Middle Of Nowhere b-7

by Ridley Pearson

LaMoia objected, "Why? So you go get yourself killed by some worthless skel?"

  "Those are your orders."

  "Bullshit!" LaMoia fired back.

  Boldt double-checked that all the phones came with similar services. "You've got call-waiting, don't you?"

  "Yeah," a disgruntled LaMoia answered.

  "So stay on the line with Gaynes and listen up for my in-coming call."

  "As ordered, sir!"

  Boldt said calmly, "You're injured, John. You're slow. And doubling up out there only doubles the noise we make. This is not heroics; it's what makes sense."

  "To you."

  "To me," Boldt said.

  Boldt checked the car's interior light before opening the door, making sure it would not light up as the door came open. He adjusted the vest as he stepped out into the rain-its woven plastic exterior would act as something of a raincoat. There would be no flashlight. He would allow his eyes to adjust and do his best in the dark. He walked slowly at first, unable to see more than a few feet in front of himself, his pace and stride increasing the longer he stayed out in the rain. He reached a muddy track to his right not far down the road, and stayed to the edge, where his sinking into the sloppy turf wouldn't show up in headlights, in case Flek was suddenly on his way out. He stooped low and felt the mud. The tire tracks seemed recent to him. Given the rain, they would have been beaten down in a matter of hours.

  He was less than a hundred yards down that track when he heard a car roar to life. With the sound bounc ing in the trees, it seemed to come from behind him, not from in front as expected. He crouched and reached for his weapon, only to realize that in his haste he'd strapped the vest in the way of his gun-an amateurish mistake that made him realize he had too much emotion working against him.

  When the car horn sounded out on the road, he realized it was his own car that he'd heard start, LaMoia behind the wheel. He ran for the open road.

  "What the hell?" Boldt said, as he jumped into the passenger seat, dripping wet. LaMoia was just shy of being a qualified stock car racer. He was the best and fastest driver of all the detectives. Boldt's car took off like someone had switched engines in the past few minutes.

  "Turns out Osbourne had a couple guys working on a hunch-"

  "Gaynes told me as much," Boldt recalled.

  "The hunch had to do with a part of the reserved bandwidth that isn't used for the calls themselves, but, as I understand it, has to do with tower handshakes."

  "What's it mean, John?" Boldt asked impatiently, strapping himself in.

  LaMoia glided the car on all four tires through a left turn that had Boldt clutching to the dash. Both hands on the wheel, the driver said, "It means that the reason we see those little bars on our cell phones for signal strength is because the phone and the towers are constantly talking to each other-and here's the catch: whether or not we're currently making a call. As long as the phone is on, it's looking for the nearest tower and reporting to its own processor what kind of signal strength is available, which comes back out of the phone as those little bars. To do so, it sends its own ID every time-like a few thousand times a second!"

  "And Osbourne can see it's his phone," Boldt mumbled.

  " Both their phones, but, yes, that's right. He can see them real-time-no more fifteen-minute delays. They can't triangulate. They can't pinpoint them unless he makes a call-and we're back to a delay at that point. But they can watch movement, tower to tower, as the phones continue checking for the best handshake. And both those phones are currently moving, Sarge." He didn't take his grip from the wheel, but his index finger pointed straight ahead. "East. They've been moving east for the last ten minutes or so. The phones appear to be at rest at the moment."

  "Which means we're gaining on them," Boldt said.

  "Bingo!" said the driver, as he pushed the car past ninety on a two-lane road swollen with rainwater.

  CHAPTER 60

  Daphne awakened to Bryce Abbott Flek pouring lukewarm beer down her face. It spilled down her chest and into her blouse, and she pushed him away as she came to. The first thing she did was look down at her foot because it felt different. He had removed her boot and sock and used the bootlaces to tie two cotton ends of the Tampax she carried as plugs on the entrance and exit wounds. One of the shoelaces was tied tightly around her left ankle, reducing blood flow. It hurt, but surprisingly held short of screaming pain.

  "Key to the cuffs," he said, sipping from the beer he'd just used to shower her awake.

