Middle of Nowhere

by Ridley Pearson

  “It’s both our faults,” Boldt said. “But it doesn’t feel that way.”

  “Good,” she said. “That somehow makes me feel better.” She asked, “Emotionally? Are you emotionally attached?”

  “It was a single kiss. It’s not an affair.”

  “But of the heart?” she asked with difficulty.

  “Where’s your heart in all this?”

  “Broken at the moment, as I imagine yours is. But the pieces are all with you, Elizabeth, with us. Every last piece.”

  “I need air. I need time to think!”

  “I . . .” Boldt began.

  But she stood and made for the door, her purse trailing by its strap. She held herself high—ever Liz. Boldt felt as if he were swimming underwater. Consumed in darkness. He pushed the food aside, his appetite gone, wondering what came next. He felt sick. Sick, and incredibly cold.

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  Boldt wishedthatLiz hadblownupathiminanger, because as it was, her level-headed wait-and-see approach only served to increase his sense of guilt. Boldt wasn’t a drinker. The only outlet for his frustration was work. Work consumed him, took his mind off nearly anything. And he wanted that. Boldt contacted one Frederick Osbourne at AirTyme Cellular and provided him with Flek’s cell phone number, which Samway had supplied in the course of her second interrogation. Osbourne explained that the technology and methodology existed to locate analog cellular phones, but that it was not a real-time process. He, Osbourne, would begin tracking Flek’s cellular calls and report back to Boldt. Of all their current efforts to locate Flek, Boldt held to the hope that Osbourne’s radio triangulation would come through. Sinking back into despair, Boldt blocked calls, prevented visitors, and spent nearly four hours in his office reviewing the Sanchez jacket, which had swollen to a thick file, though under Daphne’s care remained properly organized and easily navigated. There Daphne was, right there in his hands. He couldn’t seem to escape her. He focused his attentions M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  on the Brooks-Gilman case—the investigation that Sanchez had taken over in the wake of the Blue Flu reassignments. Prior to her assault, she had identified that Flek used garage door openers to break and enter. Boldt understood that he had allowed her work on the case to mislead him. It was the I.I. case that seemed more likely to have gotten her beat up, the I.I. case that interested him. Yet without I.I.’s cooperation, he didn’t know how he might break that case. Flek’s testimony still seemed the most important first step. If Flek had an alibi for the night of Sanchez’s assault, then Boldt had the necessary ammunition to pressure I.I. into including him in on what they knew about whatever had led to Sanchez, Schock and Phillipp all ending up in the hospital.

  He called down to the lab and reached Bernie Lofgrin. He asked about the boots recovered from Flek’s closet in the first raid.

  “What about them?” Lofgrin asked.

  “Guy I spoke to said they were Converse, but have you compared the tread pattern to that Nike pattern you found on Sanchez’s leather jacket?”

  “I have, and I sent them to Property. That’s where her jacket is as well.”

  Mention of Property reminded Boldt of Ron Chapman and his visit to the Cock & Bull the night Schock and Phillipp had been “mugged.”

  “Property,” Boldt repeated.

  “That’s right,” Lofgrin said. “Do you ever read your E-mails?”

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  “I was out of town,” Boldt said, spinning around to check his computer. Seventeen messages. In the chaos of LaMoia’s injuries and Samway’s surveillance, he’d fallen behind. He began to scroll through them, pulling up the one from Lofgrin as the man said into his ear,

  “Tread pattern lifted from the jacket came back as Air Nike. Flek’s closet contained two pair of Converse All Stars. Both are ubiquitous, but they’re not interchangeable. Not even close.”

  “Same size?” Boldt asked, reading from his screen that the impression from Sanchez’s jacket had been a size 12.

  “Flek wears a fourteen,” Lofgrin answered. “Again, no match to what we lifted from that jacket.” He waited.

  “Lou? You there?”

  “Thinking.”

  “Not what you wanted to hear,” Lofgrin stated, “or you would have hung up on me, as you always do.”

