No Witnesses lbadm-3

by Ridley Pearson

  “Am I the only one who sees irony in that?”

  “The Lowry boy went critical a couple hours ago,” Mann informed him.

  Again, Boldt couldn’t catch his breath. He could picture the boy as clear as day: the sunken eyes, the strange color to his skin. It made him sick to his stomach. He put down the tea.

  “Sorry,” Mann said.

  “I’ve got a two-year-old,” Boldt explained.

  “Me, a boy five, a girl three,” Mann said, pointing to color photographs by the computer.

  “We’re on the back side of the curve, I’m afraid, even with the research work on 395. I’d like to tell you that they will be okay, but I can’t because it isn’t necessarily true.”

  Boldt said, “The girl is doing better.”

  Mann said, “We get lucky now and then.” He hesitated, “There’s something else you should know-your lab people should be aware of this, but in case they are not: Vibrio cholerae degrades rather rapidly. At room temperature, it will die on the shelf inside these soup cans. With a high enough inoculum, there should be sufficient organisms to cause disease for the first five to seven days. After that, the organisms will die, which means they may go undetected by your lab. Just so you know.”

  “You’re telling me these are time bombs with a shelf life. We won’t be able to prove they were contaminated?”

  “Not after the first five to seven days. After that, the bug is dead and your tests will return negative.” The doctor added, “The bright side is that after a week on the shelf it won’t harm anyone.”

  Boldt was devastated by this. Providing evidence of the contamination in a court of law might prove difficult if not impossible. He thanked the man for his time and they shook hands.

  On his way out, Boldt leaned his head into the lab and looked down at the half-refrigerator, unlocked and available for the killer.

  This triggered a thought, and he returned to Mann, who hung up the phone. He said, “Will you lock that refrigerator for me?”

  “Just arranging that.” He pointed to the phone.

  As Boldt passed the lab, a woman’s voice called out: “Did you get what you need?” It was the young Asian woman, her eyes stretched open by the clear safety goggles, a wire loop held in her hand and sparking in the flames of a Bunsen burner.

  “Yes,” he said with a slightly raised voice, loud enough to carry above the whine of a centrifuge.

  “Good,” she said brightly.

  “Not really,” Boldt replied. He turned and left, negotiating his way through a labyrinth of hospital corridors so similar in appearance that someone had painted color bars on the floor to direct you-only Boldt didn’t know which colors led where. Like this case. He finally reached the main lobby, and then headed off at a run out into the parking lot, out into the unexpected rain, pouring rain, buckets of rain, out without an umbrella or even a newspaper to hold over his head. Sometimes he hated this city.

  SEVEN

  The meeting with Owen Adler was due to begin promptly at three. For the sake of security and privacy, it was to take place aboard Adler’s yacht. Earlier that Friday morning, Boldt had assigned Detective John LaMoia to obtain a list of Mann’s students and faculty who had regular access to the Infectious Diseases lab. He also asked for employee lists from Foodland, Shop-Alert Security, and Wagner Wholesale, the distributor that supplied Lee Hyundai’s Foodland store. In an attempt to link motive with opportunity, these lists would be cross-checked with that of Adler’s employees.

  Shilshole Marina was a clutter of masts alive with the clanging slap of nylon line on hollow-core aluminum. Wind whistled across the steel stays. Stinging rain struck the launch’s Plexiglas shield and drummed on the blue canvas awning as the craft carried Boldt and Daphne through choppy water to the waiting motor cruiser. It was temporarily moored in the lee of the gray stone boulders that created the breakwater protecting the man-made inlet from the sound. The multidecked, fifty-five-foot cruiser could have made a landing at the dock, but Adler was taking no chances that he or any of his passengers might be seen meeting with the police.

  “It looked so nice earlier,” she called across the noise of the twin engines. She was not herself. Nervous, perhaps to see Adler professionally and in the company of others.

  “Is he crazy?” Boldt shouted.

  Her eyebrows danced. She knew whom he meant. She hollered back, “He’s disturbed.” She reached up and took hold of her hair, keeping it from whipping her face. “We want to look for suicides when we get this employee list-a spouse, a relative. And bankruptcy. Those are his immediate demands.”

