His current plan was to go home with Jimmy for the afternoon. Avoiding his own house—the address in the wallet—was of utmost importance. Jimmy was big for his age, with narrow-set eyes and big pudgy hands. He wasn’t the coolest of Ben’s friends, but he never teased Ben about his glass eye the way some of the kids did. Jimmy was okay. Ben realized they would probably play video games or watch a movie—what would normally have been a great way to avoid homework and going home to his empty house—but as the school day came to a close, Ben wished he had never agreed to go. He was terrified to leave the building.
He had an urge to visit Emily, as he so often did on his way home from school, but the possibility remained that the driver of the pickup truck, Nick, had connected Ben to Emily, which meant he might be watching her place just as he might be watching Ben’s place. With few options, going home with Jimmy seemed the smart thing to do: He would ride a different school bus to a different part of town. Meanwhile, he debated how he might go about running away, how far the money might take him, where he might go. He also debated buying his very own Nintendo.
Ben wore a sweatshirt with the hood up on the way to the school bus. Jimmy was big enough to use as a screen, and Ben followed him to the bus, head down, trying to force himself not to look up and give anybody a chance to see his face. His stepfather would be home about seven or eight, sometimes later. By then it would be dark, easier to move around without being seen. Ben was slowly formulating a plan. Survival was everything. He was no stranger to the game.
25
To confront a possible murderer face-to-face was the moment Daphne Matthews lived for. As departmental psychologist, she tolerated that aspect of her job which required her to listen to grown-up men with badges whine like little boys; she put up with the sexist environment of a cop shop that would never change. The boys could paint over their discrimination with regulations and the occasional slap on the wrist, but they would never be rid of it: Men who wore uniforms and oiled their guns on a regular basis saw women as a reservoir of soft flesh and a means to a hot meal and children. She helped out the alcoholic patrolman, the suicidal detective, the wife abuser, all as a means to an end: to interview killers, to see herself through herself, to explore the darker realm.
She walked a little lighter, stood a little taller, grinning nonstop as she hurried down the 1500 block in Ballard, home to SFD’s Battalion 4 and its Marshal Five, Steven Garman. The firehouse was a beautiful brick structure built fifty years earlier, outclassing everything in the block. Ballard was Seattle’s neighborhood of Norwegian ancestry, its southern boundary Salmon Bay and the Ship Canal, whose piers and marinas housed much of the city’s smaller commercial fishing fleet, the mom-and-pop vessels owned and operated by generations of Ballardites. For some, Ballard was the target of ethnic jokes, about smelling like fish and talking with accents; to others, an object of respect, one of the only neighborhoods in the city to have maintained its heritage and identity through the Californication of the mid and late eighties.
As Daphne climbed the stone staircase to the firehouse’s second floor, she focused on establishing her own identity while preparing herself for whatever, whoever, Steven Garman turned out to be. She would begin with no preconceived notions of innocence or guilt, no judgment. She accepted that he was the recipient of the poetic threats, both of which had been accompanied by an as yet unidentified piece of melted green plastic. She intended to establish a rapport, whatever this required of her: professional psychologist, sexual flirt, disinterested bureaucrat, attentive listener. Such interviews required her to be an actress, and she loved the challenge. She could use her beauty to lull a man into an unwitting cooperation; women were a far tougher sell.
The firehouse had undergone little if any renovation. Daphne was struck by the depressing atmosphere, well aware of the role environment plays in psychology. There were photographs on the walls, black-and-whites of blazing out-of-control fires and a color copy of the mayor’s official photograph. The requisite gunmetal-gray file cabinets, ubiquitous in all government offices, were full to overflowing, and the hallway smelled of a combination of chewing gum, hot dust, and industrial cleaner, as if something electric were burning somewhere out of sight—an odor appropriate for the office of a fire inspector.
Daphne knocked lightly on Garman’s door and entered.
