No Witnesses lbadm-3

by Ridley Pearson

  “What’s up?” Boldt asked his friend.

  “Shoswitz is on a tear. Rankin is all over him about the clearance rate.”

  “That’s my clearance rate,” Boldt said knowingly. “Or lack of it.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Boldt thanked him for the warning and hurried upstairs.

  Lieutenant Phil Shoswitz oversaw three squad sergeants, of whom Boldt was the most senior, the most experienced and, until recently, had the highest clearance rate. Boldt had five detectives under him; the other two squad leaders had four each. Shoswitz reported to Captain Carl Rankin, a political captain and a real asshole most of the time. This kept the lieutenant ever vigilant. His crew had homicides to work. They tracked them in “the Book,” a cardboard-bound, thumb-worn ledger that sat at its own table outside the coffee room with a pen Scotch-taped to a worn string at its side. When you were assigned a case, it went into the Book under your name. When the case went “down”-when it was cleared-it received a check in the right-hand column. The sergeant’s job was to keep those check marks coming. The lieutenant’s job was to ride the sergeants. Boldt’s squad had turned in an extremely respectable 72 last year: Seventy-two percent of all homicides and crimes against persons investigated by their squad had cleared. A clearance was defined as any investigation ending in an arrest, a warrant for arrest, or compelling evidence against a particular suspect whose whereabouts remained unknown. The clearance rate had nothing to do with how many cases went to trial or how many of those resulted in convictions or sentences, or how many of those sentences actually resulted in time spent in a correctional facility. It was merely a yardstick of how well a sergeant and his squad conducted their investigations. It was also the figure used for crime statistics, and therefore a figure the public eventually took note of. The last six months had not served Boldt well. There had been a double homicide down by the docks-three months now and still unsolved. A black hole. There was an apparent swan dive off the Fremont Bridge, a paraplegic who no way in hell threw herself to her death. A black hole. There was a two-week-old torture/homicide that wasn’t going anywhere. Another two hit-and-runs, both in the same neighborhood. A drive-by shooting, drug-related. All unsolved: black holes. Boldt’s squad had drawn the tough investigations-sometimes it worked out that way. You answered the phone, you took a call; you took whatever case was there. You signed into the Book. With his squad’s clearance rate in the low 50s, there was hell to pay for Boldt. They needed a couple of domestics, a suicide or two-some “slam dunks”-and they might possibly pull that number up into the low 60s by Christmas.

  Lately, the other squads seemed to have the luck. David Pasquini’s squad was batting an unbelievable mid-80s, and this with a couple of knucklehead detectives on his squad. Pasquini was strutting around like a peacock these days. Boldt, on the other hand, was spending a lot of time out of the office.

  Bringing an absolute surefire black hole to the lieutenant at a time like this was asking for it. But Boldt needed that case number. Shoswitz was having a tough ride with a bad case of hemorrhoids that everyone on the fifth floor knew about.

  “You have that fucking look in your eye,” Shoswitz said. His office was decorated in baseball memorabilia and cheap trophies. He had big brown eyes, a narrow face, and the anxious movements of a used-car salesman. His shirt collar was a half size too big.

  “I’ve got a live one. I need a case number for the second floor.”

  “Evidence? Don’t tell me someone in your squad actually came up with some evidence!” He moved around the room judiciously.

  Boldt saw Wednesday’s paper on a chair. He opened it to page 7 and spread it on Shoswitz’s desk, tapping the article. Shoswitz read.

  “Adler Foods has received some convincing threats. Part of the demands include our staying out of it,” Boldt observed.

  “Adler Foods is huge,” Shoswitz said, the concern very real in his voice.

  “There’s the very real possibility that these illnesses are our criminal’s way of making himself be taken seriously.”

  “So we keep it out of the Book,” Shoswitz observed.

  “I’d like to be detailed,” Boldt said, requesting he be assigned solely to this one investigation and his other responsibilities reassigned.

  “I can justify that.” Shoswitz was not going to fight him, was not going to nag him about clearance rates or internal politics. He was, in effect, throwing himself to the lions, and doing so without complaint or comment.

