No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

He was thinking about it, and Boldt thought that was good, because a guy with Striker’s temper had to be discouraged from this at all costs. “Is it for you or her that you want to catch her in the act?”

  Striker’s one good arm was incredibly powerful, and when he shoved Boldt with it, the big man tripped on a lawn sprinkler and went down hard. “You see?” Boldt asked, sitting on the damp grass. “You want those kinds of images permanently living inside you? Worming around inside you? Do you? Because I’ll tell you something? They eat their way right back out eventually. Those kinds of things will kill the relationship forever. You can’t erase that stuff. It’s a big mistake. If you’re smart, you’ll stay as far away from that as possible. What you want to do is talk. To listen. You want to sit her down and talk, and you’ve got to accept what she says—no matter what she says.” He added, “No matter what, because she may be a little hateful right now. Feeling guilty. And that’s where therapy comes in—because a therapist won’t let you play games with each other. She’ll call your number.” Boldt came to his feet. Striker appeared lost. “You with me, buddy?”

  Striker did not answer for a long time. “What do you care? You got things straightened out.”

  “Razor, I do care. I care a lot.”

  The attorney hurried to his car.

  Boldt ran after him. “Mikey …”

  “Fuck you!” He climbed inside the car.

  “Mike, listen—”

  But the man drove away. Boldt chased the car on foot, calling after him, but pulled up short when he saw it was a lost cause. His son’s three-wheeler was crashed into an azalea bush. He fished it out and carried it around back and left it with the other stuff. He could not believe the mountain of toys this kid had.

  He saw Liz through the kitchen window, holding Miles. The boy had not stayed down. She was watching him with a worried expression. He shrugged. She shrugged right back.

  “I’ve got to get going,” he reminded her when he reached the kitchen. She opened her arm and the three of them hugged. Miles touched his father’s face and nearly poked him in the eye.

  “I’m sorry you have to go through this stuff,” she said.

  “There are always a couple of blowouts on a case like this. Always happens.”

  “So long as it isn’t you,” she said, holding to him tightly. “We’re lucky,” she added. She did not try to look into his eyes. “What do you think? About him?”

  “I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that.”

  “This could make trouble for you, couldn’t it?” she asked.

  “It’s all right,” he answered. But she knew him better than that.

  “Da-da?” Miles reached out for his father. “Go-fo-wak,” he slurred.

  Boldt stood him on his right shoe, and the boy clung to his thick leg as if it were a tree trunk.

  “Go for a walk,” Boldt announced. His son stared up happily into his eyes with unrequited love, and Boldt began walking him slowly around the kitchen, his son squealing with joy.

  “Don’t get him too worked up,” Liz reminded, well aware that with Boldt leaving, she would have to face the terror of Miles on a roll.

  Boldt wanted this and only this: to be in his kitchen on a summer night with these two people; to hear squeals of joy coming from his son. To be free of the Tin Man and Michael Striker and Adler’s nine-thousand-square-foot estate. To play along with a Scott Hamilton cut when no one was listening.

  A few minutes later he walked out to his car, climbed inside, and drove off. As he passed the house down the street and the sound grew louder, it seemed quite obvious that the laugh track was laughing at him.

  THIRTY

  “But did it help?” Liz asked from across the breakfast table.

  The time-trap software had failed to make a difference the night before. Boldt said positively, “We got closer than we’ve been. Only a couple blocks away by the time the transaction ended.” He did not like bringing his work home like this, to where Liz had an active interest in a case, but he owed her whatever she wanted to hear. “I’m told there’s a pretty good chance the Bureau will partner up with us, which would mean more people and better gear. If that happens, I think we stand a chance.” The phone rang. Liz did not move.

  Boldt recognized the smooth French accent as belonging to Lucille Guillard. “Sergeant Boldt? I have something in my hands I believe you would very much like to see. You will please come to my office?”

  Boldt was in the car fifteen minutes later. He hit horrible traffic, costing him another thirty to reach downtown. He had to sign in with a receptionist and wear a badge marked VISITOR, which was new since the last time.

