The First Victim

by Ridley Pearson

  The only glimpse of the structure’s interior came as a huge garage door lifted to admit a Ford minivan, so new that it still carried a dealer’s paper permit taped to its rear window. One of Boldt’s squad pulled the permit number using a pair of binoculars and called it downtown in order to run it. Boldt sat in the passenger seat of Coughlie’s Buick, a considerable step up from his own Chevy.

  ‘‘This video you guys got hold of? You thinking about sharing that?’’ Coughlie asked.

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  ‘‘That could probably be arranged. The PA’s office might have a thing or two to say about it.’’

  ‘‘I’m not asking the PA’s office,’’ Coughlie said.

  ‘‘You probably should,’’ Boldt said. He didn’t fully trust Coughlie for the same reasons Daphne had cited. Other than Mama Lu, Coughlie had been the only one outside of SPD to whom Boldt had mentioned the freighter’s ship captain. A few hours later the captain had been found dead. His frustration with the INS, his suspicions of Coughlie and Talmadge, in particular, had started then. Regardless of how far-fetched it had seemed at the time, millions of dollars were at stake, and no one could be counted out. If Coughlie hadn’t produced the search and seizure warrant as he had, he wouldn’t have been part of this operation. Law enforcement made for strange bedfellows. When the temporary dealer permit came back stolen, Boldt asked Coughlie, ‘‘Can you give me any reason a sweatshop would need a hot minivan?’’

  ‘‘To transport their workers,’’ the INS man stated matter-of-factly.

  ‘‘Ican’t think of a vehicular bust we’ve made in the last three years that didn’t involve either a stolen vehicle or stolen plates. The thing about what we do?’’ he asked rhetorically. ‘‘None of these people exist. Can you imagine? They don’t exist. There is no paperwork on them: no birth certificates, credit information, tax records—no nothing. That’s what we’re up against: phantoms. We pull ’em over; they scatter into the streets and we have nothing to follow . . . because they are nothing. A confirmed stolen vehicle? In terms of probable cause this bust just got a whole lot easier.’’

  ‘‘Agreed,’’ Boldt said.

  ‘‘Have you been shot at lately?’’

  ‘‘Only by my captain,’’ Boldt said, causing Coughlie to laugh.

  ‘‘I’m from the George Patton school,’’ Coughlie told him, reaching into the backseat for a Kevlar vest. ‘‘Idon’t believe in sending my guys into any battle that Idon’t engage in myself.’’

  ‘‘You don’t have kids,’’ Boldt observed.

  ‘‘No kids, no family, no no one,’’ Coughlie replied dryly. He strapped on a throat-mounted microphone that straddled his voice box,

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  and he then inserted an earpiece. The device allowed hands-free conversation between team members. He toyed with a small black box that he then clipped to his belt. ‘‘You guys with me?’’ he spoke for the benefit of his team. ‘‘Yeah, we’re going in.’’

  t

  The bullet-resistant vest was not physically heavy, but its presence was. It meant battle; it meant risk. For Boldt a vest was a symbol of youth. It had been well over a year since he had worn one. Ironically, as he approached the hangar’s north door at a run behind his own four heavily armored Emergency Response Team (ERT) personnel, he caught himself worrying about his hands, not his life. He didn’t want to smash up his piano hands in some close quarters skirmish. One of his few selfish pleasures in life was the piano—his evening practice and the occasional happy hour performance at Joke’s On You. To break a finger or a wrist was to dislocate more than bone and ligament, it was to sever him from personal expression.

