No Witnesses lbadm-3

by Ridley Pearson

  The photograph was shot through a star-shaped form of spread fingers in the foreground, and behind it, a reflective surface-a motorcycle helmet, he realized-and the high, padded shoulders of a biker’s black leather jacket. No face. No identifying features. His heart sank. Out of politeness, he studied the photo for a long minute and then put his glasses away.

  “This person wore gloves,” she pointed out. “Tried to cover the plastic in case there was a camera,” Guillard explained, “but you can see this was done a fraction too late. Some of our cameras are triggered by card access. Others, by motion detectors. I am guessing that this was a motion detector.”

  Out came the glasses again as he drew the photograph close to his face. The gloved hand had triggered the autofocus of the lens, which helped to explain why all else behind it was fuzzy. Very few people could get away with wearing gloves in summer without attracting attention or, at the very least, being remembered. A biker was the one exception. The helmet hid the face effectively. It confirmed his chase in the U district-they were, quite possibly, after a woman wearing a helmet.

  “Are you certain you have the right photograph?” he asked.

  She showed him the entire three-photo series. By the time the second shot had been taken by the hidden camera, there was nothing to be seen, the gloved hand having effectively screened the shot entirely; but at the bottom of the frame, where it showed the date and time and listed the ATM’s reference location ID, there was now also a card number identified, and it did indeed match the card belonging to the dummy account. The third photograph was nearly identical to the second, except for the time stamp, which had progressed by several seconds.

  “I know it’s not much,” she apologized.

  “More than you might think,” he said, trying to make the best out of precious little.

  “So it’s good.”

  “It’s very good.”

  She seemed hesitant as she asked timidly, “May I express something that concerns me?”

  “By all means.”

  “It is the cameras-their location. As I said, this camera just came on-line in the last few days. Because of this, it has yet to appear on any list here at the bank. You understand? No lists. None. And before this? This person has not once made a withdrawal from any ATM that has a security camera in place. Not one. You understand? Such coincidence is not possible. I am sorry-not possible. And that means this person has a copy of our most recent ATM security list. Those with surveillance security are indicated on this list.”

  Understanding this, Boldt felt the first sinking sensation in a string of many. Would Harry Caulfield have access to such information? Definitely not. But Chris Danielson? Howard Taplin? Kenny Fowler? All had access to the information.

  “Who has copies of this list?”

  “Yes. I wrote these down. I thought of this also. Perhaps a dozen of us here at Pac-West. I have written down their names for you. All top executives. No one below executive vice president. Also, I should think that the companies that performed the installations would of course have record. Pac-West employees working at the particular branches during installation would know-but only about that specific branch. Ted Perch at NetLinQ would have a much more comprehensive list, I would think, encompassing all the ATMs in the entire Northwest region.”

  Anyone, Boldt realized, in or out of the bank.

  “It means something,” she said. “Do you think? This is significant, I feel.”

  “It means something,” Boldt agreed. Once again, suspicion fell onto those around him. He called Fowler, and insisted they talk.

  At lunchtime Boldt met Kenny Fowler in the Pikes Place Market, amid the bustle of swarming tourists searching out “Save the Whales” T-shirts, asparagus, and fresh salmon. The two men walked slowly atop pavers engraved with names of contributors whose donations had helped restore the open-air market. The tourists wore micro athletic shorts, neon rubber sandals showing lots of long leg, and filling the air with the distinctive smell of optimism: suntan lotion. There were big bellies and bigger chests, and Kodaks and nylon web leashes on the children under six. There was real money and plastic and unwieldy ice-cream cones and the smell of fish.

  “That looks pretty awful,” Boldt said, noticing the blister on the end of Fowler’s index finger that he kept pushing as if he might pop it.

  “That’s what I get for smoking a roach with the lights off,” Fowler teased, amused by his own joke. Fowler walked farther on before he told him, “My people drew a blank on Danielson. No big cash purchases, no real money problems. Pays his taxes. Pays his bills. Maybe a little short on social activities. I’ve got some of the paperwork for you in the car.”

