Lou Boldt

THE BODY OF DAVID HAYES
CHAPTER ONE

Lou Boldt picked up bits and pieces of the assault over an uncooperative cell phone. Paramedics were still on the scene—a trailer park near Sea-Tac Airport—a promising report because it suggested the victim remained at the scene as well. If he reached the site in time, Boldt meant to ride to the hospital in the back of the ambulance. He owed Danny Foreman that much.

The Crown Vic bumped through a pothole that would have knocked dentures out. Boldt's eyes shifted focus briefly to catch his reflection in the silver of the windshield. Boldt had crossed forty a few years back, tinges of gray gave a hint of it. He was in the best physical shape of his professional career thanks to Weight Watchers, a renewed interest in tennis, and a regimen of sit-ups and push-ups in front of CNN each morning. He scratched at his tie, seeing that he was wearing some of his dinner, a familiar habit, and hit a second pothole because of the distraction. His head came up to catch a glimpse of a closed gas station. Plywood tombstones where the pumps should have been, the signs torn down, the neon beer ads gone from the windows.

He turned down a muddy lane, dodging the first of many emergency vehicles. The air hung heavy with mist, Seattle working its way out of a lazy fall and into the steady, cold drizzle of winter. Three to five months of it depending on El Nino or La Nina—Boldt couldn't keep straight which was which.

Beneath twin sliding glass windows on the butt end, the once white house trailer carried a broken, chrome script that Boldt reassembled in his head to read EverHome. It had come to rest in a patch of weedy lawn that needed cutting and was accessed by a poured cement path, broken and heaved like calving icebergs. The emergency vehicles included a crime scene unit van, a King County Sheriff patrol car, and an ambulance with its hood up. Technically the scene was the Seattle Police Department's and therefore Boldt's, but Danny Foreman's career had landed him first in the Sheriff's Department, then SPD, and now BCI, Bureau of Criminal Investigation, what some states called the investigative arm of the state police. Boldt wasn't going to start pawing the dirt in a turf war. Danny Foreman was well liked, both despite and because of his unorthodox approach to law enforcement. To his detriment and to his favor he played it solo whenever possible; it had won him accolades and gotten him into trouble. The Job was as much politics as it was raw talent, and Foreman lacked political skills, which to Boldt explained their mutual respect.

Foreman lay on a stretcher inside a thicket of blackberry bushes that grabbed at Boldt's pant legs. A balloon-like device had been inserted into Danny's mouth. A woman squeezed the bag while monitoring her sports watch. Foreman looked wiry and older than the early fifties Boldt knew him to be. Tired and beaten down. His nap was graying now and cut short, and a pattern of black moles spread beneath both eyes, lending him the masklike look of a raccoon. Could it possibly have been as long as all that?

Boldt was quickly caught up to date by a deputy sheriff and a paramedic, both interrupting each other to finish the other's sentence. The deputy sheriff knew the name Boldt and acted like a teenager in front of a rock star, trying to impress while fawning at the same time. Boldt had enough headlines to fill a scrapbook, but wasn't inclined to keep one. He had the highest case clearance per average in the history of the Seattle Police Department. He had rumors to defeat and stories to live up to, and none of it mattered a damn to him, which only served to provoke more of the same.

Foreman had apparently been hit by a projectile stun gun and "subsequent to that"—these people all spoke the same way, and though Boldt was probably supposed to as well, he'd never taken up the language—"the subject was administered a dose of an unknown drug with behavioral characteristics not dissimilar to those of Rohypnol." The date rape drug of choice, alternately known as roofies, ruffies, roche, R-2, rib, and rope, produced sedation, muscle relaxation, and amnesia in the victim, more commonly a coed found later with her panties down than a cop on a stakeout.

The ambulance on the scene was having engine trouble, and though a second ambulance had been dispatched, efforts were being made to get this one started. Boldt's chest tightened with anticipation as he learned that the combination of the medication and the stun gun had resulted in "respiratory depression." Foreman had nearly stopped breathing. He'd been unconscious for almost fifteen minutes.

"Look what the dog drug in," a blinking Foreman said suddenly, his voice slurred behind the drug.

His coming conscious sent the paramedic into high gear, shouting out numbers like a sports announcer.

"You took a stun dart," Boldt said. "Then they roped you."

"Feel like Jell-O. No bones, discounting the one I got for Emma, my nurse here."

"Keep it in your pants, Danny," the woman said, grinning, "or I'll search my bag for the hemostats."

"Emma and I went to high school together."

"We went to the same high school," Emma corrected for Boldt's sake. "Only Agent Foreman graduated twenty- eight years ahead of my class."

"Always technicalities with you," Foreman said.

"We met outside of work," Emma further explained. To Foreman she said, "And here I am with my hand on your heart."

"Wish our situations were reversed."

"It's the medication loosening his tongue," Emma said. "Next thing he'll be proposing. Good part is, he won't remember any of this."

"Seriously?" Boldt asked.

"Doubtful. He'll sleep soon, and when he wakes he'll have lost most of the last few hours."

"Good God."

"Bullshit," Foreman said. "I'm as clear as day."

"Starting when?" Behind him Boldt heard the ambulance's engine rev and a handful of half-assed cheers.

"I've got a vague recollection of thinking a dog had bit me, or a bee stung me. That's about it."

"A stakeout?" Boldt inquired. "A solo stakeout?"

"Budget cuts."

"Meaning you will, or will not share the identity of whoever it was you were watching in that trailer?"

"I'll need a kiss before I can answer that." Foreman added, "From her, not you."

"Fat chance," the medic said.

As they strapped Foreman into the stretcher, Boldt collected more bits and pieces: Foreman had gone off-radio while on duty, which had eventually caused his own people to go looking for him. BCI had called King County Sheriff, asking for a BOL—Be On Lookout. A patrol unit had found Foreman's car—a brand-new Cadillac Escalade – which had eventually led to discovering Foreman out cold in the bushes. Boldt was told the house trailer held "a good deal of blood evidence."

While the EMTs loaded Foreman into the ambulance Boldt conducted a quick examination of the trailer. A tube- frame lawn chair in the center of the small living room looked to be the origin of most of the blood. The scarlet stains radiated out like the spokes of a wheel. Dirty dishes filled the sink and the television was on, tuned to a rerun of Con Air.

The gloved forensics guy told Boldt the only thing they'd touched was the mute button on the remote: "The volume was deafening." Boldt filed this away as important information.

Several pizza boxes were stacked on the counter, the cardboard oil-stained, indicating age. In the back bedroom, a room about eight by ten feet, he took in the unmade bed and clothes on the floor.

"We seem to be missing a body," Boldt said.

KCSO CSU was stenciled across the back of the man's white paper coveralls, the crime scene unit of the King County Sheriff's Office.

Boldt repeated, "Do we have a body?"

The man turned around. He wore plastic safety glasses over a pinched face. "We're told we have an earlier ID made on the possible victim by the surveillance team. The mobile home's rented one to David Hayes. Male. Caucasian. Thirty-four. Our guy claims Hayes was observed inside this structure earlier this evening." Boldt experienced a small stab of anxiety; he knew the name, yet couldn't place it. Another unpleasant reminder of his being on the other side of forty.