  Unlike a typical SPD covert operation, Boldt had no way to monitor communications. His own ERT officers were outfitted with handsfree radios, but they were short sets for both LaMoia and Boldt, who were to rely on hand signals. Absurdly, in the name of government secrecy, the feds used their own protected radio frequencies, meaning that even though they wanted to, the two teams, INS and ERT, could not hear the other’s radio traffic: hand signals were used to communicate between the two digitally equipped units. Well aware that they had thrown this together a little too quickly, perhaps hastily, and that he was relying on men he’d never met, Boldt kept pace with the ERT

  operative in front of him, eyes ever vigilant for the hand signals that controlled his movement and thought process. When that hand reached up, fingers open, and then closed firmly, cementing into a fist, Boldt stopped and squatted down. When it made numbers—four and four—Boldt paired up with another of the ERT operatives and stepped to the left of the door.

  The eight men crouched. The door was knocked in with a ram, and they streamed into the building, the line dividing in two. Boldt

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  followed the yellow letters POLICE printed onto the black nylon vest in front of him.

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  It was a chop shop, not a sweatshop, the enormous area littered with automotive parts and vehicles in various stages of disassembly, the air reeking of welding torch and burning paint. Boldt’s team took shelter behind the disembodied shell of a gutted pickup truck. Coughlie’s team ducked behind a pile of automobile doors. The first shot to ring out came from the far side of the room. Men scattered in all directions. Once provoked, law enforcement returned fire. Some of their targets dove to the floor, arms spread. The rest fled like rats.

  A few hand signals and the weapons went quiet, gray smoke lofting into the air.

  Two of the opposition were down, but squirming. Alive, but wounded. In all, nine men were cuffed and read their rights. SPD officers caught two more suspects fleeing on foot. The remainder escaped. Within the hour, the scene began to sort itself out, the suspects having been transported downtown and run through booking. A computer was seized. A thorough inventory began. Bernie Lofgrin’s SID technicians went to work—photographing, cataloguing, developing prints, accounting for the wounded—

  attempting to ensure that the charges would stick. Surfaces were swept, evidence bagged and collected.

  Finding a free moment, Boldt stepped aside and called Liz just to hear her voice.

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  ‘‘If it hadn’t been early in the alphabet we might not have caught it for a couple weeks,’’ the Robbery detective, Chuck Bandelli, explained to Boldt from the other side of Boldt’s desk back at Public Safety. Bandelli had a crude look to him, like a horse left out in the rain. ‘‘But as it is, two of us got given the job of notifying all them people whose

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  vehicles were chopped, and we divided up the list by threes, you know?—A through C, D through F, this kinda thing—to make things faster. So I’m the one got stuck with the Cs. And when I seen that girl’s name right there on the list, Ifigured Ibetter clue you in.’’

  CHOW, M. / VIN:3678 90 8754C65E7/613 1ST AVE. ࠻2C SO./SEA Boldt stared at that line on the computer printout for the longest time. A world of confusion. Her car—it was a van—had been stolen and gutted for export. Boldt did not want to believe that she had met a similar fate, but the cop in him had his doubts.

  ‘‘Listen, Bandelli,’’ Boldt said, ‘‘I’d appreciate it if this didn’t get around the house. The press gets a whiff of this and we’re going to be in the middle of a big stink.’’

  ‘‘Sure thing, Lieutenant.’’

  Boldt knew it would leak. The question w
as when.

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  C H A P T E R 4 1

  ThegravediggerwasnotthemanBoldtexpected.Othershadinterviewed him the first time around, and so his slight frame, his aged gaunt face and hollow, ice-blue eyes came as a surprise. Boldt had envisioned a thick, burly man with dirt under his nails and a cold distance in his eyes. The one major requirement of the job, as it turned out, was to operate a backhoe.

  Boldt stood on the far side of the observation glass, hoping that this man might connect them to whoever had buried Jane Doe. Melissa’s mention of the graveyard and Boldt’s subsequent visit to Hilltop had sparked a thought: they had been intentionally misled. It was LaMoia’s interrogation. Friday afternoon. Everyone wanted to get home.

  The detective kicked his two-thousand-dollar boots up onto the Formica table and leaned his head back. ‘‘You know why you’re here?’’

  ‘‘More questions.’’ His voice was as thin as he was.

