No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

  Seeing Boldt’s lack of interest, Lofgrin said, “Okay—I’m lecturing again. Sue me. Caulfield had several boxes under his workbench. We’ve identified them as cardboard. You and I discussed that we had some supportive evidence that three of these boxes may have contained paper products—labels, leaflets, who knows? The cardboard in those boxes is apparently from the same manufacturer—a set, if you will. Produced by Everest Forest Products up to Anacortes. Everest has clients all over the state—but I have a list,” he said, digging into the pile and handing Boldt a fax. It was several pages long and listed over two hundred clients. “About seventy of those clients have their company logo printed on the boxes before final shipment. Seventeen of those seventy have zip codes here in the city.” He grinned and teased, “And I bet you thought you were the only one who loves detective work.”

  Boldt asked anxiously, “And do we know if the boxes at Longview Farms were printed or not?”

  “We do not know anything conclusively. We’re talking about the examination of ash, Lou. Our tests suggest that these boxes were the unprinted, generic variety. And that means they could have been supplied to any one of the other one hundred and thirty Everest clients.”

  Boldt’s hopes waffled.

  “The FBI techs have turned up a mixed bag. In all three boxes we show pulp fiber inconsistent with the production of the cardboard, meaning there is a high probability that all three contained paper products.” Reading another of the Bureau’s faxes, Lofgrin said, “In one of the boxes we find the presence of bleach and heavy metals consistent with some commercial inks—commercial printing techniques. In the other two, we show trace quantities of organics that suggest, but do not confirm, what we usually see in herbal inks—”

  “Adler uses herbal inks,” Boldt reminded.

  “Yes. That had occurred to me.” Lofgrin did not like being interrupted.

  “Sorry,” Boldt apologized.

  When Lofgrin’s enlarged eyes blinked, Boldt felt as if the man were waving at him. Lofgrin said, “Knowing that Adler uses herbal inks on his labels, we asked for a comparison, and you’ll be pleased to know that the ink found in these two boxes at Longview is consistent with that used on Adler labels. We cannot differentiate between say a chicken soup label and a hash label, but we can say with some degree of certainty that the labels in those two boxes could have been Adler Foods labels.

  “What is of interest to us,” he continued, “is that the contents of this other box—the one with the heavy metal content—have nothing whatsoever to do with the labels of Adler Foods products. Did I mention that because of a nice stratification, the Bureau lab was able to approximate paper size?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I told you how when we exposed the contents of these boxes to oxygen, they basically disintegrated. The Bureau boys have a vacuum chamber large enough for something like this, and they were able to pull accurate measurements for us. And those measurements also support the assumption that two of the boxes were Adler labels, and one not. So, basically, of the three boxes with paper products, two conform to what we see in Adler products and one does not.”

  “A different company,” Boldt suggested.

  Lofgrin nodded. “Right. And by the size and shape, they could very well be labels from another company’s product. Whether or not it is food, we can’t say.”

  “It’s food,” Boldt said.

  “One other element of interest to you,” he said, spinning to face his computer. “And this was sent via the proverbial new information superhighway—which we just happen to have been using for the past eight years, I might add … and there’s a hard copy to follow by express courier …” He clicked through some files, explaining, “The Bureau people got a beauty of a photograph of a sample in what I’m calling the heavy metal box. While inside the vacuum chamber, no less? I wish to hell we had this kind of gear …” The screen went completely blank, and lines slowly drew across the screen until what looked like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle appeared. Lofgrin stepped the computer through several moves, and the piece enlarged. He said, “This is a piece of what we believe to be one of the labels in the heavy metal box. It’s tiny, only a few centimeters square—a flake is all—but notice the colors.”

  With the next enlargement, the colors became apparent: red, yellow, and blue. Strong, primary colors.

  Boldt, leaning over Lofgrin’s shoulder, asked for the crime scene photographs from Longview Farms.

  “Color or black-and-white?”

  “Color.”

  It took Lofgrin a few minutes to locate the photos. When he returned to the office, he rewound the Scott Hamilton tape to his favorite ballad.

