Beyond Recognition lbadm-4

by Ridley Pearson

  LaMoia, not turning around to look, not stopping his shoveling, repeated, “It’s a grounder, Sarge. If he moves back toward the truck, we’re gonna drop him. And as far as him getting out of that truck? My money’s on Matthews any day. Ain’t a head she can’t shrink.”

  “Ten seconds,” Boldt echoed. He set down the pickax. “Five …”

  Three miles south of Garman’s pickup truck, a bolt cutter on the end of a remote-controlled robot that looked like a lawnmower severed the padlock under the direction of the bomb squad experts. The remote claw removed the lock, dropped it to the side, and exerted an upward pressure on the garage door.

  Despite the reassurances that the unit was not wired, a collective breath was held as the robot lifted the door.

  It came open without an explosion.

  A fully padded man rolled under the door’s opening and inside the storage unit. Against all rules, Daphne Matthews broke under the restraining tape and ran at full sprint toward the unit, a chorus of protest arising behind her. She rolled under the partially open door right behind the bomb man.

  At the first sound of a series of dull explosions to the north, she pulled Ben into her arms and cradled him. She tasted his tears on her lips and spilled her own into his hair as the rope came off and the two were forcibly encouraged toward the opening of daylight by the man in the padded suit.

  “Paramedics!” Daphne shouted, knowing an ambulance was waiting to the south.

  The boy’s lips were glued shut, and in all the excitement he seemed on the verge of passing out.

  The charges went off in a string of five, sounding to Boldt like a burial salute. Six, counting the crunch of metal and glass as the Chevy was struck from behind.

  The flames were instantaneous: huge blue and orange and black tongues licking up toward the sky. Whoever had set it knew his stuff, reminding Boldt how close a fireman was to an arsonist. If Jonny Garman had not been behind the wheel of that pickup truck, Boldt wouldn’t have been able to take his eyes off the inferno. Everyone’s attention was glued to the spectacle. It was as if, for a moment, the world blinked. The traffic braked and came to a stop in unison, any and all conversation ceased, and a giant plume of heat rose dramatically into the sky, a pillar of subterfuge.

  The bright flash and subsequent roar was seen and heard over twenty-five miles away as the core fire reached over four hundred feet into the air and the resulting column of smoke over ten times that.

  Boldt leaned on his pickax, his head angled toward the fire, his eyes on the driver of that pickup truck. Stay and watch it, Boldt encouraged the man silently. Get out of the truck and watch. The burning building was a block and a half away from traffic, but firemen were deliberately allowing pedestrians a closer look, having roped off a spot only half a block away from the event. Of the seven people standing there watching, all were from law enforcement.

  Get out of the truck, Boldt encouraged for a second time, the dispatcher’s voice listing Garman’s location in that inhuman monotone. Daphne had been convinced that a spectacular fire would lure him out of his vehicle. “He can’t resist a fire,” she had said. Boldt was taking that to the bank, right or wrong.

  As part of the ruse, one of the four cars preceding Garman pulled over and the driver climbed out and hurried toward the fire for a better look. Lead by example, Boldt thought. But to the sergeant’s horror, Garman did not get out, electing to watch from the front seat of the truck. Worse, some cars farther behind launched into a protest chorus of honking. The driver of the Chevy was nursed back, away from the truck, but wasn’t liking the manhandling.

  The truck’s wheels crept forward, as if Garman was to drive on.

  Out of the truck! Boldt begged. He could feel the man drawn to the fire, but-concerned over his cargo and the job at hand, Martinelli-he seemed reluctant to stay and watch. Boldt pleaded silently for him to stay. The fire roared loudly as the first hose was trained onto it. Firemen, bearing hose, charged the structure.

  Jonny Garman pulled his truck over to the shoulder. Traffic moved around the minor accident in the road and drivers rubbernecked as they passed the blaze. Boldt reached into the pocket of the coveralls and felt the grip of the gun’s stock. He locked eyes with LaMoia and then across the street with the officer closest to Garman, a woman dressed as a street person.

