No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

  Boldt pretended not to hear him. “One of your clients is Grambling Printers.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “And is the Grambling work invoiced by Grambling customer, by specific delivery, or all grouped together?”

  “Grouped. We contract out to a lot of outfits. They handle their paperwork, we handle ours.”

  “We want that paperwork,” Boldt reiterated.

  Indicating Daphne, Pacer said, “Already taken care of. Come on! Let me out of here.”

  Daphne tried: “One of the companies you ship for uses a logo or a name—I can’t remember—of red, yellow, and blue. The three colors by themselves. Maybe some silver or gold in there.”

  “Hell if I know.”

  “Think!” Boldt said, too impatiently.

  The rebuke rattled Pacer. He played with the salt shaker sliding it between his hands like a hockey puck. “I don’t know. Sounds more like fruit and vegetable crates to me. Del Monte, you know? Some of the truck farmers. Eyecatching shit. Flowers maybe. We don’t do no produce.”

  Boldt and Daphne met eyes, and Boldt started sliding out the booth, reaching for his wallet as he went.

  “What?” Pacer asked, tentatively.

  Daphne offered him a business card and told him, “We need the Grambling paperwork immediately. Right now. Right away.”

  “I understand the word immediately. It’s my drivers can’t read, not me.”

  “We’ll have it?”

  “You’ll have it.”

  Pacer stood, uncertain and confused. He swept a hand over his rug, ensuring it was still in place. He nodded and headed out of the restaurant at a fast pace. Boldt flagged the waitress, while stuffing the hot dog down.

  “Produce,” Daphne declared. “Truck farmers. He could be out there anywhere, selling spinach out of a pickup.”

  During the summer months, truck farmers proliferated on Washington’s back roads, interstate rest areas, and downtown parking lots.

  “Buy it, shoot it up with strychnine, and sell it off the back of your truck. He keeps moving, he keeps killing.”

  “Or deliver it to grocery stores.”

  “Or restaurants.”

  His pager sounded. Reluctantly, he reached down and shut it off, not wanting to read its tiny LCD display and whatever information was contained there. Just the sound of the device turned Boldt’s stomach; it was actually worse than a telephone ringing.

  Boldt read the code on the display. He felt the blood drain from his face, and his hands go cold.

  “Lou?”

  He stole Daphne’s purse, rummaged through it, and removed her cellular phone. He called downtown, and the moment the dispatcher answered, he spoke his name clearly, “Boldt,” though to him it sounded like somebody else talking. “Who is it?” He waited to hear the answer, then shut off the phone and handed it back to Daphne, his hand visibly shaking.

  She grabbed his pager from him and read the display. “An officer down?” she said, her voice wavering. There was nothing so painful as this for any cop. “Who?”

  “Striker just shot Chris Danielson in a hotel room over on Fourth.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Boldt had been to over a hundred such crime scenes, but with his friends and coworkers involved, this hotel room looked somehow different. Shoswitz had assigned Sergeant David Pasquini as primary in the officer-involved shooting, and Boldt tried to stay out of the man’s way.

  According to a uniform by the door, Danielson had gone out on a stretcher, alive but critical; Striker was in handcuffs, ranting and raving about what a lousy shot he was.

  There was a good amount of blood on the bed, and two piles of clothes on chairs, with Danielson’s weapon still snapped into its holster. Four shells had been discharged onto the carpet. An ID man was taking photographs of them. The air still smelled of cordite. Boldt crossed the room and glanced out the window. Downstairs on the street, a media circus was brewing.

  “Where’s that coffee?” Pasquini shouted after cracking open the bathroom door a few inches.

  Boldt, back at the room’s entrance, grabbed the green Starbucks coffee from the patrolman and delivered it himself, inching the door open with his foot and not allowing Pasquini to get full hold of it.

  “Okay,” Pasquini said, relenting, and admitting Boldt to the tiny bathroom.

  Elaine Striker, wearing a hotel towel wrapped around her middle, sat on the closed toilet. A woman officer was braced in the tub, a notepad in hand.

