Boldt - 04 - Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

  Boldt checked his watch. He was late to an autopsy that he did not want to attend. Dixie was to go over the skeletal remains of the woman found in the crawl space. He would attempt to confirm it was Ben’s mother. If Boldt skipped it, Shoswitz would hear about it; he had no choice but to go.

  47

  It was not such a long drive, but for Daphne it felt nearly interminable. Boldt had not been told about the meeting. Susan Prescott did not know. It was the bit of conspiracy between Ben and Daphne that had convinced Ben to cooperate with the video lineup and the police artist: the promise of seeing Emily.

  The meeting could not take place at Emily’s because Daphne remained concerned about the Scholar’s possible whereabouts and media references to the participation of a local psychic and the existence of a twelve-year-old witness. Even without names being mentioned, Daphne was taking no chances; she would protect Ben at every opportunity.

  Both Boldt and Susan would have been highly critical of her for arranging such a meeting, but a promise was a promise. Her fears ran far beyond the tongue-lashing she might suffer from Boldt. More important, she might lose her newly formed bond with Ben to this other woman. She wondered if the transition from a possible future with Owen to a present with this boy had resulted in a transference; if, in fact, she was fooling herself, not being honest, using the boy to soften the landing. She had barely thought about Owen over the past few days. He had been gracious enough to give her the distance she requested, and that distance had ended up an emotional abyss, a black hole across which she had not returned. She had rid herself of him. It felt good on many levels. She missed Corky, especially at dinnertime, but much of what she gained from Corky had been easily replaced by her time with Ben. At that point it hit her hard: If she lost Ben the world was going to seem incredibly empty for a time. For the past week, the kid had done more good for her than he would ever know.

  She did not trust Emily. The woman was a proven con artist. She played on a person’s superstitions, fears, and aspirations. She tricked people. She used the stars and a tarot deck to feed people what they wanted to hear. Worst of all, she owned Ben’s heart free and clear; in the eyes of the youngster this woman could do no wrong. If she told Ben to stop talking to Daphne, he would; if she told him to run for her car and lock the doors, he would do this as well. Just the mention of her name drove the boy’s eyes wide. Daphne realized that she was in many ways jealous of Emily, just as she was jealous of Liz—envy was too light a word. She didn’t like herself much, and that discovery made her wonder if her impending breakup with Owen was a product of his failures, their combined failures, or her own internal dissatisfaction with herself.

  Martin Luther King Boulevard was a four-lane road through several miles of an economically patchy black neighborhood kept separate from Lake Washington’s upscale white enclaves by a geological formation, a high spine of hill running as a steep ridge, north to south. Daphne marveled how Seattle, like so many U.S. cities, was segregated into dozens of small ethnic and microeconomic communities, villages, and neighborhoods. People moved freely and, for the most part safely, one community to the next, but park a car of blacks in a gated community and a cop or security person would arrive within minutes. A car of whites would not draw the same response. Seattle’s various communities consisted of African Americans, Hispanics, Vietnamese, Caucasians, Jews, Scandinavians, yuppies, yaughties, and computer nerds.

  Ben pointed out the park before they arrived. A row of cement obelisks loomed in the distance, looking like support piers for a highway overpass. Daphne didn’t know this area well and was unfamiliar with the park itself. She followed Ben’s directions and pulled over to stop where he indicated.

  Ben could not remember feeling this happy, this excited. Emily. He had missed her to the point that he felt his heart might rip from his chest. He had dreamed about her, written in his journal about her, lay awake thinking about her. He had so many questions to ask. More than anything, he wanted a hug—to feel her arms around him.

  He walked fast, outpacing Daphne, who chided him for it. “Stay close,” she called out to him, and he could hear something wrong in her voice, something different.

