Middle of Nowhere

by Ridley Pearson

  Her eyes shone. A tear escaped down her cheek.

  “We’ve upset you,” Daphne apologized to the woman. “Are you avoiding answers, Maria, because we are not I.I., not directly your superiors on this case?”

  “Yes!” Somehow those eyes shouted.

  Again Maria stared at the ceiling, tears running.

  “But we want to help!” an exasperated Boldt pleaded.

  Daphne repeated softly, “Do you think your assault might be connected to your I.I. case?”

  Her eyes shut and reopened. “Yes,” she replied, now staring directly at Boldt.

  Daphne looked across to a relieved Boldt and said,

  “We need this burglar in custody. If he can give us an alibi for the night of her assault, then—”

  “Maybe that would be enough to take a good long 186

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  look at whatever case she was working,” Boldt interrupted. The secrecy surrounding I.I. cases was notoriously impossible to crack. He said, “You’re right about the order of things—this burglar just might become our star witness.”

  C H A P T E R

  22

  Anthony Brumewell caught a glimpse of himself in the driver’s side mirror as the garage door flipped shut electronically and he stepped out into his garage. Working nights was not his thing; he felt exhausted. He entered the home’s small kitchen, dumped his briefcase onto a kitchen chair, and headed straight for the refrigerator and a Coors Lite. He yanked down a jar of dry-roasted peanuts, popped off the yellow plastic lid and spilled out a handful. He blindly reached over for the TV’s remote and came up empty. When he turned toward the TV itself he realized there was no remote control because there was no TV. And that was when the first pang of dread overcame him.

  What the hell? he wondered, his mind fishing for a recollection that might explain its absence. He dropped the beer can on the counter. The peanuts spilled like pebbles onto the floor, and his heart raced furiously. The television had been stolen, he realized now. Was someone still inside the house? He panicked. He picked up the wall phone. No dial tone. “Hello?”

  It was off the hook somewhere else. There were two other phones: one in the living room, one in the bedroom. He scrambled to get out of the house. Only 188

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  then did he notice his home security box had been smashed up.

  Terrified now, Brumewell hurried back out to the garage and into the safety of his car. He locked the car doors, tripped the garage door to open, turned the key and shoved the car into reverse, knocking a mirror off in the process. He reached for the car phone, already stabbing the three numbers he had never before dialed: 911.

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  23

  Another break-in. Boldt contacted the Brumewell crime scene by cell phone and uncharacteristically drove over the speed limit to get there. Phil Shoswitz had caught him while he was on his way to the Jamersons’ for breakfast. Shoswitz’s burglary unit had drawn the investigation on a chaotic morning when nearly nine hundred officers—out of the eleven hundred who had walked out—had returned to work “unexpectedly.”

  The media was camped in the lobby of Public Safety, making a zoo out of the place. The victim—the owner of the house—was waiting for their arrival. The radio led with “breaking news” that the strike had been broken by a tough stance from the new chief. Rumors and stories abounded.

  Without asking if the victim’s home had a garage, Boldt requested that the garage’s clicker be waiting for him.

  SID had not yet arrived. The sunrise had brought rain, then sunshine, now rain again—like Boldt, it couldn’t make up its mind. There had been no assault and therefore no detective initially assigned. It was only through the diligent eye of a dispatcher that Shoswitz had been notified at all. With Flu-time burglaries at an 190

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  all-time high, and low on SPD’s priority list, Anthony Brumewell might have been missed by the radar entirely. Boldt intentionally blocked the short driveway with the Cavalier. Sunshine again. He hoped it might hold. He didn’t want SID pulling their van in there as they had at the Sanchez crime scene. Cleanliness was next to godliness at a crime scene.

  The patrolman said, “I’ve got the owner in the front seat of the cruiser, if you want to—”

  “Later,” Boldt said, accepting the clicker from the man. “Take down his statement, Officer . . . Mallory. No editorials. Just let him talk. You’ve got five to ten minutes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If the press shows up, you keep them away from him. You got that?”