  “Do I?” Boldt asked, astonished to learn this about himself.

  “Every time,” Lofgrin confirmed.

  “The Nike . . .” Boldt said. “Is it a distinct print?”

  “You bring me the shoe and chances are I can tie it to Sanchez’s jacket. A little visit to Property is all it would take.”

  There it was again: Property. He made sure to thank Lofgrin before hanging up. Who said you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks?

  He called down to Property. Riorden answered. Riorden ran with Pendegrass, both of them on Krish-M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E 341

  evski’s squad. Krishevski and Pendegrass had both been discharged in the chief’s health service sweep. Riorden had somehow survived. Boldt elected to skip the small talk. By now, news of Boldt and LaMoia’s late-night visit to Pendegrass would have reached Riorden—he could do business with the man, but he wasn’t going to win any friends.

  “I need you to check your logbook for me,” Boldt informed him.

  “For?”

  “Schock or Phillipp,” Boldt said. “Any visits in the last ten days?”

  Silence on the line. “Let me check,” Riorden replied. Boldt waited to hear the pages of the logbook turning—he had the ears of a bat—but heard nothing, not even the clicking of computer keys. “Nothing I see, Lieutenant. You might want to check yourself.”

  This time it was Boldt who left the silence on the line. “Yeah . . . okay . . . thanks . . .” he said, knowing his ears had not failed him. Why hadn’t Riorden even bothered to check the log? Out of obstinacy? Pissed off over Boldt’s questioning of Pendegrass? Did the Flu still continue inside these walls? The thought that a handful of officers might yet still be sabotaging the efforts of those officers who had remained on their job during the Flu stayed with Boldt on his extended ride home.

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  He stopped at The Joke’s On You and played six ballads during a break in the comedy routine. Bear Berenson finally interrupted him, saying, “That’s some really dark shit you’re playing, man.”

  He drove next to Carkeek Park and walked the water’s edge, wondering what to think about Riorden’s apparent refusal to assist him. As dusk fell and the Sound washed gray from green, as radio towers winked and jets flew almost silently overhead, Boldt felt overwhelmed. His personal life was in tatters. Fellow officers were backstabbing his efforts to set the record straight on Sanchez and perhaps Schock and Phillipp in the process. His knee-jerk reaction was to call Daphne, but he wisely ruled that out. Instead, he made the drive home. Home, where he belonged.

  He climbed out of the car, accidentally kicking an empty Starbucks cup into the driveway. As he bent to retrieve it, the driver’s door window blew out above his head cascading down as a thousand cubes of tempered glass.

  His detective’s mind immediately registered that he’d been shot at—an intended chest shot. A kill shot. His next coherent thought was Flek! He edged beneath the car instinctively, defenseless but partially protected and less vulnerable. He waited for the second shot, hoping there wasn’t enough of him exposed to take a bullet. His heart raced out of control and he wondered if a heart attack might kill him instead. Ten seconds passed. Twenty. . . . M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  The shot had not made any noise. Even the window shattering had sounded like little more than a hand clap and pebbles spilling onto pavement. He didn’t want Liz alerted, didn’t want to bring her to the door for any reason. One Boldt as a target was enough. A long shot, Boldt thought, recalling the rifle Manny Wong had sold Fle
k. Probably from on a roof or up in a tree, and at a long distance, which might explain why he had not heard any report from the weapon. Not even a trailing echo. Maybe Wong had saved his life by resighting that scope.

  He stayed there under the car, collecting himself, wondering if a German sniper sight was searching the edge of the car, looking for enough flesh to sink a bullet into. He heard tapping on a window. He couldn’t see, but he knew it was Liz, inside the house, wondering where he was. She’d seen his car. Perhaps she had heard the dull pop of the driver’s door glass. His kids would be getting ready for bed. Maybe already in bed. The rest of the world was going about its business. It took him a moment to extricate his right arm and ease himself out from under the car. He didn’t want Liz to come looking for him. She’d come home without consulting him. For a moment a husband’s anger boiled inside him. Maybe his sniper was doing him a favor. Could he tell his wife he’d just been shot at? In his own driveway?

