogate the suspect if the interrogation was kept to thirty minutes or less. Boldt pressed for and won a concession that the interrogation could involve three, possibly four people. A second, more involved session was tentatively approved for the next morning. Although Caulfield had already waived his right to an attorney, by morning a public defender would be assigned and the case would fall into the hands of the attorneys. With black holes, everything was done to the letter.

  At ten-thirty that night, armed with a cassette tape recorder and a large tea, Boldt stood outside Caulfield’s hospital room alongside two SPD patrolmen who stood guard. They were accompanied by Dr. Richard Clements and deputy prosecuting attorney Penny Smyth.

  Boldt wanted nothing less than a full confession. They had attempted murder, they had enough circumstantial evidence to fill a courthouse, but a confession would finish things nicely. Clements wanted “a peek into that mind.” Smyth wanted to make sure they conducted the interrogation properly.

  “Before we go in,” Clements said, stopping them, “his world has ended, and he knows it. He continues to blame Adler—not us, you will find—for everything. And that is extremely important, because it offers us a way to the truth. He will surrender the truth without meaning to. The more he tries to hide it, the more we can get from him. I see your confusion. You will understand as we proceed.” He pushed open the door, and they entered the room.

  Caulfield was awake, lying in bed, his head rocked up on a pillow, his eyes alert and sparking darkly with anger. The room, stripped down to the bare necessities, smelled of alcohol and disinfectant. The surgery had involved only local anesthesia, which meant medication would not interfere with or negate the results of the interrogation.

  Boldt switched on the tape recorder and spoke clearly, listing the location, the time of day, and those present.

  Caulfield’s pewter-gray eyes ran over them. The man looked so normal.

  Clements pulled up a chair beside the bed. Boldt and Smyth remained standing.

  “I’ve got nothing to say,” Caulfield informed them.

  Smyth said, “The difference to you, should you cooperate, may mean life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.”

  “I want to hang,” Caulfield said, stunning both Boldt and Smyth.

  Clements smiled and said softly, “Of course you do.”

  Caulfield eyed him peculiarly.

  Clements said, “But not before clearing Mark Meriweather’s good name. Hmm? Think about it.”

  “You know about that?”

  “We know about everything, my boy. We are very interested in Mr. Meriweather.”

  Caulfield looked at him curiously, wondering how far he could trust the man. “Bullshit,” he said.

  “Meriweather was set up, son.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Very well. What would you like me to call you? Mr. Caulfield? Harold? Harry?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “If I leave you alone, attorneys like our Ms. Smyth here will get their hooks into you and that will be that. You’ve been through this before, Harry. You know what I’m talking about. If you had wanted that, you would not have waived your right to an attorney.”

  “Attorneys suck,” he said directly to Smyth. “No attorneys.”

  “Let’s talk about your hanging for a minute.”

  “I want it over.”

  “I understand. But why so fast? What about Mark Meriweather?”

  “He’s dead. It’s over.”

  “You loved him.”

  “He was good to me.”

  “They bro
ke him.”

  “They lied.”

  “Yes. We know that.”

  Caulfield sat forward slightly, stopped by the pain of his wound, but his neck remained craned forward.

  Clements said, “Oh yes. We know about it all. They laced the birds. They paid people off. They placed the blame on Mark Meriweather.” He paused. “They made you kill the birds.”

  The pain on Caulfield’s face cried out. The last thing Boldt wanted was to feel sorry for this monster.

  “That wasn’t easy, was it? Killing those birds.”

  Caulfield shook his head slightly. He seemed to have left the room.

  “You had never seen Mr. Meriweather like that, had you?”

  “So much blood,” Caulfield whispered.

  “He wasn’t himself.”

  “He changed.”

  “Yes, killing the birds changed him, didn’t it?” He added, “Changed you all.”

  Caulfield nodded.

  “You loved those birds.”

  He nodded again.

  “We need your help, Harry. If you help us, we will help you. Sergeant Boldt here knows all about what happened out at Longview Farms, but we need to hear about this soup. What you did to the soup.”