  As the truck’s cab door came open, Boldt’s world crawled into slow motion. His elation surfaced as a clarity of thought, vision, and hearing. Garman appeared to be as much interested in the firemen as the fire itself. Perhaps it had to do with memories of his father; perhaps it would never be explained.

  One leg dangled out of the cab, followed by the other-he was getting out! Garman slipped down onto the pavement and, still holding the door, spun his head forward and back, assessing his situation. Worried about the parking? Boldt wondered. Feeling the presence of something wrong, something misplaced, something staged? The suspect pushed the cab door shut and walked toward the front of his truck, toward a better view of the burn and the action.

  The street woman, near the back of the truck, took several long strides to close the distance, her hand slipping into her torn shopping bag. LaMoia, carrying his shovel-a worker fascinated by the fire-ran past Boldt, as if going for a better look.

  Garman took no notice of any of them. His neck craned back and his head lifted up in that eerie slow motion, and he drank in the power of the fire. The magnificence. He stepped several feet in front of, and away from, the truck, just far enough to pick him.

  In Boldt’s ear, the drone of radio communication sounded slowed down as well, the words impossible to discern. The sergeant’s hand gripped the pistol. The investigation came down to that moment: a truck loaded with volatile fuel and a disturbed, disfigured man just out of reach.

  Garman, his synthetic face filled with a childish glee as he drank in the fire, rocked his head back and forth in joy, spraying rainwater off his sweatshirt like a dog shaking, glancing around him, attempting to share the thrill of that moment with others. The fire erupted into a shower of flame, spark, and ash, and Boldt thought he saw the suspect’s body convulse; his awkward mouth seemed shaped into the curve of a laugh.

  Garman’s excited eyes swept briefly over the scene behind him, where, in a failed attempt to convince the driver of the Chevy to retreat, the undercover cop had resorted to dragging and shoving the bystander to the ground, anticipating a fire fight. In the process, the man’s coat flew open and his gun, holster, and harness showed.

  Garman’s elation collapsed. Realization stung him. His eyes registered each of the fifteen people immediately in his vicinity, and he seemed to acknowledge that each and every one was law enforcement personnel. He was trapped. He identified LaMoia, and then the street woman, and backed up two steps toward the truck and the fuel it contained.

  LaMoia changed direction too quickly, slipped, and fell. The street woman was blocked by the truck itself.

  Boldt and his fellow construction worker, the closest officers to Garman, launched themselves in the direction of the suspect. Over the radio a sharpshooter announced a line-of-sight shot. Shoswitz’s voice gave the order to take him.

  The shot went straight through his shoulder and sprayed blood onto the truck, but Garman never felt it. He swung open the truck door, which absorbed the sniper’s next two attempts, and jumped in behind the wheel.

  Boldt’s slow-motion world continued-all action, all sound misplaced.

  The pickup truck lurched ahead, smashing into the car parked in front of it. LaMoia was back on his feet, and Garman looked just quickly enough to see him. Boldt was three strides from the truck, as Garman cut the wheel and, rather than turn into traffic, rather than face LaMoia, jumped the sidewalk. The driver’s side window blew out behind the power of another sniper attempt. Boldt jumped for the truck, his toes catching the running board, his right hand losing hold of his gun as he clawed to hold on.

  Garman shoved down the accelerator.

  The pickup’s bac
k tires squealed over the curb, and Garman drove through the weedy vacant lot toward the street ahead and that raging fire.

  Boldt did not know nor did he think that the fuel in the truck was enough to consume over three city blocks; he knew only that Miles and Sarah needed a father, now more than ever, and that their father was riding a pickup truck toward Hell.

  Whether Garman was attempting an escape or a suicide didn’t matter, because the present course of the truck predetermined the destination.

