Boldt 04 - Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

  “I’m pretty careful about playing hunches,” Boldt said.

  That Boldt had solved the case in five phone calls was never discussed. Nor that, had Shoswitz added up the sergeant’s time—off-duty time—spent on the case, it would have amounted to less than one work day. Regulations were regulations.

  The solution was simple. A forest fire had raged several months earlier. Firefighters had fought the blaze on the ground, planes had dumped chemicals from the air, and helicopters had worked the spot fires. The victim had been diving in a mountain lake. Accidentally scooped up by a helicopter grabbing water to fight a spot fire, he had been dumped into the fire’s center from a hundred feet up. Case solved. Nonetheless, Shoswitz remained upset about Boldt’s violation of the regulations.

  “Unless I’m wrong, the first couple were just vacant structures,” Garman said. He didn’t strike Boldt as the kind of guy to be wrong. He exuded a quiet confidence once he got talking. “Listen, in this city, even a piece of ground the size of a postage stamp is worth ten grand, but not necessarily the structure on it.” He explained, “Property valued at ten grand or higher—that’s when Marshal Five is called in to investigate. Suspicious fire. Known arson. Any of those three. But truthfully, the way it works is that the IC—the incident commander—makes an early call on a fire and determines whether Marshal Five should investigate. We usually speak by phone. I’m apprised of the situation. If it’s cut and dried, some photos are shot, some sketches maybe, and the next day I look it all over. Ten times out of ten I agree with the call. It keeps us from investigating every fire there is.”

  He was working up to something and taking his sweet time about it. Boldt’s time also. Garman was an animal with his nose to the ground, carefully approaching the scent.

  Boldt felt like asking Garman why he had waited. Why hadn’t he brought up whatever it was at the meeting? Why be secretive and demand privacy and talk around it? Running out of patience, he said, “Maybe you should just tell me whatever it is.”

  “They fit some of this,” Garman replied. “Vacant structures, all of them, until now. Teardowns, over in Battalion Five, mostly. The land has all the value, the building nothing. We look at them—Marshal Five—because although they don’t fit the ten grand requirement, they obviously aren’t the result of a lightning strike. But ten times out of ten we have bigger fish to fry. Most of them are the work of JDs, kids out for kicks. We’re not going to catch them anyway. We shoot for a witness, but if we can’t scare one up they go in the back of the file cabinet with a heck of a lot of company. It wouldn’t be the same for you. I’m not talking dead bodies; I’m talking worthless shacks, garages, condemned buildings. Just kicks. A kid with a match and nothing to do.”

  “You’re making me uncomfortable, Mr. Garman. I’m viewing all this with a jaundiced eye.”

  “Six of them. Maybe as many as fourteen. Maybe more if I dig around. Battalion Five is not my turf, but we trade around, you know, and I’ve worked a few of them. I remember two that appeared to me to have burned especially hot: heavy alligatoring, some spalling, just like we were talking about.”

  “What exactly is spalling?” Boldt asked.

  “The concrete gets so hot so fast that the little moisture that’s trapped inside it boils and explodes the surface. You’ve seen it on sidewalks in winter, maybe. Looks just the same. Like bad acne. Liquid accelerants, ten times out of ten. That’s okay in a shack because these kids typically use gasoline or some close relative—gas and diesel, diesel and acetone. Readily available stuff. But the two I’m talking about burned hotter than a big dog. Never seen gas do that. I wasn’t thinking in terms of a pro, because who’s going to bother with a little shack? But after we were talking just now, it occurred to me who might bother: Someone testing out his stuff. Let me tell ya, Sergeant. Every fire has a personality. I’m no expert when it comes to understanding everything about fire, even though that’s my job; no one knows everything. But as corny as it sounds, I do know that every fire tells its own story. Studied long enough, it reveals its secrets. To the ordinary eye it produces destruction and chaos, but to those of us who live and die with the beast, it speaks volumes. It will tell you when, where, and how the dragon was born and chronicles its growth to the raging inferno it becomes. Fire respects nothing. No one. But for everything it consumes, it leaves evidence, the telltale marks of who or what created it. It takes on the personality of its creator, just as offspring do their parents: some dull and uneventful; others creative and imaginative.

