No Witnesses lbadm-3

by Ridley Pearson

  The big salmon grew active as smaller fish crowded the tank. After a few minutes they settled down, their mouths moving as if talking, as if mocking Daphne Matthews and Owen Adler, she thought.

  “Can you get me in?” she asked.

  “Hmm?” Adler was lost in thought.

  “Without a lot of hassle.”

  “Of course I can.”

  “Without Howard Taplin knowing,” she clarified.

  “But you don’t think-”

  “Don’t ask,” she interrupted. “It’s part of my job to be suspicious. Not that I always like it.”

  “I suppose it ruined Meriweather, something like that. Busted him, probably. What about the wife?” he asked. “Where did she end up in all of this?”

  Daphne hesitated a second, reluctant to answer, but then decided that honesty was a two-way street and that she owed him hers. “At the top of my list,” she said.

  The salmon turned viciously and bit one of its smaller cousins. The water clouded with an explosion of activity, and when it cleared again the big salmon was all alone and the bench at the viewing station was empty.

  THIRTEEN

  At eight-thirty Daphne arrived at the Public Safety Building flush with excitement over her discovery of the State Health lab report. She grabbed Boldt firmly by the arm, and without another word dragged him into her office, kicking the door shut behind them. Standing close to him, she searched his eyes and said, “Five years ago New Leaf Foods was accused by State Health of selling contaminated chicken soup. Lab tests placed the blame with a poultry company called Long-view Farms out in Sasquaw.” She passed him the photocopies of one and then a second newspaper report she had gleaned from a computer service since her meeting with Adler. “Longview Farms went bankrupt and folded as a result of lawsuits brought against it.” As he shifted to the second article, she narrated for him: “Its owner, Mark Meriweather, went off Snoqualmie Pass in his Ford pickup. The fatality was ruled accidental-but what if it was suicide?”

  Boldt looked up. “Are we supposed to believe they’re coincidences? Chicken soup? A suicide?”

  “Especially when you add in this.” She handed him the laser-printed copy of the State Health lab report. She explained what it was, and informed him of her suspicions that it may have been altered.

  “A copy won’t prove that.”

  “I know that. I’m working on it.” She searched his eyes again and said: “You like this, don’t you?”

  “Very much.” Boldt’s mind was racing. “If they went bankrupt, then tracking down whoever once worked there may be tough.”

  “I put Meriweather’s widow on the top of my list. Loses her husband, their income. She sours and hires someone to threaten Owen.”

  “Do we have her?”

  “No. I ran her through DMV. No current operator’s license, no current vehicle registration. I thought I’d ask LaMoia to try his contacts at State Tax-see if we can find a paper trail.”

  A knock on her door was followed by the head of one of the civilian staff. “Sergeant, we’re holding a call from Gaynes for you. Says it’s urgent.”

  The call was placed from Nulridge Hospital. Hearing Boldt answer the call, detective Bobbie Gaynes said in a frightened voice, “Sergeant, I’ve got two more.”

  Nulridge Hospital was the kind of small community hospital that was unlikely to survive health care reform. It had not been remodeled in years, though it felt clean and well kept.

  Gaynes explained that via a credit card payment, she had traced one of the Foodland receipts to a woman who had purchased Adler soup on the same day as the Lowrys. The woman’s husband and child had recently been admitted with what she described as “the stomach bug,” but the symptoms-severe diarrhea, headaches, and mental confusion-matched those of Slater Lowry.

  Boldt spent the next forty minutes attempting to convince the supervising intern to test for cholera-this, while also avoiding any direct mention of a product tampering. The doctor, refusing to be told his job by a gumshoe, remained hostile and distant until Boldt connected him with Dr. Brian Mann, after which point his attitude changed completely.

  The senior Kowalski was responding well to fluids but his teenage daughter, already weakened from a two-year battle with bulimia, was listed as serious.

  There was seemingly nothing to gain from visiting the two patients, but Boldt stopped in on the father. The man was lethargic and untalkative, but he was alive, which put him well ahead of Slater Lowry.