  Boldt pushed the door shut.

  Pasquini removed the lid from the coffee and handed it to the woman, who used both hands to steady the cup before taking a sip.

  Elaine had mascara on her cheeks, bloodshot eyes, and a mottled chest. Her skin was freckled—a good deal of it showing—and her tousled red hair framed her face in a ring of fire. She looked up at Boldt with hollow, apologetic eyes. “It just happened,” she said.

  Pasquini wanted her talking to him, not Boldt. “He had a key?”

  “He came in without us knowing. We were … busy. He must have just stood there watching.” She broke down crying. Pasquini shook his head impatiently and took the cup from her as she spilled some coffee across her hands. Boldt offered her a towel. She dried off her hands, tucked herself into the towel that was wrapped around her, and looked back up at both policemen. “Chris sat up, and Mike started firing.”

  Boldt could see the blood in her hair. There was some on the left of her neck, too. And only then did he notice the small pile of bloodstained washcloths used to clean her up.

  “How many shots?” Pasquini asked.

  “No idea.”

  “One? Ten?”

  “More than one. Several. And then Chris—” She broke down again. Boldt had heard enough. He leaned in closely to her, offered some reassurance, and took her hand as she reached out to him. It took a few seconds to win his hand free again, and he left.

  Using an address listed on Caulfield’s employment form with Pacer Trucking, warrants were issued to search the rooming house, and that afternoon seventeen uniformed and plainclothes officers descended on Caulfield’s room like a swarm of bees. A check of records confirmed that Caulfield had moved out of the hotel the day following the murder of Sheriff Turner Bramm—a date Boldt could not get out of his mind. Since that time, the room had been home to a grunge musician and his girlfriend, destroying any chance the lab techs would recover anything of use—and nothing admissible in a court of law. Boldt was reviewing the search with Shoswitz and Lofgrin when Daphne entered the lieutenant’s office and said, “I can get us into Striker.”

  The nurses in Harborview’s psych ward knew Daphne by name, and allowed them to bypass much of the red tape usually required. Even so, before being allowed into the ward that housed Michael Striker’s barren hospital room, she and Boldt were required to leave behind their weapons, badges, belts, pens and pencils, and Boldt’s shoelaces. This was their first indication of Striker’s condition. Daphne had stretched the truth to gain them access so quickly, saying she was here for “a session” with the suspect, and explaining Boldt’s presence as “some protection.” After the shooting, Michael Striker had broken a patrolman’s arm before jumping into traffic in an apparent act of suicide. This, she explained to Boldt, was the reason for his admission to the psych ward, and his doctor’s refusal for police interrogation. A male nurse unlocked and then relocked the door behind them.

  Striker had cut up his legs by running into traffic, though nothing was broken. He was under physical restraints. And Daphne informed Boldt in a whisper that he was also mildly sedated.

  “Hey,” Boldt said, trying to sound casual.

  The room’s mood was grim. In place of a real window, there was an electronic contraption mounted to the wall that emitted light and offered an incredibly lifelike pastoral view of the Canadian Rockies.

  “So I can’t jump out,” Striker informed him from his bed. “They pay ten grand for those things. Supposed to help improve your state of
mind.” He grinned thinly at this. “Supposedly, the thing even does sunrise and sunset.” He wore a blue-and-white hospital gown that used Velcro instead of ties, to eliminate the chance of hanging oneself. Striker had sad, lifeless eyes. He had hollow, drawn cheeks and bulging eyes that indeed made him look a little crazy.

  “They’ve got so much shit in me,” he said, “that I’m basically a walking pharmacy. Check that,” he corrected. “I’m not doing much walking.” He tugged at his strapped-down arms.

  Daphne spoke with him for the better part of twenty minutes, through which she remained incredibly calm and Striker slowly began to make some sense.

  “Listen,” he said, in what sounded to Boldt like the man’s familiar intolerant attorney voice, “I was out of my gourd to do what I did. And that includes diving for the grille of that truck. But it’s over now, and I feel great. Valium is a wonderful thing.”