  “Got it.”

  “SID waits outside as well. Anyone entering while the captain and I are inside will be chalking tires. That includes you, Officer Mallory. You want me, you page me. Dispatch has the number.”

  The officer nodded but looked a shade or two paler than a moment earlier. He took off as Shoswitz caught up. Boldt pressed the clicker and the garage door opened out and up, reminding Boldt of a mouth of a tomb. He handed Shoswitz a pair of latex gloves. “You ready, Captain?”

  Shoswitz rubbed his elbow violently. Boldt took that as a “yes.”

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  Brumewell’s garage was crowded, though not cluttered, with collapsible lawn furniture and rusted garden tools hanging from nails on the wall. Boldt and Shoswitz steered their way clear, and then Boldt tripped the clicker he held in his hand, the garage door slowly closing.

  “What’s with your interest in the garage?” Shoswitz asked.

  “Point of entry,” Boldt answered. “Dead-bolted homes, Phil. It took us a while to see the common denominator. Our boy clones the garage door clickers, probably by hanging around nearby and picking up frequencies. I had someone looking for a name for us, but I haven’t heard from him, so I suspect we’ve drawn a blank.”

  “My guys didn’t have this garage thing?” Shoswitz queried, a little troubled.

  “Neither did I, Phil. Sanchez gets the credit on this one.” They entered the kitchen. Boldt speculated, “My guess is that the burglar takes only one big risk: He backs his van into the victim’s garage in broad daylight and then shuts the door. If he pulls that off cleanly, he’s home free. Probably carries a police-band scanner with him. If it’s me, I put the scanner in a pocket and an earpiece in one ear. If I hear this address called in, I’m gone. Otherwise, once he’s inside, he’s inside.”

  Shoswitz followed Boldt out of the kitchen and into a living area, where several vacant spaces on shelves marked some of the stolen electronics. A cable TV box 192

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  sat on a table’s empty surface. A VCR, untouched. “My guys didn’t get this?” a frustrated captain repeated.

  “Not important,” Boldt said.

  “It is to me.”

  “You made inquires about an I.I. connection?”

  “First thing. But the chances I’ll hear back—”

  “I know,” Boldt interrupted.

  Boldt had greeted LaMoia’s return to the fifth floor by dumping a copy of all eleven burglaries on his desk and ordering him to use his contacts in the private sector to look for possible insurance fraud. Standing in Brumewell’s living room, he made notes about the missing electronics.

  “Clean job,” Shoswitz said. “It’s no junkie, that’s for sure.”

  The comment triggered a thought, and Boldt dropped to his knees, searching the area behind the cabinet that had held the TV.

  Shoswitz followed obediently, also dropping to the carpet. A moment later, he asked sheepishly, “What exactly are we looking for, Lou?”

  Boldt stretched, squeezing his arm between the cabinet and wall. As he touched the object, his mind leaped ahead wondering where Pendegrass and Chapman fit in, and if he’d ever prove a connection between these men and the assaults.

  “This!” he said, suddenly jubilant. Pinched between his latex-gloved fingers he held a white plast
ic wire-tie.

  C H A P T E R

  24

  ThenoonnewscarriedapleafromKrishevskitothe mayor to drop the “hardball tactics” and allow police officers to “once again take their place, protecting and serving the city of Seattle.” But it proved too little, too late. The mayor had played his card—health services had invalidated dozens of sick leaves and officers were being fired from the force.

  Krishevski attempted to turn Schock and Phillipp into martyrs, claiming that inexperienced officers promoted prematurely by the chief, with the mayor’s blessing, had failed to support the detectives and that the chief should be held directly responsible for their injuries. The pressure failed. In a press release, the mayor announced that the two hundred and twelve firings were not under reconsideration, that health services had determined that these officers claiming sick leave had been perfectly capable of serving their city and had lost the public’s trust, causing permanent damage to the reputation of all city employees and services. Krishevski, it was announced, was himself fired, and the mayor announced he would no longer be considered president of the guild, as this position, according to charter, had to be held by an active police officer. 194

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  Viewed as nothing more than a negotiating position, the nature of Krishevski’s status remained in question. A compromise seemed inevitable. The cost to both sides—politically and economically—had not yet been calculated.

