Beyond Recognition lbadm-4

by Ridley Pearson

  He didn’t want to cry in front of her, to set her off, to start something he felt so unclear about, so incapable of articulating. He wanted to treasure her, to trust her, to believe. He feared the truth; he didn’t want to know-and the realization swept through him that this was the first time he had purposely and intentionally not wanted the truth. As an investigator, curiosity drove him, fed him. It was the fuel of his professional existence, and yet now he stifled it, like throwing a wet blanket over a fire. To him this was a profound and significant difference, and one he interpreted as a weakness. A crack in the armor.

  The mother beckoned with outstretched arms, and the child, seeing this, stopped crying and wiggled to be free. Boldt envied Liz this biological connection and for a moment felt himself a visitor in his own home. Liz sat up high in the tub and, cradling the child, offered her ripened breast. The hungry lips drew her mother into her and Liz smiled slightly, closed her eyes, and leaned her head back against the tub. Boldt studied his wife’s nakedness from head to toe, her youthful breasts, trim waist, the grassy swatch of black hair between her long legs. He didn’t want anyone else having this. He felt possessive. He wondered why he had allowed his own body to train-wreck the way it had. He blamed himself.

  “Didn’t I hear your pager?” she questioned, her eyes still closed.

  Did she want him out of the house? He felt a flood of anger surge through him. He stood taller and drew his stomach a little tighter. He suddenly wished he looked different, less disheveled, more hair, better tone to his muscles. Had her eye wandered? Was he aging too quickly for her?

  “Yeah,” he answered. Was she going to blame the pager for awakening Sarah? It wouldn’t be the first time. She had fallen into the habit recently of blaming him for all sorts of things, many out of his control. He had let most of these complaints pass unchallenged, but they had eaten into him like dry rot, damage unseen to the naked eye.

  “You going to call it in?” she asked. The lines of her naked form were a work of art. He wished the tub were big enough for both of them. He wanted to feel her skin against his, warm and wet.

  “Yeah.” When had he not called it in? he wondered. He was a slave to his work. He lived for it.

  She opened her eyes slightly, like a person drugged-dreamy and quiet. The baby suckled her. Again he was struck by how he envied that connection. He wondered what it must feel like to her, the aching swelling of the breast relieved, her fluids giving life to another. “You okay?” she asked, her brow knitted sharply, her eyes suddenly pained.

  “Sure,” he replied.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Fine,” he lied to her, wondering when and how that had become such an easy thing to do.

  “You know what it is?” she asked. He looked back at her curiously, wondering if this was to be her moment of confession. Strangely, he didn’t want that just now. “The pager,” she explained. “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “No, it’s not that,” he informed her.

  “Then what?”

  “Regrets. Concerns.” He heard his voice betray him. Betrayal fed on itself, he thought, like those insects that eat their mates.

  Her eyes came open wider. Her hips rolled in the water as she leaned toward him. She floated there, motionless. She cradled the baby tighter to her. “Honey?”

  He had an urge to make love to her. Possess her. He knew it was for all the wrong reasons. “Maybe we should talk at some point,” he said, though he sounded defeated and he knew she picked up on it.

  “I’m all yours,” she said.

  I wonder, Lou Boldt thought. He nodded, though insincerely. She took the baths to clean herself up, to keep him from knowing. A cleansing. Purify her from whoever else had been with her. He ached, wondering what drove such thoughts.

  “Go to work, Sergeant,” she ordered. “I’m not going to get mad about it.”

  “I’ll call in,” he said. “Check it out.”

  “I’ll wait up,” she told him, acknowledging with more certainty than he wished that the page was going to take him from their home. She was right, of course, it nearly always did. The pager was the giant stage hook, designed, it seemed, to steal him from his home life. To disrupt. He had come to hate it. “Or I’ll try to, depending how late you are.” She chuckled. The baby lost her mother’s nipple, and Liz helped her to find it again.

  “You two are beautiful,” he said, still living with the urge to have her sexually. He felt his throat choke and turned toward the phone to prevent her from seeing the betrayal of tears that filled his eyes.

  Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Boldt thought, the wind blowing through his close-cropped hair-what was left of it; her silhouette caught by a streetlamp that lit the running path that surrounded Green Lake. Daphne Matthews was a little too fit, a little too pretty; she never quite looked the part.

  The lake was several acres of black water surrounded by the running path, a perimeter road lined on the east with cafes and a quality restaurant or two. Lush wooded hills, densely populated with neighborhoods of two- and three-story clapboard houses built in the city’s first big boom-the timber era-seventy years earlier, rose on three sides, containing the lake in a jeweled bowl of window lights. Green Lake was picturesque and charming, like something from a New England village postcard. South of the lake were recreation fields for softball and soccer, lit at night by steel towers projecting a harsh, stark light visible at a great distance. At 8 P.M. the lake’s running path still saw a great deal of use, men and women running or walking alone for the most part, as contrasted with the pairs of couples and friends and associates that exercised in the early morning and at lunchtime.

  Daphne wore jeans and a stone-washed blue silk jacket over a crisp white shirt buttoned to her neck. He joined her and they started walking, holding to the right side of the path, allowing the breathless joggers to pass. The lake was convenient to both their houses. She had recommended they meet there, as they had so many times before.

  “Emily Richland uses a shill who checks the cars of her clients. Information about the cars is passed to her, and she can make some damn good educated guesses as to who is sitting in front of her.”

  “Am I supposed to be surprised?” he asked, his mind elsewhere.

  “The guy with the burned hand came to her place looking to check a couple of dates: October second, two days before Heifitz; and then again on Saturday. Lou, I think it’s the arsonist.” Before he could speak, she said, “His right hand-the last three fingers are fused in a kind of paddle. Badly burned. He’s military. Air Force, maybe. I think she’s holding out on me. I think she has more.”

  Boldt’s mind raced away from him, removing his concern about Liz’s affair and focusing solely on the suspect. He realized that he buried himself in work for a reason. “His car?”

  “A truck.” She gave Boldt the description that Emily had given her.

  “Air Force,” Boldt mumbled.

  “She thinks this guy is involved in drug deals, not arson. And maybe that’s right, maybe he’s dealing in drug lab chemicals, maybe that’s how he got the burned hand, maybe it has nothing whatsoever to do with arson, but I think it’s one hell of a lead.”

  “A psychic,” Boldt said. “Do you know how Shoswitz is going to react to this?”

  “A fraud,” she reminded him. “If we get her accomplice, the one who actually saw this guy’s truck, Jesus, I think we’ve got a hell of a witness. The two of them? Are you kidding me? One of them studied the truck, the other spoke to the man. He was nervous, real concerned about October second.”

  “Or maybe he’s just a middleman,” Boldt was thinking aloud. “Maybe he’s selling some chemicals to our boy. Maybe he even thinks they’re for a drug lab. We won’t know until we get there.”

  “I paid her two hundred. I think another two and we’ll get more. I think if we sat on the place we’d ID her accomplice. She needs the spy. The scam doesn’t work without the spy. Furthermore,” she added, pulling on
his elbow to keep him from interfering with an approaching runner, “she thinks he’ll return.”

  Boldt stopped walking. Daphne went on a step or two. He said, “Return?”

  “He’s already been there twice,” she said proudly.

  “Military? Maybe Garman was military, maybe Air Force. Maybe they served together. Maybe that’s the connection.”

  “A woman was involved,” she said, reminding him of the connection between the two victims. “A divorced woman.”

  Boldt walked to catch up to her. The two started walking again. “Heifitz was widowed,” he reminded.

  “She was separated,” Daphne corrected. “As good as divorced, I’m told, when her former husband up and died on her. Went down on the records as widowed.” She walked a few more steps and then said emphatically, “Divorced single moms, Lou. That’s what we’re looking at. Count on it.”

  He was a cop who based his investigations on the information a victim could reveal. He caught himself walking faster, out of excitement. Thoughts sparked in his head; he could barely contain them. “We can link the victims!” he nearly shouted.