  ‘‘You’re right about that.’’ LaMoia waited a moment. ‘‘What do you think we want to ask you about?’’

  ‘‘That girl?’’

  ‘‘Which one?’’

  ‘‘The one Ifound. That Chinese girl.’’

  ‘‘That’s something we need to clear up,’’ LaMoia informed him.

  ‘‘That’s a good place to start.’’

  ‘‘What’s that?’’

  ‘‘We’re thinking it wasn’t you who found her.’’

  ‘‘Of course it was. Icalled the police. You people must have recorded—’’

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  ‘‘Yeah, you called the police. And you played it out real well. But someone else found that body. Isn’t that right, Mr. Caldwell? Someone visiting Hilltop early that morning. An old lady maybe? An old man? This person reported it to you, and you made the call to us. Imean if you make the call, why should we look at you very hard? And of course that’s what happened.’’

  Caldwell blinked rapidly, jutted out his jaw and said, ‘‘That’s not true.’’

  ‘‘Which part isn’t true?’’ LaMoia asked. ‘‘And Ishould warn you that you want to be careful here. This is an incredibly important moment for you, Mr. Caldwell. You cooperate with me, and Ican see the possibility of your walking out of this building a free man. But if you try blowing smoke up my ass, you’re going to be wearing denim courtesy of the state for a few years. Got it? So I’d think my answers through if Iwas you, and Iwouldn’t go making nothing up, on account you don’t know what Iknow and that puts you at a distinct disadvantage.’’

  The man furrowed his brow and blinked some more.

  ‘‘So let’s try it again,’’ LaMoia said. ‘‘You knew that body was there all along.’’

  The old man shook his head faintly. ‘‘Iknew something was in there.’’

  LaMoia glanced over his shoulder at the one-way glass and Boldt on the other side. It was a gesture meant to compliment Boldt on his suspicions.

  ‘‘Did you bury that woman?’’

  ‘‘No!’’ he barked sharply.

  ‘‘But you knew there was a body there because you’d done this before. A little side money to help with the rent. Cash, Iimagine.’’ He waited. ‘‘Now is not a good time to be inventing the truth.’’

  ‘‘A Mexican. Big guy. Offered me five hundred bucks if I’d dig the graves the night before instead of the morning of, like Iusually do.’’ Melissa’s video had showed a big guy on the bus. Mexican, maybe. LaMoia compartmentalized this.

  ‘‘You called him? Paged him? What?’’

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  ‘‘No, nothing like that. Ionly seen him that once. The first time. After that Istart digging at night. That’s all. A couple times, there’s an envelope in the tool box the next morning. That’s all.’’

  ‘‘How many times?’’

  ‘‘A couple.’’

  ‘‘How many?’’

  ‘‘Twice. That’s all.’’

  ‘‘A thousand bucks all together.’’

  ‘‘Right,’’ the old man said.

  ‘‘This Mexican? Can you describe him?’’

  He shook his thin head again. ‘‘It was raining. Didn’t get a very good look at him. He was wearing this . . .’’ the man stroked his chest,

  ‘‘apron, sort of thing. Rubber. Black rubber.’’

  ‘‘Like a fisherman?’’

  ‘‘Idon’t know no fisherman. A big son-of-a-bitch. That’s all Iremember about him. Mean-looking, you know? Like that.’’

  ‘‘Who found the body?’’ LaMoia asked.

  ‘‘An old lady. A dingy old bird. Said someone had stolen a casket and left the body. She didn’t get it. Itold her I’d handle it.’’ He looked up at LaMoia. ‘‘Icalled you guys ’cause Iwasn’t sure what she’d do about it.’’ He added, ‘‘And maybe ’cause Iwasn’t feeling so right about it anyway.’’

  ‘‘Don’t try to sell me the good citizen thing,’’ LaMoia cautioned.

  ‘‘Quit while you’re ahead.’’

  ‘‘I’m telling you: I wasn’t feeling right about it.’’

  ‘‘We want you to look at some photographs for us.’’

