No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

  “Money?” he asked incredulously. “To clear the black hole, why else?” The man was too tired, too medicated for Boldt to read his face well.

  “You were offered a job away from the force,” Boldt speculated.

  “Not true.” He met eyes with Boldt. “I wanted your job.”

  A flashing light passed below the window as a silent ambulance arrived. It pulsed light across all their faces.

  “I wanted this one worse than you did. I’ve been going at this case night and day when I wasn’t handling your paperwork for you. ‘Nice little nigger, sit behind the desk and let the white boys do the big, tough jobs.’ Not this nigger, Sergeant. Bullshit.”

  “It wasn’t like that, at all.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  They both raised their voices simultaneously and began shouting. Daphne cut them off with a sharp reprimand and said to both of them, “Out of order!”

  Unaccustomed to losing his temper, Boldt took a few seconds to pull himself together. He checked his watch—precious seconds.

  Daphne said to the injured man, “Elaine Striker.”

  Danielson looked over at her. “Just one of those things that happened. It’s nothing I’m proud of. She’s lonely and she doesn’t remember what love is.”

  “And then this black hole comes along,” Daphne nudged.

  “Like I said, it’s nothing I’m proud of. Turns out Michael Striker is a talker, that’s all. Turns out his wife knows everything there is to know about this case, and suddenly I’m a lot more interested in the romance—the pillow talk—and she isn’t complaining.”

  “What a sweetheart you are,” Daphne said.

  “I paid for it, Matthews. You want to switch places?” He jerked his head toward the corner of the room where a collapsed wheelchair leaned against the wall.

  Daphne stuttered.

  “Listen, Striker was all messed up about Lonnie—Elaine. He wasn’t thinking clearly. I came to him for a warrant to get the New Leaf bank records—the canceled checks—and it never occurred to him to clear it with you,” he said to Boldt.

  “You found the payoffs,” she concluded.

  “No, I didn’t. They were more careful than that. It was a long shot was all: Hoping to find a paper trail to the bribe money. I had already guessed who had been paid off, but couldn’t prove it. So I changed tack.”

  “We’re listening, Chris.”

  “Check the transcript of Caulfield’s trial. It was not a good case. But public sentiment toward drugs was bad right then—you so much as said the word cocaine, and in a jury trial the suspect went down for the long count. And what did the case hinge on? Some tip that the arresting officer received. The whole thing turned on this snitch—an anonymous tip. One anonymous snitch, and Caulfield goes away for four and change. Granted, that’s how Drugs’ busts go down: Narcs never reveal their snitches. But if you read between the lines of that transcript, the arresting officer—a cop named Dunham—was nervous as hell up on the stand. Why? Because he didn’t have a legitimate snitch. It was a setup. Caulfield was framed.”

  “And?”

  “And before I got to this Dunham, Striker got to me. Must have followed Lonnie—Elaine—to the hotel.”

  “But you suspected someone.”

  “Wouldn’t be fair. I never did prove it.”

  “Kenny Fowler,” Boldt said, supplying the name. He mumbled, “Badge number eight-one-six-five.”

  Daphne stared at him, dumbfounded.

  Danielson’s eyes flashed. He hesitated, barely nodded, and explained, “Dunham’s partner for five years on Major Crimes. Fowler goes private with a company called New Leaf. Dunham goes over to Drugs. He’s floundering, can’t get the hang of Drugs. Then he does this major bust: Harry Caulfield with a couple kilos of high-quality soda. Four months later, guess who he’s working for? Double the salary, double the vacation. Double the fun.”

  Boldt sagged and leaned onto the frame of the bed. “Jesus.” In a soft, apologetic, guilt-ridden voice, he confessed, “I got you shot, Chris.” No one said a thing until Boldt spoke again. “I suspected you of stealing that file. I didn’t want an IA investigation in the middle of this black hole. I asked Fowler to place you under surveillance for me. Keep it out of uniform. He lied to me about what he found out about you. Obviously, what he found out was that you were a little too close for comfort and that you were sleeping with Elaine Striker.”