  Guillard wore a navy-blue suit with gold buttons, and a blouse with a French collar and white silk embroidery on the cuffs that looked like waves. Her hair was straightened and pulled back into a topknot, elongating her face and enhancing her eyes. She wore pale red lipstick that contrasted with her black skin and her white teeth. She offered him coffee; he asked for tea with three aspirin.

  “Funny way to drink your tea,” she said. She called in a male assistant and placed their orders with him, and she went looking for aspirin. A few minutes later, when all had been delivered, she shut her door and they were alone.

  The blinds were open, and the view from the Pac-West Bank tower included the Westlake Center, with a thousand shoppers swarming in and out of it like bees on the hive. The Seattle sun poured over them like golden honey. A street juggler tossing pins into the air caught Boldt’s attention. From this distance the pins looked like matchsticks.

  She slipped something out of a folder, leaned forward across her desk, and declared: “Here is your extortionist.”

  The eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph that she handed Boldt was a grainy, slightly blurred image that at first glance looked like an astronaut wearing a black space suit. He donned his reading glasses, reducing some of the blurriness. Guillard explained, “This was recorded on stop-frame videotape during last night’s nine P.M. withdrawal. I did not know of it then or I should have mentioned it. The camera, you see, was installed just this last weekend.”

  The photograph was shot through a star-shaped form of spread fingers in the foreground, and behind it, a reflective surface—a motorcycle helmet, he realized—and the high, padded shoulders of a biker’s black leather jacket. No face. No identifying features. His heart sank. Out of politeness, he studied the photo for a long minute and then put his glasses away.

  “This person wore gloves,” she pointed out. “Tried to cover the plastic in case there was a camera,” Guillard explained, “but you can see this was done a fraction too late. Some of our cameras are triggered by card access. Others, by motion detectors. I am guessing that this was a motion detector.”

  Out came the glasses again as he drew the photograph close to his face. The gloved hand had triggered the autofocus of the lens, which helped to explain why all else behind it was fuzzy. Very few people could get away with wearing gloves in summer without attracting attention or, at the very least, being remembered. A biker was the one exception. The helmet hid the face effectively. It confirmed his chase in the U district—they were, quite possibly, after a woman wearing a helmet.

  “Are you certain you have the right photograph?” he asked.

  She showed him the entire three-photo series. By the time the second shot had been taken by the hidden camera, there was nothing to be seen, the gloved hand having effectively screened the shot entirely; but at the bottom of the frame, where it showed the date and time and listed the ATM’s reference location ID, there was now also a card number identified, and it did indeed match the card belonging to the dummy account. The third photograph was nearly identical to the second, except for the time stamp, which had progressed by several seconds.

  “I know it’s not much,” she apologized.

  “More than you might think,” he said, trying to make the best out of precious little.

  “So it’s good.”

&nb
sp; “It’s very good.”

  She seemed hesitant as she asked timidly, “May I express something that concerns me?”

  “By all means.”

  “It is the cameras—their location. As I said, this camera just came on-line in the last few days. Because of this, it has yet to appear on any list here at the bank. You understand? No lists. None. And before this? This person has not once made a withdrawal from any ATM that has a security camera in place. Not one. You understand? Such coincidence is not possible. I am sorry—not possible. And that means this person has a copy of our most recent ATM security list. Those with surveillance security are indicated on this list.”

  Understanding this, Boldt felt the first sinking sensation in a string of many. Would Harry Caulfield have access to such information? Definitely not. But Chris Danielson? Howard Taplin? Kenny Fowler? All had access to the information.

  “Who has copies of this list?”

  “Yes. I wrote these down. I thought of this also. Perhaps a dozen of us here at Pac-West. I have written down their names for you. All top executives. No one below executive vice president. Also, I should think that the companies that performed the installations would of course have record. Pac-West employees working at the particular branches during installation would know—but only about that specific branch. Ted Perch at NetLinQ would have a much more comprehensive list, I would think, encompassing all the ATMs in the entire Northwest region.”

  Anyone, Boldt realized, in or out of the bank.

