Boldt - 04 - Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

  They were headed straight for the missing front door of the burning building—straight for Hell.

  I don’t belong here, Boldt thought. It’s not my time.

  Garman clawed at Boldt’s face, trying to drive him back out the window. His foot found the accelerator and the truck surged forward.

  Overcoming the pain, Boldt heaved his broken arm farther through the wheel, his fingers fishing for the key. Garman’s attention was fixed on the white bucket on the floor. It registered in Boldt that this bucket would have been the one to use in window washing; Garman’s rocket fuel was inside it. The driver craned forward to reach for it, but Boldt grabbed the sweatshirt hood, pulled hard, and held him up short.

  Those ears are painful, he remembered the nurse explaining.

  Still clinging to the sweatshirt hood, Boldt swung the man’s head on the end of the sweatshirt’s tether, back and forth, Garman resisting, but Boldt with the better angle. The man’s right ear pounded into the rear panel of glass. Garman cried out and grabbed for the pain.

  Boldt heaved his broken left arm forward; his fingers groped and found the key and he twisted.

  The engine died.

  The truck grumbled to a stop, fifteen yards from the burning building’s brick wall. The paint on the truck’s hood bubbled and blistered from the heat. The inside of the truck was instantly an oven.

  Fire hoses trained on Boldt and Garman, and the truck was swamped in hundreds of gallons of water with a force so powerful that Boldt was lifted up and driven further into the cab, fully atop Garman.

  They were too close. The truck would catch fire and blow.

  Boldt felt his feet and legs grabbed by strong hands. “Hold tight!” a voice called out. The pickup rocked onto two wheels and then slid sideways as a fire truck collided with the pickup and drove it away from the fire, the man holding Boldt never letting go.

  The truck stopped, now twenty yards from the inferno. Loud voices shouted orders simultaneously in a language all their own—what sounded to Boldt like total chaos. Boldt felt Garman dragged out from underneath him. “Hold him!” Boldt shouted, his voice buried by the others. He realized that few of the firefighters would be aware of the ultimate purpose of the operation, would not know the threat Garman represented. “Hold on to him!”

  As Garman hit the ground, dragged from the wreckage, he left his rescuers with only his zippered sweatshirt in their heavily gloved hands. He rolled twice. Boldt counted the revolutions and would later swear to Daphne that he and the suspect locked glances in the midst of one of them. He would swear there was nothing in those eyes: no remorse, no fear, no life.

  Jonny Garman came to his feet, and faced a team of police rushing toward him. Boldt recalled Daphne’s comments about an asocial’s reaction to crowds.

  “No!” Boldt shouted at the group of cops, closing at a run.

  Garman looked once at that wall of armed men rushing him, glanced once toward Boldt, turned, and ran at a full sprint into the burning building. Already engulfed in flames before his screams ripped toward the sky, he disappeared into the pulsing orange light.

  75

  Appropriately, it was raining. Daphne was glad for that because it would disguise her tears.

  “You don’t need to come in or anything,” Ben said, meaning he didn’t want her to.

  “I’ll just see you to the door,” she said.

  “Whatever.”

  It hurt her to see him so excited to be reunited with Emily. How she wished he might change his mind at the last minute and beg to find a way to stay with her. But the finest things pass through your life, she thought, like migratory birds. They do not light. They leave you with a glimpse of beauty and pass on.

  This was not the death of a friendship, it was the beginning of a young man’s life.

  Reading her thoughts, as they sat in the dull glare of a red light, the windshield wipers working like a metronome, he said, “It’s not like we won’t see each other.”

  She didn’t answer. Perhaps they would see each other from time to time; she wanted to support him, to be there for him. She reached out and took his hand in hers. It was the first time she had dared to do so, but not from lack of want. Of need. Her heart wanted to burst. Her throat was tight. His small fist was hot. Her hand was cold. He looked down at their hands, and when the light changed, she pulled away from him and drove on, her moist eyes focused on the moist road, but she felt his intense gaze fixed upon her. Perhaps he had felt it too. Perhaps.

  “You know, Ben, sometimes a person comes along in your life, a special person, and without knowing it they show you something about yourself, they point you in a particular direction that maybe you didn’t see until they came along. You know?” She was talking like him now. She could hardly believe it. A smile sprang onto her face.

  “I guess so,” he answered.

  “What I mean to say is, you are that person for me. You helped me in ways I can’t explain, I guess, but profoundly and forever. Good stuff,” she said.

  “That guy Owen. Is that what you mean? Look out, it’s yellow.”

  She slowed the car, realizing she had better pay closer attention. “Thanks.”

  “You mean him?” he asked, not letting it go the way an adult might have.

  “I mean you,” she answered.

  “I don’t see what I did, except screw everything up.”

  “Watch the language.”

  “It’s the next right.”

  “I know.”

  He bit away a sly grin. “You’re okay, D. I know you did a ton of stuff for me—to make this happen with Emily and all. You and Susan. And, well, it’s really cool, is all. You know?”

  “If you ever, ever, need anything, you had better call me,” she said, trying to avoid crying, which only made it worse.