  Another long silence as the sound of the circulating air and the hum of machinery seemed deafening to Boldt. He wanted this man’s forgiveness, and he knew that was impossible.

  “Her PD is on his way,” prosecuting attorney Penny Smyth informed them.

  “But do we wait?” Boldt asked her.

  “No one is forcing her to speak to you,” Smyth pointed out. “You can push, but technically she doesn’t have to talk.”

  “Understood.”

  Smyth was cautious not to give them her outright approval. “You don’t have much time.” She requested of Daphne, “Should anyone ever ask: You loaned me your office, where I remained while you two were in there with her, okay?”

  “Near as I can remember.”

  Boldt and Daphne moved quickly down the hall. “I have an idea. Back me up in here,” she requested, meeting eyes with him as he reached to open the door for her.

  “I’m there,” he promised.

  “We turn the volume way up and she’s going to talk. Bet on it. But it may get a little nasty.”

  “That suits her, I think.”

  He followed her into the Box. Daphne never broke stride. She burst through the door, leaving it for him to close, and she hollered at the suspect, “Out of the chair. Now!”

  Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Cornelia Uli wore a haggard expression from her two dismal nights in lockup. Uli sprang to her feet.

  “Come over here,” Daphne said, indicating the end of the table. “Right here.”

  Uli stood at the end of the interrogation table, looking concerned.

  Daphne said, “Now let’s get one thing straight: If you do not cooperate with us, your life just got ugly. You’re going where girls do other things to girls that are not pleasant—things you’ve never heard of—and where the guards just do worse things, so no one ever says a thing to them. You keep your mouth shut, unless someone has use for it. That’s option number one. Option number two is you open that same mouth for me, right now. This is not some two-year drug charge we’re talking about. It is not some check-kiting scam. This is not some free ATM card that your pal set up for you. This is murder one. This is the end of your pitiful little life, Cornelia, if you do anything but exactly as I say.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say.”

  Daphne glanced once, hotly, at Boldt, turned to face the suspect, and said, “Lean against the table.”

  “I will not,” Uli protested.

  Daphne slapped the table hard, jarring the woman. “Lean against the table.”

  “Go ahead,” Boldt said.

  Reluctantly, Uli leaned onto her hands.

  “Your forearms,” Daphne said. “Good. Now open your legs. More. Move ’em. Good!”

  “What do you think?” Daphne asked, stepping back to view the profile as she might a painting.

  Having no idea what he was agreeing to, Boldt said, “I think you’re right.”

  Daphne stepped up behind a nervous Cornelia Uli and reached around her, careful not to make contact, and leaned over her in a provocative position impossible to mistake. She rocked her hips unmistakably. In an intimate whisper she asked the suspect, “Remind you of anyone?”

  “Get off me.”

  “I’m not on you. Neither was he. He was in you.”

  Boldt felt like an idiot for taking so long to see it: The woman in Kenny Fowler’s apartment. The night Daphne had taken the hotel room and sat in the dark.

  In that same intimate whisper Daphne said, “I saw you two up there.”

  Uli’s head jerked. “I don’t know what you’
re talking about.”

  “It didn’t look like you enjoyed it very much,” Daphne said. She added quietly, “Whatever he has on you is gone. We tear it up, burn it, whatever. We’re not interested.”

  “All I do is squeal, right? Forget it.”

  The first crack.

  Boldt said, “We’re talking about extortion, accessory to murder. The rest of your natural life spent behind bars.” he added, “We know it was you.”

  The door swung open and an angry male voice demanded, “Out of here now!”

  It was Uli’s public defender, and he left the door for them to close as he rushed to his client’s side.

  On the other side of the Box’s one-way glass, Uli, her attorney, and Penny Smyth were waiting impatiently for Daphne and Boldt, who had been talking it through for the last several minutes.

  Wrapping it up, Boldt speculated, “Being one of the few insiders, Fowler knew how to word the extortion threat so that we would attribute it to Caulfield.”

  “But he blew it—the extortion demand neglected to blame Adler, something that bothered both Dr. Clements and me.”