  “Why do you think I paged you? Link? I don’t know. But we’ve got some obvious common denominators.”

  “Divorced single mothers,” Boldt repeated. “Both of them,” he stated. He could barely contain his excitement. He felt like screaming. The victim! he thought. The victim can tell more about a homicide than a pile of crime-scene evidence.

  “That’s it,” she confirmed. “Age of the kids?”

  “Didn’t check.”

  “We need to.” Searching for a way the two women might have been targeted by the killer, Boldt listed, “Group therapy-you know, coping-with-divorce classes-church groups, what else?”

  “Book clubs,” she suggested.

  “Cooking classes, gyms.”

  “Plumbers, electricians-”

  “Ladders!” he barked, stopping again. His excitement bubbled out of him. He could see it become contagious in her. “We’re close! Plumbers, electricians …”

  “Roofers, masons, chimney sweeps …”

  “A house painter!” he exclaimed. “The cotton fibers at the base of the ladder.”

  “What?”

  He spoke so rapidly that his words blurred. “We found cotton fibers alongside the ladder … at the base of the ladder. Bernie’s working on them. What do you want to bet they come up positive for petroleum products?”

  “Slow down,” she said. “I mean, slow your walking. You’re practically running.”

  “Both of them divorced,” Boldt repeated for the third time.

  “Dating services,” she offered. “It’s hell out there as a single mom.”

  “Both divorced,” Boldt said gleefully. He stopped her, grabbing her by the shoulders, overwhelmed with a feeling of accomplishment. “You’re a genius!”

  They stood face-to-face, both breathing hard, the path light catching half their faces, their eyes locked, his large hands firmly gripping her narrow shoulders. Electricity sparked between them, a familiar energy, and Boldt sensed how precariously close he was to kissing her.

  He released her and backed off.

  “Oh, God,” she gasped, maintaining eye contact, confirming her own desires.

  Lou Boldt nodded imperceptibly, his heart pounding in his chest and then breaking into pieces.

  21

  Walking to the school bus stop on a wet Friday morning in mid-October, cars everywhere, their drivers anxious and agitated, everyone in such a hurry, Ben sensed he was being followed. Spilling the beans to Emily had not quieted the sensation, as Ben had hoped. He dreamt about it. He felt it at all times. He had absolutely no doubt that someone was back there. It was not something that needed proof. He knew! If Emily could know things, why couldn’t he? Perhaps he possessed the Power as well.

  For Ben, all fear, all terror, all misgiving had previously existed in the form, the shape, the image of his stepfather. He had compartmentalized it, defined it, so that he recognized it. For years it had been the only fear he knew. All else was tame by comparison.

  Tame, until that moment when Ben realized a second, more palpable fear: fear of the unknown, the unexpected. He had an idea about the identity of the person following him. And of this he had no doubt: He was being watched. It had to do with the money from the truck. Emily had said that things would work out. Ben was not so sure.

  To Ben, the sidewalk suddenly felt soft, spongy, like walking across a mattress, and it took him a few strides to realize it was his knees, not the sidewalk. His vision darkened on the edges, as if he were suddenly walking down a poorly lit hallway. As he hurried, nearly running, he gained the courage to glance over his shoulder and sneak a look.

  The blue truck! He staggered, nearly collapsing. It moved so slowly that traffic rolled around it as it held to the curb. Ben could not see Nick’s face, but he knew the identity of the driver. He knew what the driver wanted.

  At the next intersection, he turned right, cut through traffic, and joined fifteen other kids at the bus stop, hoping for cover. He watched for the blue truck.

  “Hey, Ben”-he jumped at the sound of his name-“you want to come over after school?”

  Finn Hershey was a school friend with blond hair and a thin face. Like Ben and the others, he was soaking wet from the rain.

