Boldt - 04 - Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

  “Getting the windows washed was a mistake? I don’t think so. They look great to me.” He hoped he might be able to press this toward humor and deflect her anger, because taken together the two added up to real trouble: He wasn’t charging the department for his overtime, and he wasn’t home enough to do his chores, so the overtime pay wasn’t there to cover the added expense of hiring people to pull his weight.

  Speaking in a patronizing, condescending way in which she accented every syllable, she told him, “A mistake. The … wrong … house. I did not hire any window washer. You are the window washer. The guy was off by one street. It was a mistake … on … his … part.”

  Boldt smelled a scam. “Did he try and charge you for—”

  “No. We cleared it up. He packed up, and he took off. He was perfectly nice about it.” She lightened up a little. “In fact,” she said, “he did a pretty good job.”

  “Better than that other guy you’ve got,” he said, meaning himself.

  She came out of the chair then and, suppressing a slight grin, approached her husband and threw her arms around his neck and drew them close together. He felt like stealing a glance at his watch, but he didn’t. “Why is it I can’t stay mad at you?”

  He felt better than he had in ages. He didn’t want to let go. He clasped his arms around her waist and squeezed tightly, and she got the message and squeezed back, and he could feel her breath beneath his ear, and he put his lips to her ear and said, “I miss you.”

  “I need this weekend, Lou. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.” She added, “Please.”

  He felt himself nod, although it wasn’t automatic; it was born of great reluctance and trepidation. He felt some fear along with his love, some suspicion, even some anger. He wanted to keep squeezing until the truth came out of her, but Liz took her time. She needed time to think; he understood this. Her return from the cabin would bring with it a request to talk with him alone. He knew this woman well enough to understand that a change was coming—a decision. The baths were part of it: isolation, a time to think; perhaps that was all they were about. He leaned back and looked at her; he thought her darkly handsome and intelligent-looking. She looked a little tired. Troubled. “You okay?” he asked.

  She squinted. That meant don’t ask, so he didn’t push it. A pit of concern burned inside him.

  “I’ll take Miles,” he conceded.

  She hugged him thanks.

  “And I’ll get the rest of the windows.”

  She kissed him on the lips. “We’ll talk,” she said.

  “I know we will.”

  “It’s going to be okay.” She attempted to reassure him, but his years with her contradicted this; her tone of voice belied her message. It was not going to be okay, and this realization terrified him. He forced a smile, but he thought she probably saw it was forced. Their moment of peace was passing. They released their hug.

  Boldt headed to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of milk.

  He heard Miles calling from the nearby room. “Da-a-ddy.” It was not a cry of alarm but of longing—the father could easily discern the difference—and it caused a warm stirring in Boldt’s heart. He stopped at the kitchen doorway and turned toward his wife, the first nibble of concern beginning chew on the inside of his chest. “How old?” he asked.

  Liz, who had poured the teakettle full of water and headed for the stove, replied, “What are you talking about?”

  “How old?” he repeated, this time more strongly.

  “What? Who?”

  “The window washer,” Boldt answered, and by then his body had seized on the idea, and it infected him, from the center of his chest outward through his shoulders, groin, and into his limbs. He felt this flood of heat like a sudden fever. “A ladder?” he barked at his wife, passing along his alarm to her, for her head snapped up disapprovingly, and even to his son, whose nearby cry suddenly raised in pitch and severity.

  Her hand trembling, she placed the kettle onto the stovetop, attempting to carry on as usual. She knew that tone of his. She detailed for him: “Midtwenties. Early thirties? Thin.”

  “His face?”

  “He was up the ladder. His face? I don’t know. I was over by the garage. He wore a sweatshirt up over his head. We said about five words. I went inside, and he was gone. Lou?” She reached down to turn the knob on the front of the gas stove. That knob was suddenly all that Boldt could see—it loomed huge in front of him, occupying his vision: a trigger.

  “Don’t touch it!” Boldt shouted loudly.

  Liz jumped back. Terror filled her face.