  “Can you tell us about it?” Daphne asked.

  “What’s to tell? The guy was fucking my wife; so I fucked him.” His cheek twitched and he asked Boldt to scratch his neck for him.

  Boldt said, “You found him with Elaine. Is that it, Mikey?”

  “You warned me, Lou. I know that. I thought about that right after I did it, too.”

  “But you followed her anyway.”

  “Sort of. Right.”

  “Is there something you want to tell us?” Daphne asked. Boldt felt the avoidance in the man, too, and it impressed him that Daphne seized upon it so quickly.

  “Jergenson was the house dick. Remember Jergenson, Lou? I offered him a fifty, and he said how it was on the house because catching people fucking was part of his job, and he remembered me. People don’t forget this,” he said, indicating his prosthesis. “The one shrink I’ve seen make a big deal about my mitt. Talked a lot about manhood and what I tried to do to Danielson. No offense, Matthews, but the guy is full of shit.”

  “I’m not a shrink,” she said.

  Boldt was not sure if Striker even heard that. He did seem pretty stoned.

  “It had a lot less to do with my mitt than it did with my dick and my heart. She tore my heart out is what she did. Especially at the end there: She wasn’t trying to hide it at all. Just wave it in my face and head out the door all dolled up. Came home smelling like love. Jesus.”

  “So Jergenson let you in.”

  “Right.”

  “How did you know which room, Mikey?”

  He looked over at the Canadian Rockies, and when he did, Daphne shot Boldt a quick look of apprehension.

  “And he was … And you should have seen her … He had her on another planet. He had her so far gone that I’m not sure she even recognized me. Know what I mean?”

  Boldt could sense it, and he thought Daphne could as well—that was what that look had been about, though he felt at a loss as to how to get at it. This was her territory; he felt more like a spectator, and yet Striker seemed more comfortable talking to him. He did not look at Daphne at all.

  “Did this man Jergenson know your wife?” she asked.

  “Nah. He was a beat cop once upon a time. Spent his last years as a court guard. That’s how I knew him. I’m surprised you don’t remember him.”

  Daphne inquired, “So it wasn’t he who told you where to find your wife.”

  Boldt asked, “Did you follow her? Was that it?”

  “It’s not what’s important,” replied the attorney authoritatively. “They were in the act. Boy, were they. And I caught the bastard, and I blew him away. What little shooting I’ve done in my life was done right-handed. If I hadn’t had this,” he said, indicating his prosthesis, “I’da hit the target.”

  They remained silent.

  “Not easy to shoot left-handed is it, Lou? You ever done it?”

  “I’m still a little confused about something, Razor,” Boldt said. “When we talked out in front of my house, you said that you weren’t comfortable following her. You asked me to do it for you. So did you change your mind, is that it?”

  “You’re missing the point,” Striker repeated, avoiding an answer, attempting to use his attorney skills that were considerably dulled by the drugs coursing through him. “I had to have proof. Can you understand that? I’d been through her dirty laundry—and I don’t mean that figuratively; I had asked questions and had studied her carefully for her reactions—it’s my job to spot the guilty. I knew I was getting lies, and there were times she would come home and completely avoid touching me until she’d had a bath or a shower, and when you see enough of that, you no longer wonder what’s going on. But I had to know. That’s just part of who I am. I’ve got to know.”

  “Is there something you would like to share with us about how you identified the particular hotel?” she asked.

  Boldt felt warm, and the room was not warm. Not unless that fake window was responsible. He felt anxious, because Striker was incredibly nervous, and the sergeant knew that if the claw had not been tied shut, it would have been chirping away.

  “I’ve fucked things up for you,” Striker apologized.

  Boldt said, “I’ve always wished I could throw you a curveball, Razor, but I’ve seen people try it in court and I’ve seen you blow them away, so I’d just as soon lay it right out there.”

  “Do it.”

  “Who did you hire to follow Elaine?”