"Your guy, or BCI's guy? Are you talking about Agent Foreman?"

"We are. We do BCI's forensics," the technician clarified. Boldt had forgotten about the arrangement between BCI and the Sheriff's Office. SPD had their own lab and field personnel.

The ambulance driver wouldn't let Boldt ride along, so he followed in the Crown Vic. Once at the hospital, while they awaited processing, Boldt found himself a sugar-and- cream tea and joined Foreman in the emergency room. No one seemed in any great hurry to help.

"A pro job by the look of it," Boldt said.

"Sounds like it."

"Who's David Hayes? And why is his name so familiar to me?"

"It's a case we're working."

"We? Are you sure about that, Danny? Because I may have squirreled things for you there, without meaning to. I called your lieu on the way over here. He said they'd assigned CSU to your assault. He didn't know anything about any stakeout, anything about a bloody trailer. You put CSU into that trailer when they showed up, Danny, didn't you? This is before you lost your breath and went unconscious. Isn't that right?"

"Hayes was paroled from Geiger four days ago. Two years in medium, two in minimum."

"And someone wanted him more than you did. Why's that?"

"Seventeen million reasons."

The light finally went off in Boldt's head. "He's the guy—"

"That's right."

A wire fraud case involving Liz's bank, six or seven years earlier. Seventeen million intercepted electronically. Not a penny recovered. "A Christmas party," Boldt said.

"How's that?"

"I met the guy, Hayes, at a Christmas party. For Liz's bank." Sparks firing on top of sparks. "You were with us at the time."

"I was in my fifth year with Fraud. Yeah. Before Darlene's illness. Before everything. Like eighteen-hour shifts for me."

"It was wire fraud, right?"

"Fucking black hole is what it was." Police used the term to define an unsolvable case. "We collared Hayes – by luck, mostly. We never recovered the software he used, and we never found the money. More important, we never uncovered whose money it was. We knew it was headed offshore, but it never got there. That means someone had seventeen million bucks he was willing to lose rather than identify himself. That's what interested us."

Boldt considered this and offered unsolicited advice. "A cop pulling an unauthorized stakeout on a guy who helped steal seventeen million dollars is going to get asked some questions, Danny."

Foreman said nothing.

More of the case came back to Boldt. It had been a bad time for him and Liz. He remembered that especially. "So we put the bloodbath in the trailer down to the rightful owners of the seventeen mil coming after Hayes," Boldt speculated.

Foreman changed the subject.

"We couldn't prove the money ever left the bank. Bank figured it got deposited into some brokerage account, papered over by Hayes. Still inside the bank's system. There, but not there. A real whiz kid, our David Hayes. A real wunderkind," he said, with the animosity of a scorned investigator. Boldt knew the feeling. "He was twenty-seven at the time, and the bank had basically given him control over anything with a chip inside it. They even called him that: `Chip.' His nickname."

"Did you write this up? The stakeout?" Boldt brought it back to the here and now.

"No one in BCI gives a shit about a cold case like this. Ask around. I guarantee you this isn't anywhere on SPD's radar either."

"Tell me you're not pulling a Lone Ranger, because you know that's how this is going to play."

"Do I want the money? Yes. For me personally? Come on! This is about closing a black hole, nothing more."

"And you think that's how it's going to play?" Boldt repeated. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"We connect the dots on this, Lou, it's going to prove me out."

"We?"

"You're investigating my assault, right? SPD is in on this now."

It almost sounded as if Foreman had planned it that way. Boldt wouldn't put it past him. "You took a dive in order to get a five-year-old embezzlement case reopened?"

"It's not like that."

Part of Boldt wanted to congratulate the man if this were the case. Any cop taking a hit, even a Lone Ranger, was certain to awaken the sleeping giant of the SPD bureaucracy. The other part of him didn't want to give Foreman that kind of credit, didn't want to see a friend misuse the system, didn't want to believe the assault had been anything but a surprise to Danny Foreman. Most of all, he didn't want to think that Danny had caused that bloodbath inside the trailer and then done damage to himself in order to cover it up.

"Remember, Lou, this was Liz's bank. Still is, right? Tell me they don't want their money back. Or maybe you don't remember. I promise you Liz remembers."

Boldt felt stung by the comment, and he wasn't sure why. He remembered plenty. Just seeing Foreman's face and hearing his voice triggered any number of memories. The cancer ward at University. Darlene Foreman's funeral. A wake for her, while Liz healed and grew stronger. A growing distance between them as Foreman stopped calling and stopped returning calls.

"What the hell happened to us?" Boldt asked.

"Liz lived," Foreman answered, as if he'd been waiting to say this for years. And perhaps he had. "Resentment. Envy. Hang any name on it you want--that's what happened. And I'm supposed to tell you I'm sorry, but I'm not. I still can't bear the thought of being around you two. Throws me right back into all my shit. Seeing you now, it's a good thing, don't get me wrong. But not with her. Not the two of you. Not together. I feel cheated, Lou, and my guess is it'll never go away."

"You want me to pass this off to someone?" Boldt wanted nothing to do with the case, nothing to do with old wounds like these.

"It isn't like that."

"I'd offer LaMoia but he's tied up in a seminar. Two weeks of counterterrorism."

"Heaven help the enemy. Nah. My guys'll take care of this in-house. I realize it falls within city limits, but cut us some slack and we'll save you the paperwork."

"That doesn't sit right with me. You're saying you don't want me to open this up?" Was Foreman playing him? Taking it away so that Boldt would reach all the harder for it? And why was he suckering into it?

"It's open now, isn't it? I know how you are. Leave it be, Lou. Be a pal and pass it off to my guys."

It still felt like an attempt at reverse psychology. The paperwork finally came through and Foreman was officially admitted. An X-ray orderly arrived to escort Foreman to the "photo booth." Boldt stayed seated in the uncomfortable chair, a three-week-old copy of People magazine dog- eared in the Plexiglas rack, Stephen King looking at him sideways.

Boldt called out, "I'll wait and see if you need a ride home."

Foreman trundled off, his walk giving away the lingering effect of the drugs. Boldt felt a knot in his throat, still stunned that friendship could go so far wrong, guilty for getting all the breaks while Danny Foreman had gotten none.

He hunkered down for a long wait, thinking to call Liz so she didn't wait up. Liz lived. Boldt heard the words echo around in his head. Like it was some kind of crime.

© Ridley Pearson

THE ART OF DECEPTION

Excerpts are flash pieces....embed?  Link?

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
PROLOGUE

The garage door groaned shut behind her, a combination of hair-raising squeals—metal on metal—and the tight, quickened shudders of rollers traveling slightly off track. The garage opener’s bulb was burned out, leaving only the yellow glare of car headlights, on a self-timer. Sharp shadows stretched across the tools and garden hoses that cluttered the walls. The room smelled of burning rubber, hot motor oil and lawn fertilizer. Slightly sickening. A light rain struck the garage roof percussively.