  Miles cried out, the fright contagious. “Daddy!”

  “Don’t touch anything!” he cautioned. “Don’t move, for that matter.”

  “Lou?” she pleaded, anxiety dissolving her.

  His mind racing, Boldt hurried outside, into a dark and gripping terror. A window washer. A ladder.

  It was dark out, and as he ran down the back steps he headed directly to his car and retrieved the police-issue flashlight from the trunk. He hurried around the side of the house, the glaring white light fanning out across the grass and throwing moving shadows in its wake. Boldt glanced up at the kitchen window and saw Liz, wide-eyed with concern, looking directly out at him. Her expression told him not to bring this sort of thing into her home, her life, onto her children. In all his years of service, no physical threat or trouble had found its way across the threshold of his home. There had been phone calls once—even with the number unlisted—but these had been quickly handled. Never this close.

  He inspected the grass bib alongside the narrow apron of foundation planting that surrounded the house. He could picture Liz in summer shorts and a scoop-necked T-shirt, toiling over the flower beds. Flooded by such memories, he felt a stopwatch running inside his head. He imagined flames, concave walls sucking the life out of everything within …

  The light illuminated two parallel rectangles pressed down into the grass. The evidence-sensitive cop in Boldt prevented him from stepping forward and contaminating the area. He looked carefully for any boot or shoe impressions, cigarette butts, matches, any possible evidence, while his heart was tugging at him to step closer and check those ladder impressions for the telltale chevron pattern left at the two arsons. The two homicides, he reminded himself grimly.

  Any grass lawn collected and concealed evidence. As empty as it appeared under the glare of this light, the area of grass surrounding the ladder impressions was a potential gold mine to evidence technicians. Technically, he should have waited, but instead he stepped forward and trained the light down into the first of the impressions. Recognizing the chevron pattern, he cursed and ran toward the back of the house, Liz staring coldly at him through the freshly cleaned glass of the kitchen window.

  “Get the kids!” Boldt ordered frantically, once inside. His imagination created an inescapable inferno at the center of the house, oxygen starved and impatient. He hurried toward their bedroom, where Sarah would be in her crib. “You get Miles,” he shouted. He reached inside the bedroom door for the light switch, but his mind’s eye suddenly enlarged the action to where he saw only a fingertip and the toggle of the switch, and as the two connected and Boldt was about to throw the switch, he caught himself. A trigger!

  “Don’t touch anything!” he shouted as a panicked Liz sprinted past him. “Just get him and wait for me.”

  He suddenly saw everything as a potential detonation device. Sarah, startled by her father’s voice, began to cry.

  Liz stopped at the doorway to their room, held by the sound of her daughter’s crying. “Be gentle,” she said. Boldt turned around in time to see Liz reaching for the light switch.

  “No!” he hollered, stopping her. “Touch nothing. Watch for wires. Anything that doesn’t look right.”

  “A bomb?” she gasped, suddenly catching on.

  “Get Miles, Liz. Quickly. We’ll go out the back door, not the front. We’ve both used the back door, right? So it’s okay. Just hu
rry.”

  When residents panicked, they fled out their front doors regardless of their clothing or appearance—any cop, any ambulance driver, any fireman had experienced the half-naked family standing out on the front lawn, toward the psychological safety net of the neighborhood. But to Boldt, the front door could be the trigger.

  Liz scooped up Miles. Boldt snagged his daughter, drawing her into his arms and pressing her warmth and her sweetly perfumed baby skin close to him. He was drenched in a nervous sweat. “Good girl,” he said, as she calmed in his embrace.

  The parents met at the door leading into the kitchen, each bearing a child. Liz was fraught with raw nerves—eyes wide, jaw dropped, breathing heavily, panting from fear. “Let’s get out,” she said hoarsely.

  “We’re going,” Boldt answered, his voice cracking, his eyes scanning the kitchen floor for anything unusual. His paranoia ran rampant. He pictured everything a potential trigger. He suddenly froze, fearing the trigger immediately before them. Miles struggled restlessly in his mother’s arms. Sarah wiggled to be free of Boldt, reaching for Liz, who pleaded, “If we’re going, then we’re going. Please.”

