Boldt - 04 - Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

  At 8 A.M. the U-Stor-It office was opened by an FBI special agent, who took his place behind the desk inside and went about his work as if it had been part of his daily routine for years. At 8:12 A.M., the first report of activity at storage unit 311 was verified by three separate scouts and delivered to Boldt over a radio earpiece. At 8:15 A.M. a light rain began to fall. Lou Boldt felt it a bad omen.

  To have driven Airport Way on that morning would have seemed no different than any other, except for a few detours that required different routes. But in Seattle, as in any major city, construction was a daily part of urban life and traffic accidents were a regular part of morning delays. Heading north into the city was not discernibly different from any other day: hurry up and wait.

  A white pickup truck bearing Nevada plates pulled out of unit 311 and stopped. A man with a disfigured face, wearing a sweatshirt hood drawn tightly around his head and a pair of sunglasses, was seen climbing out of the truck and returning to shut and lock the unit’s door. For approximately fifteen seconds, Jonny Garman was nearby but out of his truck. This possibility—which some viewed as an opportunity—had been discussed in great depth among various factions of the operation’s coordinators. In the end it was decided that he would be too close to both his lab and his truck to attempt any kind of pick at that location. A suggestion had been made to use a sharpshooter on Garman, but with the boy’s life at stake it had been quickly dismissed. The suspect climbed back behind the wheel of his truck and drove out through the facility’s automatic gate, joining the slow-moving traffic, hindered by detours more than a mile ahead.

  “This is Birdman,” reported a voice in Boldt’s ear. The helicopter was owned by KING radio and used for traffic reports. On that day, it was being used for surveillance. “Looking down through the windshield, I’m not showing a hostage. Contents in the back of the truck don’t look as promising. There appear to be two fifty-five-gallon drums, a variety of boxes, and assorted other items. No tarp in place.”

  Fifty-five-gallon drums, Boldt thought. Enough to burn a hotel or a shopping mall to the ground. Either Garman had packed up shop or was planning an enormous hit. A flurry of radio traffic passed along the Birdman’s observations. Traffic moved slowly, Garman’s position reported every fifteen to thirty seconds.

  At the Santori house, Marianne Martinelli prepared to make herself seen leaving the home, if it came to that.

  At the abandoned machine shop, three ladder trucks and two pumpers stood by, lights flashing, hoses ready. Inside, last-minute preparations were made as the incendiary charges and detonator wire were checked and double-checked.

  Dressed in coveralls, Lou Boldt threw a pickax into a dirt hole in a vacant lot across from the machine shop. The three men around him, including Detective John LaMoia, also wore coveralls but were working shovels. Boldt didn’t understand why he always got the pickax.

  “Dig,” Boldt said. “He’s a half mile and closing.”

  LaMoia jumped on the shovel and dug into the wet earth. Boldt’s hands were wet on the pickax’s handle, but it had little to do with the rain. His weapon weighed down the coverall’s right pocket, within easy reach.

  “Hey,” LaMoia said, sensing everyone’s sudden tension. “This is a damn good-looking hole. Listen, if we fuck this up, Sarge, maybe we’ve found ourselves a second occupation.”

  “Gravediggers?” one of the shovelers asked.

  The three other workers stared this man down.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  73

  When Garman’s vehicle crossed an imaginary line one mile from the U-Stor-It facility, two members of the SPD bomb squad moved into place, accompanied by Tech Service Officer Danny Kotch and psychologist Daphne Matthews.

  Kotch worked flawlessly with the fiber-optic camera, Daphne immediately alongside. The thin black wire was fed under the gap in the garage door and the first images of the unit’s contents were revealed.

  Daphne leaned onto Danny Kotch in order to get a good look at the tiny screen. She gasped aloud and began to cry as she saw Ben tucked into a ball in the corner, a single piece of rope binding him. There was no gag in place, and she wondered why he hadn’t called out. The screen was too small to show his eyes.

  Let him be alive! she prayed.

  The space was empty except for some black PVC pipe, a pair of beach chairs, and some cardboard boxes from Radio Shack.

