LaMoia reached for the light switch. Boldt caught his arm, shook his head no, electing the flashlight instead, wanting control over the environment.
Darkness closed in around them as they descended the steep stairs. Boldt’s flashlight beam directed his attention. A washer and dryer. A soapstone sink. A laundry line. A pottery kiln. Otherwise, it was black down here-the windows boarded up and painted shut.
They moved slowly through the laundry room and into another musty-smelling room formed of concrete-and-rock walls, a room stacked high with secondhand furniture and rusted gardening equipment. Rocking chairs, baby’s toys, pine dressers, clothes inside clear vinyl hanging bags, mattresses, and headboards. It smelled faintly of mothballs and cat urine. A hard box of white light framed the edges of a crude door leading into another room. The closer they drew to this door, the more pungent the feculent odors.
Boldt drew a box with his finger. He and LaMoia carefully searched the door frame with their gloved hands. LaMoia said, “Got it,” and pointed to a delicate stretch of monofilament that crossed the gap in the door frame just above the rusted hinge. The trip wire was not entirely taut. LaMoia peered inside. “Ceiling balloons,” he announced. “It’s rigged for arson.”
“We back out slowly, John. Now! And we keep our eyes open. There may be others.”
Meo-ow …
It came from behind them, drawn by the fetid odors of early decomposition. It came hungry, and it wanted through that door. Both cops understood the threat it represented without a word between them. Boldt stooped and said, “Here, kitty,” as LaMoia groaned, “Oh, shit!” maneuvering to box it between them. “Good kitty,” Boldt tried.
It stopped and stared up at them-a mangy cat with a curiously distant look in its eye. It meowed yet again and LaMoia, creeping up on it, said to Boldt, “Blind it.” It shied away from both, and Boldt could feel the tension set into its hind legs as it hunkered down prepared to spring.
“Ready?” Boldt asked, the flashlight held tightly in his sweaty hand.
“Ready,” LaMoia echoed.
“Go!” Boldt aimed the beam of the light as he would the bead on a barrel, directly into its eyes. It froze. LaMoia took one long stride, hands outstretched, and the cat sprang through them like a bar of wet soap.
Fast little silent footsteps. Before either man could react, the wooden door creaked open as the kitty nosed and nudged it. LaMoia dove and snagged the cat, but his shoulder brushed the door and threw it fully open.
Sheriff Turner Bramm hung suspended by his wrists from an overhead pipe. His uniform seemed moth-eaten with holes where his captor had burned him with cigarettes. His shoes were off and his ankles wired to his thighs so that the full weight of him fell to the wire wrapped like bleeding bracelets around his wrists. His death mask was one of pure horror, frozen in a wretched spasm of agony.
There was a workbench, its surface clean and neat. Boxes stood beneath it.
A string of as many as twenty balloons-all sagging, filled with gasoline-was suspended in rows from the ceiling. As the detonator took, in an extreme slow motion, bright orange-and-blue flames chased through the string of balloons, running like water down a hill.
LaMoia was already up, clutching the cat, sprinting for the storm cellar door only feet behind Boldt. LaMoia shouted something, but it seemed slowed down to Boldt and he didn’t understand.
Boldt felt the strong wind in his face as he followed LaMoia up the concrete steps on hands and knees, wildly racing for survival. The igniting of the balloons drew air from every crack and crevice, creating a choir of singing voices.
The force of the subsequent explosion propelled Boldt out of the storm cellar as if he had been shot from a cannon, followed a fraction of a second later by a tunnel of yellow flame that curled to the sky like a crooked finger.
Boldt scrambled to safety, unaware his jacket was afire until LaMoia tackled him and threw him upside-down into the mud.
The house went up like kindling, a bonfire of epic proportions.
The volunteer fire department arrived in time to declare it a complete loss and to take several pictures. For the time being, Boldt and LaMoia identified themselves only as passersby, keeping their occupations silent. There was no mention of a body in the basement, and the fire remained far too hot for its discovery. The sergeant and detective lingered nearby, protective of their crime scene. Fire marshals were due on the scene early morning. At 1 A.M., Boldt telephoned Bernie Lofgrin of the police lab, awakening him at home. By the time the fire cooled, sometime around sunrise, Boldt wanted an ID crew available to sift the ashes. Lofgrin complained about jurisdiction and that he was still owed the jazz tapes Boldt had promised. Boldt said he would take care of both, and even though Lofgrin knew there was little or nothing Boldt could do about the jurisdictional conflict, he agreed to have a crew available.
SEVENTEEN
A man was following her-she was convinced of it. She would have to lose him or miss the emergency meeting. She was already late. Monday mornings were always a nightmare.
The meeting had been hastily arranged by Fowler and was to be held at a neutral site. They were all to arrive within a few minutes of one another-Boldt, Fowler, Adler, Taplin, and Matthews-all having used different modes of transportation, or at the very least, different entrances to the Seattle Center. The idea was to make it impossible for one man-following any one of them-to connect them to this meeting. A pair of Fowler’s undercover security people were to keep Adler under constant surveillance while watching for someone keeping him under surveillance. If such a person were identified, a police patrol, under the direction of Phil Shoswitz, was prepared to detain him or her.
