Boldt - 04 - Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

  Casterstein remained unruffled. He allowed a slight smile, as if he had expected a LaMoia in the group. “I appreciate your honesty, Detective. I asked Sergeant Boldt here,” he emphasized, “because I wanted to show him this piece of evidence. I also wanted to show him this.” Casterstein nodded to someone off-camera at his end. The screen went blue. Casterstein’s voice said, “Stand by. What you’re about to see is a test conducted by the Fort Worth Fire Department.”

  The image was of a large deserted supermarket in an open sea of empty blacktop. Where the windows should have been were sheets of plywood. Grass grew up through gaping cracks in the pavement. Surrounding the structure were twenty or more fire vehicles, all parked at a good distance. Crews stood on the ground with hoses, but there was little water on the ground, no evidence of a fire having been fought. A digital clock counted down in the lower right-hand corner.

  Casterstein said, “Pay particular attention to the speed of the burn and the color. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

  The clock counted down to zero, at which point Gaynes and LaMoia, closest to the screen, actually jumped, leaning back in their chairs and away from the bright purple flash that rose into the sky like the flame from a wick. The roof of the building melted away, creating a hole in the doughnut. Everything seemed to burn at once. It lasted for three minutes and forty-two seconds, at which point the crews moved in and began to hose water onto the structure. The only water able to reach the center, shot from ladder trucks, exploded into flames as it arrived at the burning core. Those firefighters shut off their hoses, and the ladder engines were pulled back some distance from the inferno. Boldt had never seen a fire so ferocious.

  The video stopped; Casterstein’s image reappeared, fuzzy at first and then clear. “They fought the fire for another twenty minutes, but it’s that initial burn that is of interest. I don’t know if you noticed, but this burn went off at temperatures that caused water to separate into its elements, hydrogen and oxygen, literally exploding the attempts to suppress it. Never seen anything like it. The fire was an attempt to discover the accelerant used in a series of arsons that swept the country from ’89 to ’94. Our Washington office had a hand in it, which is how I have a copy of the tape.”

  Boldt could picture a person inside such a structure. He shuddered from head to toe and wondered if Bahan, next to him, saw him shake. All of a sudden the lack of human remains discovered on-site made sense to him; it explained the inability of Enwright and Heifitz to flee their homes. The pressing urgency of preventing another fire welled up from within him, and he immediately felt filled with self-doubt. Perhaps he should have moved on to lieutenant, he thought. Perhaps the work required younger minds, more agile thinking. Had he grown staid and incapable? Could he do his job effectively while worrying that his wife was having another affair? He had too much on his plate, too little time. Time. The word haunted him. Not another fire, not for anything.

  “The recommendation coming out of Washington—and I have to agree with it—is that, should there be a third fire, we let it burn. No fire suppression, certainly no overhaul.” An uncharacteristically long silence hung over the room.

  “What the hell did we just look at?” Boldt inquired, uncharacteristically brash. He glanced over at LaMoia, feeling respect for the detective; only LaMoia had dared to push Casterstein. Only LaMoia had sensed something lingering under the surface. Boldt couldn’t help but wonder if he’d lost his touch.

  Casterstein pursed his lips and leaned into the camera, going slightly out of focus again. “I don’t know yet what we’re looking at in these fires of yours,” he said flatly, his voice suddenly dry. “But I can tell you what they set off in that test fire. I can tell you what they’re thinking back East. I can tell you what they’re looking for, now that they’ve culled the test site and run the necessary analysis.” He allowed it to hang there for a moment, suspended on a telephone line somewhere between Sacramento and Seattle, a ball of spoken information surrounded on both sides by static. He brushed his hair back like a pitcher debating a signal sent by the catcher. Then he took a deep breath and spoke two words that flooded Boldt with heat and caused his eyes to sting. “Rocket fuel,” he said. “The accelerant in the Fort Worth test was liquid rocket fuel.”