Moving around the parked car, Maria Sanchez’s awkward movement reflected the late hour—hunched shoulders, stiff legs. She wanted a bath, some Sleepytime tea and the Amy Tan novel that awaited her. She felt the weight of her sidearm in her purse as she adjusted its strap on her shoulder. When out on active duty she wore it holstered at her side, but the last four hours of her day had been paperwork, and she had transferred the gun to her purse. At least another four to go if she were to get even partly caught up. But no more on that night. She had clocked-out. Amy Tan owned the rest of her waking hours.

She closed the side door to the garage, and stepped into darkness. The light alongside the back door hadn’t come on, which surprised her since it worked off a sensor that should have automatically switched it on at sunset. It must have been burnt out also. Just like the one in the garage. God, she wanted that bath.

Something moved behind her. A cop learned the difference between the elements and human beings. This was not wind, not the elements. It was human movement. Her right hand dropped and reached for a weapon she now remembered wasn’t there—her terror mounted.

The crook of a man’s elbow choked her windpipe. Next came a hard kidney punch. Sanchez’s handbag slipped to the wet grass. She tried to respond as she’d been trained—as a police officer; to compartmentalize and set aside her terror. She drove back her elbow sharply and bent forward, driving her butt into the man behind her. The attempt did nothing to loosen the grip of that chokehold. Instead, the defensive move put more pressure on her own throat, increasing the pain, restricting the blood flow. She stomped down hard—hoping to connect with an instep, shatter it. She could smell beer and sour sweat and it was these smells that increased her fear.

Then another kidney punch. Sanchez felt herself sag, her resistance dwindle. She hadn’t put up much of a fight, but now she knew she was going to lose it. She suddenly feared for her life.

Her reaction was swift and intense. She forced herself up, managing to head-butt a chin or a forehead. The vise-like hold on her neck slackened. She felt the warmth of blood surge toward her brain. Briefly, relief. She tried once again to rock forward and this time break the grip for good.

But now the grip intensified. This guy meant business. He cursed and jerked his locked grip on her neck first right and then sharply left. She heard her own bones go, like twigs snapping. And then cold. A brutal, unforgiving chill, racing through her body. In seconds, all sensation of her body was gone. She sank toward the mud and her face fell into the muck. Raspy breathing from above and behind her. And then even it disappeared, overwhelmed by a whining in her ears and that desperate cold that finally consumed her.

© Ridley Pearson

THE FIRST VICTIM
CHAPTER ONE

Puget Sound, Washington

It came off the northern Pacific as if driven by a witch’s broom: the remnants of typhoon Mary that had killed 117 in Japan, left six thousand homeless in Siberia and flooded the western Aleutians for the first time in sixty-two years. In the ocean’s open waters it drove seas to thirty feet with its eighty-five mile-per-hour winds, dumping three inches of rain an hour and barreling toward Victoria Island, the San Juan Islands, and the largest estuary in North America, known on charts as Puget Sound. It headed for the city of Seattle as if it had picked its course off a map and caused the biggest rush on plywood and chipboard that King County had ever seen.

In the partially protected waters west of Elliott Bay, one nautical mile beyond the established shipping lanes that fed Seattle’s East Waterway dock lands, the pitch black night was punctured by the harsh illumination of shipboard spotlights that in clear weather might have reached a half mile or more, but failed to stretch even a hundred yards in the dismal deluge that had once been Mary. The freighter, Visage, a container ship, rose and sank in fifteen-foot swells, rain drumming decks stacked forty feet high with freight cars. The Asian crew followed the orders of the boatswain who commanded a battery-operated megaphone from an upper deck, instructing them to make-ready.

The huge ship pitched and yawed and rolled port to starboard, threatening to dump its top-heavy cargo. The crew had been captured inside Mary’s wrath for the last three hundred nautical miles, three impossibly long days and nights, rarely able to sleep, some unable to eat, at work all hours attempting to keep the hundreds of containers on deck secure. Early on in the blow a container had broken loose, sliding across the steel deck like a seven ton brick and crushing the leg of an unsuspecting crewman to where the ship’s medic could find no bones to set, only soft flesh where the shin and knee had once been. Three of the crew had tied themselves to the port rail where they vomited green bile with each and every rise and fall. Only four crewmen were available for the transfer that was to come.

The neighboring tug and barge, seventy feet and closing off Visage’s starboard bow, were marked by dim red and green running lights, a single white spot off the tug’s bow, and a pair of bright Halogens off the tower of the telescoping yellow crane chained down to the center of the barge. The tug and barge disappeared into a trough, rising and reappearing a moment later, only to sink once again into the foam, the crane as ominous and unnatural as an oil platform. The storm prevented any hope of docking the barge to the freighter, but both captains had enough motivation in their wallets to attempt the transfer nonetheless. Like two ends of a seesaw, the vessels rose and fell alternately, the crane’s tower pointing like a broken finger into the tar black clouds. Radio communication was forbidden. Signal lights flashed, the only contact between the two captains.

Finally, in a dangerous and daring dance, the two vessels drew close enough for the crane’s slip harness to be snagged by the freighter’s crew on an upward pendulum swing. Briefly, the barge and container ship were connected by this dangling steel cable, but it broke loose of their hold, the barge lost to another swell. It was twenty minutes before the crane’s steel cable was finally captured for a second time.

The vessels bobbed alongside one another, the slack in the crane’s cable going dangerously tight with each alternating swell. The exhausted deckhands of the Visage worked furiously to be rid of this container, to a member wondering if it was worth the bonus pay they had been promised.

When the moment of exchange arrived, the crane made tight the cable and the deckhands cut loose the container’s binding chains while lines secured to winches on both vessels attempted to steady the dangling container, for if it swung too violently it was likely to capsize the barge. As the first of these four lines snapped, the container, dangling precipitously over the void of open foam between barge and ship shifted awkwardly, suddenly at a precipitous and treacherous angle. Above the deafening whistle of wind and the lion’s roar of the sea, came the muted but unmistakable cry of human voices from within this container.

A crewman crossed himself and looked toward heaven.

A second line snapped. A third.

The container swung and slipped out of the harness, splashing into the water. It submerged and then bobbed back up like a whale surfacing.

The captain of the Visage barked his orders. The mighty twin screws spun to life, the gigantic ship lumbering to port and away from the barge and crane in an effort to keep the container from being crushed between the vessels.

The spotlights on the freighter were ordered extinguished as the ship was consumed by the storm, lumbering back toward the shipping lane where it belonged.

Behind it, in its wake, the abandoned container, singing of human screams and cries of terror, rode the mounting swells into darkness, lost to the wash of the waves and the whim of the wind.

© Ridley Pearson

THE PIED PIPER
CHAPTER ONE

Puget Sound, Washington

The train left the station headed for nowhere, its destination also its point of embarkation, its purpose not to transport its passengers, but to feed them.

By early March, western Washington neared the end of the rinse cycle, a nearly perpetual curtain of ocean rain that blanketed the region for the winter months, unleashing in its wake a promise of summer. Dark, saturated clouds hung low on the eastern horizon. Well to the west, where the sun retreated in a violent display, a glimpse of blue cracked the marbled gray, as welcome to the residents of Seattle as any sight alive.