If Adler was free of any surveillance, then the meeting would go ahead as planned.
But now it was Matthews, not Adler, who was being followed, or so she believed, and there were no contingencies for this.
At first it had just been a sixth sense, a bout of intuition, a feeling as if one too many buttons were undone and every male on the street had his eyes on her. Or maybe her wraparound skirt was not fully wrapped. Only she was not wearing a wraparound skirt today, but a pair of forest-green denim jeans, and the oversize white button-down oxford was properly buttoned right up to her collarbone, with the shirt collar flipped up to help hide the scar that had been the gift of a psychopath some years before.
The Westlake Center was just down the hill now. She had been assigned the monorail. She debated taking a quick detour through Eddie Bauer, a chance to waste a few extra minutes-she was always early to everything-and maybe even a chance to ditch or identify whoever was back there. She could not be sure she was right about this.
In the back of Daphne’s mind always lingered the possibility of retaliation, of becoming a target of one of the criminals she had helped to convict. As the department’s forensic psychologist, she saw more of the witness chair than many of her colleagues did, testifying ninety-nine times out of a hundred that the suspect was legally sane and therefore able to stand trial. Such testimony carried long-range implications: If and when the suspect was subsequently convicted and sentenced, the sentencing time for a suspect deemed mentally healthy was specified as hard time instead of the more gentle “hospital time” given to those identified with psychological problems. For those serving the time, a big difference indeed. To make matters worse, she knew that the cases involving her services were for criminals with unstable personalities. Or perhaps, she thought, her being followed had to do with her current efforts-the break-ins at the Mansion and the archives. The Tin Man himself, or at least the New Leaf contamination.
She did not get a good look at him, and that worried her all the more because he was good. If there was someone back there, he remained well back, and seemed to always anticipate her inquiries. The very first time she turned, she had seen a reaction in a man about a block in back of her; but the next time she looked, he had stopped nonchalantly, turned, and walked away from her, quickly rounding a corner. Twice mor
e, sensing his presence again, she stopped cold and turned around abruptly. But both times she failed to identify any pursuer. Even so, the feeling, once inside her, did not go away; and she was talking no chances.
She passed over the Eddie Bauer idea, deciding instead to make her move once inside the Westlake Center, which was the departure point for the monorail. The tourist crowds were large this morning-there were two conventions in town, a greeting card sales conference and a water sports equipment show-and Fifth Avenue teemed with coffee-carrying, camera-laden, T-shirt-clad enthusiasts, a swarming hive of Middle America in search of retail therapy.
The Westlake Center was just what such people were looking for: a minimall that included some impressive anchors as well as decidedly upmarket outlets for everything from jelly beans to three-hundred-dollar fountain pens. It had size without losing its substance. It catered to the gold cards, leaving the Discover set to find their thrills out on the streets amid the homeless and Seattle’s unpredictable weather.
Daphne headed straight to Fireworks, not only because she enjoyed the often bizarre merchandise, but also because of its central location and floor-to-ceiling glass walls that enabled her to keep a close watch on both the escalators and the people emerging from the building’s only elevator.
She declined the assistance of an eighteen-year-old windup Barbie doll whose exposed cleavage was enough to keep any warm-blooded male shopping for hours, and confined herself to the front shelves that provided her the perfect location for her vigil.
She had the monorail timed perfectly. In five minutes she would head two floors upstairs, buy her ticket, and board.
After her first few minutes of observation, she began to doubt herself. She saw no one who even vaguely reminded her of that man whom she had seen duck around the street corner. She, of all people, knew the power of imagination, the power of the mind, and she, too, knew the dangers of paranoia. She could not allow herself to be convinced of anything without solid proof. She could tolerate suspicion, but only for so long. Just as she nearly had herself convinced that this was nothing but delusion, she saw him.
How he had reached the Westlake’s Metro level she had no idea, but there he was below her-at least the back of him; she had yet to see his face. But the clothes looked familiar, as did the general height and size of him. And he had that bloodhound body language about him-attentive to the crowd around him but not the stores. Maybe he had taken a bus and entered through the Metro tunnel; she had been watching the street-level entrances. But what sense did that make? How could he be following her if he rode a bus to get here? Was there more than one man involved? She willed him to come closer, to turn around and face her, but he continued away from her, and as she glanced at her wristwatch she saw that she had run out of time: Less than two minutes until the monorail’s arrival.
There was no decision to make-she was expected at this meeting. She left the store, dodging a final attack by the bouncing Barbie who nearly caught up to her at the door. Her attention remained almost entirely on the man who circulated on the floor below her. She gripped the handrail and moved slowly toward the ascending escalators. He wore a khaki windbreaker, blue jeans, and boat shoes, but so did half the males in Seattle this time of year. He wasn’t alone in this look, even in the Westlake-and again she found herself mired in self-doubt. Another man perhaps, not the one she had seen earlier.
As she took her attention off him to board the escalator, she suddenly felt his eyes find her. She strained to lean over the escalator and look down-to confirm this-but in those few spent seconds he was gone. Try as she did, she could not locate him.