Garman was ensconced in a large leather chair in an immaculately kept office. He was a big, handsome man with soft brown eyes and a bushy mustache, younger than she had expected. There was a picture of Einstein on the wall, and another of Picasso. These seemed out of place to Daphne; a blue-collar fireman up on his Impressionism? What were his tastes in poetry? she wondered. There was a color shot of the space shuttle Challenger at the moment of its explosion, the entrails of white fumes caught in a tight corkscrew spiral, shuttle debris frozen forever in a sky of blue. Daphne remembered exactly where she had been on that day. Garman caught Daphne staring.
“I worked on that one,” Garman explained. “The debris reconstruction.” Maintaining strict eye contact, he said, “Like working on a jigsaw puzzle with cranes.”
“You were Air Force?”
“Does it show?” he asked, coming out of his chair and introducing himself with a handshake.
Maybe it did show, she thought, as she looked more closely. Maybe it helped explain the hard handshake and the riveting grip of those eyes. She wanted to like him right away, which only fueled her suspicion of him.
“Aircraft carriers, land-based, or what?” she asked.
“Bases,” Garman answered, motioning Daphne into a chair.
The desktop held a couple of faded snapshots of Garman with a very young boy. Wheat fields. Blue sky and lots of it. Kansas? she wondered.
At the forefront of her thoughts were Emily Richland’s mention of a military man and Boldt’s information that the accelerant might be rocket fuel. Steven Garman, ex-Air Force, had to be considered carefully.
She said, “Sergeant Boldt wanted to thank you for not opening the most recent note.”
“Listen, I wish I could tell you why he’s sending this stuff to me. I really don’t want any part of it.”
“He?” Daphne asked. “What makes you think so?”
“A girl? No way, no how. I’ve been around fire most of my life, arson investigation for the past seven years, and I gotta tell you that in all that time I’ve never had a female suspect. Not once. Some women trying to be firefighters, sure, we’ve gone through that. Maybe a few teenage girls as accomplices to their boyfriends. But primary suspect? No, ma’am. This is a man lighting these fires. I’d bet my badge on it.” He added, “Are you on Boldt’s squad?”
“I’m part of the in-house task force,” she answered. She felt compelled to skirt the truth. Garman might freeze up if he discovered she was a psychologist.
He had bright red cheeks and either dark skin or a 200-watt tan.
“The last note read, Suddenly a flash of understanding, a spark that leaps across to the soul. Mean anything to you?”
“He’s one sick mother, you ask me. Sparks leaping? I don’t know. You can overanalyze this stuff, you know? It’s some shitbird’s way of playing heavy. It’s a power trip—send this stuff ahead of time. He’s a tease is what he is, but he’s a killer too.”
“It’s Plato.”
“Is that right? Plato? Probably got it off a box of cornflakes.”
“Can I ask you a couple of personal questions?” she said, feeling for the cassette tape recorder that ran in the pocket of her coat, counting on it for transcripts later.
“Shoot.”
“Did you know either Dorothy Enwright or Melissa Heifitz, personally or otherwise?”
“Certainly not,” he said defensively, his voice strained with tension. He looked at her quizzically, suddenly more curious.
“The reason I ask is because it might help explain the threats coming to you—someone who knows you’re connected with the women.”
Garman said bru
squely, “Not connected. I never knew either of them, never had so much as heard their names. Listen, I don’t want these things. Have you guys checked with the other Marshal Fives, other firemen? Do we know for sure that I’m the only one getting them?”
“I haven’t heard otherwise.”
“Well, neither have I, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“One of the things Sergeant Boldt has asked me to do is act as liaison. There’s the Arson Task Force investigation, and there’s the Homicide investigation,” she said, indicating one of her hands for each department. Weaving her fingers together, she said, “My job is to help marry the two, now that Bahan and Fidler are so actively involved. We don’t think the weekly meetings are enough, and Boldt is no fan of meetings to start with. He says everything gets talked about and nothing gets done.”
Garman allowed a grin. “I’d go along with that.”