  “You’ll want LaMoia and Gaynes, so I’ll give the squad over to Danielson. That should starch some shorts.” Danielson was a newcomer to Boldt’s Homicide squad, and not particularly well liked, though he had earned the support and respect of his sergeant and lieutenant.

  “How long can we sit on it?” Boldt asked.

  “A day or two. Rankin will have to be told eventually, and by then, you’ll have to have something more than this,” he said, pointing at the newspaper.

  “This is one time I’d really like to be wrong,” Boldt said honestly.

  A patrolman knocked on Shoswitz’s door and opened it, informing Boldt that the lab had just called up for him.

  The lieutenant and sergeant met eyes, and the lieutenant said plaintively, “Tell Bernie it’s not going in the Book. He has a problem with that, he can call me.”

  The lab smelled medicinal, with a hint of cordite and the bitter taste of shorting electricity.

  Lofgrin’s glasses gave him eyes that looked like boiled eggs sliced in half. He had an oily face and wild hair-what was left of it.

  “I need to know if any of the jars or cans had been tampered with,” Boldt said, following at a brisk pace across the lab.

  “The jars are out,” Lofgrin declared, explaining, “we would need the lids to detect tampering. Probably would miss it even then. The cans,” he said, pointing ahead, “are a different story.”

  “Can you test the jars for cholera?”

  “Can, and will. But it won’t be today. And honestly, we’re unlikely to get much of anything. The bacteria will not survive in a dry jar. Even in the soup, it has a shelf life of only a few days at the outside. But obviously, we’ll still try. An early jump won’t help with these.”

  “When?”

  “Eight to ten working days. Five days at the earliest; two weeks at the outside.”

  Weeks? Boldt wondered. He grabbed Lofgrin by the arm, pulled him aside, and spoke in a whisper. “It’s not going in the Book, Bernie. It’s one of those. I don’t have weeks.”

  Lofgrin searched Boldt’s eyes and then fixed his attention on Boldt’s tight grip, which loosened immediately. He said, “We may be able to get some help with this. First, let’s see what we’ve got, okay?”

  “We’ve got two down that we know of. Alive, but not well.”

  “Understood.”

  They each took a seat on a stool in front of the lab counter where Boldt’s prized evidence-two soup cans and a spaghetti jar-awaited them. A loose-leaf reference manual lay open alongside. “The labels match. No forgery or nothing; they’re the real thing. Dimensions, too,” he added, tapping the reference book. “Got the specs on everything from Milky Ways to Lean Cuisine in here. Adler uses the same size can for all his soups.”

  “You dusted them,” Boldt said, noticing the white smudges on the outside of the cans.

  “Dusted one, but I’ll fume the others,” Lofgrin said, referring to SuperGlu fumes that had been used for the last decade to develop latent prints on surfaces that offered difficult imaging. “Nothing of interest,” he added. “Smudges. Let’s check ’em for continuity,” Lofgrin delivered in his most professorial tone.

  His initial inspection of the cans’ surfaces was accomplished with a magnifying glass. “Seems archaic,” Lofgrin said, “I know.” He used the glass carefully and methodically, rotating the can slowly beneath a strong light. When he placed the glass down and clipped a special set of magnifiers to his glasses, Boldt asked him, “Got s
omething?”

  “Hmm,” Lofgrin answered, pushing his face to the can. “May be.” Carrying the can, he led Boldt to an elaborate instrument that turned out to be a microscope. He spent several minutes setting it up. Then, spinning the can slowly, he raised the piggybacked pair of glasses and pressed his greasy face to the black rubber viewfinder. Boldt instinctively stepped closer. Lofgrin said to the machine, “Hello there!”

  “Bernie?”

  He said softly, “There’s a solder plug in the seam.” He reached up and spun a dial without taking his eyes away. “It’s small. Couple millimeters is all. Carefully done. The color is off. FDA outlawed the use of lead in seams some time ago. They’re all a ferrous-based alloy now. This plug shows up despite the attempts to sand it smooth and blend it into the seam.”

  Lofgrin looked up.