  “I don’t know,” Ben said, shifting his glance from left to right, bus to truck. He couldn’t think about such things; he had the truck to worry about. The yellow school bus appeared, its big nose topping the hill and dropping toward the waiting kids. At the same instant the blue truck appeared in the intersection, creeping along incredibly slowly as it passed. Thank God it didn’t turn, though for Ben it felt as if he locked eyes with the driver, who was bent low and clearly searching the bus stop. The bus chugged forward, seemingly more slowly than ever. Ben mentally encouraged it.

  “If it keeps raining we could hit my Sega. I got a new MK magazine. Some cool stuff in it.”

  Mortal Kombat. Ben was something of a pro. Finn was always trying to beat him at the video game, but he wasn’t very good. “Sure,” Ben said.

  “It would be cool.”

  “Sure.”

  “We could call your mom from sch-” Finn caught himself.

  “I don’t have a mom,” Ben reminded him.

  “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “I know.”

  “We could leave a message. You know.”

  “Sure.”

  “What is it with you?”

  The bus arrived, its door swinging open, and the kids fought toward the door. The pickup truck rounded the far corner, heading for the bus stop. Ben shoved his way into the bottleneck, followed by Finn.

  “What is it with you?” Finn repeated.

  “Nothing.”

  Ben was never anxious to get on the bus. Today he was acting different. Fear had changed him, he realized. He clawed his way to a seat near the back of the bus and was forced to relinquish it when told to by a junior Ben had no desire to mess with. He found a seat farther forward.

  He looked back in time to see the pickup truck through the rain-blurred back window. Forced to wait behind the bus, the driver sat idle, craning close to the fogged windshield and rubbing it in an effort to see. A line of vehicles had formed behind it, waiting for the school bus to decommission its warning lights and move on.

  By the third bus stop, when Ben looked back, the truck was no longer in sight. He decided that it had either moved on or gone ahead. Whichever, it hardly mattered; by that point the driver knew the name and location of his school. He thought back to the airport, to that stupid moment of taking the money. For the hundredth time since that day he touched his back pocket, praying his wallet had reappeared.

  The bus stopped in front of the school. In the chaos of the rain and the rush for the front steps, Ben crouched and ducked into the foundation planting alongside the stairs. His head swooned as he caught sight of the blue pickup truck. Out there wa
iting. For him. Like a wild dog at a rabbit hole: patient and hungry. Ben knew the way it worked. The rabbit never stood a chance.

  22

  The pressure had built up behind Boldt’s eyes like water in a pipe. Based on the timing established by Emily Richland’s client, another woman was likely targeted to burn. She would be close to thirty years old, a divorced woman, mother of a boy younger than ten. Daphne had followed up as requested. He bore the responsibility to prevent this death from happening, and he had frightfully little evidence to pursue.

  Boldt gave a regular morning briefing to LaMoia, Gaynes, Bahan, Fidler, and two other homicide detectives loaned to Boldt from the other squad. ATF had offered agents but Boldt had politely refused, fearing that once he allowed the federal agents inside he might never get them back out the door.

  The ATF lab chemist, Casterstein, was an exception to that rule. When he requested a video conference with Boldt, the sergeant accepted, though not without trepidation. SPD lacked video-conferencing capability, requiring Boldt to pay a visit to the ATF offices in the Federal Building, which he feared might be little more than a ploy by ATF to hold him hostage while they convinced him of the importance of their joining the investigation. As an insurance package, he brought along the police lab’s Bernie Lofgrin and all four of his detectives, LaMoia, Gaynes, Fidler, and Bahan. If Casterstein wanted a conference, Boldt would give him one.

  The federal offices were newer, cleaner, and quieter than SPD’s, a source of irritation for any cop. ATF and the FBI had access to, or owned outright, state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, computer technology, weapons, and communications systems. Although they were always generous with the equipment, it nonetheless irked Boldt and the others to have to ask, which they did often. Using the video conference room was partly embarrassing for that reason, even though an ATF agent was involved. Boldt and his five ducklings moved through the ATF halls like kids on the way to the principal’s office. The room itself was nearly identical to their own fifth-floor conference room, except for the projection television screen at one end and the video camera mounted on the wall alongside and aimed back at those sitting at the table.