  “It’s personal?” he asked.

  “Love, money, and revenge,” she said, quoting the three most common reasons humans killed each other. “We may have a possible paranoid schizophrenic on our hands,” she warned. “And then again, he may be a cold-blooded psychopath.” The wind suddenly felt colder to Boldt.

  “I’d like to bring in Dr. Richard Clements. He’s BSU.” She meant the Behavioral Sciences Unit of the FBI. Boldt knew she had used Clements in past investigations. He had never met the man.

  The low charcoal clouds grew oppressively lower. Boldt loosened his collar and chewed down two Maalox.

  “You all right?” She crossed unsteadily and flopped down onto the cushion beside him. Her hair whipped in the wind. “Are you okay?” she asked more intimately, pressed up against him.

  “The boy is worse, I hear,” he said.

  She reached out and laid her hand gently on the lower sleeve of his sport jacket and squeezed his forearm.

  The launch engines slowed, and as the launch pulled alongside, a woman crew member tossed a line. Daphne climbed the ladder, followed by Boldt. The launch sped away, cutting into the angry green water, ripping open a crease of white foam.

  “Lousy weather,” the woman offered. She was in her twenties with an athletic figure, nice legs, and quite crisp green eyes. She wore khaki shorts, white and blue canvas deck shoes, and an aquamarine T-shirt damp on her shoulders.

  They descended into a spacious, well-appointed living room. Owen Adler stood to the side of the steep ladder and offered his hand to Daphne to guide her down the steep steps. “Welcome aboard,” he said to Boldt.

  Adler was a boyish forty-five, with graying hair at the temples, wire-rimmed glasses, French cuffs, and silver cuff links. He stood just under six feet but carried himself much taller. He wore soft brown Italian loafers, linen pants, and a faint pink pinpoint cotton shirt with a starched collar. His handshake was firm, his dark eyes attentive.

  Adler and Daphne sat on opposite ends of a small chintz couch. Adler’s attorney and chief operating officer, Howard Taplin, took the cushioned chair to Adler’s immediate right. Taplin was a wiry man with drawn features, a trimmed mustache, and intense gray eyes. He wore a gray suit and black wing tips and the kind of high, thin socks that required garters. Boldt sat between Taplin and Kenny Fowler. Fowler had once served on the police force in Major Crimes, working the gangland wars. Boldt saw him occasionally at the Big Joke, where Boldt played happy-hour piano. Fowler carried a deliberate intensity in his eyes. He wore his dark hair slicked back and kept himself impeccably groomed. He fancied himself a ladies’ man, though the rumors had always been that he chased the cheerleading age. Boldt knew well the man’s reputation for an explosive disposition and frank honesty. Fowler shook hands strongly with Boldt and asked him about Liz and Miles. He always remembered to ask. He had a couple of new teeth in front and a tiny scar on his lower lip. Boldt wondered what the other guy looked like: Fowler was the workout type and wore tailored clothes to prove it.

  As Adler opened the meeting, the cruiser left the protection of the jetty, entering some rougher water. But as the speed increased, the ride smoothed. The cabin was impressively soundproofed. A male crew member delivered a pitcher of iced tea and extra glasses with sprigs of mint and wedges of lemon. A plate of cookies circulated.

  Adler said, “We want to welcome your assistance and expertise
, Sergeant. This is a horrible situation, and we will cooperate in whatever way required to resolve this just as quickly as possible. I want to say right up front that we’re aware we may have impeded your efforts by waiting to contact you as we did.” He glanced at both Daphne and Howard Taplin. “And I should add that we still feel strongly about keeping the involvement of the police as low-profile as possible. With these contaminations, whoever this is has proved he means business, and we would just as soon be perceived as adhering to his demands-all of his demands.”

  “Agreed,” Boldt replied. “Where do we stand with the recall?”

  “We’ve issued a full recall for the product run in question. Kenny is continuing to quietly search for a possible employee who might carry a grudge. You two will want to coordinate on that, I’m sure.”

  “We will not give in to terrorism,” Taplin interrupted.