  “It would have been beneath-that is hidden by-the label. Drill it, inject whatever your pleasure, plug it, reapply the label, and you’ve got one hell of a surprise. We detect the lead or the flux in a chromatograph, if I’m right.”

  “Tampered?” Boldt asked.

  He offered Boldt a look. Magnified to twenty times its normal size, Boldt could make out the slightly discolored plug of gray metal surrounded by obvious scratch marks from sanding.

  “Hiding his work like that-that’s thinking,” Lofgrin said.

  Boldt did not want to face someone so thought-out.

  “Blackmail?” Lofgrin asked.

  Boldt nodded. “That’s why it’s not going in the Book.”

  “Drilling tin cans and plugging them with solder. You find this Tin Man, I gotta think he’s got some kind of background in microbiology or chemistry. Might be a jeweler. Might be in electronics.” It was customary to invent nicknames. Boldt’s stomach turned with the image of a person hunched over a soup can and injecting it with a hypodermic needle.

  He poked the can with his pen. “This is what I’m looking for? A soup can that looks like every other soup can?”

  “I’m a big help, aren’t I? That’s what they pay me for.”

  Boldt did not want to face a grocery store full of food-shelves stacked high with cans, any one of which might be poisoned-but that was where he was now headed: the Foodland supermarket on Broadway.

  “Where the hell are you going in such a hurry?” Lofgrin called after him. “We’ve got paperwork to complete,” he objected.

  Boldt stopped and turned at the door, far enough away that Bernie Lofgrin could not detain him. “Never keep a crime scene waiting,” he said, quoting one of Lofgrin’s favorite expressions.

  He finally had his crime scene.

  FIVE

  It was just after three-thirty on that same June Thursday when Boldt pulled the worn Chevy into the expanse of asphalt fronting the Foodland on Broadway. Before going inside, he called State Health and was told that a search of the second victim’s home had turned up nothing useful. Lori Chin’s mother did remember serving her daughter soup, but not the same brand, and there were no Adler Foods products found in the home or in the trash. Boldt remained focused on the evidence connecting Slater Lowry to Adler’s chicken soup.

  He climbed out of the Chevy and locked it and walked toward the supermarket’s automatic doors, passing abandoned shopping carts that carried two-color ads in their kiddie baskets announcing this week’s specials. Eggplant was nearly a dime cheaper per pound than where Boldt shopped. The sixteen-ounce spaghetti sauce was a bargain. Boldt did most of the marketing and all of the laundry; he split the child care with Liz, who handled finances, some ironing, housecleaning, and their social calendar.

  He suspected this was a crime scene. Daphne had reached him on the cell phone only minutes earlier, confirming that the product-run number stamped on the lid of the Adler soup can found in Betty Lowry’s recycle crate was indeed a valid lot number and one that would have recently been on sale in the greater Seattle area. The investigation was beginning to take shape in his mind, which was a little bit like the morning rush hour on I-5: too many ideas entering all at once and not enough lanes to accommodate them. But the basic structure seemed clear enough: either the blackmailer was working from within Adler Foods, or from without. Both concepts would have to be pursued-each differently, and both quite delicately.

  More important to the moment was that the blackmailer had managed-in person or indirectly-to place a contaminated can of soup on a shelf in this store. That much was fact. Boldt traveled the aisles of this store now, first as the victim: the unknowing patron on an afternoon shop, Betty Lowry, busily hunting down provisions. And then again as the criminal: alert for security cameras, store personnel, lines of sight, and placement of product. It was not so much an investigative technique as it was a result of his dedication to the evidence. He broke out in a sweat as he threw himself fully into this identity, even going so far as to carry a can of Hormel Chili that he intended to place among the shelved cans of Adler Soup just to see how difficult it might be to do so without being seen by human or camera.

  He stalked the aisles, aware of his own rapid breathing, the sound of his synthetic soles on the vinyl flooring, the slight chill from the store’s vigorous air-conditioning that conflicted with his own perspiration. He was aware of each and every person, immediately visible or not. Patrons. Employees. Checkers. He passed the morning cereals, where dozens of faces stared out at him: sports legends, cartoon characters, the All-American Mom, dinosaurs, astronauts. He, the center of attention, the focus of their combined sales efforts. “Take me.” “Buy this one!” “Twenty-five percent more!” Loud, despite the insipid Muzak.