“You’ve worked over two hundred arson investigations,” she informed him, without consulting any notes. She wanted him to know she had been researching his record, wanted to have her eyes on him to judge any reaction. She was disappointed by the slight blush to his neck. He averted his eyes in what to her was an act of modesty. She realized she had lumped all firemen into cocky macho types despite her efforts to avoid prejudging.
“Suspicious fires,” he corrected. “Some we call as arsons. Some not.”
“Twenty-two arrests, nine convictions,” she added.
“Listen, I don’t keep notches on my gun or anything. It’s a job. You quote those numbers, and it depresses me. We only clear fifteen percent of our cases. You guys, it’s what? Seventy or eighty, I think? Vehicle fires are the worst. Last year we lost forty-five thousand vehicles in this country to suspicious fires. Forty-five thousand! Can you believe that? And we wonder why our insurance costs so much! Maybe half my stuff is vehicles. Most of the rest, abandoned structures. Every now and then revenge or a vanity fire.
“First thing I did,” he continued, “when I connected the Enwright fire to that note, was go back through my files. That’s what Boldt asked about; that’s what you’re going to ask too, so I’ll save you the time. I can’t place a single one of those shitbirds in something like this. A couple are still locked up, a couple more moved on. And every one of them was an obvious pour. Gasoline. You don’t convict them on anything less. Every drop of gasoline has its own fingerprint, did you know that? Every batch that comes out of a refinery is a little bit different, chemically speaking. A guy does a pour; we pursue him as a suspect; we find a can of gas in his garage and, bingo! the lab gives us a match. At that point we convict. Anything short of that, they walk. And I’ll be damned if I can make any one of my convictions stick for this thing.”
“Your arrests?”
“Same thing.”
“But why are you receiving these notes?” she asked. Again, Garman’s neck went florid, but this time his soft eyes went cold and hard; he nervously rolled a pen between his fingers. It was not what she expected; she registered that look, not wanting to forget it.
“Marshal Five, I suppose. There are only a few of us. Could have mailed it to any one of us. I got lucky, I guess.”
“Enemies?” she asked. “Anything in your past that might—”
“No,” he interrupted. The pen began to spin again. She used it as a barometer.
“How about your Air Force serv—?”
“Listen!” he interrupted again. “What is it with all the questions about me? It’s this torch we’re after, okay?”
“He’s chosen you for some reason, Mr. Garman.”
“Steven,” he corrected.
“Do we chalk it up to coincidence? To chance? Let me tell you something about Lou Boldt, if you haven’t already heard it. The word coincidence isn’t in his lexicon. It doesn’t exist. He’s a fatalist: Everything happens for a reason; there’s an explanation for everything. These victims?” she asked rhetorically. “Chosen at random? Don’t suggest that to Lou Boldt. There’s a reason, no matter how obscure. And Boldt will find it, mark my words.” The pen stopped moving. “These notes coming to you?” she asked in the same tone. “To Boldt there’s a reason for that. No roll of the dice is going to explain it. And my job is to provide him with a believable explanation. There isn’t a hell of a lot to go on in this one. You are about all he has. Why Steven Garman? he keeps asking. He wants an answer—and let me tell you something else about Boldt: He gets to the truth.” The pen started spinning. “He gets the answers. You want to talk clearance rates? Boldt’s is in the nineties—and we’re talking over a fourteen-year career on Homicide. You want to talk amazing?” The red flush crept back into Garman’s neck, and Daphne knew she had a live one. Like every other living human being, the man had secrets.
“So that’s the question he wants answered: Why Steven Garman?” A thin film of perspiration glistened under his hairline. “I’m asking myself if it doesn’t go back to your Air Force days. Something out of your past.”
Garman swallowed heavily. His eyes were soft again, but they were scared. His pupils were dilated; he was mouth breathing.
Talk to me, she encouraged silently.
“Nothing I can think of,” he said. His voice cracked and belied his words.
Got you!
She wanted to stay there the rest of the day, to keep working on him until he asked if she were hot or loosened his tie or opened a window. She had no idea what was hidden inside him, or if it bore any real significance to the investigation. People inflated their own self-worth. But she wanted to get at it. She wanted to sweat him. There were a dozen ways to trip him up, but she would go gently. Consult Boldt, play it his way. She said, “You mentioned that you were stationed on a base.”