  Did he have any choice?

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  He squeezed himself out from under the car and ran, crouched low, to the back of the house. He entered through the kitchen door, sat Liz down and explained that he’d just been shot at. He wasn’t going to tell her to take the kids and leave. That would be left for her to decide. They embraced. Boldt felt himself swell with tears—the fear of the last few minutes wanting an outlet.

  Boldt groaned.

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Daphne,” he answered, believing her still questioning the kiss.

  “The gun shot,” she corrected, tension steeling. “Who shot at you, and what are you going to do about it?”

  He leaned back, drew his weapon from its holster, and checked it as he spoke to her. She didn’t like that. A tension settled between them. “I’m going to check the park. I think the shot came from there. If I’m lucky, I find a shell casing. Doubtful, but worth a try.” He hurried so that she wouldn’t interrupt. “After that, I’m going to go out there and look for the bullet, which is probably the only chance we have for evidence.”

  “You’re going to report it,” she stated with no uncertainty.

  “All they’d do is look for a slug and a shell casing. Believe me, I know how this works. And when we find the slug or the shell casing, it’ll be from a Chinese manufacture long-barrel assault rifle.”

  “You do know who it is,” she said. M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  “A pretty good idea is all,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t win convictions.”

  They met eyes—hers filled with concern. Then she softened and said, “Lou, if you’d kissed some waitress at a bachelor party . . .” surprising him. “But this isn’t the same thing. Not even close. I’ve changed over these last couple of years, I know that. I’m not so sure you have. Which is fine. Let me just say this: if you don’t want me, I don’t want you. But for the sake of the kids, I’d do anything not to break us up. Not now. Not so young anyway. I’m angry with you. Not so much for what you did, but for allowing it to happen. I’ve got my faith to keep me strong. What do you have?” She stepped back and crossed her arms defiantly. “Go find your slug. Tonight, I’ll sleep with Miles. For their sake, we’re loving and cheerful in the morning.”

  “Maybe I’ll wait ’til morning to look,” he suggested, hoping they might still talk it through.

  “You?” she asked. “Do you know yourself at all?”

  “Maybe not,” he answered.

  “Maybe not,” she agreed. “You’re a cop. Once and forever.” Her eyes sparked, a thought clearly filling her head. That look on her face grew with intensity. “You’re a cop! Meaning our phone is unpublished, and always has been. Your name—our address—is not in any phone book, any listing, anywhere. So how did this guy know which house to watch? Right? I mean, that’s the point of the privacy, of all the secrecy. Right?”

  “The Internet?” he wondered aloud. “I don’t know,”

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  he answered, somewhat lifelessly. Her reasoning bored into him deeper the more he thought about it. Who was the cop in the family now?

  How, indeed? he wondered, looking at that assassin’s bullet in a whole new light.

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  He spent an hour in the park, and found no evidence of his would-be assassin. He searched his driveway in the dark. Again, nothing. In the dim light of dawn, Boldt methodically searched his driveway a second time. Flat-bottomed wisps, like micro-clouds, hovered in the air twenty feet off the ground. Birds awakened with their percussive morning calls and crackles, not yet song. Someone across the street had NPR playing too loudly. Boldt could almost make out the news stories himself. There would be nothing there about the attempted assassination of a cop; nothing there about a police manhunt for Bryce Abbott Flek that grew in scale each day. Presently, that manhunt included not only SPD, but King County Police, the state sheriff’s office and the Washington State Transportation Department; nothing on the news about Boldt’s attempt to locate Flek’s cellular phone while in use.