  Attempting to sound professional, Daphne sniffed back her tears and said to the bomb squad team. “He’s inside. We want him out as quickly as possible.”

  “With a torch like this, we’re going to move slowly,” the man wearing the thick vest informed her.

  She had been warned of this already, but she found the thought of even a minute longer too long.

  “Ben, can you hear me?” she shouted.

  The little head rocked up, and a single eye angled to look for her. She felt herself burst into tears. Through a blur she told the others, “Shit, hurry it up, would you? I want him out of there.”

  A plainclothes detective ran toward them, a radio held in his hand. He shouted, “Matthews, Garman is a half mile and closing. They need you for the count.” He met up with her and passed her the radio.

  The decision of when to light the house was hers and hers alone. Boldt had insisted that, of all those involved, she understood the dynamics of the psychology best of all and the call should be hers. This had offended Bahan and others, especially several of the Marshal Fives.

  She grabbed the radio, repeating what she had told Boldt several times. “Is the suspect within full visual range of the structure?” she inquired.

  “A half mile and closing,” a deep male voice informed her.

  “But can he see the building?” she repeated, amazed how so simple a question could become so complicated an issue.

  “No. He wouldn’t have a visual at this time.”

  Speak English, she wanted to shout.

  “When he’s got the building fully in sight,” she informed the dispatcher, “torch it. But he has to see it ignite if he’s to get off on it. He has to participate in it. If he sees it go off, he’ll stay to see them fight it. Do you copy?”

  “Another hundred yards,” the dispatcher told her. “I’m told he’ll have full visual in another hundred yards.”

  “Let’s go with full visual, shall we?” she said sarcastically.

  Releasing the radio’s button, she told the bomb team, “Hurry it up. I want the boy out of there. And I want it now.”

  74

  “We’re thirty seconds to ignition,” Boldt heard in his earpiece. “Suspect is a quarter mile off and closing.” With each detour, each intersection, Garman’s position had been carefully reported, and it was deeper and deeper in Inferno’s hastily crafted web.

  “Thirty seconds,” Boldt told the others.

  “We been here before, Sarge,” LaMoia reminded. “It’s a grounder.”

  Boldt glared at his detective. It was no grounder.

  The four cars in front of Garman’s truck were all being driven by members of the operation, exactly as planned. The same had been intended for the traffic following the suspect’s vehicle, but the first glitch in the operation occurred when a Chevrolet four door, driven by a white male in his late thirties, ran a red light and cut into the line immediately behind the pickup.

  The ensuing radio traffic was heated.

  CAR 1: Dispatch, we have a visitor. Some asshole just cut into our line.

  SHOSWITZ: We need him out of there. Now.

  DISPATCH: All vehicles maintain position.

  Let us jaw on this a moment.

  Less than twenty seconds later, the dispatcher came back on line.

  DISPATCH: Okay. It’s a bump-and-run by you, One. Copy that?

  CAR 1: Bump-and-run.

  DISPATCH: Make it a good collision, one he has to stop for. Williamson, we want you to assist at the moment of impact. Get the civilian to safe cover. Copy?

  All parties copied corre
ctly.

  This man’s safety was now the joint assignment of the driver immediately behind him and the detective in the work crew to Boldt’s right. His existence was a sticking point of the operation. They could not knowingly place a civilian at such close risk. The decision was for a synchronized, coordinated effort. The plainclothes undercover officer driving behind the Chevy was to ram the car at the moment of the fire’s ignition. He would then rush this driver, apologizing over the accident, as one of the workmen went over as a “witness” to the fender bender. Exactly how it would play out was anybody’s guess. Shoswitz had clearly made the decision not to abort the operation over this one civilian. They would do their best.

  “Twenty seconds,” the dispatcher announced.

  Boldt relayed the timing. He glanced up. The white pickup was advancing slowly in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. Into his radio, Boldt announced visual contact.

  LaMoia, not turning around to look, not stopping his shoveling, repeated, “It’s a grounder, Sarge. If he moves back toward the truck, we’re gonna drop him. And as far as him getting out of that truck? My money’s on Matthews any day. Ain’t a head she can’t shrink.”