  “You look awful,” LaMoia told Boldt upon entering the man’s office. “But this . . .” he said, indicating the busy fifth floor, “this, is beautiful.”

  The floor teemed with activity.

  “Partially trained cadets promoted to uniform; uniforms to plainclothes,” Boldt complained. “It’s a circus. No one knows what the hell they’re doing. And they’re all acting like they won the lottery, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” LaMoia said. “You wanted it over, Sarge. Krishevski will be gone by the end of the day. Everyone wanted this thing over. Once you’ve seen all the Seinfelds twice—”

  “I feel more like a schoolteacher than a lieutenant.”

  LaMoia grinned and said, “We got more members of our unit back than any other division. That’s what I hear.”

  “Thirteen shields out of seventeen.” Disappointed. He had wanted them all back.

  “Yeah, well, those other four? Poor, poor pitiful them,” he said, intentionally misquoting a Warren Zevon song. LaMoia was Zevon’s biggest fan. Boldt recognized that cocky grin of LaMoia’s. With no less than a dozen active cases on the desks of every returning detective, including his sergeant’s, this wasn’t a social call. “So give it up,” Boldt suggested. M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  “I made some calls,” the man confirmed proudly.

  “It isn’t insurance fraud,” LaMoia said, knowingly disappointing his boss. “And I tried everything I could think of, in terms of trying to connect the vics to each other . . . in terms of trying to determine how our boy is picking them as targets. Their finances came up blank. No overlaps I could see. Mind you, it’s a quick pass, and not all my calls have been returned. There may still be something there. A gas station they all used. A department store. Some one place they all shared in common.”

  “Then why that look?” Boldt asked.

  “What look?” LaMoia asked, offering the look again.

  “Are you going to chortle over there all day, or you going to tell me what you have?”

  “Who says I have anything?”

  “John—”

  “It’s not exactly convincing evidence, Sarge. It’s a connection, is all.” He added confidently, teasing the man, “Sure, maybe even the connection we’re looking for, but not something you can take to Shoswitz or Hill.”

  Boldt elected not to speak, not to engage the man. LaMoia would drag this out as long as he could, would make Boldt beg, if possible.

  “The silent treatment?”

  Boldt said nothing. He offered only a lazy-eyed stare.

  “Okay. . . . Okay. You wanted me to work the insurance angle. So I did like you asked. A decent idea worth pursuing. But it came back blank, as I said. Zip. Zero. 196

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  And then I catch the unexpected, and I’m thinking,

  ‘Well, maybe not exactly zero.’” He waited for Boldt to react, but the man remained as patient as a fisherman. At that point it became a contest, and Boldt finally gave in. “Caught what?”

  “Lucky as hell I did catch it, because it wasn’t anything I was looking for. You know? You know how that is, Sarge? You’re looking so damned hard for that missing red shoe that you overlook something way more important. Something right there in front of you. A knife . . . a gun . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “John—”

  “A name is all,” LaMoia said. “Of the nine burglary vics, three of them had switched their household policies in the weeks prior to the break-ins. All three to the same company, Consolidated Mutual.”

  Boldt sat forward. “Three of the nine had switched insurance carriers.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. Yes.”

  “New policies.”

  “Yes.”

  “Bigger policies?”

  “No. Not a one of them. It’s not that,” LaMoia said.

  “It’s not fraud—it’s just that switch.”

  “A salesman. Maybe door to door,” Boldt speculated. “He gets a look inside. He picks his targets.”

  “More what I was thinking. Yes.” LaMoia said,

  “Maybe he’s in as partners, maybe just sells the info to our burglar and lets him take it from there. But it’s a M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  connection, something that ties one to the other, and either way, we’ve got to chat up this company.”

  “Consolidated Mutual,” Boldt repeated.