  The daughter was unconscious, her medication being changed as Boldt arrived. The doctor caught up to Boldt in the hall, apologized for his earlier attitude, and thanked him, adding, “At least we know the enemy now,” the irony of which was not lost on the detective.

  At eleven-thirty that night the anonymous State Health van pulled in front of the Kowalski home. Once again Boldt ushered the field agents inside the home and stood by as an exhausting search, so familiar to him from the Lowrys’, began anew.

  At 12:45 A.M., summoned back to the office, Boldt met up with Daphne, whose frantic behavior unnerved him as she explained, “Longview Farms has long since defaulted on their property taxes, but from what I can tell, it hasn’t changed hands.”

  “It’s vacant?”

  “It’s worth looking into, but it’s well outside of our jurisdiction.”

  “And the widow?”

  “I’m working on it. LaMoia got the property information, but he doesn’t have anything on Meriweather’s wife or the Longview business. What I want is an employee roster.”

  “That sounds like a better shot than driving a two-hour round-trip out to a vacant farm. You stay on the widow Meriweather, I’ll ask a local uniform to check out the farm.”

  Boldt contacted one Sheriff Turner Bramm, within whose jurisdiction Longview Farms was located. He sounded like a smoker, and maybe a drinker, too.

  “I don’t appreciate being woke up at three in the morning.”

  “It’s urgent,” Boldt informed him.

  “It always is. I’m not on call tonight, Sergeant.”

  “I know that, Sheriff. But this can’t be entrusted to anyone but you. I need this done. I need it done right. And I need it done now. It’s an active homicide investigation with a repeat offender at large.”

  “I got me deputies for the graveyard shift. What the fuck do you suppose they’re there for?”

  “I’m not KCP,” Boldt reminded him. Bad blood existed between King County police and some of the local law enforcement of the smaller municipalities within King County. It stemmed from a budget-driven decision that required payment for KCP’s services or the establishment of an independent police force.

  “Don’t give a shit you are or you aren’t,” Sheriff Bramm said. “You got any errand-running need done this time of night, then my deputies do it. Period,” he said. He hung up.

  Boldt called him right back.

  “You’re pissing me off,” Bramm said answering, without waiting to find out who had called him.

  “You get your butt out of bed and over to Longview Farms or you’ll be answering to Klapman,” Boldt warned, referring to the state attorney general.

  “I’m trembling all over.” The line went dead. When Boldt called back for a third time, the line rang endlessly: Bramm had unplugged his phone.

  Lacking any jurisdictional authority in the area, Boldt returned a call to the sheriff’s office and politely solicited the cooperation and assistance of one of Bramm’s wet-behind-the-ears deputies. He wanted the local buzz on Longview Farms and he wanted this deputy personally to inspect the premises, getting the names of anyone and everyone currently or formerly associated with the property and the business conducted there. He tried to impress upon this deputy the urgency of his request. He needed this done immediately, not tomorrow or the next day.

  “Sure,” the man replied listlessly. Boldt hung up the phone, anything but convinced.

  Some days his own people were his worst enemies.

  When Boldt
arrived at work the following morning, he was briefed by Shoswitz on an agreement reached with State Health. Should the Kowalski illnesses become the focus of media attention, the statements to the press would be that the symptoms were consistent with E. coli contamination. The early symptoms were in fact similar, which precluded the necessity to lie outright, and the city had been through a bad spread of E. coli the summer before, lessening the alarm caused by any such statement.

  The first telephone call Boldt made was to Sheriff Turner Bramm, from whom he had received no report.

  The phone was answered by the same gruff, raspy voice. Boldt reintroduced himself and asked for an update on Longview Farms.