With this man in sight she had felt okay, but now that she had lost him, her paranoia returned and she punched her way rudely up the stairs of the moving escalator, as if running from someone she could not see. Get hold of yourself, she cautioned internally, knowing the dangers of such behavior-fear fed on fear and could run out of control in situations like this. But she felt him back there, like her brother chasing her as a child, like her drunken uncle chasing her around her bedroom, reaching out for her-and she could not help but experience the terror of being caught. Wild with this fear, she charged out of the escalator, took the corner, and ran to the next and final escalator up, knowing somewhere within her-but not realizing-that the more she ran, the more attention she drew to herself. The easier a target.
As she entered the ticket line for the monorail with her heart in her throat, she knew she wasn’t thinking clearly. She bought a round-trip, impatiently checking over her shoulder, and then moved on to join the waiting crowd. The monorail surged around the bend and slowed for its arrival. Her agitation increased with each passing minute. The two train cars pulled to a stop and a handful of passengers disembarked. A moment later she and the others crossed the steel catwalk into the train and took seats. No one in a khaki windbreaker, she realized to great relief. The sliding doors clapped shut, and she exhausted a huge sigh. She moved forward to the lead car where there was more room, instinctively distancing herself.
But the doors, previously shut, hissed open admitting three latecomers, including a man in a khaki windbreaker whose back was already to Daphne by the time she realized these others had boarded. When she spotted that jacket, she nearly let out a small scream, but muzzled herself and faked a sneeze to cover. She could not allow herself this kind of fear. She knew that once a cop allowed him- or herself this kind of paranoia, it was difficult if not impossible to stop it. You saw the faces of killers you had helped to convict in every crowd, on every street. You imagined where no imagination should be allowed. She felt through her purse at her side to the small police-issue handgun it contained.
She collected her strength, stood, and walked back to this other car, her full attention on the khaki windbreaker. She passed the circular bench, took a handhold on an overhead rail, and turned to face him. She stared at him until he finally looked up. He was a small man, midforties, with a tiny scar by his left eye. With boyish curiosity he said, “Hi.”
“Do you know me?” she asked, not knowing where the words came from, not recognizing him.
“I think I’d like to,” he said.
“Why are you following me?” she asked.
He looked around nervously at the people around them, all of whom Daphne was using intentionally. Confront, intimidate. He could not do anything to her here. “What?” he replied. If he was acting, he was quite good.
“Go away,” she said, “or I’ll have you arrested.” She took one step away and then added as an afterthought, “If you know anything about me, you know I’m capable of delivering on that.”
“Listen-” he said. But she would not give him any chance at an explanation. The worst possible thing she could do, she had just done, responding to emotion rather than logic. If he was for real, she should have played him out, should have arranged to have him followed, to turn the tables on him, to get something out of it. Instead she had felt the need to prove herself, and had blown whatever advantage she might have had over him. She handled this all wrong. She knew all this, and yet she felt satisfied as she sat back down, because it had taken nerve to do what she had done-and right then she had needed proof of that nerve. Now she did not, but now it was too late.
The monorail came to a stop after its brief trip to the Seattle Center. She wandered the Center for longer than she had intended, keeping an eye on this man who, paying her no mind whatsoever, headed straight to a crafts show, confusing her all the more.
With this confusion charging her system, she headed toward the crafts fair at a full run. To hell with the meeting. She would follow him. She would call in backup and stay with him.
But he was gone. She spent ten minutes searching the grounds, the rides, a few of the displays. He had disappeared again, as quickly as he had at the Westlake.
Or maybe, she thought, glancing around quickly, he was once again watching her, only this time more cautiously. This time vowing to make no mistakes.
The
felt board outside the Seattle Center’s planetarium was the kind used in hotel lobbies for seminar announcements. It read, NEXT SHOW: 12 NOON, with a listing of the planetarium’s regular summer schedule in a smaller white press type below.
The center was mobbed with families overcome by the interactive science exhibits, providing the exact cover that Boldt had hoped for in calling the meeting here. Boldt discreetly showed his badge and gave his name to a security guard who stood sentry by the planetarium’s door, and getting the nod, let himself in. Taplin and Fowler were already waiting.
Boldt had to convince Adler to pay the extortion money. He expected the man to flat-out refuse.
The room was a twenty-foot-diameter circular enclosure, its perimeter entirely surrounded by a padded couch. In its center was a large, fixed desktop covered with an abundance of gray-metal projection gear that looked to Boldt as if it were straight off the set of Buck Rogers. The room had only one entrance and it was sound-proofed, the two qualities that when combined with its extremely busy public setting made it the perfect location for a covert meeting.
Boldt had seen the real show a few months ago while here to meet a snitch who had whispered right over the words of the college-age woman with her red-light pointer narrating “a voyage into the night sky.” Pretty good show at that-terrific for the under-twelves. Miles would need a few years before he could get anything out of it.
“You look a little whipped,” Fowler said, coming over to him. Taplin, an open briefcase next to him, was focused on a stack of papers on his lap. “You’re supposed to sleep every week or so, whether you need it or not,” Fowler quipped.
“Glad to be out of it?” Boldt asked.
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