  To him, the place was out of a Star Trek movie: the towering blocks of concrete, the enormous metal cages attached to cement walls, all of it cut into the massive hill like a giant bunker. To Ben it was the tunnel park—eight lanes of I-90 passed beneath it, unheard, unseen. The facility had only recently been completed as a park, and the sidewalks, the flower beds—everything about it—were so new it did not feel inhabited; each time Ben came here it felt as if he were the first person to discover it: the giant slabs of concrete all lined up like blocks, stretching toward the gray sky, all different sizes but topping out at the exact same height.

  The sidewalk climbed up a steady grade to reach a wide bike path that ran down the center of the park and served as its focus. A bicyclist sped by, head bent low, legs pumping. Ben said hi to the man, but the cyclist never looked up, never acknowledged him.

  Ben’s legs began to run underneath him before he managed to say to Daphne, “There she is!” He took off at lightning speed, his eyes welling with tears not because of the wind in his face but because of the ache in his heart. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed her until he saw her again. Her silhouette, so unmistakable in the distance, so beautiful, so wonderful. Perhaps it was the sound of his footsteps slapping beneath him, perhaps she had sensed his approach out of thin air as she could sense so much, but something caused her to spin around and face him. As she did, her face lifted in a big moon of a smile, her eyes lighted up, and she opened her arms invitingly.

  Daphne let the boy have some distance. She owed the two of them a moment in private, given all she had put them through. A part of her had no desire even to greet Emily, to give the woman a chance to wield her power over the boy and dominate him the way she knew was possible. She would not turn this into an emotional tug-of-war, not for anything. She would not put the boy through that; worse, she would not inflict it upon herself, for she knew this was a game she was certain to lose, and at that point in time she could not afford to lose the boy and his dependence on her. It was a delicate line to walk, and she walked it with one eye glued to the scene before her but with her head turned down in indifference. The human heart is more fragile than one ever expects, she thought.

  She strolled the bike path, unfamiliar with it, intrigued by a series of stone posts that rose to knee height on either side. She approached the nearest of these stone posts, admiring the tile work at its base.

  The tile held an odd stick-figure drawing, evoking a Native American pictograph. Surrounding the tile’s perimeter were words. It took her a moment to discern where the sentence began. But it wasn’t a sentence, she realized; it was a quotation: “Crooked is the path of eternity.” Nietzsche. She hurried to the next post: more primitive art and a quote from Lao-tsu: “The way that can be told, is not the constant way.” Heart pounding, she hurried to the next, reading words emblazoned on her memory: “Suddenly a flash of understanding, a spark that leaps across the soul.” Plato. The same quote that had accompanied a melted piece of green plastic. One post to the next, like a bee to flowers. A dozen such quotations and pictographs. She stopped and stared: “He has half the deed done who has made a beginning.”

  The first of the threats: Dorothy Enwright. She had profiled the suspect as highly educated, a scholar! He was nothing more than a plagiarist who had walked or ridden through this park. The Bible-thumping disturbed man in the trees had not lined up well for her with the poetic intellect, but with this discovery the two melded into one: A plagiarist, with little education and the need to appear smart; a mind steeped in biblical significance; a sociopath intent on burning or disfiguring women.

  There on that bike path she found each and every quote mailed to Garman. And then the most important thought of all: The arsonist used this section of bike path—he lived somewhere in the area.

  �
�Quick, Ben!” she shouted from a great distance. “We have to go. Right now!”

  48

  Boldt was awaiting a meeting with King County Medical Examiner Dr. Ronald Dixon, in the basement of the Harborview Medical Center, when Dr. Roy McClure, a friend of Dixon’s and Liz’s internist, approached him and shook hands.

  The waiting area was foam couches and three-month-old celebrity magazines.

  The two men shook hands. McClure perched himself on the edge of the couch.

  “How are you taking it?” McClure asked gravely, with great sympathy in his calming eyes.

  “It’s unsettling,” Boldt admitted.

  “I should say it is. The real battle is psychological. Attitude is ninety percent of the game.”

  “Yeah,” Boldt agreed.

  “How about the kids?”

  “The kids?”

  “Miles and Sarah,” McClure answered.