  “We’ll see each other,” he repeated, a little more desperately. She wanted to believe that only then was their separation registering in him.

  “You have a lot of love in you, Ben. Don’t be afraid to share it.” The rain did her no good, for she hadn’t held off the tears until outside as she had hoped to do. She finally dared look at him, and he was crying too, and selfishly this made her happy.

  She pulled to a stop in front of the purple house.

  “I don’t normally do this,” he said. He reached into the back seat for his backpack and books. “You and Susan are going to help me move, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So we’ll see each other.”

  “Maybe I won’t get out,” she said, seeing Emily open the door and wave. She couldn’t stop the tears now. She abandoned any effort to do so. The wipers sounded peaceful, their rhythm soothing. She was heading back to the houseboat alone to listen to the rain fall on the dock and beat on her roof. To a log fire and a glass of wine and more tears. It was good. It was what she wanted.

  “Well,” he said. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, his excitement over seeing Emily already winning out.

  Daphne nodded and sniffled, unable at first to get any words out. He popped open the door and jumped out.

  “Ben!” she called out sharply, sounding like a wire breaking.

  Out in the rain, Ben leaned his head down and into the car.

  “Tell her to paint the damn house,” Daphne said. She found a smile at last.

  “Watch your language,” Ben replied. But his expression said it all. She would remember that look for a lifetime. Cherish it.

  He pushed the door shut and hurried off through the falling rain.

  76

  The Dahlia Lounge was crowded. Boldt and Liz owned two stools up by the receptionist as they waited for a table. She was drinking fruit juice. Boldt, uncharacteristically, was drinking straight vodka. She looked like a million dollars. His cast itched.

  “He had moved all his stuff out, probably because if the kid talked we could locate him, and he had no desire to hurt the kid.”

  “It was two weeks ago.” She studied him. For two week
s he had lain awake petting her hair as she slept. For two weeks they had said things they had always wanted to say, shared things they had always wanted to share. They had talked about why it took something so severe to bring two people to such rich honesty. He believed it unfair. She believed it a blessing.

  The pain was worse. They were taking an evening out while they still had one to take.

  “What about the boy?” she asked.

  “Daphne pushed hard. He gets to be with the psychic short-term, maybe long term. It’s a good thing.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. They clinked glasses.

  “What’s this dinner about?” she asked.

  “Can’t we just go out to dinner?”

  “No. Not here. Not like this. What’s it about?”

  He snorted and looked to the drink for courage. “I’m going to put in for lieutenant.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Would I joke?”

  She studied her husband, leaned over, and kissed his cheek. She reached up to take off the lipstick, but Boldt leaned away.

  “No,” he said. “I want to keep it.”

  “It looks kind of silly.”

  “Good,” he said. He lifted his glass and ordered another vodka.

  “I’m driving,” she said.

  “You’re driving,” he agreed. Then he said, “Hell, you’ve been driving us for years.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes a few times, but neither said a word. Liz eventually couldn’t fight off the smile, and Boldt joined her.

  “Crazy, huh?” she said.

  “Yeah. Weird,” Boldt agreed. He felt tears at the back of his throat. He fought against them.

  “You never know,” she offered. Her eyes were glassy.

  “No. You never know.”

  “We’ll help each other through it.” She reached down and took his hand in hers and squeezed hard—she squeezed the way he’d wanted her to squeeze for years. Where had that squeeze gone? he wondered. How had they lost that squeeze until such a moment? She squeezed again and squeezed tears from both their eyes.

  But Boldt managed the smile that time. He realized that was how it was going to be, trading back and forth, the both of them. “A lot of this lately,” he confessed.

  “Yeah. Good for the tear ducts,” she offered, blinking through her own.

  “Scared?” he asked, his voice trembling.

  “Yes,” she answered. “You bet I am.” Her lips quivered and she looked to him for some answer that he didn’t have.

  “Me, too,” he whispered, to the most beautiful wife in the world.

  If you loved

  Beyond Recognition,

  be sure to catch

  Ridley Pearson’s

  The Pied Piper,

  also from Hyperion.

  An excerpt follows.

  Excerpt: The Pied Piper

  Tech Services occupied two glorified basement closets that communicated by a doorway cut through a cement block wall. An array of electronic gear, predominantly audio/video and computer, occupied black rack mounts that in some instances ran floor to ceiling—linoleum to acoustic tile. Twice the rooms had experienced water damage due to errant plumbing, damaging gear and blowing circuit breakers. As a precaution against such accidents, a clear plastic canopy had been installed as a kind of shortstop. The sheets of plastic were taped together with silver duct tape, in places partially obscuring the overhead fluorescent tube. Boldt was shown to a computer terminal in the corner of the back room.

  “We’re working on some audio tapes in the other room,” the technician explained, offering Boldt a set of headphones that were in bad condition. He plugged them into one of the rack-mounted devices.

  “I don’t think it’s music,” Boldt said, not understanding the offer of headphones. “I’ve got a CD player in my office.”

  “It’s CD-R,” the tech explained. “Recordable CD-ROM. Multimedia, probably, or why not just send a disk? These babies hold six hundred and forty megs of data, that’s why. With compression? Shit, it’s damn near bottomless.”