  “I walked the Enwright fire,” he continued. “I had met its little sister, its little brother, these stick burns I’m talking about. They’re all in the same family. To bring it up in the meeting, I embarrass my buddy; I make it look like he should have made more of those stick fires than he did. Monday morning quarterbacking. But it scares the fool out of me, the way those fires feel the same. And if that’s right, then they were warm-ups—pardon the pun. He wanted it just right for Enwright. Made sure he knew exactly what to expect: amount of fuel, speed of burn, degree of destruction.”

  “You’re giving me gooseflesh, Mr. Garman,” Boldt said.

  “Scares the fool out of me,” he repeated. “Want to know why? Lemme ask you this: Does a guy light off two, three, four test fires—does he take all that risk—just to get Dorothy Enwright perfect?”

  “Does he?”

  “No way. It’s too risky. One fire, maybe. But four? Six?”

  “What exactly are you saying?”

  Garman reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew an opened envelope. He placed it before Boldt, who elected not to touch it. The address, written in blue ballpoint ink, was scripted in poorly formed block letters.

  “You’ve handled this?” Boldt asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “No. I’ve haven’t shown it to anyone.”

  Boldt found a pencil and expertly maneuvered the envelope to face him, curious but at the same time reluctant. “Why me? Why now?” he asked.

  Hearing the question clearly troubled Garman, and Boldt sensed he had prepared himself for the answer ahead of time. “How many of these do we all get? You get them, I get them. Quacks. Freaks. Tripsters. Former squirrels we’re not using any longer. Most of them end up in the can. I got a whole series from a woman once, following a TV interview I did. First one was a sexy letter. Second one was another letter and a photo. Third, was a letter and another photo, this time with her shirt off. By the fifth, she was stark naked on a bed, and I mean rude. The sixth, there wasn’t any letter, just a video. That was the last one. They stopped coming after that.” Garman wiped some perspiration off his upper lip. It wasn’t hot on the fifth floor, not compared to summer. “So, something like this comes, you file it under freak. But it arrived the day of the Enwright fire—addressed to my home, not my office.”

  “You brought it with you today to the meeting but elected not to show it,” Boldt reminded the man. “Why?”

  “I’m showing it to you now.” Garman had naturally red cheeks and a big smile when he allowed it.

  “Why show it to me and not your colleagues?” Boldt asked.

  “Those guys? I’m one of those guys. I know how they think. We investigate fires, Sergeant. They would have laughed me out of that room. This,” he said, indicating the envelope, “maybe it’s something, maybe it’s not. But it’s your thing, not mine, not those guys. If it means anything at all, you’re the guy for it.”

  “Am I really?” Boldt didn’t want the letter. He didn’t want the case any longer. Too many guys between him and the evidence, too much he didn’t know about and would have to learn. He realized that if the body was subtracted from the case, it wasn’t his. He briefly resented Dorothy Elaine Enwright.

  Seeming to sense this, Garman said, “Listen, it’s just a bunch of nonsense. That’s the other reason. It’s not a threat or anything. But it’s off the wall. Some plastic and a poem. So what? And then I’m thinking maybe it means somet
hing. Those stains on the envelope? I threw the thing out. It was in the trash for three days. I only fished it out this morning before the meeting, because it occurred to me the dates were the same.”

  “It’s mailed from Capitol Hill,” Boldt said.

  “Yeah, I saw that too.”

  Using a pencil’s eraser, Boldt carefully opened the back flap. He hoisted the envelope with the pencil and dumped out its contents. An unremarkable blob of what appeared to be melted green plastic slid out onto the desk’s surface. It was about the size of a poker chip.

  Using a second pencil, Boldt extracted and unfolded the note. His eyes fell to the crude drawing of a small headless man climbing a ladder. Boldt could imagine the figure a fireman. The fact that it lacked a head would require the interpretation of the department’s psychologist, Daphne Matthews. Alongside, in the same undeveloped handwriting as on the envelope, was written, He has half the deed done, who has made a beginning.