  Adler did not appreciate the intrusion. “What Tap means,” he said addressing Boldt, “is that we would prefer to catch this person than enter into negotiations.”

  “And some of us would prefer to keep the police out,” Taplin said. “Nothing personal,” he added coolly, passing Boldt the most recent fax.

  THE CHOICE IS YOURS.

  MORE SUFFERING-AND WORSE-

  UNLESS YOU OBEY.

  DO NOT CLEAR THE SHELVES,

  AND NO POLICE OR PRESS OR

  HUNDREDS WILL DIE.

  BEEN TO PORTLAND LATELY?

  “Portland?” Boldt asked, worried.

  “We have calls in to all the hospitals,” Fowler explained.

  Daphne took the fax and reread it, saying partly to herself, partly to the gathering, “He’s getting more wordy. That’s a good sign. He’s opening up.” The others listened. Boldt felt cold. She reread it yet again. “No contractions; he’s well educated. And he uses the word obey, not cooperate-that’s interesting.”

  Taplin said, “You see our position?”

  “Damned if we do, damned if we don’t,” Fowler said.

  “What do you advise?” Adler asked. “We will cooperate however we can. We would like to place another run of soup back out there-but not if we’re risking more poisonings.”

  “Can you keep the chicken soup off the shelves, but stock them with something else?” Boldt inquired.

  “It’s our highest-velocity product,” Taplin complained.

  “My take,” Daphne offered, “is that we should accede to the specific demands while taking every precaution possible to prevent this from happening again. What about product redesign?”

  Boldt explained, “If the blackmailer is working in one of your production facilities, a label or product redesign might tell us so. If he-or she-has access to the new materials then we know it’s inside work. He added, “And it doesn’t go against any of the demands.”

  “Way ahead of you,” Taplin crowed. “Six to eight working days to print new labels if we already had a new design, which we do not. Two to three weeks for a new design. In terms of container redesign-moving to something tamper-proof-we’re looking both domestic and abroad, but best guess is anywhere from two to twenty months to facilitate such an overhaul.”

  Fowler contributed, “We’re aware of the product-tampering cases that have lasted years, Lou, ’kay? But from what I can tell, they seem to always involve extortion. These are strange demands we’re getting, and with the time limit already exceeded, it somehow doesn’t seem too real that this nut house is going to hang in there for all that long. You follow? Whatever he’s got cooking-you’ll pardon the pun-I don’t think we can wait around a couple months to put the soup in jars or something. ’Kay? So I advised to move forward with the new labels but not to hold our breath or nothing.”

  “What about changing the glue to water-insoluble,” Boldt suggested. “This guy is drilling the cans beneath the label. If we make it impossible to soak off a label, and yet he is still able to contaminate the cans, we narrow the field of where to look inside your company.”

  Fowler said, “It would have to be someone stealing labels from, or working on, the line.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s very good!” exclaimed Adler, jotting a note onto a legal pad. “And it’s a simple change,” he said to Taplin, who nodded.

  “As few people as possible should know about the glue change,” Boldt encouraged.

  “We can arrange this with virtually no one involved,” Adler said.

  “We might piss him off,” Fowler cautioned.

  “He’s threatened hundreds if we challenge him,” Taplin reminded.

  Boldt considered how much to reveal and then informed them, “The lab tests suggest that there is no direct evidence indicating that the label was either soaked or steamed off the can. There’s a high probability that the blackmailer is working with fresh labels-new labels.”

  “And that means the production line, the loading dock, or the printers,” Fowler offered.

  “Storage?” Boldt asked.

  Taplin answered, “We’re a just-in-time operation. Printing inventory is kept to a ten-day lead time.”

  Making a note, Fowler said, “It should be added to the list.”

  Adler addressed Boldt, “If it’s all right with you, Sergeant, I think Kenny should handle all the in-house aspects of this investigation. We operate on a family concept. Police would be noticed, and would be talked about immediately-”

  “And given his threats, we certainly don’t want that,” Daphne agreed.

  Fowler said, “We’ve had some employee-related thefts lately. I can use that as an excuse for asking around.”

  They all agreed on this: The police would remain involved, but well in the background.