  23

  The grounds of Owen Adler’s residence intimidated Boldt despite the fact that he had been there three years earlier. One measured Owen Adler’s kind of wealth by the size and range of his private jet. It was a Gulfstream 3 with the wings of a 4 for extra fuel. He was on the Seattle A-list. His marriage to Daphne Matthews was to be performed by Robert Fulghum in a private ceremony on the grounds of the estate, overlooking Shilshole Marina and Puget Sound. The marriage had been postponed twice, although only their closest friends knew this—no invitations had ever been sent. Daphne claimed it was because, in putting his food empire back together, Adler had encountered repeated scheduling problems, but for Boldt there were other signs. Daphne had allowed the tenant of her houseboat to leave without penalty; she had made no attempt to rent it again. She was back to volunteering at the Shelter, a church basement for teenage runaways, a commitment she had dropped during the infatuation days with Owen Adler. For his part, Adler had twice been photographed in the company of other women for the society pages. Boldt had not asked any questions. Any man who could lift a multimillion dollar company out of ashes the way Adler had deserved some kind of medal. There was no doubting the man’s power to overcome financial obstacles. On the other hand, Boldt thought, Daphne Matthews might be a kind of challenge he had never faced.

  The picturesque marina, so pretty at night with its white lights, black reflecting water, and regimented lines of white boats, their masts as delicate as frost on a window, was nestled inside a stone seawall, far below the hillside compound.

  Using the front door’s intercom, Daphne asked him to go around the house and wait for her out on the patio. When he circled the sprawling mansion, he saw that both pool and patio lights were on. It felt more like Italy than Seattle. He and Liz had not been back to Italy since Miles was born, another of those lifestyle changes that at moments like this registered in him as regret.

  Daphne had it all. This would be hers soon. He wondered what that felt like.

  The French doors opened and she ducked through chintz drapes wearing a pink robe and a towel wrapped around her head. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I was … I wanted a swim. A shower first. I was just getting out—”

  “Then it’s me who’s sorry for interrupting.”

  “Corky’s asleep,” she said, referring to Adler’s adopted teenage daughter. “I didn’t want to wake her.”

  “No.”

  “Does this make you uncomfortable?” she asked, clearly referring to the robe and the fact that there probably wasn’t much in the way of clothing underneath it.

  “Are you living here?” Boldt asked. He wasn’t sure why this came out of his mouth, wasn’t sure why it was suddenly so important to him.

  “I could change, if you want. The clothes,” she clarified. She looked away, back in the direction of downtown and the Space Needle and the city skyline. “He’s in South America this week. Peru, I think, tonight. Another deal. I didn’t want Corky to be with a nanny. Not as long as I’m around. It doesn’t seem fair to her.”

  “He travels a lot.”

  “Yes, he does.” Regret. Maybe some resentment that Boldt would voice such a thing. The way two people relate changes with each different situation, he realized, wishing it didn’t have to. He wanted to always share an intimate closeness with this woman, that liberating closeness where anything goes. But it was not the same any longer, and he resisted the change. He blamed Owen Adler. Her secret life was now shared with this other man; Boldt was the outsider.

  She sat down in a Brown and Jordan chair and crossed her legs, and a knee and then a thigh popped out of the robe. Boldt looked off into the cleanness of the pool. Interwoven lines of serpentine light ribbed the pool walls.
A plane flew over the bay, its wing lights flashing.

  “Rocket fuel.”

  Her head snapped up. A line of shower water ran from her wet hair down her neck, chased the line of her collarbone, and leaked down into the robe between her breasts.

  “That was my reaction as well,” he said.

  “Emily Richland mentioned the Air Force.” Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed.

  Boldt said, “There’s more. Bernie says the ladder impressions put his—or her—weight at one-forty tops. That’s light.”

  “A juvenile?” she asked. “The second poem was Plato: Suddenly a flash of understanding, a spark that leaps across to the soul. Big stuff for a juvenile.”

  “Messed-up kid, ugly divorce. It’s possible, I suppose.” He added, “You’re the judge of that.”