  After an excruciating silence, Boldt looked up at the big man sitting next to him and said dryly, “I don’t like this.”

  “No,” said the other. “I know what you mean.”

  5

  The psych profile was ready on Friday.

  Daphne Matthews, the department’s psychologist, notified Boldt by leaving a message on a piece of notepaper, accompanied by her trademark doodle of a smiling bird.

  Sight of her still stopped Boldt’s breath. Some things never changed. He wondered if it was because of her thick mane of chestnut-brown hair or the narrow face with the sharp features. Perhaps the slender body, the dark skin, and long fingers. She was a woman who could play a set a tennis, talk a suicide out of a window, or hold a press conference where no one shouted. Maybe it was those lips, red, pouty, that just had to taste sweet, had to be softer than warm butter. Her clothes helped. She wore smart clothes, not high fashion. On the morning of September twentieth, it was khakis, a hunter-green plaid shirt that she filled out deliciously, and a silver necklace with a jumping porpoise leaping below her collarbone.

  On her desk, a small plastic Charlie Brown held a sign that read THE DOCTOR IS IN—5 CENTS. A teapot with a twisting vine of soft blue flowers sat on a coaster next to a pile of multicolored file folders. Her ninth-floor office was the only one in the entire building that didn’t smell of commercial disinfectant and didn’t feel like something built by a city government. She had real curtains covering her window, and the poster art on the walls reflected her love of English landscapes and Impressionists. She had a red ceramic lamp with brass handles on the opposite corner from the phone. Vivaldi played from a small boom box on the shelf behind her. She turned down the music, pivoting in her chair, and smiled. The room seemed a little brighter.

  In the small stack of files were problems common to the department: the officer-involved drunken brawl at a downtown hotel that erupted after two of the men had entered the hotel pool, after hours and stark naked; the attempted suicide by a narcotics officer that followed the near fatal beating of his ex-wife; the evaluations of several officers in drug and alcohol rehab; a few repeat offenders; a few who couldn’t sleep anymore; and some others who slept too much, burdened by depression.

  Daphne Matthews was referred to as the staff shrink. She attempted to paste back together the cops who fell apart. She listened to those who needed an ear. She created psychological profiles of suspects based on whatever she could find.

  She poured him tea without asking, putting in one sugar and enough milk to make it blond. She stirred it and handed it across the desk. She didn’t ask why he was here—there were too many years between them for such formalities. “The green plastic in the envelope mailed to Steven Garman? I don’t know what it means. Money? Jealousy? Death? None of the above?”

  “The verse?” he asked.

  “He has half the deed done, who has made a beginning. It’s from a poem by Horace. Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Born in the century before Christ. Major influence on English poetry. One of the greatest lyric poets. Heady stuff. Our boy knows his literature. College educated, maybe a master’s. It’s either a cry for help or a threat.”

  “Our boy?” Boldt asked. “The killer? You think so?”

  “We play it that way, don’t we?” she said. “At least until you hand me someone different. The sketch is of a headless fireman going up a ladder. It talks about a deed being done.”

  “A confession?” Boldt asked, his heart beating strongly in his chest.

  “More of a warning, I think. He warned Steven Garman; it allows him to disassociate from the consequences of the fire.”

  “It’s Garman’s fault,” he proposed.

  “Exactly. Perhaps Garman is the headless fireman in the sketch—the guy up the ladder.” She explained, “I have to caution you that the handwriting, the block letters, the inconsistent spacing contradicts the notion of a well-educated individual. I’m not sure how to interpret that. He may be young, Lou. Let me run some numbers by you.” She picked up a sheet of paper on her desk. “Sixty-six percent of arson arrests are people under twenty-five years old. Juveniles account for forty-nine percent of those.” Her face tightened while reading.

  He asked, “What is it?”

  “Just a number.”

  “Daffy?”

  “Nationally the clearance rate is only fifteen percent.”

  Boldt sagged, literally and emotionally. Eighty-five percent of arsonists got away with it. “I don’t like those odds,” he admitted.

  Attempting a more upbeat note, she said, “This blob of green plastic is symbolic to him. Though without knowing what that symbolism is, we’re at a bit of a loss.”