  “It means something,” she said. “Do you think? This is significant, I feel.”

  “It means something,” Boldt agreed. Once again, suspicion fell onto those around him. He called Fowler, and insisted they talk.

  At lunchtime Boldt met Kenny Fowler in the Pikes Place Market, amid the bustle of swarming tourists searching out “Save the Whales” T-shirts, asparagus, and fresh salmon. The two men walked slowly atop pavers engraved with names of contributors whose donations had helped restore the open-air market. The tourists wore micro athletic shorts, neon rubber sandals showing lots of long leg, and filling the air with the distinctive smell of optimism: suntan lotion. There were big bellies and bigger chests, and Kodaks and nylon web leashes on the children under six. There was real money and plastic and unwieldy ice-cream cones and the smell of fish.

  “That looks pretty awful,” Boldt said, noticing the blister on the end of Fowler’s index finger that he kept pushing as if he might pop it.

  “That’s what I get for smoking a roach with the lights off,” Fowler teased, amused by his own joke. Fowler walked farther on before he told him, “My people drew a blank on Danielson. No big cash purchases, no real money problems. Pays his taxes. Pays his bills. Maybe a little short on social activities. I’ve got some of the paperwork for you in the car.”

  “What about surveillance?”

  “He works out at the Body Shop every day, rain or shine—not the soap store, the gym.” Boldt knew the place. SPD was given special discounts there. “He lost my guys a couple of times—which is not easy to do, I might add—but both times they reported it as their fault, not some maneuver by Danielson to avoid them. Middle of the day, both times.”

  “Any private life?”

  “About the worst thing we’ve got on your boy is that he’s a palm greaser. Calls the 900 numbers and likes to hear it real dirty. Likes to hear them describe things in detail. Frankly, I think he’s oversexed.”

  “Background?”

  “Bright kid. Good middle-class family. Father is an aerospace engineer. His mother is middle management at Nordstrom. Brother died as an innocent bystander in a gas-station holdup, which is supposed to explain his being a cop.”

  “Supposed to?”

  “You know him better than I do. The guy is driven. ‘Kay? He’s not doing this for some dead bro, he’s doing this for Chris Danielson. He wants a suit and a secretary and a gold badge, not nickel.”

  “Money?”

  “He wouldn’t take a kick, if that’s what you mean. Do you think? I don’t. Too ambitious. He’s not going to risk that desk and secretary for a few lousy bucks.”

  “He’s dirty, Kenny. I don’t know how, but he’s dirty.”

  “Not from what I’ve found, he isn’t. You were smart not to go to IA with this—woulda made you look bad.” They stopped in front of a fruit stand where the produce was stacked perfectly, flawless, and in beautiful groups of rich colors. Fowler bought an apple with a five-dollar bill, so they had to wait for change. When they were walking again, wedged in a claustrophobic stream of loudly talking tourists, Fowler reminded, “Mr. ATM burned us again last night. Go figure.”

  Fowler was as competitive as the next guy. Boldt elected not to share any of his meeting with Guillard. An uncomfortable silence resulted.

  “You missed Mac’s service,” Fowler criticized.

  “Did I?” Boldt had not realized this.

  “Lisa wanted it over with. She’s lucky there weren’t no kids.”

  Boldt waited several steps and asked, “Was Mac on patrol that night or was he following Matthews?”

  Fowler missed a step, though he covered it well by pretending he had stepped in something. “A person goes asking a question like that, you’d think it’s you running into posts in the dark, not Matthews.”

  “Is that your answer?”

  “The way I see my job in all of this, my primary responsibility—’kay?—is looking out for number one, which in this case is Adler. We watch him pretty much round the clock, Lou. He don’t like it, so we don’t tell him. Mac had the woods that night. Bad draw.”

  “He was in the woods. On patrol,” Boldt clarified.

  “You got it.”

  “And Danielson’s clean?” Boldt repeated skeptically.