  Striker shook his head like a person who had a bug caught in his hair. Boldt took inventory of Daphne, who gave him a slight shake of the head, indicating for him to let Striker be. Her eyes said, Don’t push.

  Striker took a moment to recover. This was the first time he met eyes with Daphne, and she sensed in him a hatred of all women, and took this as normal. She offered, “I can leave the room if you like.”

  “No. It’s not that.” He looked at Boldt. “I didn’t hire anyone, Lou. It wasn’t like that.”

  “Okay, so you didn’t hire anyone. After you spoke with me, did you ask someone else in the department to do this for you, or maybe one of the investigators in your office? Someone like that? No curveballs, Razor. I’m putting it to you straight: you have screwed things up for me. I need answers.”

  “I received a call.”

  Boldt glanced over and met eyes with Daphne as she sat forward in her chair. “A call?” Boldt asked, as calmly as he could force his voice to sound.

  “I received a telephone call telling me that if I was looking for Elaine, I could find her in room four-seventeen.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Elaine is female, Lou.” This was the medication talking, and though Striker chuckled for a little too long, Boldt waited him out.

  “Male,” Striker answered.

  “Did you recognize the voice?”

  “No, I did not.” He seemed a little bored, a little let down in himself for talking about this.

  “But you believed him. You went there prepared to shoot a man.”

  “I didn’t think about it. I was on autopilot.” He laughed more strongly this time. “You know, I’ve put guys away for twenty years who tried that line on me! Talk about the tables turning!” He hesitated and said, “You’re messing with my head here, Lou, because I hear what you’re saying to me. You’re saying someone fed me that phone call knowing damn well that I’d go and blow the guy away. Counting on me to do it. And if you don’t mind, right now that’s a little much for me, okay? Because I know what people think about my temper—I mean, it’s no secret.”

  Boldt asked, “When did you receive this phone call?”

  “A little after ten.”

  “At the office?”

  “Yeah, the office.”

  “And is that number published?”

  Striker nodded. “I see what you’re getting at, Lou, but it’s no good. I didn’t recognize the voice. I’m being straight with you on that.”

  “You were set up, Razor,” Boldt informed the man. “Someone wanted you or Danielson or both of you out of the way.”

  “Yeah?” Striker said angril
y. “Well, I couldn’t care less about that. If I got that phone call again, I would go right back there and finish up what I started. I swear I would. My one and only one regret is that I missed. I wasn’t aiming to kill him. A PA knows the difference between assault and murder one. But I missed, goddamn it. Four shots and I couldn’t hit the damn thing. Four damn tries. Not that it was very big anyway. So much for the myth—I’m here to tell you.”

  At first the laughter seemed all right, though Daphne looked concerned. And then Boldt realized that the laughter would not quit, and after a minute it frightened him, because Striker had lost all control. He was crying and laughing and looking at them desperately as though he did not understand where it came from and that they should pull the plug and shut off the machine. He was laughing ten minutes later, when the male nurse kicked them out and delivered a shot of something that Daphne said would take care of it. But it did not. When they reached the car, Boldt imagined he could still hear the man’s laughter, as if it had penetrated the electronic window, reverberating down to the parking lot below. Even the car door closing did not shut it out for Boldt. And he told Daphne this.

  “You know what those two words are together?” she asked, placing the car in reverse. “Man’s laughter? Combined?” she asked. “What we witnessed up there is how most of them pay for it.”

  Boldt combined the words in his head and spoke softly: “Manslaughter.”

  She said, “Michael Striker has a long road ahead of him.”

  He placed his hand on hers and stopped her from backing up the car. “How good is your memory?” he asked, taking his hand away.

  “You know damn well that I pride myself on it.”

  “I forget who it was,” Boldt said, “but someone told me that the bump on your forehead was from a box coming down off a shelf.”

  “That was Lofgrin or LaMoia or Bobbie. They were the only ones who asked.” She said, “It’s after seven, aren’t you supposed to be over at NetLinQ? You want me to drop you?”