  “Not actually,” LaMoia corrected. “Something called Newmann Communications. They’re out of Denver.”

  Boldt scribbled down the name. He knew that look: LaMoia had rolled over a large rock.

  “Our problem is that it never showed up on any of the burglary reports,” LaMoia stated obliquely. Again Boldt waited him out rather than feed the flames. LaMoia asked, “You spoke to this Helen Brooks-Gilman, Sarge. And to Kawamoto. Did either happen to mention a pair of free movie tickets?”

  Boldt asked sarcastically, “Are you on some kind of medication?”

  “How about phone solicitations?”

  Brooks-Gilman had in fact mentioned phone solicitations, though it had been nothing more than a denigrating comment about the intrusion upon their privacy. She’d said something about how those were the people who should be arrested. He thought he also recalled Kawamoto saying something similar to him.

  “Phone solicitations?” Boldt queried.

  “You check the phone logs at Newmann Communications, my guess is you’ll find out that that’s what all the burglary victims shared in common: they all received phone solicitations from Newmann. Several chose to up their insurance coverage; others cashed in 198

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  on free movie tickets. It’s the linkage, Sarge. It’s how they were targeted. So tell me what you’re really thinking,” LaMoia said, crossing his arms and leaning back.

  “Tell me how fucking great it is to have me back on the job.”

  C H A P T E R

  25

  Squeezed by Seattle’s prosecuting attorney, Newmann Communications found itself facing the possibility of a federal investigation into interstate fraud if it failed to cooperate with Seattle PD. With the Sanchez case still belonging to Matthews, she and Boldt were dispatched to Denver to confirm the role of a phone solicitation campaign in the string of burglaries and, if possible, identify the particular employee responsible for tipping off the burglar back in Seattle on which homes to hit.

  Hoping they might accomplish the task in a single day, both Bold
t and Matthews nonetheless packed overnight bags and booked hotel rooms, believing two, or even three days more likely. Police work rarely went off like clockwork.

  Newmann Communications occupied a four-office suite in a mud-colored cement block building that housed KSPK, a conservative talk radio station, and Irving’s Red Hots, a diner featuring hot dogs. The sausage odors fouled the building. The employment flyers in the firm’s reception lobby—a room that reminded Boldt of a department store changing room—gave away its game—Earn 200

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  Money While Staying At Home! Internet Opportunities, Retail Management, Adult Entertainment. Printed on green construction paper, the small flyers fit well in the human palm—perfect as handouts on downtown sidewalks and college campuses. Phillip Rathborne listed President/CEO on his office door. The oily scalp, bad complexion, and knockoff Armani suit suggested a man in his forties or early fifties, but the degree on the wall from North Florida Junior College put his graduation just six years earlier, meaning he had not yet crossed thirty. The office tried too hard to imply money but reminded Boldt instead of a room found in a truck stop motel with a heartshaped bath. The clock, phone and desk lamp had been bought through the Sharper Image catalog, but the desk was granite veneer, chipped at the edges, and the jungle plant in the corner needed a serious vacuuming. The computer looked authentic—its monitor screen was large enough to be a window, something the office lacked; the screen saver played images of fairways at Pebble Beach and Augusta.

  Boldt was all business. “You received a call from the Colorado Department of Justice,” he began. Boldt had called the office and had been informed that the count had increased: Seven of the nine burglary victims recalled the phone solicitation offering free movie tickets and had accepted the offer. Lawsuits seemed certain to follow. Newmann Communications could anticipate leniency in return for cooperation. Boldt expected nothing less. M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  “I did,” Rathborne confirmed. The man seemed preoccupied with Daphne’s silence and her intense beauty, a common enough occurrence. Useful to interrogations, her looks could be used as a means of distraction. She wore a scarf to hide the neck scar where a knife had cut her a few years before, and a blouse buttoned to the top. The less skin the better—unless she needed something from someone. Her job this time around was to play the silent, powerful type. When she finally chose to speak, she would be the more difficult of the two, leaving Rathborne surprised that ice could flow from such heat.