  The driver aimed his blank white face at the sergeant, brown eyes recessed behind sculpted plastic skin. For that instant, something exchanged between them, something sparked. Boldt reached for the gear shift, but Garman struck him hard. The sergeant shoved himself deeper into the window, pushing the driver across the seat. He reached for balance, and his arm pushed through and stuck inside the steering wheel, making it impossible to turn the wheel. They bounced through the lot, and Boldt’s head struck the ceiling and the pickup altered its course just far enough to crash into one of the pumpers. It was like hitting a brick wall. They careened off to the right, heading once again for the burning building, and thumped over the swollen fire hoses. Boldt felt his arm snap. His head swam with the pain, and for an instant he slipped toward unconsciousness. He couldn’t catch his breath.

  They were headed straight for the missing front door of the burning building-straight for Hell.

  I don’t belong here, Boldt thought. It’s not my time.

  Garman clawed at Boldt’s face, trying to drive him back out the window. His foot found the accelerator and the truck surged forward.

  Overcoming the pain, Boldt heaved his broken arm farther through the wheel, his fingers fishing for the key. Garman’s attention was fixed on the white bucket on the floor. It registered in Boldt that this bucket would have been the one to use in window washing; Garman’s rocket fuel was inside it. The driver craned forward to reach for it, but Boldt grabbed the sweatshirt hood, pulled hard, and held him up short.

  Those ears are painful, he remembered the nurse explaining.

  Still clinging to the sweatshirt hood, Boldt swung the man’s head on the end of the sweatshirt’s tether, back and forth, Garman resisting, but Boldt with the better angle. The man’s right ear pounded into the rear panel of glass. Garman cried out and grabbed for the pain.

  Boldt heaved his broken left arm forward; his fingers groped and found the key and he twisted.

  The engine died.

  The truck grumbled to a stop, fifteen yards from the burning building’s brick wall. The paint on the truck’s hood bubbled and blistered from the heat. The inside of the truck was instantly an oven.

  Fire hoses trained on Boldt and Garman, and the truck was swamped in hundreds of gallons of water with a force so powerful that Boldt was lifted up and driven further into the cab, fully atop Garman.

  They were too close. The truck would catch fire and blow.

  Boldt felt his feet and legs grabbed by strong hands. “Hold tight!” a voice called out. The pickup rocked onto two wheels and then slid sideways as a fire truck collided with the pickup and drove it away from the fire, the man holding Boldt never letting go.

  The truck stopped, now twenty yards from the inferno. Loud voices shouted orders simultaneously in a language all their own-what sounded to Boldt like total chaos. Boldt felt Garman dragged out from underneath him. “Hold him!” Boldt shouted, his voice buried by the others. He realized that few of the firefighters would be aware of the ultimate purpose of the operation, would not know the threat Garman represented. “Hold on to him!”

  As Garman hit the ground, dragged from the wreckage, he left his rescuers with only his zippered sweatshirt in their heavily gloved hands. He rolled twice. Boldt counted the revolutions and would later swear to Daphne that he and the suspect locked glances in the midst of one of them. He would swear there was nothing in those eyes: no remorse, no fear, no life.

  Jonny Garman came to his feet, and faced a team of police rushing toward him. Boldt recalled Daphne’s comments about an asocial’s reaction to crowds.

  “No!” Boldt shouted at the group of cops, closing at a run.

  Garman looked once at that wall of armed men rushing him, glanced once toward Boldt, turned, and ran at a full sprint into the burning building. Already engulfed in flames before his screams ripped toward the sky, he disappeared into the pulsing orange light.

  75

  Appropriately, it was raining. Daphne was glad for that because it would disguise her tears.

  “You don’t need to come in or anything,” Ben said, meaning he didn’t want her to.

  “I’ll just see you to the door,” she said.

  “Whatever.”

  It hurt her to see him so excited to be reunited with Emily. How she wished he might change his mind at the last minute and beg to find a way to stay with her. But the finest things pass through your life, she thought, like migratory birds. They do not light. They leave you with a glimpse of beauty and pass on.

  This was not the death of a friendship, it was the beginning of a young man’s life.