  “I’m thinking mid to late twenties, college educated. He could be thin, even gaunt; I could buy that.” She leaned forward. The bathrobe fell away from her chest. He looked away, back toward the pool and its dancing waves of light. He didn’t want to stare. Daphne had always been dangerous for him. It was inescapable.

  “LaMoia is trying to track down the Werner ladder sales. Something about computerized cash register receipts. He’s optimistic we’ll get something.”

  “John? Since when doesn’t he think highly of his own abilities?” She said sternly, “I know you’re thankful to have LaMoia. Believe me, I love him dearly. But we all should be grateful that there’s only one of him. He stretches the envelope enough, thank you very much.”

  “Bernie can’t swear by those impressions. It’s a best-guess situation. If he’s wrong, he’s wrong; there’s no backup guesstimate. The ground was soaked by the fire fighting, which made conducting any kind of field test impossible.” He mused aloud, “Funny, isn’t it, how the act of suppressing the fire goes a long way to destroying the evidence that might be found.”

  “Ironic would be my word of choice.”

  “Twenty-five and a college grad?” He attempted to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

  “That bothers you?” she inquired. “All I’m saying is that’s the collective wisdom based on national averages. In talking with others, that’s the best I can do: twenty-five to thirty, college educated, sexually inadequate. He hates his mother, girlfriend, whatever. Maybe all of the above. He is judge and executioner. He’s intelligent, quiet and lives alone. He’s working at a job under his abilities.”

  “You’ve been busy!” Boldt said. He was never comfortable with these profiles, but he did his best to trust them—they had proven accurate too many times.

  “He probably carries a library card and rides city transportation. If we put this information from the ladder into the mix, then he’s slight of build.”

  “Library card? City transport?” he asked.

  “Comes out of his income, which is limited if any. These guys like their labs. They like to tinker with their stuff. He works a job that requires no thought. He thinks about his kills, about his bombs, all day long. He may not sleep much, or eat much for that matter, and that fits with what you’re saying about his being slight. He leaves work and goes to his lab.”

  “His apartment?”

  “Unlikely. No. Someplace away from it all. Someplace he won’t be bothered. A garage. An abandoned building.”

  “None of those in this city,” Boldt snapped sarcastically.

  “I know it’s not what you want to hear.”

  “Fidler gave me a report on Garman. Steven Garman, the Marshal Five, the fire inspector—”

  “I know who Garman is,” she reminded him, a little hot under the collar. “The one receiving the threats is always the first one to look at.”

  “Have you looked?” he pressed.

  “We talked about Garman, that’s all. What is it with you?”

  He met and held her eyes. He found her beauty intoxicating. He had often wished she could make it go away. “I don’t know that I’m up to this,” he confessed.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “I teeter on the edge. My self confidence goes out the window, and there I am, teetering.”

  “It’s called anxiety. It’s healthy.” She studied him thoughtfully and asked rhetorically, “You didn’t come here because of Bernie Lofgrin or rocket fuel or Steven Garman, did you?”

  “Sure I did.”

  “Talk to me, Lou.”

  “Another woman is going to burn.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Sure she is. And I’m at the helm, and I don’t particularly want the wheel.”

  “Understandable. But you’ve got it.”

  “Thanks loads.”

  “You want to turn it over to Bobbie?” she asked, eyes penetrating. “John? Whom would you pick to run something this size? Pfoutz? Lublanski? Tell me.”

  “Garman lives alone. He went through what he characterized to Fidler as an ugly marriage. He’s been with SFD for twelve years. Highly regarded but keeps to himself. No beers with the boys. At constant war with his superiors.”

  “Don’t do this, Lou. Let’s talk about you,” she encouraged.

  “He’s a stickler for details. Meticulous. Demanding. No one can remember his having even dated a woman—or a man either, for that matter.” He knew he had her then, for the color of her eyes changed and her brow tightened.

  She said, “We can talk about Garman later,” but in a tone that suggested she didn’t mean it.

  “I wouldn’t mind if you could find a way to chat him up,” he informed her. “Open him up.”

  “You can pass the case to someone else,” she told him. “Shoswitz will grumble and piss all over you, but in the end he’ll relent if he thinks you aren’t up to it. You want me to tell him I think you need a breather? I can do that.”