  “They’re fine, I think,” Boldt answered. “I haven’t seen them in a while, quite honestly. Liz has had them.”

  “Well, I certainly understand that,” McClure replied.

  “You know, Roy, I get the feeling that we’re having two different conversations here.”

  “You’ll feel that way from time to time. The world won’t make any sense. The temptation may be to bury yourself in work, but the more prudent course is to talk it out. Sit her down and tell her how much you’re rooting for her, give her every ounce of support you can.”

  “I was talking about work,” Boldt stated. He felt too tired for any conversation. He wished McClure would go away.

  “I’m talking about Elizabeth.” It wasn’t the doctor’s words that jolted Boldt so much as the ominous tone of voice in which they were delivered. Boldt felt a sickening nausea twist his stomach.

  “Liz?”

  “You’re not in denial, are you?”

  “Roy, what in bloody hell are you talking about?” the sergeant blurted out. “I’m too tired for this.”

  “I’m talking about your wife’s lymphoma, Lou. I’m talking about your wife’s life. Your children. You. How you are all coping with this.”

  Boldt’s ears rang as if someone had detonated an explosive in the room. He felt bloodless and cold. His head swam and he felt dizzy. His eyes stung, and his fingers went numb, and though he struggled to get out some words, nothing happened. He was paralyzed. He could not move, or speak, or even blink his eyes. Tears gushed down his cheeks as if someone had stuck his eyes with a knife. He felt himself swoon. McClure’s mouth was moving, but no sound issued from it. No words came forth. The doctor’s face twisted into a knot of concern, and it was clear to Boldt that the numbness and the ringing in his ears was his flirtation with unconsciousness—he was passing out.

  McClure’s strong grip upon his shoulders brought Boldt back just far enough to hear the words, “She didn’t tell you.” It was a statement. Definitive.

  Boldt felt himself shake his head. “Is it …?” He couldn’t say the word. To speak it was to cast negative thoughts. He convinced himself that he had heard wrong. “Did you say …?” But McClure’s expression was enough. Boldt pictured her looking so sad in the bathtub, recalled the regular baths that had seemed so out of place, her request to spend time with one of the children by herself. The pieces of the puzzle suddenly came together like they did occasionally in an investigation.

  “It metastasized quickly,” McClure answered. “Stage Four by the time we caught it. She must have known, Lou, but she evidently couldn’t bring herself to face it. It was the kids, I think.”

  Tears continued to cascade down his face.

  “The surgery is scheduled for next week,” McClure said, soberly and dryly. “I’m counting on your support through all this. She needs every bit of strength we can offer her.”

  Boldt felt trapped inside a small dark box. He could shout as loudly as he wanted, but no one could hear him. He could open his eyes wide, but could not see. It was a dream, he convinced himself, nothing more. A nightmare. He would awaken and find himself at Harborview, on the couch, awaiting his meeting with Dixie. It was guilt playing a nasty trick on his subconscious.

  But McClure did not go away.

  “The baths?” Boldt mumbled, and somehow McClure understood the question.

  “They help with the pain,” he said. “She’s in a tremendous amount of pain.”

  There were many shades to gray. There was the gray of forgiveness between the black and white of knowledge, the gray of age at the temples, the gray of a mirror’s reflection, the gray of a weathered headstone in a graveyard. Boldt caught a glimpse of himself in the crooked rearview mirror as he drove straight home.

  He drove with tears in his eyes, his shoulders shaking, his lips trembling; only the siren filled his ears. Time had stopped, and yet a clock ran inside his head and heart as never before. So many memories, all tangled up in a man’s stubborn refusal to let go. Guilt banged at his chest for distrusting her. He recalled their baby in her arms and at her breast, the two of them in the bath, and he dragged his shirtsleeve over his face to relieve his eyes.