  “What about surveillance?”

  “He works out at the Body Shop every day, rain or shine-not the soap store, the gym.” Boldt knew the place. SPD was given special discounts there. “He lost my guys a couple of times-which is not easy to do, I might add-but both times they reported it as their fault, not some maneuver by Danielson to avoid them. Middle of the day, both times.”

  “Any private life?”

  “About the worst thing we’ve got on your boy is that he’s a palm greaser. Calls the 900 numbers and likes to hear it real dirty. Likes to hear them describe things in detail. Frankly, I think he’s oversexed.”

  “Background?”

  “Bright kid. Good middle-class family. Father is an aerospace engineer. His mother is middle management at Nordstrom. Brother died as an innocent bystander in a gas-station holdup, which is supposed to explain his being a cop.”

  “Supposed to?”

  “You know him better than I do. The guy is driven. ‘Kay? He’s not doing this for some dead bro, he’s doing this for Chris Danielson. He wants a suit and a secretary and a gold badge, not nickel.”

  “Money?”

  “He wouldn’t take a kick, if that’s what you mean. Do you think? I don’t. Too ambitious. He’s not going to risk that desk and secretary for a few lousy bucks.”

  “He’s dirty, Kenny. I don’t know how, but he’s dirty.”

  “Not from what I’ve found, he isn’t. You were smart not to go to IA with this-woulda made you look bad.” They stopped in front of a fruit stand where the produce was stacked perfectly, flawless, and in beautiful groups of rich colors. Fowler bought an apple with a five-dollar bill, so they had to wait for change. When they were walking again, wedged in a claustrophobic stream of loudly talking tourists, Fowler reminded, “Mr. ATM burned us again last night. Go figure.”

  Fowler was as competitive as the next guy. Boldt elected not to share any of his meeting with Guillard. An uncomfortable silence resulted.

  “You missed Mac’s service,” Fowler criticized.

  “Did I?” Boldt had not realized this.

  “Lisa wanted it over with. She’s lucky there weren’t no kids.”

  Boldt waited several steps and asked, “Was Mac on patrol that night or was he following Matthews?”

  Fowler missed a step, though he covered it well by pretending he had stepped in something. “A person goes asking a question like that, you’d think it’s you running into posts in the dark, not Matthews.”

  “Is that your answer?”

  “The way I see my job in all of this, my primary responsibility-’kay? — is looking out for number one, which in this case is Adler. We watch him pretty much round the clock, Lou. He don’t like it, so we don’t tell him. Mac had the woods that night. Bad draw.”

  “He was in the woods. On patrol,” Boldt clarified.

  “You got it.”

  “And Danielson’s clean?” Boldt repeated skeptically.

  “I can hear it in your voice, you don’t believe me. ’Kay. So why’d you ask me to do this for you if you’re not going to believe me anyway? You’re pissing me off here, Lou. What? I’m not busy enough without your laundry? Trouble with you, Lou?” he asked rhetorically. “You want everything nice and clean. Square pegs in the square holes. But it ain’t like that, pal.” He was
building a head of steam. A vein rose in his forehead. “Order out of chaos, all that shit. I remember you.” They dodged around a street musician. Boldt threw a quarter in the guitar case. Seeing this, Fowler put a dollar in and took out fifty cents in change. “You want Danielson dirty because it fits some preconceived notion of yours. You want Taplin, too, judging from our last conversation. For all the looks you give her, maybe you want your face in Matthews’s pussy.” Boldt stopped cold. “How the hell do I know? But it ain’t that way, Lou. The square peg never fits. Danielson’s not dirty. And it’s Adler riding Matthews, not you. There’s no fucking order to it, Lou. It’s random-it has always been random. No fucking way to make things fit. That is your problem.”

  “You’ve got a foul mouth, Kenny.”

  “And a dirty mind,” Fowler added. “But Danielson is still clean.”