  “We expected extortion demands. He simply gave us what we wanted.”

  Looking at Uli through the glass, Daphne explained proudly, “It was her body language that caught my eye. When she started prancing around the room like that, I knew I recognized her. I sat in that hotel room watching them for hours. It just took a second for it all to click.”

  Boldt said cynically, “Both of them in that apartment—right there across from us …”

  “He was angry with her about something. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to show up there. He took a quickie at the dining room table for payment and sent her packing.”

  “He’s such a prince,” Boldt said, swinging open the door as they joined the others.

  Uli’s public defender was a young Jewish kid fresh from the law boards named Carsman. He looked like an unmade bed. He had a high, squeaky voice and he protested Boldt’s every breath. Penny Smyth, looking the most dignified of any of them, dragged Carsman into the hallway for a conference, and when they returned to the Box, Cars-man did not utter a single objection. He took notes furiously, and occasionally passed one to his sagging client.

  Boldt passed Uli her arrest record. “Badge number eight-one-six-five. That badge number belonged to Detective Kenneth Fowler when he was a police officer. He arrested you in a gang situation, and you were charged with a second-degree homicide. The charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.”

  Daphne stated, “We saw you in his apartment that night.”

  “Shit,” the suspect said, and she hung her head and shook her hair in defeat.

  Boldt felt triumphant. His face revealed nothing. Impassive. Exhausted.

  Daphne said, “What does he have on you, Cornelia?”

  She mumbled. “A videotape. A surveillance tape. I was seventeen.”

  “Sex?” Daphne asked.

  “A homicide,” Boldt stated knowingly.

  “Don’t answer!” Carsman interrupted.

  Boldt said, “Lester Gammon. Age eighteen. Stabbed seven times.”

  Cornelia Uli obeyed her attorney, though she locked eyes with Boldt. “He asks me to do stuff now and then. I do it.”

  “Like the other night?” Daphne asked.

  “Go stuff it,” Uli said vehemently. “What do any of you know about the streets? Let me tell you something—out there you do favors and people leave you alone. It’s simple in the streets. It’s basic survival. You and your perfect hair and your strawberry douche,” she said spitefully to Daphne. “You make me sick.”

  Daphne blushed and held herself back in a formidable show of internal strength.

  “You did Fowler favors,” Boldt repeated.

  “Like this ATM thing. Yeah.”

  “Do not say anything more!” her attorney advised.

  “Shut up,” Uli told him.

  “I can’t represent you if—”

  “Shut up!” To Boldt she said, “I went where he told me to. I did what he said to do.” To Daphne she said, “And yeah, he jumps my bones now and then. And no, I don’t particularly like it. But it’s not like it’s something new, okay? He’s been doing it since back when he was a cop. He had a lot of the girls doing it back then. If Kenny busted you, you went down on him. No charges. It was that simple. That’s what I’m saying. You get why I’m afraid of cops? It started when I was fifteen and running with a gang. Kenny liked me. Too bad for me.” She seemed to be apologizing to Daphne. “You get kinda used to the ones like Kenny Fowler. But it’s better than the alternative, and that’s the way it works out there. Doing favors for people beats the hell out of living under bridges in cardboard boxes. Getting gang-banged. Getting bad needles. You don’t know until you’ve been there.”

  “You’re right,” Daphne said, overcoming her personal agenda and striving to establish rapport with the suspect. Daphne’s friend Sharon had been there. Daphne knew all about it, but was not going to say so, was not going to defend herself. Boldt admired her for that.

  “He gave you the ATM card,” Boldt began for her.

  “And the number. And he told me which machines to hit. Big deal. He gave me a hundred a night.”

  “Generous,” Boldt said.

  “It’s a living,” Uli replied dully.

  “Sergeant?” It was Penny Smyth. She asked for a conference in the hall. Daphne stayed with the suspect.