  “The birds were not sick.”

  “We know that. And you blamed Mr. Adler.”

  “They lied about us.”

  “What about the soup, Harry? Tell us about the soup.”

  “They poisoned our birds. I warned them. They didn’t listen.” He had a glazed look, no longer directed at Clements or Boldt or Smyth, but somewhere on the ceiling or the back wall. Off on his own. “I thought the cholera would convince them.”

  “You put the cholera in the soup?”

  He nodded.

  Boldt glanced over at the tape. Still running.

  Clements saw this and said, “I didn’t hear you, Harry.”

  Harry Caulfield just stared at the wall.

  “We need your help, Harry.”

  “I did it because they did it to us. I did it to show them that they had better listen.”

  “Did what?”

  “Poisoned the soup.”

  Boldt and Clements met eyes. There it was—and captured on tape.

  Caulfield attempted to sit up once again, but was beaten by the pain. He pleaded, “Why didn’t they believe me? Why did they let those people die?”

  “Excuse me,” Smyth said. She was pale and his lips were trembling. She walked quietly to the door and left the room.

  “Tell me about the money,” Boldt said.

  “What are you talking about?” His eyes burned into Boldt.

  “The extortion money,” the sergeant reminded. But Caulfield’s face went blank, and Boldt felt certain that this was no act.

  “You’re out of your mind.” To Clements he said, “All cops are out of their fucking minds.”

  “Are you out of your mind, Harry?”

  “Who is this guy?” he asked Boldt. To Clements he said, “A shrink, am I right?”

  “How do you feel about these murders, Harry? Tell me about these murders.”

  “Ask Owen Adler. No fault of mine.”

  “Tell me about the murders.”

  “I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “Yes you did, Harry. You have murdered twelve people, including two peace—”

  “I didn’t murder anyone! And I don’t know anything about any extortion money, or whatever the hell it is you asked me,” he said to Boldt.

  Clements scooted farther forward, leaned in closely, and whispered intimately, tenderly, “We’re listening, Harry. We want to hear whatever you want to tell us. Doesn’t matter what.” Caulfield’s eyes brimmed with tears. “The world has not treated you fairly, have they, son?” This time, Caulfield did not object to Clements’s using the term. Instead, the patient shook his head and tears spilled down his cheeks. Clements said warmly, but in a strangely eerie voice, “No one has listened, have they? I know what that’s like, son. Believe me, I know. They just never listen.” Caulfield shook his head again. “You told them about what happened at Longview, and did they listen? Is that fair? You told them about that drug charge—oh yes, I’ve read the piece. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, son. Something to be proud of. I’ve read it all.” Caulfield groaned. “But no one ever listens, do they? They tell you to come back. They tell you to go away. They treat you like a child. But they never listen, do they?” He paused. “No one has ever listened like Mark Meriweather listened. And they took Mark away from you. They ruined him, didn’t they?”

  The cry that came from the man might have been heard across several of the hospital’s wings. The patient’s mouth hung open and he wailed at the ceiling, rocking his head on the pillow, and Dr. Richard Clements threw his own head back, closed his eyes, and listened like an opera patron enjoying an inspired aria.

  “I’m listening!” Clements shouted in the middle of one of these cries, and it only encouraged the patient louder. Boldt glanced at the tape recorder—no one was going to believe this, he thought.

  Before the male nurses threw open the door, Clements had already raised his hand to stop them and wave them off. Boldt had not heard their approach.

  “We’re fine,” the doctor reported. “A little healthy release is all.” He said to the patient, “They heard you, Harry. Do you see? We’re listening now! We can hear you!”

  Caulfield stopped and opened his tear-stained eyes, and Boldt thought he was witnessing a soul’s final glimpse of sanity, that Harry Caulfield had made a fateful journey. But Clements did not seem bothered in the least. For the benefit of the troubled male nurses, Clements said to the patient, “We’re fine, aren’t we, son? Better now, aren’t we?” To the nurses he said, “You see?” And he waved them off contemptuously, a move he finished by sweeping off the lapels of his double-breasted blazer.