  Every second, every moment seemed a lost opportunity. So many had passed while he took their love and their life together for granted. At that point, racing toward the final turn in the road, he wanted it all back, like an athlete with a lost game. It seemed so fast, so quick. They had been building toward something, making a life. In the process their lives had been crossed, lost a few times. They had drifted apart and back together, like boats riding the ebb and flow of the tides. She so private—so unfair. He felt anger, love, fear, and terror all combine in an inescapable emotional avalanche, with him at the bottom looking up. One did not run for cover from such things but steeled the body and soul to face the inescapable. He didn’t want to believe it, to buy into it. There was always hope, he reminded himself, always a miracle waiting. Was it too late to pray? Anger surged through him. He didn’t want this life alone. He didn’t want a world without Liz. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t what they had planned.

  He pulled to a stop, the siren running down and silenced but the light still flashing on the dash. His terror erupted as a brief sputter of laughter—it was a joke, some kind of mistake, McClure confusing one patient with another.

  “They help with the pain.” Boldt pressed his hands to his ears. He didn’t want McClure’s words circulating inside his head. He didn’t want to hear his voice. He wanted peace, release. He wanted to awaken, to wash the nightmare from his face with a quick splash of cold water. “Wake me up,” he muttered.

  Marina opened the door, the smile on her face running off like melted wax, replaced with a troubled look of concern. “Mr. Boldt?”

  “She here?”

  A shake of the head. “Work.”

  Was she back at work? He couldn’t remember where he had slept last night, what day it was. “The kids?”

  On cue, Miles rounded the corner, yelped, “Daddy!” and held his arms outstretched for his father, who scooped him up and then broke into tears. Marina, arms crossed as if freezing cold, stood in the entranceway, unable to take her eyes off Boldt and his tears. She gasped, “Everything okay?”

  Miles cuddled himself around Boldt’s neck, clinging tightly. The father’s eyes met those of the woman, and she sobered. “I’m right here,” the woman told Boldt. He passed Miles back to her and nodded, the tears dripping from his chin. He felt embarrassed, exhausted, terrified. He didn’t want a world without Liz; he didn’t want to think of her in pain. He wanted to take her away, as if by leaving she might leave the illness behind as well.

  His car flew down the road, driven by someone else. Car horns complained behind him as he ran intersections, his vision more occupied by a stream of memories than by the road he traveled. He was a flood of regret, seeing so many chances to be a better person to her, a better husband, a better lover, a better friend. How much of illness is physical, he wondered, and how much a product of one’s environment? If he had been more available, less self-ab
sorbed, would she even be sick? His thoughts played tricks on him: self-pity, shame, a bone-numbing fear. He pushed on the accelerator and begged to be released. “Make it not so,” he mumbled.

  The office building towered over downtown, stretching for a piece of the sky that would offer a glimpse of Elliott Bay and Puget Sound beyond. It had been erected in the mid-seventies at the start of an economic boom that foreshadowed the high-tech revolution and the invasion of the Californians. Boldt parked illegally, pulled his POLICE ON DUTY sign onto the dash to keep the meter readers at bay, and hurried up the long procession of low steps that eventually rose to meet the glass and steel of the lobby.

  He turned heads as he marched toward the elevators in long, defiant strides. He rode the elevator alone, which was the first decent thing to happen to him that day.

  “Elizabeth Boldt,” he informed the receptionist. In all the years of his wife’s working here, Boldt had visited the offices only a handful of times. He realized then that he brought his work home almost every night, whereas Liz did so only occasionally. She earned nearly four times his pay and had pleaded with him regularly to give up the badge—or, at a bare minimum, the field work—in part because she couldn’t stand the tension resulting from the danger involved. The two years in which he had taken a leave of absence for the arrival and care of Miles had been among their most happy. He’d been seduced back into public service, in part by a bizarre case involving the theft of human organs, in part by the ways and means of Daphne Matthews. But looking back while he awaited the receptionist to notify his wife of his arrival, Boldt thought the return to service a mistake. They had found each other again during those two years, Boldt with late-afternoon happy hour piano gigs, Liz with a husband who wasn’t mentally and emotionally preoccupied by his work.