  “What do I do?”

  The man set up the disk in the machine. “Double click this baby when you’re ready,” he said, pointing to the screen. “It should do the rest.” He reminded, “Don’t forget the disk when you’re done. People are always forgetting their disks.” He tapped his earlobe.

  “You go through this a lot, do you?” Boldt asked sarcastically.

  “Headphones,” the man reminded.

  Boldt slipped the headphones on as the tech left him. He double clicked the CD icon and sat back, watching the screen, his anxiety still with him. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble. The average snitch liked things simple: money for information. This felt more white collar, more upmarket, and that generally meant power and influence—entities that Intelligence ran up against from time to time.

  The computer took a moment to access the CD-ROM. The word WAIT flashed in the message bar, as if he had a choice. The screen suddenly changed to a light gray background, and a credit card–sized box appeared in the center of the screen. Ambient room sound hissed in his ear, reminding Boldt of interrogation tapes. But there was something else in the sound: a radio or TV.

  The small box in the center of the screen showed a small child—a girl—in a chair. He scrambled for his reading glasses. The girl appeared bound to the chair. Worse, she looked alarmingly like his own Sarah, although the room was unfamiliar to him: a pale yellow wall behind her, grandmother curtains on a window behind her and to her right. To the child’s left, a television set played CNN, the voices of the news anchors distant and vague.

  All at once the image animated. The girl looked left in a movement all too familiar to Boldt. The reading glasses found their way to Boldt’s eyes, and he leaned in for a better look.

  Not possible, a voice inside him warned. Terror stung him.

  As she spoke, as he heard that voice, all doubt was removed. Sarah screamed, “Daddy!” She rocked violently, her arms taped to the chair. “Daddy!”

  The video image went black, replaced by a typewritten message in the same small box. Boldt could not read it for the tears in his eyes.

  He saw her all at once as a small fragile creature, cradled between his open palm and elbow, a tiny little newborn, a treasure of expressions and sounds. A promise of life; the enormous responsibility he felt to nurture and protect her.

  He wiped away his tears, returned the glasses and read the message on the screen.

  Sarah is safe and unharmed. She will remain so as long as the task force’s investigation wanders. Do not allow it to focus. Do not allow any suspect to be pursued. If you are clever, your daughter lives and is returned to you happy and safe. This I promise. If you speak of this to another living soul, if the investigation should net a suspect, you will never see your sweet Sarah again. Think clearly. This is a choice you must make. Make it wisely.

  Boldt reread the warning, stood from the chair and then sagged back down. He closed the file and took the CD out of the machine. Think! he demanded of himself, no thoughts able to land, his balance gone, the room spinning. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The Pied Piper might have spies anywhere. Paranoia overtook him. Boldt stood up slowly, like an invalid testing his unsure legs. Chills rushed up and down his spine. His face burned. Someone spoke to him in the hall, and again on the elevator and in the garage—he saw their mouths move, he heard the shapes of sound, but not the words. He was someplace no one could reach him. He ran several red lights on his way to the yellow house where Sarah and Miles spent their middays with fifteen other children.

  He bounded the stairs two at a time and attempted to turn the doorknob. Locked! He pounded hard—too hard, too loudly, too furiously.

  If you speak of this to another living soul …

  Hurried footsteps approached noisily. The fish-eye peephole momentarily darkened as someone inspected him from the other side. Hurry up! he wanted to shout, but collected himself as the door came o
pen.

  Millie Wiggins stood before him, surprised. “Mr. Boldt!”

  “Sarah?” he asked, his voice cracking as he stepped past the woman and into the playroom. Sight of the children playing choked him and squeezed tears close to the surface. “Sarah?” he called loudly into the room, drawing blank expressions from the children. A pair of tiny arms clutched at his leg and he looked down to see his son beaming up at him. He reached down and hoisted Miles into his arms.

  “Sarah?” he pleaded to Millie Wiggins.

  “You called,” she whispered, reminding him. “The police officers you sent picked her up.” She glanced at the large Mickey Mouse clock on the wall. “That was nine-thirty.”

  He too glanced up at the clock. Five hours had passed. A lifetime.

  He tried to speak, to contradict her, but the policeman inside him, the father, caught his tongue. He turned away and cleared his eyes as Miles tugged on his tie.

  Millie Wiggins spoke in a gravel voice. An attractive mid-forties, she wore jeans and a white turtleneck. “I called you back, don’t forget. To verify, I mean.” Her hands wormed in concern. He could not afford the truth. He measured how far to push.

  “Two officers, right?” he asked. She had used the plural.

  She nodded. “A woman and a man. Exactly as you said. It’s okay, isn’t it?” She looked him over. “Is everything all right?” She added reluctantly, “With Mrs. Boldt?”

  “Mommy?” Miles asked his father.

  “Fine … fine …,” he said, avoiding sending the wrong signal. Sarah … He needed to collect himself, time to think. He needed answers. Sarah’s chance depended on the next few minutes. And for how long after that? he wondered.