  When he discovered a small hole in the garage’s gray clapboard siding, the only convincing evidence that drew him to it was the fresh splinters of wood showing. Seattle’s dampness aged any exposed wood quickly—a week or two and a broken branch or a 348

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  recently sawed two by four might be mistaken for a year old. But these tiny slivers of missing wood surrounding the oddly shaped hole were a golden blond. The hole’s location at knee height puzzled him, and it took a moment to convince himself the slug could have ricocheted off the blacktop and landed so high up on the wall, but as an investigator he knew better than to doubt the obvious— anything could happen. He had not thought to look at this height. He had cost himself time. He dug the slug from the garage wall with a hammer and flat blade screwdriver, taking more of the clapboard than necessary to ensure he didn’t further damage the slug. He wanted it as intact as possible for SID’s ballistics analysis.

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  Like an expectant father, Boldt waited in a formed fiberglass chair inside Bernie Lofgrin’s office. Lofgrin joined his friend at the first opportunity.

  “I’d really appreciate a case number to assign that slug,” Lofgrin said.

  “Later.”

  “Suit yourself, but the work goes down in my log and it’s easier for all if that number’s attached. The computer won’t accept it without a number, which means it will stand out. Get noticed. Be brought to my attention during some forensics audit, and therefore to your attention.”

  “I’ll call down a number,” Boldt told him. M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  “Oh, goodie,” Lofgrin said. “Because by that look on your face, I was afraid it was personal. And you know the new lab policy about doing personal work for officers.”

  “No, it’s not personal.”

  “Not that I wouldn’t make exceptions for my closest friends,” Lofgrin said, still prying, “but I’d have to know to make those exceptions well before the computers became involved. You can see my point.”

  “I see your point.”

  Lofgrin added, “How’s Floorshow doing anyway?”

  Boldt felt a hole in the center of his chest. He hadn’t checked up on LaMoia in days. He felt awful about it. “Better, I think,” he said.

  “Give him my best.”

  “Right.”

  “Here we go,” Lofgrin said, indicating a lab woman approaching Lofgrin’s office. “Your ballistics report.”

  She knocked on the open door and Lofgrin admitted her, introducing her to Boldt, who missed her name. She looked first to her boss, then to Boldt. “Is this some kind of test or something?” she asked them both, clearly irritated. To Lofgrin she complained,

  “Does the upstairs brass know that we didn’t lose anyone to the Flu? That we don’t need this kind of thing to prove our competency? Our loyalty
.” To Boldt she said, “Are you the messenger here, Lieutenant? I’ve got better things to do than be tested like this.” Addressing Lofgrin she said, “Maybe we should remind the brass 350

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  that we’re civilian employees, that we have actual, active cases to work—pressing cases—and that school got out for most of us ten years ago.” Throwing the file onto Lofgrin’s desk, she said meanly, “Someone tell the person who did this to stop blowing smoke up my ass.”

  Meeting eyes with Boldt, she said, “I quit smoking.” She stormed off.

  Lofgrin grinned. “I just love a passionate employee,”

  he said.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Boldt asked. Lofgrin opened the manila folder and read from the single page it contained. He nodded to himself and smiled. “Oh, I get it,” he mumbled.

  “I don’t,” Boldt said.

  “Somebody’s pulling your chain on this slug, Lou. No wonder you didn’t want to give me a case number—

  you sly dog! Are you in on this?”

  “In on what?” Boldt said, raising his voice.

  “Someone is apparently testing us.”

  Boldt said, guessing, “Fired from a Chinese manufacture assault rifle? Can you determine that?”

  “You’re not serious? Come on! This slug? This baby was fired from a rifle that’s down in Property. Confiscated in that gang raid where Williamson and Hobner were both shot. This is the rifle that winged Williamson. She’s right: I mean why waste our time with something like this? And you, Lou, a part of it? You ought to be ashamed.”

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  Boldt repeated for his own sake, “This gun is supposed to be locked up in Property?”

  “Supposed to be?” a confused Lofgrin replied. “This is some kind of joke, right?”

  Boldt didn’t think so. He’d been on the receiving end.

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  Addressing Sergeant Ron Chapman from outside SPD’s Property room, Boldt said, “Ronnie, we’ve got some confusion about a confiscated weapon.” He handed the man some paperwork from SID. It bore a reference number for the rifle that had fired on Boldt.