“It isn’t relevant. Seriously. It was—what?—nine, ten years ago. The world changes a lot in ten years.”
“You were married then,” she said, adding a little tug to the hook.
Garman’s eyes went to glass. If the pen had been a pencil it might have snapped between his powerful fingers. He glanced away, then back at her, then away again, unable to decide where his eyes should light. There was anger concealed within him. Rage. Its bubbles broke the surface, indicating the roiling boil below. “Exactly what is the purpose of this meeting?” he inquired tightly.
Instinctively, she switched off the role of interrogator. She had more than enough to present to Boldt. To push further without backup, without surveillance in place, would be a mistake. Garman was a suspect. She felt a flood of hot, almost sexual energy pass through her chest and through her pubis and down to her toes. “The purpose of this meeting was to get to know each other, that’s all. I have the jump on you in that regard. Sorry if it came off as the third degree. Product of the profession, I’m afraid.” She had saved one last gem, held it in her bag of tricks from the moment he had confirmed his service in the Air Force. Kept it ready, compartmentalized in her mind, one hand on the door. She opened that door by telling him, “The ATF lab believes the accelerant was some kind of rocket fuel.”
For a split second Steven Garman appeared chiseled in stone. Daphne wished she had a camera.
She continued, “You see the possible connection to the Air Force, I’m sure.”
Garman seemed incapable of speaking. She knew that look. She had seen it a dozen times: He was devastated. She had touched his most sensitive nerve. Rocket fuel, she thought.
She looked over at the photograph of the Challenger explosion. Framed beneath it, she recognized salvaged pieces of the craft spread out on a hangar floor. He must be something of an expert. That was how Garman looked too: blown apart, his world a mass of smoke and flames.
26
“Looking good, Detective,” a female voice cooed from behind Boldt.
The sergeant turned in time to see the target of the comment, John LaMoia, strutting his stuff—creased blue jeans and all—heading in the general direction of his sergeant. LaMoia was style: those pressed jeans, a crisp Polo shirt, ostrich cowboy boots
, and a rodeo belt for taking second in bronco riding when he’d been seventeen and stupid enough to enter. He had a bony, thin face, wiry hair, and a prominent nose. Exactly what women saw in LaMoia was a mystery to his senior in rank, a man whose job it was to solve mysteries, but women flocked to him, even if one discounted his reported conquests by half, which was only sensible given LaMoia’s tendency toward exaggeration.
Maybe, Boldt thought, it was that walk—confident and tall, with a certain swagger to the hips. Maybe it was the large brown eyes, or the way he used them so unflinchingly on his targets. Or maybe it was simply his self-centered, cocky attitude, a quality that clearly endeared him to the uniforms as well as the brass. Whatever the case, LaMoia led, he didn’t follow. He’d have his own squad someday if he wanted it. He’d have a wife and five kids, or a woman in every part of town, or both. One liked the man from a distance, trusted him up close, and could rely on him, unequivocally, in any situation. Boldt tried to disguise his admiration but not his fondness. He didn’t need a loose cannon—and LaMoia trod dangerously close most of the time.
LaMoia began as he so often did, without any greeting. He simply rolled an office chair into Boldt’s cubicle and straddled it backward, leaning his frame on the chair’s hinged back. “Needless to say, you have no idea where any of this came from.” The detective had enviable connections to the private sector: credit unions, insurance companies, banks. Some believed it was past or current women who supplied him with such broad access. Shoswitz said it had to do with LaMoia’s military service, though Boldt thought it was nothing more than the man’s undeniable charm and his incredible ability to network. If you met him, you liked him; if he asked a favor, one was offered. If he received a favor, valuable or not, he reciprocated. He knew people: how they thought, what they wanted. He knew the streets. He could probably supply anything to anyone, though Boldt turned a blind eye to this possibility. He had the knack. He was envied by most, hated by few, and always at the heart of controversy.
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