Arrival at the dinner train surprised Doris Shotz. She had thought her husband Paul was taking her to Ivar’s, one of Seattle’s more popular fish house chains. A simple dinner date had presented her with a test of sorts, being that it was her first evening leaving her four-month-old baby girl, Rhonda, with a sitter. She’d finally decided she could handle an hour or two a flew blocks away from home. But an entire evening stuck on a train in the woods was unimaginable, unthinkable!

"Surprised?" he asked, displaying the tickets proudly.

On the verge of total panic Doris reminded herself that Julie was an experienced sitter, having taken care of Henry for the last year, as responsible a fifteen-year-old as one could ask for. Better to give Paul his moment than to start a fight.

They’d been talking about the dinner train for years. And Doris had to concede that over the last nine months, Paul had been a saint. She owed him.

"I can’t believe it!" she said truthfully.

"I know. You didn’t guess did you?"

"Not for an instant. I promise: It’s a complete surprise."

"Good." He reached down and took her hand and squeezed. She felt flushed. She wanted to be home with the kids.

"All aboard," he said.

 * * *

 The train lurched. Doris Shotz shifted to avoid spilling the cheap champagne that Paul had ordered. While she didn’t want to drink while nursing, she knew Paul would consider it an act of defiance to say no to any part of the celebration, and given that she had already gone this far to please her husband, she wasn’t going to let one glass of champagne ruin the evening. When the train turned east the frosted mountains flooded crimson with the sunset, Paul said with obvious satisfaction, "This is a long way from the backside of a computer."

Paul repaired PCs for Micro System Workshop, a name his employer had invented because it could be reduced to MS Workshop, and in an area dominated by Microsoft those two initials meant dollars. Paul drove a blue MS Workshop van around the city, crisis to crisis, fire to fire: hard drives, networks, IRQ ports—Doris had heard all the buzzwords enough times to think she might be capable of a repair or two herself.

Paul provided for them adequately. He loved her in his own way. She loved him too, though differently than she once had. Now the children absorbed most of her time and much of her love too. She wasn’t sure exactly how to categorize her love for Paul; she simply knew that she would always be at his side, would attempt to put up with his moods. But the truth was that she lived for her children, Rhonda and Henry. She had never before known such a complete feeling. It warmed her just thinking about it.

She politely refused a refill of champagne as she watched her husband’s cheeks redden behind the alcohol’s effects. Clearly carried away with happiness and the light buzz that came from the champagne he talked at her, but she didn’t hear. Boys and trains, she thought.

"Do you think I should call home?" she asked him.

"Call?"

She motioned to the rear of the train car. "There’s a pay phone. Cellular. I could call them."

"You know how much those things cost? Fifteen minutes, Doro," he pointed out, checking his Casio and saying sarcastically, "we’ve been gone a whole fifteen minutes!" He leaned closer and she could smell the sweet alcohol on his breath, a smell that reminded her of the occasional drunken violence that Paul had sometimes brought with him to their bed. "They’re fine. Julie’s perfectly capable."

"You’re right," she said, offering him a fragile smile. He nodded and stared out the window. She felt sick with anxiety. It occurred to her that in a few minutes she could excuse herself to go to the bathroom and use the phone. Paul would probably never know. The champagne bottle’s white plastic cork rolled noisily at his feet. The train clattered past condominiums that reminded her of a Monopoly board. A few of the couples had dressed for the occasion, though most wore jeans and sweatshirts. It wasn’t exactly the Orient Express. It soon became clear that Paul’s romance was with the train rather than her. Flushed cheeks pressed to the glass, his right foot tapping quickly as it always did when he drank in excess, her husband disappeared into the alcohol and she retreated into thoughts about her children.

Ten minutes passed with minimal conversation. Doris excused herself and made the call home. It rang and rang, but there was no answer.

Wrong number, she decided. At those prices—$3.95 for the first minute, $.99 each portion of a minute thereafter—Paul was certain to catch the charge on the credit card bill. But so what? She pressed: NEW CALL. She redialed, again suffering under the weight of its endless ringing. She could envision Julie busy with a diaper, or in the middle of feeding. It didn’t necessarily mean trouble . . .

A fire, she thought. Paul’s home entertainment center—a sports center was more like it—crowded the outlets with far too many wires. What would Julie do in a fire?

The knot in her stomach twisted more tightly. Her fingers went cold and numb. Julie might be in the bathroom. Nothing more than that. But her imagination wouldn’t let it go. Perhaps Julie had a boyfriend with her in the house. In that case, she wouldn’t be paying attention either to the kids or the phone. Doris stole a look around the corner and down the shifting train car’s center aisle to the back of her husband’s head. She had already been gone a few minutes, and it would ruin everything if he caught her at the pay phone. She had promised him she would wait to call until after dinner.

She hung up the receiver, deciding to slip into the washroom and then try again when she came out. But she emerged only to find someone else using the phone, ironically a mother happily talking to her children.

When the woman hung up, Doris tried again. This time the phone’s endless ringing seemed a kind of punishment for trying at all. She glanced up the aisle at Paul, but now all she could think about was that there was something terrible going on. She decided to call her neighbor Tina who answered on the second ring.

Doris concentrated on removing any panic from her voice. "Tina, it’s Doris. I have a really weird favor to ask of you . . ."

In her mother’s heart she knew: Something was dreadfully wrong.

© Ridley Pearson

BEYOND RECOGNITION
CHAPTER ONE

The fire began at sunset.

It filled the house like a hot putrid breath, alive. It ran like a liquid through the place, stopping at nothing, feeding on everything in its path, irreverent and unforgiving. It raced like a phantom room to room, eating the drapes, the rugs, the towels, the sheets and linens, the clothes, shoes and blankets in the closets, removing any and all evidence of things human. It invaded the various rooms like an unchecked virus raiding neighboring cells, contaminating, infecting, consuming. It devoured the wood of the doorjambs, swarmed the walls, fed off the paint, and blistered the ceiling. Light bulbs vaporized, sounding like a string of Black Cat firecrackers. This was no simple fire.

It vaporized the small furniture, chairs, tables, dressers, all dissolving in its wake. It refinished and then devoured the desk that she had bought at a weekend flea market, a desk that she had stripped of the ugly green paint and had lovingly resurfaced with a transparent plastic coating guaranteed by the manufacturer to last thirty years.

Longer than she lasted.

For Dorothy Enwright, it was more like a camera's flash popping in the dark. It began long before any clothes or rooms were claimed. It began as a strange growling sound deep within the walls. At first she imagined an earthquake. This was dispelled by the quick, and surprisingly chilling spark on the far side of her eyelids. To her it began not as heat, but as a flash of bone-numbing cold.

It burned off her hair, the skin on her face—and she went over backward, her throat seared and unable to scream. In a series of popping sounds, her bones exploded, brittle and fast, like pine needles dumped on a fire.

The toilets and sinks melted, a sudden flow of bubbling porcelain, running like lava.

Dorothy Enwright was dead within the first twenty seconds of the burn. But before she died she visited hell, a place that Dorothy Enwright did not belong. She had no business there, this woman. No business, given that a member of the fire department had received a threat eleven hours earlier, and that the person receiving that threat had failed to act upon it.