  “If it’s significant, we run with it.”

  She asked, “Have you thought about testing the plastic to find out what it was before it was melted?”

  “That’s an interesting idea,” he admitted.

  “It would sure help me to know what it was.”

  “What about a fireman?” Boldt asked, stating what he believed an obvious question.

  “Certainly near the top of our list,” Daphne answered. “A disenchanted fireman. Someone turned down by the department. Discharged. Denied a promotion.” She clarified this. “It works for the sending of the note, but not for killing Dorothy Enwright. Why kill an innocent woman if you’re venting anger? You’d kill a fireman or fire inspector, wouldn’t you?”

  Boldt nodded but didn’t speak. He heard it in her voice, her words: This was bigger than Dorothy Enwright, bigger than anyone had foreseen.

  “We need the connection,” Daphne said. “The spark, if you will. The motive. It may be something as eclectic as the architecture of the house. It may tie in directly to Dorothy Enwright or Steven Garman.”

  Boldt experienced it as a dryness in his throat, a knife blade in his stomach. He didn’t want to ask the question of the psychologist because he feared her answer. Nonetheless, it had to be asked. “It isn’t over, is it?”

  She met his eyes; hers were filled with sympathy. “The note tells us that: He has half the deed done, who has made a beginning.” She asked rhetorically, “So what comes next?”

  6

  Nothing much changed. If Ben had one complaint in life, this was it. He felt powerless to change things himself, and, left to grownups, things remained too much the same. School was school; home was home. He felt pressure from Emily to give the social workers the evidence they needed, but he wasn’t about to give in, so in the end he blamed himself for his situation, and it hurt.

  He had Monday Night Football to thank for keeping Jack Santori away. His stepfather wouldn’t come home from work but, instead, would head directly to the bar for the game. He wouldn’t come home from the bar until late, because he placed bets on football and he drank heavily, win or lose. Sometime around midnight he would stumble in downstairs, bang around, and find his way to bed—if he was lucky—or more likely end up passed out on the couch with TV fuzz hissing back at him. By that same time, Ben would be safe, locked behind his bedroom
door, having spent the late afternoon and evening with Emily.

  There had probably been a time when he had been afraid of the dark, though it had long since passed. He had other things he feared more. Jack had a way, with his eyes and voice, of terrifying Ben so that his legs suddenly went to Jell-O and his thoughts became tangled and confused. There were times when for no reason at all he would press Ben to the floor and, holding a pillow against Ben’s back, would beat him, hammering away with his drunken, reckless fists so that the bruises ended up buried deep inside Ben’s flesh, not on the surface where they might show. Ben’s pee stung for days in a row and his poo was tar black. “You’re going to do as I say, right?” Jack would ask, as he carried out this punishment. And if Ben was stupid enough to answer, stupid enough to open his mouth, the punishment continued until Jack grew physically tired or lost interest. For Ben to cry aloud was unthinkable.

  Ben liked Seattle in September. Less people than in the summer, fewer cars on the streets. Ben had heard it called a transition neighborhood: blacks, mostly; very few whites. Ben knew which streets to avoid, which hangouts to circumvent. Most of this he had learned the hard way, although being shoved around by a bunch of zit-faced bullies was nothing compared to things at home. Fear was like water: it sought its own level. For Ben, it took some kind of threat to make him afraid, discounting the effect of Jack calling upstairs, “You going to do as I say or not?” That was an entirely different kind of fear. One of these days, the guy would go too far. Emily kept warning of that.

  The neon sign in Emily’s window was lighted—YOUR FUTURE, YOUR PAST: AT LAST!—which meant she was home and open for business. She got a lot of customers in the evening. Her business was both repeats and drop-ins.

  There was a car parked out front, so Ben didn’t disturb her. He recognized the car as Denise’s, an Emily regular. He went quietly around back and tried the kitchen door and, finding it locked, sat down in the cool September evening and waited. The city hummed. Somewhere out there was his mom. He wondered for the thousandth time why she had left without taking him with her. Fear. He had Jack Santori to thank for that.