  "Zippered pocket of my purse." He went after them. "How long was I out?"

  "Five minutes. Maybe less."

  It had felt like hours to her. But she doubted she had hours now, and that thought electrified her. If Flek had his way, this was meant to be the last night of her life, she realized. She would bleed out if she didn't receive medical attention. Regrets and fear piled up inside her, and she struggled to be rid of them. Eventually, they won out. She said, "What you wouldn't let me tell you-we only want you as a witness. We have nothing but circumstantial evidence against you. But there was an assault that we don't think you're good for, and we wanted you in to clear that up."

  "Sure you did," he said. "Here's how it's going to be." He glanced outside nervously. The sidewalks were empty due to the hour and the rain. "I'm going to take those off," he said, meaning the cuffs, "and help you over to the pay phone. And we're going to call your friend and you're going to say hello. And if anyone sees us, you're going to hold onto me tight like you've been loving me a hundred years. And if you don't, the next shot goes through the other foot, and then up the legs, and so on. Clear?"

  "I got it."

  "Fast and easy," he said. Then he added, "You got any change in here?" and dug deeper into her purse.

  CHAPTER 61

  " Hang on!" Boldt hollered into his cellular. "Let me write this down. I'm not thinking too clearly right now." It was no exaggeration. When his phone had rung he had not expected Flek, believing the man's cellular phone was jammed. He scribbled into his notebook. "Miller Bay North… directly across from Quail. The street's name is Sid Price?"

  LaMoia, overhearing his lieutenant, said, "Sounds like a game-show host."

  "Okay… Okay…" Boldt said into the phone.

  LaMoia tapped his watch frantically.

  Boldt acknowledged the signal with a nod and spoke into his phone. LaMoia wanted time. Boldt had to remember that Flek considered him still on the mainland, not a few precious miles away.

  "I can catch the nine-fifty ferry if I hurry," he said into the phone. "No… we don't have a helicopter… No, we don't! And that means an hour or so at the earliest. I understand that, but there's nothing I can do… It's the best I can do… Exactly.

  … Yes, alone. But I want to talk to her. If I don't hear her voice, the meet's off." He waited. "Okay."

  Boldt felt his heart pounding in his chest.

  "Lieutenant?" her weakened voice inquired. She avoided use of his first name; she didn't want to give Flek any hint of their friendship, not so much as an ounce of added leverage. "I'm wounded-" Boldt heard a struggle as the phone was ripped from Daphne's hand-he could visualize this as clearly as if he were standing by whatever pay phone they occupied. Wounded! His stomach knotted.

  "One hour," the man said. The line went dead.

  "She's wounded," Boldt reported in a whisper.

  "Wounded, how?"

  "He hung up."

  LaMoia one-handed the wheel. "Yeah? Well, the only reason he wants a meeting is to take you out." With the call to Bobbie Gaynes pressed to his ear, LaMoia warned his passenger, "My batteries are going to go, Sarge." Boldt's had already failed, though a cigarette lighter cable now powered his phone. They'd be down to that one phone in a matter of minutes. "Get back to Dispatch," LaMoia instructed his lieutenant, slamming on the brakes and skidding the car thirty yards to within a few feet of a stop sign and a T intersection that offered either a right turn to the south, or a left to the north. The quick braking pasted Boldt to
the dash. Concentrating on the phone, LaMoia reported, "They're rolling again-east, northeast. South end of Suquamish." He pointed out the windshield to the right. "A mile or two that way." Osbourne's tower-tracking technology was working.

  Boldt called Dispatch and reported the proposed location for the meet. The car idled smoothly at the intersection. Both men held tightly to their phones, their faces screwed down in impatience. LaMoia said something about them being "men of the millennium."

  Boldt shushed him with a raised finger and explained to the dispatcher, "I need a look at three hundred yards in any direction. Elevations. Obstructions. Get a detective in there and pick a spot that has the best long-range rifle shot at the location I just gave you. A long-range rifle shot," he repeated. "Right… Right…." Boldt began to sketch a slightly crooked finger onto a blank page of his notebook. It angled thinly to the right. He marked an X to the left of the middle knuckle. "Fastest route from here?" he asked. A fraction of a second later he pointed north, and LaMoia left two plumes of steam and black-rubber smoke behind the vehicle as it jumped through the turn. "I'll hold," Boldt said. He didn't mean the dash, but he held to that too.