By the time the fire hoses were through, little existed for Seattle's Marshal Five fire inspector to discover or collect as evidence. Little existed of the truth. The truth, like the home of Dorothy Enwright, and Dorothy herself, had gone up in smoke, destroyed beyond recognition.

© Ridley Pearson

THE ANGEL MAKER
CHAPTER ONE

Wednesday, February 1st

The young woman's pale, lifeless expression cried out to Daphne Matthews from across the room. Nearly all of the kids who sought out The Shelter were high on something when they came through that door. The hollow cheeks, the dirty hair, were common to all the runaways, as were the torn jeans, the soiled T-shirts and the disturbing smell.

The windowless basement room in the King Center Baptist Church on South Jackson held thirteen beds and was void of any color except for the odd assortment of unframed art posters. The beds, arranged in perfect rows, were each covered with a grey wool blanket atop which had been placed a white towel and a dull green cardboard box containing a toothbrush, comb, bar of soap, a package of condoms and a leaflet on AIDS.

The boys' dorm, across the hall and next to the room where the choir robes were kept, held only eight beds, in part because teenage boys were less likely to seek help from such places, and in part because girls between the ages of thirteen and eighteen accounted for a larger percentage of the runaways that wandered Seattle's streets.

The other volunteers at The Shelter welcomed Daphne's expertise as a psychologist as much as her being a member of the Seattle Police Department, though this latter qualification was rarely called upon, and never mentioned in front of the girls. For Daphne, each young woman who passed through that door represented a challenge, each had her own unique, often terrifying story. Just by coming here, they called out for help. Homeless; penniless; distrustful; addicted; pregnant; filthy; diseased: the job of each volunteer was to reverse all of that, to connect the runaway with counselors, doctors, halfway houses, government funding, jobs, housing, recovery programs and safety. To rescue and rebuild a life.

Daphne sat down quietly and slowly on the bed opposite the girl and forced a welcoming smile that made her feel both cheap and dishonest: There was nothing to smile about here. She noticed a tiny scab on the inside of the girl's elbow joint and felt her heart sink. To her relief, she didn't see any other needle marks. Perhaps this was the girl's first time. With any luck, her last.

The girl never looked at her, she just stared off into the room in a catatonic daze.

Daphne suggested gently, "Would you like to lie down?"

The girl nodded slightly. Daphne supported her head as it traveled to the pillow. Some of the drunks felt this hot, some of the druggies, but this contact gave Daphne a sickening feeling in her stomach that told her this was something worse. Exactly what, she wasn't sure. She wasn't even sure she wanted to find out.

The girl cried out sharply as she leaned back, clutching her abdomen.

Daphne cleared the tangled hair from her face, wincing as she noticed a pink circle on the girl's temple. Without looking, she knew there would be an identical mark opposite this: electroshock.

"Cold," the girl complained in a dry, raspy voice.

Daphne covered her with a blanket, told her she would "be right back," and hurried over to Sharon Shaffer who had just arrived. Sharon, a remarkably petite woman with large gray eyes and an oversized mouth, a former "graduate" of The Shelter, was now its spokesperson, working the circuit of Rotary Clubs and ladies' luncheons in fund-raising efforts. To both the volunteers and the community, she was a symbol of everything right about The Shelter, its leader and patron-saint. To Daphne, she was a dear friend.

Sharon immediately dug into a pocket and handed Daphne a folded note. "I found a vet for Camile. He's supposed to be the best internist in the city. And he's a surgeon, in case she needs it."

Daphne accepted the note without looking at it. She stuffed it away. Camile, her calico cat, had been vomiting and off her food for the better part of a week. Daphne had already taken her to three different vets. Was surgery the next step?

There was no time for this. Daphne charged one of the volunteers with checking all area hospitals for a psych ward discharge or escapee. She briefed Sharon on the recent arrival as the two of them crossed the room: the needle mark, the evidence of electroshock therapy, the woman's abdominal pain.

"Are you thinking restraints?' Sharon asked. She had a way of reading Daphne's thoughts. Before Daphne could answer, Sharon said, "Let's hold off on that, okay? There's nothing more frustrating than a tie-down. It's horrible. I've been there." Daphne didn't argue. Reaching the girl, they perched themselves on opposite sides of her bed.

"Where am I?" the girl wondered aloud. "Why am I here?"

"The only requirement for being here," Sharon explained in a comforting voice, "is your desire to be off the streets." She hesitated. "Okay?"

The girl squinted painfully. It hurt Daphne to see that kind of pain -- psychological or physical? -- and it worried her too: the druggies usually felt nothing. Again, the combination of electroshock and that needle mark warned Daphne of an institution. Her policewoman instincts kicked in -- this girl could turn violent without warning. She was glad to have Sharon here.

Sharon said calmly, "You're safe now. My name is Sharon. I'm a runaway. This is Daphne. We're all women here. Okay? This is a woman's shelter. We can keep you warm. We can feed you. We want nothing from you. Nothing at all." The girl began to cry. "We are not going to notify the police or your parents -- your home. You're safe here. Whatever you have done is behind you. Here, you are safe. If you need medical attention, you will have it. We want nothing more of you than your name. Something to call you. A first name is all. Can you tell us your name?"

"Cindy," the girl answered. "Can't you stop them?" she asked desperately.

Sharon repeated, "You're safe here, Cindy." She reached out and took the girl's limp hand.

The girl attempted to sit up. She cried out painfully, once again clutching her abdomen and then shielded her ears. "Can't you stop them?" she pleaded.

The blanket fell away from her. A wet bloodstain colored her side. A stabbing? Daphne wondered. How had she missed the wound earlier? The girl pleaded, "Do you hear that barking? Can't you stop the barking?"

Daphne reached out and lifted the girl's shirt. Her skin was colored an iodine-brown from surgery. At the center of this stain was a three-inch incision laced with broken stitches. It was so fresh, it had yet to scab. She was losing an enormous amount of blood.

"Call 911!" Sharon shouted loudly across the room. "We need an ambulance, pronto!" She caught eyes with Daphne then and whispered, "What the hell is this?"

© Ridley Pearson

UNDERCURRENTS
CHAPTER ONE

As he stepped off the jetway, Lou Boldt spotted the child held in the woman's arms, a keen sense of expectation in the young blue eyes as they briefly caught his own. The child attempted to kick loose from her mother, who set the girl down, allowing her to run to greet her father, a rather average-looking executive-type a few people back. It was symbolic to Lou Boldt that the child should pass him by. He felt as if everyone, everything were passing him by, taking no notice. Perhaps it was his own fault. Yes, perhaps he was invisible. Perhaps what he wanted was to be unseen and left alone.

He heard the child giggle and found himself tempted to turn around. He loved the musical sound of a child laughing. Was there anything more beautiful? Anything more missing from his life? But right now the child didn't matter.

The killings had started again; that was all that mattered. He maneuvered his way through the arriving passengers, his mind elsewhere, eyes trained toward the floor as he absentmindedly watched the colorless toes of his scuffed shoes.