  Bramm informed him impatiently, “Listen, Tommy did a drive-by last night, didn’t see nothin’. Gone sick with a summer cold now, so I’m what you might call shorthanded, Sergeant. I got me a grand theft auto and the DEA telling me I got a crack house operating in my village. You hear me? A crack house out here in the goddamn nowheres. You think I’m running errands for you city boys, keep on dreaming. And as for waking me up last night-”

  “A drive-by?” Boldt interrupted. “A drive-by is all?”

  “More than you shoulda got. More than you gonna get. You hearing me?”

  “A grand theft auto?” Boldt inquired, perplexed. “I’m talking about murder one. A repeat offender at large. I’m trying to stop a killer, Sheriff,” he said through his teeth, managing a modicum of control in his voice, “a killer who may or may not have a connection to a residence in your jurisdiction. I need someone to knock on that door and ask some questions, and if you’re not up to it, then I’m going over your head and getting permission to send one of my own people out there and do it. Is that registering with you? I’m not looking to make you any trouble, but I will in a heartbeat if you’re going to go on playing southern cracker with me.”

  “Southern cra-”

  “Final warning,” Boldt said, interrupting loudly, and drawing Shoswitz’s curiosity, which focused onto him. Boldt was not one to lose his temper. “Either you knock on that door and ask questions or one of my people does.”

  “I am not inviting you out here,” the sheriff made clear.

  “It’s going to mean trouble for you,” Boldt warned in an ominous voice that rang with authority.

  Silence on the other end. It lasted so long that Boldt finally said, “Sheriff?” thinking he had been hung up on again.

  “Give me your phone number,” the sheriff said. “I’ll call you right back.”

  “Ten minutes, Sheriff. Then I move without you.”

  “Give me your fucking phone number!” the man hollered into the receiver.

  When the sheriff called back ten minutes later, Boldt couldn’t help but wonder if he’d taken a drink of something, his mood had changed so noticeably. “You coulda told me who you were,” the sheriff said. He claimed to have made a few phone calls.

  “I did,” Boldt reminded.

  “No. I mean who you were,” the sheriff attempted to clarify. “Fuck it. It doesn’t matter. You need a hand, you got one. I didn’t know, that’s all. You’ve got my respect, Boldt, that’s all I’m trying to say. I didn’t know it was you. Get it?”

  “Maybe not,” Boldt admitted, thinking that the man probably had him confused with someone else, but appreciating the change of tone and not wishing to challenge it. “But if you’ll help, then that’s fine.”

  “I’ll head right over there. Right away while the coffee’s still warm, right? Check the neighbors first, huh? Maybe the postman?”

  And a good cop to boot. Surprise. “Sounds good,” Boldt said.

  “Be back to you by noon. That okay with you?”

  “Just right,” Boldt answered. “The sooner the better.”

  FOURTEEN

  The wind blew swiftly from the southwest, changing the way the air smelled-or perhaps, Daphne told herself, it was just that she had not been out to Whidbey Island for a long time. She had driven here. After work on a Wednesday, no less … She felt irresponsible for having agreed so quickly and spontaneously. But Owen had that effect on her. He and Corky had arrived via his yacht, making it virtually impossible for him to have been followed. The home belonged to a friend of his. It was a split-level modern in the school of Frank Lloyd Wright-flagstone and glass, cut into a carpet of green lawn that spilled down to the shoreline.

  The beach was steeply inclined and consisted entirely of fist-size smooth rocks. Huge cedar logs had been rolled up and deposited by storm tides, creating an obstacle course that Corky used for hiding places.

  “We keep saying we can’t do this, and yet here we are again,” she observed.

  “It’s only for the one night, and besides, Corky insisted,” Owen Adler explained. “She wants to invite you to her party, and there are some things a father cannot say no to, regardless of the so-called rules.” He added, “Not my rules, anyway.”

  “Precautions, not rules.”

  “Truthfully, I think she’s more excited about Monty the Clown than the party.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s an ice-cream bar with a gimmick, is all. The kids love it.” He sounded like a marketing executive.

  “Do you want to talk about the investigation?”

  “No. It’s what I came to get away from.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “In the morning if it’s necessary.”

  “It’s not,” she said.