  “Ten seconds,” Boldt echoed. He set down the pickax. “Five …”

  Three miles south of Garman’s pickup truck, a bolt cutter on the end of a remote-controlled robot that looked like a lawnmower severed the padlock under the direction of the bomb squad experts. The remote claw removed the lock, dropped it to the side, and exerted an upward pressure on the garage door.

  Despite the reassurances that the unit was not wired, a collective breath was held as the robot lifted the door.

  It came open without an explosion.

  A fully padded man rolled under the door’s opening and inside the storage unit. Against all rules, Daphne Matthews broke under the restraining tape and ran at full sprint toward the unit, a chorus of protest arising behind her. She rolled under the partially open door right behind the bomb man.

  At the first sound of a series of dull explosions to the north, she pulled Ben into her arms and cradled him. She tasted his tears on her lips and spilled her own into his hair as the rope came off and the two were forcibly encouraged toward the opening of daylight by the man in the padded suit.

  “Paramedics!” Daphne shouted, knowing an ambulance was waiting to the south.

  The boy’s lips were glued shut, and in all the excitement he seemed on the verge of passing out.

  The charges went off in a string of five, sounding to Boldt like a burial salute. Six, counting the crunch of metal and glass as the Chevy was struck from behind.

  The flames were instantaneous: huge blue and orange and black tongues licking up toward the sky. Whoever had set it knew his stuff, reminding Boldt how close a fireman was to an arsonist. If Jonny Garman had not been behind the wheel of that pickup truck, Boldt wouldn’t have been able to take his eyes off the inferno. Everyone’s attention was glued to the spectacle. It was as if, for a moment, the world blinked. The traffic braked and came to a stop in unison, any and all conversation ceased, and a giant plume of heat rose dramatically into the sky, a pillar of subterfuge.

  The bright flash and subsequent roar was seen and heard over twenty-five miles away as the core fire reached over four hundred feet into the air and the resulting column of smoke over ten times that.

  Boldt leaned on his pickax, his head angled toward the fire, his eyes on the driver of that pickup truck. Stay and watch it, Boldt encouraged the man silently. Get out of the truck and watch. The burning building was a block and a half away from traffic, but firemen were deliberately allowing pedestrians a closer look, having roped off a spot only half a block away from the event. Of the seven people standing there watching, all were from law enforcement.

  Get out of the truck, Boldt encouraged for a second time, the dispatcher’s voice listing Garman’s location in that inhuman monotone. Daphne had been convinced that a spectacular fire would lure him out of his vehicle. “He can’t resist a fire,” she had said. Boldt was taking that to the bank, right or wrong.

  As part of the ruse, one of the four cars preceding Garman pulled over and the driver climbed out and hurried toward the fire for a better look. Lead by example, Boldt thought. But to the sergeant’s horror, Garman did not get out, electing to watch from the front seat of the truck. Worse, some cars farther behind launched into a protest chorus of honking. The driver of the Chevy was nursed back, away from the truck, but wasn’t liking the manhandling.

  The truck’s wheels crept forward, as if Garman was to drive on.

  Out of the truck! Boldt begged. He could feel the man drawn to the fire, but—concerned over his cargo and the job at hand, Martinelli—he seemed reluctant to stay and watch. Boldt pleaded silently for him to stay. The fire roared loudly as the first hose was trained onto it. Firemen, bearing hose, charged the structure.

  Jonny Garman pulled his truck over to the shoulder. Traffic moved around the minor accident in the road and drivers rubbernecked as they passed the blaze. Boldt reached into the pocket of the coveralls and felt the grip of the gun’s stock. He locked eyes with LaMoia and then across the street with the officer closest to Garman, a woman dressed as a street person.

  As the truck’s cab door came open, Boldt’s world crawled into slow motion. His elation surfaced as a clarity of thought, vision, and hearing. Garman appeared to be as much interested in the firemen as the fire itself. Perhaps it had to do with memories of his father; perhaps it would never be explained.