He didn't want to believe it was the work of the same man. He had consumed the better part of the short flight from Portland to Seattle straggling with the thought, trying to convince himself it could not be. The killings had ended with that horrible scene in the courtroom. He had suffered through that incident—the whole city had suffered—and that had been the end of it. But nothing is ever that simple, he now thought, waiting for the line at the escalator to move.

He broke free of the line and, carrying his hanging bag effortlessly, charged down the stairs instead, drawing looks from those to his right who descended silently, their curled fingers gripping the fat black rubber rail for support. There was no rail for Boldt to grasp, nothing automatic about the job before him. Again, he found himself eying the dull toes of his shoes in order to avoid a disastrous and embarrassing fall, and he thought he should have them shined.

In the men's room he caught sight of himself in the mirror and realized he looked older than his thirty-nine years. This case was taking its toll. His whole act needed a shine, not just the shoes. The age of his suit reflected a detective's salary; he had spilled coffee onto his new tie—when and where, he had no idea; he had missed a spot shaving, eager to catch the first flight out of Portland; his face was pale and gaunt. And if the sun represented enthusiasm and energy, then he thought his spirit pale as well: he felt tired, nearly exhausted. He splashed some cold water onto his face, then discovered there were no paper towels. He resorted to rubbing his face briskly in the noisy jet of a hot-air dryer, lukewarm air that smelled like urinal deodorizers. The stream of forced air stirred his thin sandy hair into a rooster crown, but Boldt didn't notice.

He wanted to be at the crime scene. Now. Precious hours had been lost. He had no desire to be standing at the curb waiting to be picked up. He, better than most, understood the importance of the crime scene, and the need to get there quickly. Any disturbance at the crime scene could throw him off. He worried that some of the evidence had already been disturbed, its value negated, the site made stale. It gives you the advantage, he thought, looking into the dizzying sea of unfamiliar faces of the hundreds of people swarming the sidewalk, wondering: Are you still out there somewhere? Not fully believing it.

Had the wrong man died in that courtroom? Was it possible? He scanned the faces in the crowd, as if someone might provide him with the answers, but of course as a homicide detective, people looked to him for the answers, not the other way around. He was considered the expert. He was the one who had been invited to Portland to speak at a criminology seminar. His topic: Methodology in the Murder Investigation: The Victim Speaks.

In any case, he knew he was ultimately responsible. He would have to catch the killer.

If the killer existed.

* * *

A TWO-DOOR FORD double-parked at the curb, its wipers fighting back the drizzle. The driver waved Boldt into the passenger seat. Recognizing the man, Boldt hesitated briefly, bent at the waist, staring from the sidewalk. When things start going against you, he thought, they get going in a big way. When the killings start up again, they send Kramer to pick you up. Wonderful.

Boldt pushed his hanging bag into the front seat, climbed in, slammed the door, and brushed the tiny silver droplets of rainwater from the wrinkled sleeves of his sports jacket, avoiding eye contact with Kramer. No sense in starting this off on the wrong foot. The two men sat in silence. Kramer switched on the wipers and put the car in gear and pulled out into traffic. The radio was tuned to a Muzak station. Boldt leaned over and switched it off. Kramer adjusted his tie and checked the outside mirror. The tires whined against the wet pavement. The wiper on Boldt's side only served to blur the windshield. He looked down and brushed at the stain on his tie.

"You mind?" Kramer complained, elbowing the hanging bag. Boldt tossed it into the backseat. Kramer switched the radio back on. "I'm driving," he explained. "Music helps me relax."

Boldt sighed and laid his head back on the headrest, closing his eyes. The Muzak annoyed him and Kramer knew it. Boldt was a jazz pianist by hobby, formerly by profession—it had helped pay his way through college—and this insipid dribble from the car speaker was as obnoxious to him as a hot dog to a gourmet. Kramer knew it all right. It was lifeless, uninspired, and Boldt realized how perfectly suited it was to Kramer. The two went together like Roy and Trigger.

"How certain are we?" Boldt finally asked. It was the question he had been intentionally avoiding. "About the killings, I mean."

"Certain enough."

"You don't have to sound happy about it."

Kramer toyed with the rearview mirror.

"I didn't make the assignments," Lou Boldt reminded, knowing what was bothering Kramer.

"You want to head out there straight away?"

"Is that the plan?"

"You're the one who makes the plans, right?" Kramer sounded like a five-year-old.

It was a blatant exaggeration. Lieutenant Shoswitz headed the Special Task Force. Kramer and Boldt were sergeants of equal rank assigned to Shoswitz. Each oversaw several pairs of homicide detectives—Kramer from a desk, Boldt from the field. Therein lay the difference, and to Kramer it was obviously an unforgivable slight. He held it against Boldt, despite the fact that neither of them had had anything to do with the command structure within the task force. The captain had issued the assignments in early May, following the second murder and the resulting flood of national press. One article had claimed that Seattle had logged more serial murders in the last decade than any U.S. city—a statement Lou Boldt questioned. As a result of those assignments, the prestigious job—the fieldwork—belonged to Boldt. Now early October, it seemed like years to both men.

"You're as important to this thing as I am. We both know that." Boldt had not made this kind of overture in weeks. But this latest killing meant they could be starting over, so he figured it was worth a try.

Kramer said nothing, softened momentarily by Boldt's attempt. He made a face, changed lanes and accelerated. The Ford sped down the slick highway, frenzied wipers fighting backwash from a semitruck. The Muzak droned from the speaker. Boldt said, "I would think you'd be happy. I'm the one the press will tear apart. Not you." Boldt knew how important the press was to Kramer. The man was always being quoted in the newspapers. It seemed to give him a sense of purpose, a sense of power.

"The press maybe, not the department. Shoswitz is still convinced you're the one who can solve this thing. I won't pretend I didn't try to get our assignments switched—you'll hear about it anyway. You bet I did. But Shoswitz wouldn't have anything to do with it. He said 'the batting order was all set' and there was no use 'changing the infield.' He talks about you like you're some kind of boy wonder."

"Hardly," Boldt groaned.

"You don't have to tell me that," replied Kramer. "He said the Jergensen thing was everyone's fault. Mostly the press. I heard him arguing on your behalf with the captain. Said it was you who suggested tighter security at the omnibus hearing. Claimed you'd been making noise about that for a couple years now. That true?"

Boldt felt cornered. "Yeah," he huffed, annoyed that Kramer could make him feel bad about being right.

"Shit," Kramer spit out under his breath, and pressed down on the accelerator. The speeding made Boldt nervous. He chewed down a Tums, and strapped on his seat belt. This angered Kramer all the more. He drove faster. "So Jergensen gets shot and killed for something he didn't do."

"We can't be sure of that," Boldt corrected.

"Certainly looks that way. You and I both know we didn't have much of anything on Jergensen. If Daphne hadn't leaked that report, Jergensen would probably still be alive. Just plain bad luck that he fit the description of the killer so well."

"It wasn't Daffy's fault. It was the FBI's BSU profile. A number of us had access to it. Yourself included. Any one of us could have passed it to the press. Whoever did, got a man killed, and I guarantee you it wasn't Daffy."

"You're always defending her. Why would that be? Why would a happily married man like you always come to her rescue?"

Boldt glared at the man and sat up stiffly. "You're lucky we're doing seventy on a wet highway, Kramer."