  “If we’re to meet again,” Adler suggested, addressing Boldt and Daphne, “I suggest we arrange it by fax and not telephone, and that we stay with remote locations.”

  “How soon can you make the glue change?”

  “Overnight. A day at the outside,” Taplin said, his mood improved.

  “Is there anything else that might help us?” Boldt asked. Adler glanced over at Taplin, who glared back at him.

  Adler said to Daphne, “Perhaps you could show the sergeant the rest of the yacht. A few minutes is all.”

  There was an awkward moment of hesitation, after which the two stood.

  She led Boldt forward through a deck dining room to a trio of private quarters and Adler’s floating study, equipped with both cellular phone and fax machine.

  “What’s going on in there?” he asked.

  “Owen can smooth over any flap. Give him a few minutes.”

  “Tell me about Taplin.”

  “Bright, protective, loyal. Longtime friend of Owen. Runs a lot of the day-to-day. Owen credits him with much of their success, but that says as much about Owen as it does about Howard Taplin. It’s Owen’s baby; always has been.”

  He noticed a caller-ID box connected into the fax machine line. The device would display the phone number of any incoming fax. “Fowler,” Boldt said, pointing it out.

  “It’s a good idea, isn’t it?”

  “If he shares the results with us,” Boldt said, adding, “which I somehow doubt. Taplin would clearly rather handle this without us. And as you said: Taplin is the one writing Kenny’s paychecks.”

  “Owen will give you anything you want, Lou.”

  “Is that the inside track?”

  She did not like his comment.

  “Time,” she declared. She guided him back to the meeting, where the others were waiting. Boldt and Daphne sat down.

  Adler said, “We had a scare in the mideighties. Not cholera-salmonella. But it was our soup line.”

  “A scare?” Boldt asked.

  “Not an intentional contamination-nothing like that. Some bad poultry in our soup. But four people were hospitalized and there were lawsuits.”

  Taplin added, “Let me clarify. We were not held liable. It was not us, but one of our suppliers. It was a state health department matter. I see no
reason to make any comparison.”

  Boldt said, “We’ll want any files you’ve got on this.”

  Adler said, “Of course.” But Taplin stiffened. He opened his mouth to object and Adler interrupted him, saying to Boldt, “Whatever you need.”

  EIGHT

  Dressed in a dull green surgical smock and wearing a white paper mask over his mouth and nose, Boldt took up a vigil at Slater Lowry’s hospital bedside, his presence approved by both the medical staff and the boy’s mother, whose mask was damp with tears below the eyes.

  The boy’s father had collapsed an hour earlier when Slater’s condition had been downgraded from serious to critical, and was presently under sedation in a room down the hall. The woman’s green surgical smock was wrinkled from where her husband had clutched it for hours.

  Slater Lowry was dying of organ failure.

  It seemed impossible to Boldt that with the boy having been admitted to the hospital, with his having been diagnosed and treated, that his condition could degenerate so quickly. Gunshot wounds, knife wounds, strangulations, and burns-Boldt had learned to live with all of these over his twenty-plus years of police service. But he did not accept what was happening to this boy.

  He felt hypnotized by the steady drip of the IV, by the peaks and valleys of the green lines crawling across the monitors. Slater’s skin was a pasty white, and a light sheen of perspiration made it glisten. His mother dabbed him dry, but it did not last long. Slater Lowry was burning up with fever despite the fluids and antibiotics. Slater Lowry was leaving.

  “If we could only trade places,” the woman had mumbled to Boldt an hour earlier. He knew that she meant her son and her, though Boldt thought she might have wished that he could switch places with her-that this would be his son, Miles, lying there, and she the visitor. Since that comment not a word had passed between them. The glances they shared needed no explanations. She blamed Boldt for this, without meaning to. And without meaning to, Lou Boldt accepted it.

  As the hours passed, as Friday slipped into Saturday, as the doctors and nurses came and went, Boldt imagined this boy a young man, the young man an adult. He envisioned the successes and failures, the joys and heartbreaks that compromised his own life, and he loaned these to Slater Lowry believing that a borrowed dream was better than none at all.