  He cautioned LaMoia, "You've got to keep them reporting their movement. If you step on it," he said, indicating his crudely drawn map, "we beat them to the drop an hour before he expects to see us."

  "And we get the jump on him," LaMoia said gleefully.

  "Maybe," Boldt said, grabbing for the dash as they skidded through the next turn, the burning rubber crying out its complaint.

  CHAPTER 62

  " You need to focus on what Davie would think of all this," Daphne advised.

  "I warned you to shut up!" he reminded angrily.

  "Yes, you did. It's true. And maybe I'm just delirious from blood loss," she suggested, "but I want to help you if I can."

  "Fuck you."

  She said, "Does the name Maria Sanchez mean anything to you?"

  "I seen the news," he said.

  "Was that you? The Sanchez place?"

  He scoffed. "Cops are all the same. If it's easy, then that's your man."

  "What if they'd put this on Davie?"

  "Davie didn't have nothing to do with it!"

  "But you did?"

  "According to the news."

  "I'm asking you," she said. "I'm trying to tell you that that's the primary reason we wanted to collar you: Sanchez. We need answers. I've gotta believe," she said, trying her best to keep her brain functioning, to use vernacular capable of establishing a rapport, "that Davie wouldn't want you going down for something you didn't do."

  "You don't know nothing about Davie. What he did for me."

  He didn't complete the thought, but Daphne's mind raced ahead looking for answers. " What he did for me…" Suddenly she saw it, she understood what he was talking about. Psychologically, it changed everything. Davie was a martyr. She said to Flek, "The robbery he went down for, he confessed to… It was yours. He let slip about a delivery coming into the store, and you pounced. But you were about to get caught. Sitting on two convictions, with a third looming, you're fifteen to twenty without parole. Three strikes. And so Davie takes the fall for you, and big brother picks up bags and splits for Seattle." It was Flek who suddenly looked wounded. "But big brother can't leave well enough alone. He hears about little brother's work in the private commerce program-a program his brother has qualified for because he's such a model prisoner-and here comes another scam, and little brother can't say no."

  Flek glanced over at her with a look of crestfallen failure. The truth could soothe, or the truth could aggravate, and Daphne had taken a huge chance trying it out on him, but for the first time since climbing into this car in the belly of the ferry, she felt progress. She just wasn't sure she could retain consciousness long enough to take advantage of it.

  "We couldn't find any record of Davie having worked the phone solicitation on Sanchez. All your other burglaries were on his list. That is why we wanted to question you, Abby. Granted, our Burglary division would have heralded the arrest. You'd have gone away for five to twelve. But we're overcrowded, and with the crime being nonviolent, you'd be out in two. But breaking the neck of a policewoman and kidnapping another? You want to think about that for a minute?"

  "That's a bullshit charge, and you know it."

  "The kidnapping?" asked the hostage.

  "Sanchez," he said.

  "Do you have an alibi?"

  "What if I do?"

  "Then I shot myself in the foot. It's my gun-it'll fit. It happens more often than you think." She added, "Besides, I'm a woman. None of these guys think a woman can handle a sidearm."

  "You'd lie through your teeth to save yourself right now."

  "You're missing the point, Abby. What would Davie want you to do? That's got to be your focus. You want his name linked to this assault? Does he deserve that? He was a good kid, Davie was. He stepped up when others would have walked away. But now you're dragging him through it, and there's nothing he can do about it. But you-"

  "Shut up!"

  "He's dead," she said bluntly, knowing this was the button that had set him off. "He's dead and gone, all through a string of mistakes. Your mistakes, Abby. And if he's looking down right now, then his soul is tortured. Is that what you want? Did he take the fall for you to have it end up like this? Him dead. You a cop killer?" She let this sink in. "That's what you have in mind, isn't it? Kill Boldt. Or me? Or both of us? Put the blame onto Boldt instead of yourself? Do you see that's all you're doing? Do you realize it won't do anything to take away the voices?"