  “I can hear it in your voice, you don’t believe me. ’Kay. So why’d you ask me to do this for you if you’re not going to believe me anyway? You’re pissing me off here, Lou. What? I’m not busy enough without your laundry? Trouble with you, Lou?” he asked rhetorically. “You want everything nice and clean. Square pegs in the square holes. But it ain’t like that, pal.” He was building a head of steam. A vein rose in his forehead. “Order out of chaos, all that shit. I remember you.” They dodged around a street musician. Boldt threw a quarter in the guitar case. Seeing this, Fowler put a dollar in and took out fifty cents in change. “You want Danielson dirty because it fits some preconceived notion of yours. You want Taplin, too, judging from our last conversation. For all the looks you give her, maybe you want your face in Matthews’s pussy.” Boldt stopped cold. “How the hell do I know? But it ain’t that way, Lou. The square peg never fits. Danielson’s not dirty. And it’s Adler riding Matthews, not you. There’s no fucking order to it, Lou. It’s random—it has always been random. No fucking way to make things fit. That is your problem.”

  “You’ve got a foul mouth, Kenny.”

  “And a dirty mind,” Fowler added. “But Danielson is still clean.”

  “No he’s not, pal. You just don’t like being wrong. And you knew your guys screwed this up somewhere.” Boldt turned and walked away. Fowler had drilled too close to the nerve. He counted to ten, and then he counted to ten again. He wanted a drink. He wanted some food. He wanted to go back and pop Fowler in the face. Or maybe he wanted Fowler to pop him. He wanted some order where none existed. He walked for three hours before returning to his car.

  And he had blisters in the morning.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Friday morning Dr. Richard Clements left voice mail for Boldt informing him that the Seattle field office of the FBI had been in touch with the Hoover Building and that the Bureau was sending Boldt seventy-five Special Agents and providing a digital tracking and communications package. A man named Meisner wanted to speak via a conference call with Boldt and Shoswitz about logistics.

  Slater Lowry had been dead three weeks.

  Boldt jotted down some notes to himself while riding the elevator to the second floor. His
feet hurt too much to take the stairs. Another piece of voice mail had been from Bernie Lofgrin.

  He entered the lab and signaled its director from across the room. Lofgrin carefully removed a pair of goggles and caught up with the sergeant in his office. The goggles left a dark red line in the shape of a kidney bean encircling his eyes and bridging his nose. His thinning gray hair was a mess, much of it sticking straight up. He patted it down, but it jumped right up again, charged with static electricity. He looked like a cockatoo.

  The office had been tidied, though it could not be considered neat. Boldt took a chair.

  “Clements must have leaned on the Bureau,” Lofgrin said as he closed the door for privacy. “At seven o’clock this morning our fax machine started humming. When the Feds issue reports, they don’t mess around. With all this paperwork,” he said, indicating an impressive stack of faxes on the desk, “it’s no wonder it takes them a month of Sundays to get back to us.”

  Lofgrin settled into his seat and switched on the tape of Scott Hamilton at Radio City that Boldt had copied for him. The sergeant felt impatient, knowing full well that all indications pointed to a Bernie Lofgrin lecture.

  Lofgrin cleaned his Coke-bottle eyeglasses, carefully rubbing them with a special soft cloth, and returned them to his face. He leaned forward. “Do you know what we call the volatilizing chamber on our gas chromatography?” The process of gas chromatography involved burning—volatilizing—a sample and analyzing the gases emitted in order to determine the organic and chemical compounds that comprised it.

  Boldt shook his head. Lofgrin’s jokes were famous for falling flat.

  “The ash-hole.”

  Lofgrin loved it; he bubbled with pleasure. Boldt felt obliged to twist a smile onto his lips, but found it impossible to maintain it. Foremost on his mind was Caulfield’s threat—as yet, that dreaded call had still not come in.

  “The ash-hole uses helium injection and weighs in at nearly twice the temp of your standard arson,” Lofgrin explained. Boldt had heard most of this before. He did not care about method; he wanted results. “Thirty-five hun and up. We reburn elements in the ash that weren’t torched the first time around, and the gases allow us to identify all but the inert compounds.”