  “We’re going,” Boldt announced dryly. He cut a straight line across the kitchen, out the door, down the steps. “No,” he called out, stopping Liz as she headed for her car. He stepped closer to her and kissed her on her damp cheek. “We’re out for a walk with the kids. Leisurely. Easy does it. Okay?”

  Tears ran down her cheeks. She nodded, glancing around.

  “No,” he cautioned. “It’s just us. The two of us with our kids, out for a walk. Nothing to it.”

  She nodded again.

  They walked west on 55th up to Greenwood and a corner convenience store run by a pair of Koreans whom Boldt knew by name from so many trips for eggs or milk.

  He dialed 911 into the pay phone mounted outside the store, with Liz and Miles at his side and Sarah in his arms. Graffiti was scrawled around the phone, foul jokes, and a message: Zippy was here.

  “You can go in,” Boldt told his wife.

  “No,” was all she said. She stayed close, to where her elbow pressed against him, and he felt her warmth with the contact. That simple touch was enough to tighten his throat as he spoke into the phone. In his twenty-plus years on the force, he had never dialed the emergency number. He asked to be put through to Homicide and was informed that it couldn’t be done. He asked, sternly, for the on-call identification technician and received the same curt reply. He hung up and, lacking a quarter, borrowed the use of the phone behind the counter.

  He called his lieutenant, Phil Shoswitz, at home rather than the department. He explained his suspicions, requesting the bomb squad, a backup fire truck, and evidence technicians. He suggested the adjacent homes be evacuated, but Shoswitz refused this last request, wanting more proof before attracting “that kind of attention.”

  The comment reminded Boldt of a conversation with Daphne that the majority of convicted arsonists admitted to watching the burn. Witnessing the burn was itself a major if not primary motive for committing the crime. Boldt debated returning to the house to get Liz’s car, but decided instead to ask a friend to come pick them up at the convenience store. A plan was forming in his head. He was a cop again, the father’s panic subsiding.

  The ladder, and whoever had scaled it, had been in their side yard that same afternoon. The arsonist, if the house had been rigged, could be watching the house at that very moment. Depending on what vantage point he took, what distance he chose, he might or might not have seen the family leave. It seemed possible he was still in the neighborhood. Boldt suggested this to Shoswitz. Listening in, Liz went noticeably pale.

  After a short argument, in which Boldt found himself on the side of sacrificing his home if necessary, it was agreed that the various squads—lab, fire, bomb—would be placed on call but would not arrive at the residence until a police net had been put in place in an area extending from Woodland Park to 5th Avenue, Northwest. The net would be tightened, in hopes of squeezing the arsonist into its center. Shoswitz, typically tight with the budget, responded admirably. Faced with a possible crime against a police officer acting in the line of duty, he made not one comment about money. No crimes drew more internal support.

  If and when the bomb or accelerants were found, their existence proved, then whoever had perpetrated this act had, in the process, crossed a sacred boundary, a boundary Boldt and his colleagues took seriously, one that was intolerable and unforgivable, the reaction to which would be the unvoiced but unwavering goal of revenge and punishment.

  Twenty minutes later, Liz and the kids were headed to Willie and Susan Affholder’s house for the night. If possible, Boldt would join them later. He and Liz kissed through the open window of Susan’s Explorer, a heartfelt, loving kiss that meant the world to him. As they drove away, as the red taillights receded, Boldt knew in his heart that even if there had been an affair, it was over now. His wife and his family were whole again. They were reunited by this incident.

  By 9:15 P.M., eight unmarked police cars had taken up positions along the corners and side points of an area roughly a half mile square, with Boldt’s house at its center. Two decommissioned school buses, painted blue, typically used for the transportation of convicted felons, awaited the drop-off of thirty-four uniformed officers, nine of whom were on walkie-talkies with earpieces, the rest on hand signals. The buses were placed to the north, at Greenwood and 59th, and to the south, at Greenwood and 50th, seventeen uniforms each.