"Always the tough cop, huh, Boldt? I don't buy it. Not from you. I buy the image of the fag jazz musician a lot easier."

Boldt took hold of the volume knob and turned the radio off. He turned so hard that he accidentally broke off the knob. He stared at it in his hand. Kramer whined, "That's coming off your paycheck, not mine."

Boldt grimaced. Children's games. Kramer always brought out the worst in him. He rubbed his gut. It had given him hell since August. For the last few weeks there had been blood in his stool. And now he had Jergensen's death on his conscience. The man had stolen a television set—for all Boldt knew that was the full extent of his crime. That was why they all had been at the hearing. Any connection beyond that had been speculation by a hungry press.

Kramer pulled the car into the middle lane and slowed down. The drizzle had let up. He switched the wipers to intermittent.

The windshield in front of Boldt grew even more blurry. It made him nauseous. "We're all to blame for Jergensen."

"And now this," Kramer said.

"Yes," agreed Boldt, nodding his head slowly. "Now this."

© Ridley Pearson

NO WITNESSES
CHAPTER ONE

And now for the good part.

This was where Lou Boldt threw out all convention, where the textbooks took a backseat to experience, and where he found out who in the lecture hall was listening and who was asleep.

He raised his voice. Boldt was a big man and his words bellowed clear back to the make-out seats without the need of the mike clipped to his tie. "Everything I've told you in the past few weeks concerning evidence, investigative procedure, chain of custody, and chain of command is worthless." A few heads snapped up—more than he had expected. "Worthless unless you learn to read the crime scene, to know the victim, to listen to and trust your own instincts. To feel with your heart as much as think with your head. To find a balance between the two. If it was all in the head, then we would not need detectives; the lab technicians could do it all. Conversely, if it was all in the heart—if we could simply empathize with the suspect and say, 'Yup, you did it'—then who would need the lab nerds?" A few of the studious types busily flipped pages. Boldt informed them, "You won't find any of this in your textbooks. That's just the point. All the textbooks in the world are not going to clear a case—only the investigator can. Evidence and information is nothing without a human being to analyze, organize, and interpret it. That's you. That's me. There comes a time when all the information must be set aside; there comes a time when passion and instinct take over. It's the stuff that can't be taught; but it can be learned. Heart and mind—one's worthless without the other." He paused here, wondering if these peach-fuzz students could see beyond the forty-four-year-old, slightly paunchy homicide cop in the wrinkled khakis and the tattered sport coat that hid a pacifier in its side pocket.

At the same time, he listened to his own words reverberating through the lecture hall, wondering how much he dare tell them. Did he tell them about the nightmares, the divorces, the ulcers and the politics? The hours? The salary? The penetrating numbness with which the veterans approached a crime scene?

Light flooded an aisle as a door at the rear of the hall swung open and a lanky kid wearing oversize jeans and a rugby shirt hurried toward the podium, casting a stretched shadow. Reaching Boldt, he passed the sergeant a pink telephone memo. A sea of students looking on, Boldt unfolded and read it.

Volunteer Park, after class. I'll wait fifteen minutes.—D.M.

Volunteer Park? he wondered, his curiosity raised. Why not the offices? Daphne Matthews was anything but dramatic. As the department's forensic psychologist, she was cool, controlled, studied, patient. Articulate, strong, intelligent. But not dramatic—not like this. The curious faces remained fixed on him. "A love letter," he said, winning a few laughs. But not many: Cops weren't expected to be funny—something else they would have to learn.

* * *

Volunteer Park is perched well above Seattle's downtown cluster of towering high-rises and the gray-green curve of Elliott Bay that sweeps out into the island-riddled estuary of Puget Sound. A large reservoir, acting as a reflecting pond, is terraced below the parking lot and lookout that fronts the museum, a building under reconstruction for months on its way to housing the city's Asian Collection. Boldt parked his aging department-issued four-door Chevy three spaces away from the red Prelude that Daphne Matthews maintained showroom clean. She was not to be found in her car.

The water tower's stone facade rose several stories to his left. Well-kept beds of flowering shrubs and perennials surrounded its footing, like gems in a setting. The grass was a phenomenal emerald green,—unique, he thought, to Seattle and Portland. Maybe Ireland, too; he had never been. Summer was just taking hold. Every living thing seemed poised for change. The sky was a patch quilt of azure blue and cotton white, the clouds moving in swiftly from the west, low and fast. A visitor might think rain, but a local knew better. Not tonight. Cold maybe, if it cleared.

He spotted an unfamiliar male face behind the iron grate of one of the tower's upper viewing windows and waited a minute for this person and his companion to descend and leave the structure. Once they were gone, he chose the stairway to his right, ascending a narrow chimney of steep steps wedged between the brick rotunda to his right and the riveted steel hull of the water tank to his left. The painted tank and the tower that surrounded it were enormous, perhaps forty or fifty feet high and half again as wide. With each step, Boldt's heart pounded heavier. He was not in the best shape; or maybe it was because she had elected to step outside the system, and that could not help but intrigue him; or maybe it was personal and had nothing whatsoever to do with the shop. He and Daphne had been close once—too close for what was allowed of a married man. They still were close, but mention of that one night together never passed their lips. A month earlier she had surprised him by telling him about a new relationship. After Bill Gates, Owen Adler was the reigning bachelor prize of the Northwest, having gone from espresso cart to the fastest-growing beverage and food business in the western region. He leased his own plane, owned a multimillion-dollar estate overlooking Shilshole Marina, and now, quite possibly, owned the heart and affections of Daphne Matthews. Had her note been worded any other way, had she not chosen such an isolated location, Boldt would have been convinced that her request was nothing more than some lover butterflies.

In another two hours, Volunteer Park would be a drug and sex bazaar. Despite its view, the tower was not a place frequented by the pin-striped set. She had clearly chosen it carefully. Daphne was not given to acts of spontaneity. She desired a clandestine meeting—and he had to wonder why.

He reached the open-air lookout at the top of the tower. It had a cement floor and evenly spaced viewing windows crosshatched with heavy-gauge steel to prevent flyers from testing their wings, or projectiles from landing on passersby.

Daphne held her arms crossed tightly, accentuating an anxiety uncommon in her. Her brown hair spilled over her face hiding her eyes, and when she cleared it, he saw fear where there was usually the spark of excitement. Her square-shouldered, assertive posture collapsed in sagging defeat.

She wore the same blue slacks and cotton sweater he had seen her wearing at work. She had not been to her houseboat yet. "What is it?" he asked, worried by this look of hers.

Her chin cast a shadow hiding the scar on her neck. She did not answer immediately. "It's a potential black hole," she explained—a difficult if not impossible case to solve, and with political overtones. And then he understood: She had bypassed the proper procedures to give him a chance to sidestep this investigation before he formally inherited it at the cop shop. Why she would have a black hole in the first place confused him. The department's psychologist did not lead investigations; she kept cops from swallowing barrels, and profiled the loonies that kept Boldt and the others chasing body bags. She assisted in interrogations. She could take any side of any discussion and make a convincing argument out of it. She was the best listener he knew.