  “He’s a big son-of-a-bitch, Garman is. Certainly no one-forty. But by his own admission, Bernie could be wrong about that, and he is, after all, at the center of the case: a Marshal Five inspector, the guy receiving the threats.”

  “You know there are any number of cases from any number of wars where a soldier fights with heart and soul, wins medals, fights to the death, invincible. Then he gets married on leave, and sometime later has a kid, and that’s the end of that phase of his military career. There’s a line he won’t cross any longer. It’s dangerous for him and others for him to be out there.”

  Her comment hit Boldt in the center of his chest. He didn’t want to hinder the investigation—this went to the core of his concern. He wanted to keep pushing back at her with comments about Garman, but he heard himself say, “If we lose another, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “You’ll go to work in the morning,” she said calmly. “Same as you always do, as you’ve always done. It’s what we do.” Again, she studied him carefully. “It was the mother and sister, wasn’t it? You humanize the victims, where others intentionally do the opposite. Why? Because it motivates you,” she stated. “Because it reminds you what these victims were before the incident—whatever the incident. It’s the not knowing,” she said definitely. “If you had more, you’d be a dog after a bone, but there isn’t more, there isn’t enough, and for the time being you feel aimless. How does he meet them? How does he rig their houses? How does he ensure they’re alone? I can’t say I know what it’s like in your shoes, because I don’t. No one does, or damn few, at any rate. But there’s no one better, Lou. You never see this, but the rest of us do. No one. And if another woman dies, she dies. And another? Maybe so. You have to live with that. I can’t even imagine the strength that requires. The rest of us—we have you as a buffer. Even Shoswitz uses you this way. But don’t think for a moment that John or Bobbie or any of the others could do any better. They would do it differently, I can’t argue that. Better? No. You work your squad for their strengths. You run it like a team. You’re admired for that behind your back. There are other ways to do it, God knows, but none better. You get up in the morning and you go to work. Some days it sucks; some days
it’s almost tolerable. Those are the ones we come to cherish. You want me to raise a flag, I will. I’d do anything for you.”

  He felt light-headed. He didn’t like her saying that, not wearing a pink robe with a lot of leg showing. He didn’t need a pep talk or want one. He needed freedom from the pressure inside his head; nothing anyone said was going to cure it. What would cure it was the foreman of a jury standing and reading off a litany of guilty charges. And that was at the end of a road so long that at times he needed to look for off-ramps. He begged for air.

  “Thanks,” he said, because it seemed only fair.

  “I’ll figure a way to get to see Garman so he won’t think anything of it. I’ll chat him up,” she promised. “Try for some sleep,” she suggested.

  He nodded. He was sorry he had come.

  “And I won’t say anything. Not to anyone.”

  He wanted inside that robe. Comfort. Escape. He lusted after this woman who was not his wife but was also no stranger. He wanted to stay, to get close to her.

  Boldt thought about Liz, and his suspicions of her having an affair, and wondered about his intentions of wanting to find her in the wrong. Was he looking for an easy way out of a complicated situation? Were the kids more than he could take? Did he dare have such thoughts, even in the privacy and secrecy of his own conscience? Was he worried about Daphne actually loving Adler for real, of losing her for good? Or was he, as he wanted to believe, so in love with his children, his wife, his life that it seemed too good to be true—and, if too good to be true, then certainly something had to come along to challenge it, even destroy it if left unchecked. An affair. A serial arsonist. Something.

  Nothing surprised him any longer.

  24

  Ben kept watch for the pickup truck. He had not seen it today but he sensed it was out there. He feared it. He had little doubt that his wallet had fallen out while hiding in the camper, and his wallet contained not only four dollars but his school picture and an ID card that had come with the wallet, carefully filled out with address and phone number. The guilt over having taken the money occupied his every thought. He figured he had two choices: give it back or run away. Emily wouldn’t take it; she called it dirty. And the thought of giving up that much money was repulsive. Running away remained at the top of the list.