  “No he’s not, pal. You just don’t like being wrong. And you knew your guys screwed this up somewhere.” Boldt turned and walked away. Fowler had drilled too close to the nerve. He counted to ten, and then he counted to ten again. He wanted a drink. He wanted some food. He wanted to go back and pop Fowler in the face. Or maybe he wanted Fowler to pop him. He wanted some order where none existed. He walked for three hours before returning to his car.

  And he had blisters in the morning.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Friday morning Dr. Richard Clements left voice mail for Boldt informing him that the Seattle field office of the FBI had been in touch with the Hoover Building and that the Bureau was sending Boldt seventy-five Special Agents and providing a digital tracking and communications package. A man named Meisner wanted to speak via a conference call with Boldt and Shoswitz about logistics.

  Slater Lowry had been dead three weeks.

  Boldt jotted down some notes to himself while riding the elevator to the second floor. His feet hurt too much to take the stairs. Another piece of voice mail had been from Bernie Lofgrin.

  He entered the lab and signaled its director from across the room. Lofgrin carefully removed a pair of goggles and caught up with the sergeant in his office. The goggles left a dark red line in the shape of a kidney bean encircling his eyes and bridging his nose. His thinning gray hair was a mess, much of it sticking straight up. He patted it down, but it jumped right up again, charged with static electricity. He looked like a cockatoo.

  The office had been tidied, though it could not be considered neat. Boldt took a chair.

  “Clements must have leaned on the Bureau,” Lofgrin said as he closed the door for privacy. “At seven o’clock this morning our fax machine started humming. When the Feds issue reports, they don’t mess around. With all this paperwork,” he said, indicating an impressive stack of faxes on the desk, “it’s no wonder it takes them a month of Sundays to get back to us.”

  Lofgrin settled into his seat and switched on the tape of Scott Hamilton at Radio City that Boldt had copied for him. The sergeant felt impatient, knowing full well that all indications pointed to a Bernie Lofgrin lecture.

  Lofgrin cleaned his Coke-bottle eyeglasses, carefully rubbing them with a special soft cloth, and returned them to his face. He leaned forward. “Do you know what we call the volatilizing chamber on our gas chromatography?” The process of gas chromatography involved burning-volatilizing-a sample and analyzing the gases emitted in order to determine the organic and chemical compounds that comprised it.

  Boldt shook his head. Lofgrin’s jokes were famous for falling flat.

  “The ash-hole.”

  Lofgrin loved it; he bubbled with pleasure. Boldt felt obliged to twist a smile onto his lips, but found it impossible to maintain it. Foremost on his mind was Caulfield’s threat-as yet, that dreaded call had still not come in.

  “The ash-hole uses helium injection and weighs in at nearly twice the temp of your standard arson,” Lofgrin explained. Boldt had heard most of this before. He did not care about method; he wanted results. “Thirty-five hun and up. We reburn elements in the ash that weren’t torched the first time around, and the gases allow us to identify all but the inert compounds.”

  Seeing Boldt’s lack of interest, Lofgrin said, “Okay-I’m lecturing again. Sue me. Caulfield had several boxes under his workbench. We’ve identified them as cardboard. You and I discussed that we had some supportive evidence that three of these boxes may have contained paper products-labels, leaflets, who knows? The cardboard in those boxes is apparently from the same manufacturer-a set, if you will. Produced by Everest Forest Products up to Anacortes. Everest has clients all over the state-but I have a list,” he said, digging into the pile and handing Boldt a fax. It was several pages long and listed over two hundred clients. “About seventy of those clients have their company logo printed on the boxes before final shipment. Seventeen of those seventy have zip codes here in the city.” He grinned and teased, “And I bet you thought you were the only one who loves detective work.”

  Boldt asked anxiously, “And do we know if the boxes at Longview Farms were printed or not?”

  “We do not know anything conclusively. We’re talking about the examination of ash, Lou. Our tests suggest that these boxes were the unprinted, generic variety. And that means they could have been supplied to any one of the other one hundred and thirty Everest clients.”