She handed him a fax—the first of what appeared to be several that she removed from a briefcase.

SOUP IS MOTHER'S CHOICE. NOT ALWAYS.

She told him, "That was the first threat he received."

"Adler," Boldt said, filling in the blank.

She nodded, her hair trailing her movements. Daphne Matthews had grace, even when frightened. "It's an ad slogan they use."

"Innocuous enough," he said.

She handed him the next saying, "Yes, but not for long."

SUICIDE OR MURDER. TAKE YOUR PICK. NO COPS. NO PRESS. NO TRICKS, OR YOU WILL CARRY WITH YOU THE LIVES OF THE INNOCENT.

"It could be nothing," Boldt said, though his voice belied this.

"That's exactly what he said," she replied angrily, lumping them together.

Boldt did not want to be lumped in with Owen Adler. "I'll give you one thing: When you say black hole, you mean black hole." Faxed threats? he thought. In the top left of the page of thermal paper, he read a date and time in tiny typeface. To the right: "Page 1 of 1." Good luck tracing this, he thought.

She handed him a third. He did not want it.

"Quite a collection," he said. Boldt's nerves unraveled from time to time, and when it happened, he defaulted to stupid one-liners that seldom won a laugh.

IF ADLER FOODS IS OUT OF BUSINESS WITHIN 30 DAYS, AND ALL OF THE MONEY IS GONE, AND YOU ARE DEAD AND BURIED, THERE WILL BE NO SENSELESS KILLING. THE CHOICE IS YOURS.

"How many days has it been?" It was the first question that popped into his head, though it was answered by the date in the corner. He counted the weeks in his head. The thirty days had expired.

"You see the way he worded it?" Looking down at her feet, she spoke softly, dreamy and terrified. Her lover was the target of these threats, and despite her training, she clearly was not prepared for how to handle it. "The more common threat would be: 'If Adler Foods is not out of business within thirty days... ' You see the difference?"

Her bailiwick, not his, he felt tempted to remind her. "Is that significant?" He played along because she had FRAGILE written all over her.

"To me it's significant. So is the attempt in each fax to place the blame firmly with Owen: It's his decision; his choice." When she looked up at him, he saw that she held back tears.

"Daffy—" he offered, stepping closer.

"Owen and I are not going to see each other—socially—for a while. Me being police and all." She wanted it to sound casual, but failed. "We have to take him seriously now."

Boldt felt a chill. "Do we?" She handed him another.

I AM WAITING. I SUGGEST YOU DO NOT. YOU WILL HAVE TO LIVE WITH YOUR CHOICE. OTHERS WILL NOT BE SO LUCKY.

"It's the first time he's mentioned himself," Boldt noted.

She handed him the last of the group. "That one was sent four days ago. This one arrived this morning."

YOUR INDECISION IS COSTLY. IT CAN, AND WILL, GET MUCH WORSE THAN THIS.

Below this on the fax was a copy of a newspaper article.

"Today's paper," she explained.

The headline read: INFECTIONS BAFFLE DOCTORS—Two children hospitalized.

He read the short article quickly.

"The girl is improving. The boy is not," she told him. "'It can, and will, get much worse than this,'" she quoted.

He looked up. "This is his offer of proof? Is that what you're thinking?"
"He means to be taken seriously."

"I don't get it," he complained, frustrated. "Why didn't you bring this in sooner?"

"Owen didn't want to believe it." She took back the faxes possessively. Her hand trembled. "The second one warns against involving us."

She meant cops. She meant that the reason for them meeting here, and not in the fifth-floor offices, was that she still was not sure how to handle this.
"An Adler employee," Boldt said: "Past or present, an employee is the most likely."

"Owen has Fowler working on it."

She meant Kenny Fowler, formerly of Major Crimes, now Adler's chief of security. Boldt liked Kenny Fowler, and said so. Better yet, he was good police—or had been at one time. She nodded and toyed with a silver ring fashioned into a porpoise that she wore on her right hand.

"I misjudged him," she said so quietly that Boldt leaned in to hear as she repeated herself. Daphne was not one to mumble.

"Are you okay?"

"Sure," she lied.

A black hole. Absorbing energy. Admitting no light—pure darkness. He realized that he had already accepted it, and he wanted to blame her for knowing him so well.

"Talk to me," he said, nervous and irritated.

"You're right about it being an employee. That's the highest percentage bet. But typically it involves extortion, not suicide demands. Howard Taplin, Owen's counsel, wants it handled internally, where there's no chance of press leakage, no police involvement, nothing to violate the demands." This sounded a little too much like the party line, and it bothered him. It was not like her to voice the opinions of others as her own, and he had to wonder what kind of man Howard Taplin was that he seemed to carry so much influence with her. "That's why I have to be so careful in dealing with you. Taplin wants Fowler to handle this internally. Owen overruled this morning. He suggested this meeting—opening a dialogue. But it was not an easy decision."

"We can't be sure this newspaper story is his doing," Boldt told her. "He may have just seized upon a convenient headline."

"Maybe." She clearly believed otherwise, and Boldt trusted Daphne's instincts. Heart and mind; he was reminded of his lecture.

"What's Fowler doing about it?" Boldt asked.

"He doesn't know about this meeting. Not yet. He, like Taplin, advised against involving us. He's looking to identify a disgruntled employee—but he's been on it a month now. He's had a few suspects, but none of them has panned out. His loyalty is to the company. Howard Taplin writes his paychecks, not Owen—if you follow me."

Boldt's irritation surfaced. "If this news story is his doing, I'd say we're a little late."

"I'm to blame. Owen asked me for my professional opinion. I classified the threats as low-risk. I thought whoever it was was blowing smoke. Proper use of the language. The faxes are sent by portable computer from pay phones. Fowler traced the last two to pay phones on Pill Hill. That's a decent enough neighborhood. What that tells us is that in all probability we're dealing with an educated, affluent, white male between the ages of twenty-five and forty. The demands seemed so unrealistic that I assumed this person was venting some anger—nothing more. Owen went along with that. He put Kenny on it and tried to forget it. I screwed this up, Lou." She crossed her arms tightly again and her breasts rode high in the cradle. Again she quoted, "'It can, and will, get much worse than this.'"

Her voice echoed slightly in the cavernous enclosure, circling inside his thoughts like horses on a carousel.

A black hole. His now.

"You want me to took into it, I'll look into it," he offered reluctantly.

"Unofficially."

"You know I can't do that, Daffy."

"Please."

"I'm not a rent-a-cop. Neither are you. We're fifth-floor. You know the way it works."

"Please!"

"I can't do that for very long," he qualified.

"Thank you."

"If either of these kids dies, Daffy—" He left it dangling there, like one of the many broken cobwebs suspended from the cement ceiling.

"I know." She avoided his gaze.

"You'll share everything with me. No stonewalling."

"Agreed."

"Well... maybe not everything," he corrected.

It won a genuine smile from her, and he was glad for that—though it deserted her as quickly as it had come. His frantic footfalls on the formed stairs sounded like the beating of bats' wings as he descended at a run.

The newspaper article had listed one of the hospitals. For Lou Boldt, the victim was where every investigation began.

© Ridley Pearson