  “Now let’s start at the beginning, shall we, son? Every action starts with a thought. Can you tell me, please, about the very first moment that you knew Owen Adler had to pay for his crimes? The very first inspiration. I have all the time in the world, son. All the time in the world.”

  Clements looked over at Boldt, beaming a smile.

  Boldt was not certain who was crazier. “The money,” Boldt repeated.

  “I don’t know anything about any money,” Caulfield repeated angrily. For the second time, Boldt believed him.

  He did not have all the time in the world. He grabbed the tape recorder and headed straight to the office to have it transcribed.

  Boldt slept for fourteen hours, awakening at two in the afternoon. He ate a light meal, called the office, and fell back to sleep. At eleven that night, he found himself wide awake with a dozen thoughts colliding in his head. He kissed his sleeping wife, changed clothes, and returned to the office. DeAngelo’s squad was on rotation. Everyone congratulated him on the Caulfield raid and on the confession, treating him like a hero, but Boldt did not feel like a hero: The extortionist was still at large.

  He checked with Lockup. He checked with Daphne—but could not find her. Cornelia Uli had a public defender assigned to her. She was in the system now.

  With no evidential connection yet made between Uli and Harry Caulfield, no money found in Caulfield’s possession, no ATM cards, and Caulfield’s denial of extortion—while confessing to cold-blooded murder—Boldt felt compelled to believe that Caulfield had had no connection to the ATM scam.

  He pulled out Uli’s file and started through it once again, reviewing her past arrests: gangs, drugs, a prostitution charge that had been dropped. He looked at her earlier arrest photos. Sixteen, seventeen years old. A real sultry beauty then. Now, at twenty-one, the street had robbed her of her looks. The gangs were hardest on the young women.

  Each time through, he had been reviewing the contents of the files, quickly passing over the form headings, the departments, the officers involved: the overly familiar information that any cop encountered repeatedly and with little or no interest. But the
next time through, a number jumped out at him. One little number typed innocently years before into one little box. So easy to miss. One small piece of information left on a form. Over six years old now. By a cop making an arrest, filling out a blank: Arresting Officer: 8165.

  The ATM PIN number. Boldt picked up the phone, his hand trembling, dialed Daphne’s number again, and again she did not answer. He had to search his notebook to find Adler’s unlisted residence. His fingers punched out the number. He waited seven rings before Adler answered and passed Daphne the phone.

  “I need you,” he said.

  Chris Danielson was asleep when Boldt turned the light on in his room. Daphne and the male night nurse followed at a run. Boldt turned to this nurse, pointed to the other bed in Danielson’s room, and said, “He’s out of here—now.”

  The nurse opened his mouth to complain, but Boldt had already been through hell with him at the nurses’ station, and he had had his fill. “Get that bed out of this room now!” The man mumbled something, but obeyed. Apologizing to Danielson’s roommate, the nurse took him for a ride into the hall, and Daphne closed the door.

  “I need straight answers, Chris.”

  He still appeared half-asleep. “Sarge?”

  “And Matthews,” Daphne announced herself.

  “They’re going to throw me out of here in a minute—we’re still not allowed to see you—and this can’t wait until morning. Are you with me?”

  “Go ahead.” He rolled his head, blinked furiously, and reached for a paper cup of ice water with a straw. Boldt handed it to him and Danielson sucked in a mouthful.

  “You took Caulfield’s file from the Boneyard without signing it out—a day before we identified him. When we did, you returned it. I need to know why.”

  Any minute, that door would open.

  The man had new lines in his face, and a combination of pain and exhaustion in his eyes. A tent frame held the covers off his abdomen, and two large weights held his legs in traction. His voice was dry. “I obtained a state tax record of Longview employees. Caulfield had a record. I pulled the file.”

  “But why?” Boldt challenged. “For money?”