  Reading her thoughts, as they sat in the dull glare of a red light, the windshield wipers working like a metronome, he said, “It’s not like we won’t see each other.”

  She didn’t answer. Perhaps they would see each other from time to time; she wanted to support him, to be there for him. She reached out and took his hand in hers. It was the first time she had dared to do so, but not from lack of want. Of need. Her heart wanted to burst. Her throat was tight. His small fist was hot. Her hand was cold. He looked down at their hands, and when the light changed, she pulled away from him and drove on, her moist eyes focused on the moist road, but she felt his intense gaze fixed upon her. Perhaps he had felt it too. Perhaps.

  “You know, Ben, sometimes a person comes along in your life, a special person, and without knowing it they show you something about yourself, they point you in a particular direction that maybe you didn’t see until they came along. You know?” She was talking like him now. She could hardly believe it. A smile sprang onto her face.

  “I guess so,” he answered.

  “What I mean to say is, you are that person for me. You helped me in ways I can’t explain, I guess, but profoundly and forever. Good stuff,” she said.

  “That guy Owen. Is that what you mean? Look out, it’s yellow.”

  She slowed the car, realizing she had better pay closer attention. “Thanks.”

  “You mean him?” he asked, not letting it go the way an adult might have.

  “I mean you,” she answered.

  “I don’t see what I did, except screw everything up.”

  “Watch the language.”

  “It’s the next right.”

  “I know.”

  He bit away a sly grin. “You’re okay, D. I know you did a ton of stuff for me-to make this happen with Emily and all. You and Susan. And, well, it’s really cool, is all. You know?”

  “If you ever, ever, need anything, you had better call me,” she said, trying to avoid crying, which only made it worse.

  “We’ll see each other,” he repeated, a little more desperately. She wanted to believe that only then was their separation registering in him.

  “You have a lot of love in you, Ben. Don’t be afraid to share it.” The rain did her no good, for she hadn’t held off the tears until outside as she had hoped to do. She finally dared look at him, and he was crying too, and selfishly this made her happy.

  She pulled to a stop in front of the purple house.

  “I don’t normally do this,” he said. He reached into the back seat for his backpack and books. “You and Susan are going to help me move, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So we’ll see each other.”

  “Maybe I won’t get out,” she said, seeing Emily open the door and wave. She couldn’t stop the tears now. She abandoned any effort to do so. The wipers sounded peaceful, their rhythm soothing. She was heading back
to the houseboat alone to listen to the rain fall on the dock and beat on her roof. To a log fire and a glass of wine and more tears. It was good. It was what she wanted.

  “Well,” he said. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, his excitement over seeing Emily already winning out.

  Daphne nodded and sniffled, unable at first to get any words out. He popped open the door and jumped out.

  “Ben!” she called out sharply, sounding like a wire breaking.

  Out in the rain, Ben leaned his head down and into the car.

  “Tell her to paint the damn house,” Daphne said. She found a smile at last.

  “Watch your language,” Ben replied. But his expression said it all. She would remember that look for a lifetime. Cherish it.

  He pushed the door shut and hurried off through the falling rain.

  76

  The Dahlia Lounge was crowded. Boldt and Liz owned two stools up by the receptionist as they waited for a table. She was drinking fruit juice. Boldt, uncharacteristically, was drinking straight vodka. She looked like a million dollars. His cast itched.

  “He had moved all his stuff out, probably because if the kid talked we could locate him, and he had no desire to hurt the kid.”

  “It was two weeks ago.” She studied him. For two weeks he had lain awake petting her hair as she slept. For two weeks they had said things they had always wanted to say, shared things they had always wanted to share. They had talked about why it took something so severe to bring two people to such rich honesty. He believed it unfair. She believed it a blessing.

  The pain was worse. They were taking an evening out while they still had one to take.

  “What about the boy?” she asked.

  “Daphne pushed hard. He gets to be with the psychic short-term, maybe long term. It’s a good thing.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. They clinked glasses.

  “What’s this dinner about?” she asked.