  While Boldt leafed through the dozens of eight-by-tens, he grabbed the phone and telephoned upstairs to LaMoia. “Find someone at Adler Foods who can tell us who does their label printing. Fowler was handling that for us, but I don’t want to involve him.”

  “Don’t want to involve him, or don’t want him to know?” LaMoia asked.

  “Both,” Boldt answered. He told him he could be reached in Lofgrin’s office, and hung up.

  While it was on his mind, and while still leafing through the dozens of Longview crime scene photographs, Boldt said to the lab man, “I need an opinion.”

  “That’s my middle name.”

  “If I take a bobby pin and insert it into an electrical outlet, and I’m wearing gloves, would there be enough heat to burn through the glove and get my finger?”

  “This is not something you want to experiment with,” Lofgrin teased, though serious. “If you’re lucky, all you’ll come away with is a burned finger. If they’re thin gloves, if the circuit is carrying a lot of amps, maybe your heart stops, too, and then you’re all Dixie’s.”

  Kenny Fowler’s fingertip had been burned. He had made a joke about it to Boldt, but something he had said later in their conversation about Daphne’s head injury continued to trouble Boldt.

  “Here it is!” Boldt passed the photograph to the lab man.

  Lofgrin’s head rose slowly, his eyes suddenly the size of dinner plates. Little Orphan Lofgrin, Boldt thought. In a hushed voice, uncommon in the confident Lofgrin, the man said, “Same colors.”

  He set the photograph down. It showed the cement floor of the slaughterhouse—a blend of spray paints in a rigidly straight line left by the removal of a drop cloth intended to catch the paints.

  Boldt said, “Yellow, blue, and red.” He held the color photograph up to the computer screen, and the colors matched nearly perfectly.

  The phone rang. Boldt snatched it up first and barked his name into the receiver. LaMoia’s voice said, “Grambling Printers, here in the city.”

  Boldt’s stubby finger, with its dirty fingernail, ran down the customer list for Everest Forest Products and came to a quick stop at the end of the G’s: Grambling Printers.

  “It’s here,” he said to LaMoia. “Get a car ready.” He hung up the phone. Boldt kissed Lofgrin on the forehead. “You’re a genius.”

  “Lou?” Lofgrin asked, scrubbing his forehead vigorously.

  Boldt’s voice cracked as he said, “Caulfield’s threat—to kill hundreds. It’s for real. The strychnine, another food company’s labels, spray painting a truck—maybe a delivery truck—he’s got everything in place.”

  “So what’s the good news?” Lofgrin asked.

  Boldt hoisted the photograph. “We’ve got these colors.”

  LaMoia drove a white Pontiac with privacy glass. The vehicle had been confiscated by SPD in a porn video bust. It had custom, wire-spoke aluminum wheels and a red velour interior, the backseat of which folded down and converted into an impressive bed. It was said to be featured in several of the videos, though only Special Ops and some attorneys had ever viewed them. This was the car that LaMoia drove regularly and had since been dubbed the Pimpmobile by his colleagues. He called it Sweetheart, as in, “Let’s take Sweetheart,” or “I gave Sweetheart a bubble bath and a wax today.” He treated it better than h
e did some of his friends.

  From behind the wheel, LaMoia queried Boldt. “Fowler already ran the mug shot by all the Adler printers, right?”

  “In theory.”

  “Meaning?”

  “What a guy like Fowler tells you he does, what he does, and what he gets from whatever he does are all different animals. He’s got a company to protect. He’s working for people.”

  “Kenny Fowler hosed us?”

  “Kenny has some explaining to do. He’s been putting his nose where it doesn’t belong. My guess is that it’s just competitive bullshit—trying to keep a step ahead. But if I’m right, it’s ugly stuff. Dirty. The kind of stuff you can’t forgive him, whatever the motivation.”

  LaMoia pulled the car to an abrupt stop, forcing Boldt to brace himself against the fringe-covered dash. “Nice driving,” Boldt said.

  “Need the brakes adjusted.”

  The office was all cheap furniture and bowling trophies. Boldt pushed the door shut. It rubbed against the floor, requiring an extra shove. There was a skim of oil on the vinyl seats from fast-food bags. He and LaMoia remained standing.