  One leg dangled out of the cab, followed by the other—he was getting out! Garman slipped down onto the pavement and, still holding the door, spun his head forward and back, assessing his situation. Worried about the parking? Boldt wondered. Feeling the presence of something wrong, something misplaced, something staged? The suspect pushed the cab door shut and walked toward the front of his truck, toward a better view of the burn and the action.

  The street woman, near the back of the truck, took several long strides to close the distance, her hand slipping into her torn shopping bag. LaMoia, carrying his shovel—a worker fascinated by the fire—ran past Boldt, as if going for a better look.

  Garman took no notice of any of them. His neck craned back and his head lifted up in that eerie slow motion, and he drank in the power of the fire. The magnificence. He stepped several feet in front of, and away from, the truck, just far enough to pick him.

  In Boldt’s ear, the drone of radio communication sounded slowed down as well, the words impossible to discern. The sergeant’s hand gripped the pistol. The investigation came down to that moment: a truck loaded with volatile fuel and a disturbed, disfigured man just out of reach.

  Garman, his synthetic face filled with a childish glee as he drank in the fire, rocked his head back and forth in joy, spraying rainwater off his sweatshirt like a dog shaking, glancing around him, attempting to share the thrill of that moment with others. The fire erupted into a shower of flame, spark, and ash, and Boldt thought he saw the suspect’s body convulse; his awkward mouth seemed shaped into the curve of a laugh.

  Garman’s excited eyes swept briefly over the scene behind him, where, in a failed attempt to convince the driver of the Chevy to retreat, the undercover cop had resorted to dragging and shoving the bystander to the ground, anticipating a fire fight. In the process, the man’s coat flew open and his gun, holster, and harness showed.

  Garman’s elation collapsed. Realization stung him. His eyes registered each of the fifteen people immediately in his vicinity, and he seemed to acknowledge that each and every one was law enforcement personnel. He was trapped. He identified LaMoia, and then the street woman, and backed up two steps toward the truck and the fuel it contained.

  LaMoia changed direction too quickly, slipped, and fell. The street woman was blocked by the truck itself.

  Boldt and his fellow construction worker, the closest officers to Garman, launched themselves in the direction of the suspect. Over the radio a sharpshooter announ
ced a line-of-sight shot. Shoswitz’s voice gave the order to take him.

  The shot went straight through his shoulder and sprayed blood onto the truck, but Garman never felt it. He swung open the truck door, which absorbed the sniper’s next two attempts, and jumped in behind the wheel.

  Boldt’s slow-motion world continued—all action, all sound misplaced.

  The pickup truck lurched ahead, smashing into the car parked in front of it. LaMoia was back on his feet, and Garman looked just quickly enough to see him. Boldt was three strides from the truck, as Garman cut the wheel and, rather than turn into traffic, rather than face LaMoia, jumped the sidewalk. The driver’s side window blew out behind the power of another sniper attempt. Boldt jumped for the truck, his toes catching the running board, his right hand losing hold of his gun as he clawed to hold on.

  Garman shoved down the accelerator.

  The pickup’s back tires squealed over the curb, and Garman drove through the weedy vacant lot toward the street ahead and that raging fire.

  Boldt did not know nor did he think that the fuel in the truck was enough to consume over three city blocks; he knew only that Miles and Sarah needed a father, now more than ever, and that their father was riding a pickup truck toward Hell.

  Whether Garman was attempting an escape or a suicide didn’t matter, because the present course of the truck predetermined the destination.

  The driver aimed his blank white face at the sergeant, brown eyes recessed behind sculpted plastic skin. For that instant, something exchanged between them, something sparked. Boldt reached for the gear shift, but Garman struck him hard. The sergeant shoved himself deeper into the window, pushing the driver across the seat. He reached for balance, and his arm pushed through and stuck inside the steering wheel, making it impossible to turn the wheel. They bounced through the lot, and Boldt’s head struck the ceiling and the pickup altered its course just far enough to crash into one of the pumpers. It was like hitting a brick wall. They careened off to the right, heading once again for the burning building, and thumped over the swollen fire hoses. Boldt felt his arm snap. His head swam with the pain, and for an instant he slipped toward unconsciousness. He couldn’t catch his breath.