  Boldt’s hopes waffled.

  “The FBI techs have turned up a mixed bag. In all three boxes we show pulp fiber inconsistent with the production of the cardboard, meaning there is a high probability that all three contained paper products.” Reading another of the Bureau’s faxes, Lofgrin said, “In one of the boxes we find the presence of bleach and heavy metals consistent with some commercial inks-commercial printing techniques. In the other two, we show trace quantities of organics that suggest, but do not confirm, what we usually see in herbal inks-”

  “Adler uses herbal inks,” Boldt reminded.

  “Yes. That had occurred to me.” Lofgrin did not like being interrupted.

  “Sorry,” Boldt apologized.

  When Lofgrin’s enlarged eyes blinked, Boldt felt as if the man were waving at him. Lofgrin said, “Knowing that Adler uses herbal inks on his labels, we asked for a comparison, and you’ll be pleased to know that the ink found in these two boxes at Longview is consistent with that used on Adler labels. We cannot differentiate between say a chicken soup label and a hash label, but we can say with some degree of certainty that the labels in those two boxes could have been Adler Foods labels.

  “What is of interest to us,” he continued, “is that the contents of this other box-the one with the heavy metal content-have nothing whatsoever to do with the labels of Adler Foods products. Did I mention that because of a nice stratification, the Bureau lab was able to approximate paper size?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I told you how when we exposed the contents of these boxes to oxygen, they basically disintegrated. The Bureau boys have a vacuum chamber large enough for something like this, and they were able to pull accurate measurements for us. And those measurements also support the assumption that two of the boxes were Adler labels, and one not. So, basically, of the three boxes with paper products, two conform to what we see in Adler products and one does not.”

  “A different company,” Boldt suggested.

  Lofgrin nodded. “Right. And by the size and shape, they could very well be labels from another company’s product. Whether or not it is food, we can’t say.”

  “It’s food,” Boldt said.

  “One other element of interest to you,” he said, spinning to face his computer. “And this was sent via the proverbial new information superhighway-which we just happen to have been using for the past eight years, I might add … and there’s a hard copy to follow by express courier …” He clicked through some files, explaining, “The Bureau people got a beauty of a photograph of a sample in what I’m calling the heavy metal box. While inside the vacuum chamber, no less? I wish to hell we had this kind of gear …” The screen went completely blank, and lines slowly
drew across the screen until what looked like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle appeared. Lofgrin stepped the computer through several moves, and the piece enlarged. He said, “This is a piece of what we believe to be one of the labels in the heavy metal box. It’s tiny, only a few centimeters square-a flake is all-but notice the colors.”

  With the next enlargement, the colors became apparent: red, yellow, and blue. Strong, primary colors.

  Boldt, leaning over Lofgrin’s shoulder, asked for the crime scene photographs from Longview Farms.

  “Color or black-and-white?”

  “Color.”

  It took Lofgrin a few minutes to locate the photos. When he returned to the office, he rewound the Scott Hamilton tape to his favorite ballad.

  While Boldt leafed through the dozens of eight-by-tens, he grabbed the phone and telephoned upstairs to LaMoia. “Find someone at Adler Foods who can tell us who does their label printing. Fowler was handling that for us, but I don’t want to involve him.”

  “Don’t want to involve him, or don’t want him to know?” LaMoia asked.

  “Both,” Boldt answered. He told him he could be reached in Lofgrin’s office, and hung up.

  While it was on his mind, and while still leafing through the dozens of Longview crime scene photographs, Boldt said to the lab man, “I need an opinion.”

  “That’s my middle name.”

  “If I take a bobby pin and insert it into an electrical outlet, and I’m wearing gloves, would there be enough heat to burn through the glove and get my finger?”

  “This is not something you want to experiment with,” Lofgrin teased, though serious. “If you’re lucky, all you’ll come away with is a burned finger. If they’re thin gloves, if the circuit is carrying a lot of amps, maybe your heart stops, too, and then you’re all Dixie’s.”