  He snapped his head toward her as if she'd poured salt on a wound.

  "You hear voices. They started right after your brother's death." She said, "You think they're bad now? You've never killed a man, have you, Abby? It's not something you forget. It's not something you walk away from and all is forgiven. You blame Boldt for Ansel- but you've got that wrong."

  His eyes burned into her as he turned the car right onto a street marked Sid Price. A damp and dark narrow lane. Enormous trees. Close quarters. She couldn't be sure he'd even heard her.

  He drove down a small dirt track, a dead-end driveway that led down to a muddy patch of lawn and a boat launch into Miller Bay. The narrow waterway was only fifty yards wide at this point. Flek parked the car up from the boat ramp. He lowered both windows, shut off the car and turned off the lights. Daphne could smell the low tide and mud flats. It smelled like death.

  "Don't do this," she pleaded. "I can still get you out of most of this. But if you go through with it…"

  Paying little attention to her, he leaned over awk wardly and reached under the seat and worked to untwist some hidden wire. If she was to have a chance to fight back, it was then, with his head lowered. But she couldn't summon the strength, nor the courage. She could barely keep herself conscious. She had lost great quantities of blood. Perhaps she was dying. She had heard Flek mention one hour and she no longer believed she could or would make it that long, certainly not conscious.

  "Please," she said.

  He sat up, the Chinese assault rifle in hand. The German scope. He had wired it high under the seat, so that even a thorough check under the seat by a traffic cop might not have revealed it. He said, "Cops lie, lady. They lie about me doing that other woman, and now you lie to save your ass. They'll lie about anything, if it makes their job easier."

  He sought out the oily rag and gagged her again, a man going about his business. He turned on the car's interior light and met eyes with Daphne. "If I get Boldt, I'll spare you. If I don't, it's you who's gonna pay. Say your prayers." Then he was gone, down toward the water, the rain and the darkness absorbing him.

  CHAPTER 63

  " Gaynes says the signals have stopped moving," LaMoia reported.

  "Then that was them," Boldt said, his attention fixed on the entrance to the street marked Sid Price. The Crown Vic was parked down a muddy lane, called Quail, from which they had an unobstructed view across Miller B
ay Road. A big monster of a car had turned through the rain only a few minutes before, its taillights receding. LaMoia had guessed it was an Eldorado.

  "Shit, Sarge," LaMoia complained. "He could lay in wait for you anywhere down there. We gotta rethink this."

  "We're at least a half hour ahead of when he expects us," Boldt reminded. "That's in our favor. We need to move while it still means something."

  "We may have the jump on him, but he's got the sniper's rifle. Our peashooters are good at ten to thirty feet, Sarge. He's dead on the money at two hundred yards."

  "We had his sight recalibrated," Boldt informed the man, who knew so little of the investigation to this point. "He wanted a hundred and fifty yards. Manny Wong gave him seventy-five."

  "No shit? And you're counting on that? What are you smoking? If he's tried the thing out on a range- which you can bet your ass he has-then everything's back on target. I wouldn't put a hell of a lot of faith in this guy missing, Sarge. I'd be thinking about shooting him first. That usually has the more desired effect."

  "His first shot will miss," Boldt said confidently. "You have to hit him before he throws that second shot."

  "Me and who else?" LaMoia complained. "I got me a peashooter here. I got to know where he is if I'm to be useful. And I won't know until after that first shot."

  Boldt cupped his penlight so the light barely shone down onto his open notebook, but it was enough to see by. He had sketched in the information provided by Dispatch and analyzed by Patrick Mulwright, head of Special Ops, who volunteered to help out. Intelligence, a division where Boldt had been lieutenant for a year, provided high-resolution military satellite images of Miller Bay. Within fifteen minutes of Boldt's request, Mulwright had come back to him with three likely sniper points: rooftops; either of two high-tension electric towers that strung four hundred thousand volts suspended across Miller Bay; and a marina, directly across the water.