  “Does this man look familiar?” Boldt asked, passing Caulfield’s mug shot to Raymond Fioné.

  “Never seen him before,” the man said bluntly. Fioné made it clear that he did not like cops.

  “Look again,” Boldt encouraged.

  “My vision’s fine.”

  “A minimum-wage job. Maybe you just haven’t seen him around.”

  “Listen. It’s true, Sergeant …” He searched for the name. “Blot?”

  Boldt corrected his name.

  “Sure—I spend nearly every waking hour with my head buried in a damn computer screen. Who doesn’t these days? It’s like the lead in the Roman pipes, right? Machines this smart, they’re going to make us all dumb. But I sure as shit know who’s on my payroll, and this guy here is not one of them.”

  “Do you run your own deliveries?”

  “With the insurance what it is? Hell no.”

  “So maybe he trucks your product.”

  “Maybe he does,” Fioné agreed, “so what the fuck do I care?”

  “You care,” LaMoia said.

  Fioné glared.

  Boldt asked, “Who delivers the Adler product for you?”

  “They’re a good customer of ours, Adler is. Listen, Fowler and I already did this dance. Okay? What I’m supposed to say? You want I should lie to you? Tell me.”

  “Who delivers the Adler product?”

  Fioné answered, “Pacer handles all our shipping.”

  LaMoia wrote it down.

  Taking a wild guess, Boldt handed the mug shot back to Fioné and said, “This man applied for a job with you.” He paused. Fioné’s face flushed and he would not look at either of them. “He had a prison record. He was fresh out of prison and you turned him down.”

  The man spoke to the desk. “He was wired. All hyped up, you know? I didn’t like the guy.” He braved a look at Boldt. “Is that a crime?”

  “But you didn’t tell Fowler that.”

  “He didn’t ask.”

  LaMoia said, “You had to get rid of him, so you gave him the name of another company.”

  “No. Nothing like that. I got rid of him. That’s all.”

  Boldt said, “Are Pacer’s colors red, yellow, and blue?”

  “No,” the man answered. “Black and green, I think.”

  Boldt tried again. “One of your customers, then. A food product company uses red, yellow, and blue in their labels.”

  “You remember first grade, Sergeant Blot? The primary colors are in every other color,” he instructed.

  “Just those colors. Only the primary colors. Red. Yellow. Blue. One of your food accounts uses just those colors.”

  “Food companies are our specialty—our niche. All right? You know how many there are in this state? You know how many customers we have?” Fioné asked rhetorically, answering, “Maybe sixty or seventy. You know how often those customers change their designs, their colors, their look? You expect me to identify one of our customers by their colors? Do you know anything about this business?”

  “Heavy metals,” Boldt stated.

  “My son listens to that shit,” Fioné said.

  LaMoia stepped closer, “Not the music, asshole. Ink.”

  The man looked ready to fight. “Heavy metals? Those aren’t in your primary colors—those are your silvers and golds, your foils.”

  Boldt said, “So okay. How about a customer of yours that uses red, blue, yellow, and a foil? Does that clarify matters for you?”

  Fioné warned, “If you’re going to treat me like some ignorant asshole, you can go suck wind, far as I’m concerned, Sergeant. The door is right behind you. You got it?”

  He turned back to his computer and started typing.

  LaMoia checked with Boldt, who nodded, then the detective stepped forward and spun the man around in his chair. He leaned in close and said with intentional dramatics, “We’re with Homicide, asshole. There’s some guy killing people, and your labels are part of it, and that could drag you in deep. We need some fucking answers here. Right now! You got it?”

  The man’s face went scarlet. He met eyes with Boldt, and looked back at LaMoia. “I’ll pull the artwork for you.”

  Back in the garish car, LaMoia asked, “Where to?”

  “Let’s say you’re Caulfield. You’re out on parole, and you’re determined to make Adler pay. First place you apply for a job—”

  “Is Adler Foods.”

  “But you’re turned down—let’s say because of your record. Next?” Boldt asked, while at the same time seeing the fallacy of keeping Caulfield’s name away from Fowler and Taplin, and regretting that decision.