  ‘‘Mug shots?’’

  ‘‘Like that, yeah. You’ll do that for us?’’

  ‘‘Do Ineed me a lawyer?’’

  LaMoia glanced over his shoulder again toward the glass. He hesitated a moment and said, ‘‘No. You’re gonna walk out of here today. But we’re gonna want you to stick around. And no more night graves.’’

  ‘‘Someplace Ican take a piss?’’

  ‘‘Down the hall. I’ll get the photos ready.’’

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  C H A P T E R 4 2

  At 11:00 P.M. Friday night, under the glare of halogen floodlights powered by a noisy and smelly generator, a woman researcher from the university’s archeology department gestured toward Boldt. Unheard, and unseen, radio waves penetrated the earth and returned signals to her computers via a pair of antennae atop small boxes. This was the third grave site she had tested. Red and black wires ran from the antennae back to an aluminum table hosting the array of computer gear.

  Boldt took the signal and walked the boxes two feet apart. He looked up, awaiting his next command.

  LaMoia nudged Boldt and said in a whisper, ‘‘We’re losing the world to geeks. You realize that? Think about it. The geeks run the computers and the computers run everything from long distance phones to ICBM missiles. I’m telling ya: We’re not safe no more with these people behind the dials.’’

  ‘‘We can’t exhume without evidence of an unexplained body. That’s the way the warrant reads.’’

  ‘‘Iunderstand that,’’ LaMoia complained. ‘‘I’m just saying . . . anyone who knows how this shit works . . . especially a woman! I mean, anyone who could think this stuff up . . . Who wants them in charge?’’

  ‘‘You’ve been watching too much TV.’’

  ‘‘In all my free time,’’ LaMoia quipped.

  The woman called out to Boldt, ‘‘Okay, Lieutenant. Let’s try four feet.’’

  Boldt approached the two boxes and moved them farther apart, LaMoia following him like a trained dog. Boldt said, ‘‘Her name is 223

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  Heidi Mack. She was recommended by Necrosearch out of Denver.’’

  Boldt moved the two antennae a few feet apart and
looked up. Mack lifted onto tiptoes to see over the computer gear, and gave Boldt another thumbs-up.

  ‘‘She’s cute,’’ LaMoia said.

  ‘‘Keep it on the job, Sergeant.’’ After several more ‘‘sets,’’ Boldt led LaMoia over to the woman.

  He was right, of course. LaMoia could spot the good-looking women from any distance. In a heartbeat. He could love them and leave them just about as quickly. Heidi Mack had warm dark eyes, a strong face, and a runner’s body. Boldt found her eyes and mouth captivating to where he caught himself staring. He averted his attention, looking at the equipment instead. On the computer screen he saw a color image that vaguely resembled a sonogram.

  ‘‘The stuff in Jurassic Park?’’ she said, in a voice smooth and sensual. ‘‘The movie, I’m talking about, not the book . . . It can’t be done. Not yet, anyway. Maybe one of these days. In the meantime, this is the best we’ve got.’’ She worked the computer mouse, sharpening the image. ‘‘We call it forensic tomography. Ground Penetrating Radar is a geophysical method which is an outgrowth of technologies developed for the petroleum industry. We can determine depth of ground disturbance. But actual contents is way trickier. And we’re lucky we’re up here on a hill, because any saline-saturated soil wreaks havoc on GPR. This program we’re using is in Beta phase. It’s all in the software, okay? Sure it’s experimental, but it’s also cutting edge.’’

  ‘‘What’d Itell you?’’ LaMoia whispered to Boldt, nudging him. Boldt pointed to the screen. ‘‘This?’’

  ‘‘Good eye, Detective. Yes.’’

  ‘‘My wife had sonograms with both children.’’

  ‘‘Are you married?’’ LaMoia asked her.

  Both Mack and Boldt looked over at him at the same time. Mack replied, ‘‘Ihave a girl, six, and a boy, three.’’