  Smyth said, “What I’m seeing here is that it’s going to come down to her word against Fowler’s. Is there any other evidence tying them together other than this? Because I’ve got to tell you, a judge is not going to like her. Will Fowler have the money on him? No way. It’s long gone—the minute you picked this girl up, it was gone. He was a cop, right? He knows the game. He’ll have something planned; he used her for a reason. Am I right, or am I right? I’ll run with this if you want. I can take it up the ladder and see what they think, but it stinks, if you ask me. She’s young—she has reasons, serious reasons in her past to hate Fowler and want to do him harm, and that’s going to come out in any testimony. It stinks, Sergeant. Matthews cannot say for sure it was this girl in Fowler’s apartment that night.”

  Boldt countered, “We have the PIN number. We have the former arrest.”

  “The bank account was opened by her. She uses Fowler’s badge number as a way of getting back at him, just in case she’s caught, which she was. I’m showing you the spin that can be put on this. As a witness she stinks, I’m telling you. Your call. You tell me what you want me to do.” She met and held eyes with him.

  “I hate attorneys,” Boldt told her.

  “Me too.” She smiled. “All my friends are cops.”

  He smiled back. “So what do you suggest, Counselor?”

  “I suggest she wears a wire for us. We plea her down to six months in medium with good behavior. Carsman will do back flips to get that. We send Fowler to the Big House until he’s gray.”

  Boldt asked incredulously, “Do you actually think that Kenny Fowler will get within a six-state region of this woman? No way in hell. Maybe to kill her, but not to—” He caught himself.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Maybe we let Fowler do our work for us. I think he owes us that.”

  Boldt had his car swept for listening devices before driving Daphne out to Alki Point, where he parked with a view of the water and a volleyball game being played out at sunset. Thankfully, no devices had been found.

  A body had washed ashore here once, and had changed a case and their lives along with it. He had not chosen this place to park at random.

  “I don’t want to ask this of you, Daffy.”

  “Then don’t.” She knew already. But she had agreed to the drive, so perhaps he stood a chance of convincing her. She looked away from him, out her window. “Please don’t,” she repeated.

  “You have to be living back there if this is going to work. We’ll have to script some things for you
and Adler to say. We have to chum the water, or he’ll spot the hook.”

  “Do you understand what you’re asking?”

  “I know what I’m asking—I don’t know what it would be like. I don’t know that I could do it.”

  “And Watson and Moulder—they would see me, too, if all this works the way you have planned. On the toilet, in the shower … My God, Lou!”

  “We gave him the mug shot, Daffy. We know he showed it around the processing plants, the warehouses. At some point someone must have recognized it. Caulfield delivered there on a regular basis. Fowler kept that information from us, all so that he could continue the extortion. He’s as guilty as Caulfield is. If we’re to put him away for that, we need a huge case against him. We need to build it from the ground up and show that Kenny Fowler, because of greed, allowed these poisonings to continue. But to do that, we have to have him dead-to-rights on the extortion. Honestly?” he asked. “I don’t care much about the extortion. I care about these lives. I care about being lied to and strung out because of Fowler’s greed. He deserves more than a slap on the wrist. And yes, it means that you have to take your clothes off. Yes, you have to do all the private things we all do every day of our lives. And yes, you have to do them as if there is no camera watching you, no microphone listening. And no, I don’t know how a person does that. But I know you want him as badly as I do—otherwise, I couldn’t have asked.”

  She sighed, and she scratched the dashboard with a fingernail. “Thank you for not saying that he’s seen it all already—that he may have hours of me on tape—so what does it matter? And thank you for not saying that I’m strong enough to pull this off. That is a sentiment that would not be appreciated, I can tell you that. We won’t know about any such strength until I try—if I try. And so that would only be manipulative garbage.” She smirked and added, “More my territory than yours. I could blow this, Lou. And thanks also for downplaying the report on that witness from the loading dock. We know Fowler received confirmation of Caulfield’s identity and did not act on it. I read that report. That makes him guilty of these crimes by omission.”

  Boldt did not realize that she had read it. “Whatever,” he said. But his heart was pounding strongly, for it sounded to him as if perhaps she had made up her mind.