  Before this, a black Emergency Response Team step van deposited nine of SPD’s most highly trained field operatives onto the southwest corner of the zoo. Woodland Park was believed by the ERT to be the suspect’s most likely route of escape. Each of the nine ERT officers was armed and wore a hands-free radio headset and night vision equipment.

  Boldt climbed into the back of a maroon step van marked in bold gold letters, TWO HOUR MARTINIZING. The van had been confiscated as part of a greyhound gaming bust several years earlier and was presently in service to the police as a field communications command center. It was parked on a hill on Palatine Place, a block and a half from Boldt’s house.

  Shoswitz occupied an office chair bolted to the floor, as did the two techies—a communications dispatcher and a field operations officer. Shoswitz owned a long, pale, pointed face, overly large eyeballs that registered perpetual shock, and busy fingers that reflected his nervous disposition.

  Boldt checked his watch. Even secured radio frequencies could be, and occasionally were, monitored by the more creative members of the press assigned to the police beat. The best technologies could be compromised, given time and determination. He knew at least two reporters capable of such tricks. He estimated the operation had about fifteen minutes in the clear. Boldt made specific note of the time: 9:23. They needed to be well along by 9:45, or the press might spoil the operation. Impatience tested him.

  “All set?” the field operations officer asked Shoswitz. Phil glanced over at Boldt through the dim red light of the step van’s interior. There was no other chair, so Boldt squatted on an inverted green plastic milk crate. The sergeant nodded at the lieutenant; it was an uncomfortable moment for Boldt, this prerequisite use of chain of command necessary to all multitask, multidepartmental operations. With one hot glance in the sergeant’s direction, Shoswitz let Boldt know that responsibility for the hurried operation was all his. Phil Shoswitz was already distancing himself.

  The dispatcher flipped some toggles and said, “Attention, all units.”

  Boldt closed his eyes and, listening to the continuous stream of radio traffic, envisioned the events unfolding in the dark outside.

  As residents in the neighborhood watched TV, ERT and uniformed police stole through their lawns, down the alleys behind their homes, and around their garages and carports, with almost no one the wiser. One child of nine announced from his bedroom that outside his window he had just seen a Ninja in the backyard. The father hollered up the stairs fo
r the kid to go to sleep and stop bothering them.

  A human net constricted toward its geographical center: Lou Boldt’s home.

  Boldt, eyes closed, pictured a cool and hardened killer, lurking somewhere out there in the dark, anxiously awaiting the spectacular light show he had planned, awaiting an event that Boldt prayed would never come to pass.

  ERT officer Cole Robbie was one of the voices Boldt heard speaking across the nearly constant radio traffic. He was a tall man, a little over six foot one, and on that night he wore all black, including a flak jacket and leather jump boots. He wore his black ERT baseball hat backward, the brim covering the back of his neck, the adjustable plastic strap biting into his forehead. Robbie had a young daughter, nine months old, named Rosie, and a wife of four years called Jo, for Josephine. Rosie was, without a doubt, the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him. Jo was probably the finest woman on the face of the earth, given that she pulled two jobs and still managed to keep Rosie happy and the house happening. Only a few days earlier, in the middle of prayer at church, Cole Robbie had realized he had everything he had ever hoped for, everything and more than a person dared ask for. On that night, sneaking through people’s backyards, aware that many if not all people in these neighborhoods armed themselves, aware that his job was to apprehend some unknown, unidentified assailant, quite possibly dangerous, quite possibly a murderer, his heartbeat was clocking a hundred and ten, and he was thinking, Let it be someone else. He had no intention of being a hero. He was, in fact, seriously considering applying for an interdepartmental transfer. After all his years of training and angling for a place in ERT, a desk job suddenly looked real appealing.

  Cole Robbie crept over a low fence and into a fire alley, which was considered city property and therefore public land. Sneaking through backyards was not exactly legal, it was just easier at times.