  The water shimmered and she could make out several sailboats in the distance motoring with the sails down. But it was the lawn and the woods that called her, having grown up in riding boots.

  She said, “The way you’re keeping track of Corky, the way you’re always watching her, always attentive to her needs-that’s part of you … who you are. You do that for me, too.”

  “Not enough.”

  “Yes. It is enough-that’s what I’m saying. It’s a quality in you. It’s not something I measure or keep track of-I don’t think of it like that.”

  In a self-deprecating tone he said, “I don’t always pay attention. I leave you in the lurch. I get thinking, and suddenly I realize I’ve left you out of my thoughts-and that’s a criminal offense in any relationship-father/daughter, lovers, it doesn’t matter. It’s a selfishness, and I’m often guilty of it. I know it’s the kind of thing that eventually destroys relationships-”

  “You’re doing it again,” she warned him.

  “Am I?”

  “You’re trying to give me a way out. Mark the exits. But I’m not going, Owen. I’m here. Like it or not, I’m in this.”

  “I like it. And you’re right-that’s exactly what I was doing.” He hesitated, and allowed privately, “That’s what you give me.”

  “What?” she encouraged-this was the great puzzle for her.

  “Insight.” He pointed out a flight of birds in the distance. “You call me on my games. You see what I’m up to when I’m not even aware of it.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good,” she admitted. “I don’t want to be a psychologist, I want to be a companion.”

  “But it is good. I need both, I think. You’re not afraid of me-you can’t believe how many people act afraid of me. I hate it. It happens so much, so often, and it affects me-and it’s terrible.”

  She collected her thoughts.

  “You’re nervous,” he observed.

  “A little uncomfortable,” she admitted. “The thing is: This is your private time. Your family time-you and Corky. It feels different than when we’re at the house.”

  “It is different.”

  “Like I’m intruding.”

  “Not at all. You know that.”

  “Maybe I don’t.” She added quickly, “And I’m not fishing.” She attempted to clarify. “I have a hard time knowing what’s going on inside of you.”

  They skirted one of the large timbers, and then another. Corky slipped over a log and ducked low, out of sight. Owen Adler said, “We’ll pretend we don’t see her, okay? Act su
rprised.”

  “Right.”

  The child erupted with a “Boo!” coming to her feet and waving her arms, then threw herself into hysterics at their reactions and buried her face in her father’s stomach and laughed to that point where she was forcing it. Owen pushed her off, teased her, and sent her on ahead of them.

  When they were alone again he admitted, “I hide, too-just like that.”

  She allowed him time to think about this. “Have you always hidden?”

  “No.” This seemed to encourage him.

  “The result of something recent or something old?”

  “Both maybe. As a child I hid-physically hid from my father. He had a short fuse. He drank too much on the weekends and he’d want to ‘play’ with me,” he said, drawing the quotes in the air, “which amounted to playing too hard. Wrestling. Some punching. He hurt me often enough that I learned to hide. There was a place in the woods. I would stay there. But truthfully, I’m not sure it’s that as much as when Connie died,” he said, referring to his sister. “We were best friends. And she was the last of my family.”

  He went quiet for a time after that, interrupting the silence with, “I’m willing to work on any of this if it means the difference between losing you and keeping you.”

  “It’s me who needs the work, Owen.”

  Corky hid again, but she gave up impatiently and chased something imaginary down the beach of rocks.

  “I’m afraid to commit fully to this,” Daphne admitted. “I see you tiring of me, leaving me, and that keeps me an arm’s length away most of the time. It happened to my parents-they never divorced, which is worse. They just grew bored with each other. Bored and old and despondent. I don’t want to bore you.”

  “Of course you’ll bore me. And I’ll bore you, too. But that doesn’t have to be the permanent state of things.” He said softly, “Corky drives me crazy sometimes. So what? If we’re ready for that stuff, we’re okay. If we’re wearing blinders, we’re in trouble.” He added, “Are you worried we’ll end up like your parents?”