  The security cameras appeared tricky if not impossible to avoid. There was a multicamera device over aisle 5 with three lenses that rotated and then stopped every ten seconds like an inverted gun turret. Each lens slightly larger than the last, and only one was recording at any one time, made apparent by a red light beneath the lens. The three combined to afford a manager or security personnel everything from a wide-angle to a close-up on the various aisles. Two more such turrets oversaw the butcher counter, meat display, the wines, and wall coolers, respectively. These units had clearly been installed with an eye toward the most expensive items, which suggested to Boldt that the soup aisle might possibly have less security. Boldt timed each of these other two camera turrets. They were also on fixed rotations, ten seconds apart, but were not synchronized in their start-and-stop times: difficult, but not impossible, for a fast hand to beat. The trick was to find that moment in the pattern when view of the soup aisle, number 4, would be lost briefly to a blind spot. After eight minutes of wandering the store-his attention split among all three, like a juggler-Boldt identified just such a moment. Eight minutes later the blind spot repeated. Clockwork. Predictable. Fallible. Enough time to plant a tainted can of soup.

  Foodland made sense as a crime scene.

  Large mirrors were mounted high on three of the four walls, with the fourth given to glass overlooking the parking lot and admitting light. Boldt assumed the business office could be found behind one of these mirrors, and, if so, then the blackmailer additionally threw himself open to being spotted as a shoplifter.

  The concept of a shoplifter made Boldt realize that the blackmailer would not be spotted as such. Would a customer returning an item to a shelf attract any attention? Customers changed their minds constantly. Shelves were cluttered with misplaced items. It was a regular part of the grocery business-straightening and restocking shelves. He sagged: Slipping an item onto a shelf was unlikely to create any suspicion.

  Boldt rounded the corner, taking in the registers and the glaring copies of the tabloids to his right: BAT HAS FACE OF MAN-STUNNED SCIENTISTS SAY, “SMART AS A WHIP!” He checked his watch: one minute to go until the blind spot. He glanced up at the mirrors, wondering if anyone had a clear look at the soups. Wondering once again if anyone would even take notice of a product being returned.

  Thirty seconds.

  He turned down aisle 4, the can of chili in hand. Soup ev
erywhere. The Adler Soup was up ahead to his right. Five seconds. One quick glance over his shoulder. A single shopper, but she was facing away; she would, in fact, screen any sight of him from the checkers and bag boys at the registers. Regimented rows of Campbell’s Soup cans, lined up for Andy Warhol. Late afternoon, there were some cans missing from nearly every variety, which made Boldt realize that time of day was important to the blackmailer. Adler Soup, a local product and an all-organic line, was a popular seller, and there were more cans missing from these shelves than any other brand. Time! Boldt’s heart pumped hard-for these brief few seconds he was the Tin Man, and he found it unsettling. He slipped his can of Hormel Chili into place alongside Mom’s Chicken Soup. He walked on, blood pounding loudly in his ears, heat prickling his skin. He marched through a sea of yellow-clad enchiladas wearing Mexican sombreros that blurred past him like the sharpened points of a picket fence.

  He had done it.

  He had poisoned a person. A stranger. No connection to be made.

  No one the wiser.

  No witnesses.

  Lee Hyundai-“like the car,” he said-was the supermarket’s day manager, a man in his midthirties but already balding. He squinted through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, displaying a nervous energy that might not have been his natural temperament. Cops made innocent people nervous and guilty ones cautious. It often interfered with Boldt’s work. It did now.

  On the wall of Boldt’s office cubicle hung a needlepoint that Liz had given him for Christmas in their second year of marriage, when handmade gifts were all they could afford. In blue lettering on a white background it read: There is no such thing as The Perfect Crime. There were those who could and did take issue with such a statement-plenty of crimes went unsolved. The Book was full of black holes that never had, and never would, clear. And yet he still clung to this as truth. He relied upon it to see him through, to get him out of bed in the morning. A black hole was the product of his own vulnerability, his own failures, not the intractability of his adversary’s powers.