  “You go to the source: Grambling Printers.”

  “But they turn you down, too. No one wants you.”

  “You find out who trucks the labels. You try to go to work for them, or maybe you steal a couple of boxes out of the back when the driver’s in making another delivery.”

  “Exactly. And you put the boxes under your work-bench,” Boldt said. “And you go to work.”

  “Pacer Trucking?” LaMoia asked.

  “I’ll call for the address.”

  LaMoia and Bobbie Gaynes kept the south entrance of Pacer Trucking under surveillance while the back entrance was covered by Freddie Guccianno, back from vacation, and Don Chun, on loan to Shoswitz from Major Crimes.

  Boldt and Daphne waited for Jerry Pacer in a booth at a Denny’s restaurant. Daphne ordered an English muffin with cream cheese. Boldt ordered a hot dog with everything, fries, and a side of cottage cheese. Pacer arrived and took coffee with cream and sugar and made them switch to a smoking table. He had basset hound eyes and a double chin, and his hair seemed to be two different colors, indicating a rug. He was the kind of man who would be bored in the middle of an earthquake.

  He handed Boldt an employment form for Harold Caulfield. Boldt recognized the residential address as a rooming house by the community college. Only a matter of blocks from the Broadway Foodland, it was within the designated area where Dr. Richard Clements had stated the killer would be found.

  Pacer took one quick glance at the mug shot and pointed to it. “He’s younger, but that’s him.” His voice sounded like a cement mixer slowed down. “Are we done now? I got trucks to move.”

  Boldt felt both the surge of excitement and the wash of relief. He felt a knot in his throat. He felt like laughing.

  Daphne said, “You don’t seem too surprised.”

  “In this business, lady? What do you think, I deal with college grads? I probably know more cops than you do.” He added: “We done?”

  “Is he on the schedule today?” Boldt asked hopefully.

  “Wouldn’t matter he is or he isn’t. Not working for me, this kid. No calls, no nothing. Just stood me up. Happens all the time, but it still pisses me off. You figure they’re in trouble when they don’t even pick up the ba
ck pay. His is sitting in on my desk. So I wasn’t exactly shocked and stunned to get your call. That’s what I mean. I really can’t help you. Is that all? Can I get back now? Please?” he added sarcastically.

  “Stay,” Boldt said firmly, waving the hot dog at the seat. Some mustard dripped onto the table.

  Pacer sighed heavily and glared at him indignantly. Boldt realized the man had indeed spent a lot of time with police when he began answering questions without being asked. “This kid was okay. All right? So why do the cops care?”

  “Did he socialize with the other drivers?” she asked.

  “No. A loner. So what? I ain’t much for beveraging, either.”

  “What kind of cat do you have?” Boldt asked. He liked throwing questions that broke a person’s train of thought. Pacer had cat hairs all over the sleeves of his shirt.

  The man’s face twisted, and only part of his hair moved. Definitely a rug, Boldt realized. “Just a street cat is all. What’s it matter?”

  “What’s its name?” Boldt asked between bites. He was starving.

  The man shrugged. “Trix. Trixie. What the hell’s my cat got to do with this?” He asked this of Daphne, who returned his shrug.

  “Any inventory ever missing from Caulfield’s trucks?” Boldt asked.

  “Stuff gets mixed up all the time.”

  “But Caulfield in particular?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “Is there a way to check that?”

  “We got manifests, we got paperwork up the ying yang, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “So it could be checked,” Boldt stated.

  “Not by my people, it couldn’t,” Jerry Pacer said defensively. “Not on my nickel.”

  “But you would supply us the paperwork,” Daphne suggested. “Without a lot of attorneys.”

  “No problem whatsoever.”

  “Do you file invoices by driver?” Boldt added.

  “No way. We file by customer. Our drivers mix up the routes, because some damn insurance study showed that it reduced accidents. I gotta tell you, I think it works, but as far as administration goes, it’s a real pain in the ass.” He checked his watch. “You gotta understand, the place goes to shit without me this time of day. Can we speed this up any?”