Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

  “No one goes unpartnered on an operation like this,” Shoswitz echoed, suddenly concerned. “Who authorized?”

  Lee said defensively, “We put this together in forty-five minutes, Lieutenant. It’s not like—”

  “I want her out of there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Team her up with someone. I don’t care if her partner ends up in a dog cage in the back, I want everyone paired. I thought I made that clear!” Shoswitz delivered this invective and then glared over toward Boldt; the lieutenant hated the unexpected. He dreaded these operations—he was too close to retirement to risk his career on hunches. He disliked Boldt at that moment; the sergeant could feel it.

  Cole Robbie moved evenly and fluidly, avoiding jerky motions. If one were to have caught a glimpse of his dark form, it might have been mistaken for a tree trunk or a waving shadow from the occasional car headlight that sneaked into the copse of trees through which he navigated. He was, at that moment, no longer a corporeal entity, no longer a body of heartbeats and sensations, for as he negotiated through the trees, so did he negotiate a transformation of spirit, divesting himself of the material and turning himself over to God. That was something he never discussed with anyone other than Jo, who fully understood such transformations and, even had she not understood, would have supported anything that might keep her husband alive through another tour of duty. Through this surrender of spirit, Cole Robbie believed himself an instrument of God, all knowing, all encompassing. If he were meant to engage with a psychotic arsonist, so be it; he would do his best and hope for divine guidance. He trusted that same divine guidance to carry him on the proper route through the forest, to deliver him to a point, the significance of which he might not understand but would willingly accept. Understanding, even knowledge itself, was beyond his capacity at that moment. His training occupied a spot within him far inferior to his trust and confidence in the correctness of the moment. He accepted his role, his route, his destination without question, and whereas others often mistook this for an admirable sense of loyalty to his team, the truth was far different. His misperceived loyalty was nothing more than an adherence to the doctrines of faith and the acceptance of Divine Principle.

  “Come and get it,” was Cole Robbie’s last conscious thought before he surrendered completely and turned himself over to his Keeper. From the corner of his right eye, he registered the quick white wink of a flashlight signal, and he returned and then relayed this signal to his left without thought. Through the trees it sparked, linking the various members of ERT, connecting the chain. All was well. His confidence was second to none. He knew and he accepted, though he did not dwell on the fact, that at that moment he was the best cop out there. He was part of an entirely different team. Only time would tell, but something told him this was his night.

  “Where then?” Shoswitz barked from the back of the step van. The pale red light cast from above created hollow black eye sockets and doubled the size and distorted the shape of his already prominent nose. He looked to Boldt like something satanic. His teeth shined wet and red in that light. His index finger pointed straight and shook authoritatively at Tito Lee. The lieutenant’s question was in response to Lee’s having said that the Vice officer Branslonovich, who was posing as a dogcatcher, was clearly not in her vehicle.

  The operations officer answered by asking a question of the dispatcher. “Can we raise her in the field?”

  Shoswitz, rarely content to speculate, shouted into the cramped confines, “I want her back in that truck and the doors locked, and her rolling, this instant. How we deal with this can be discussed later. Copy?”

  Lee shot Shoswitz a hot glance.

  The radio dispatcher looked distressed as well, and that troubled Boldt because the dispatcher’s role was critical to such a complex and quickly conceived operation.

  “All we can do,” Boldt offered, weighing in on the side of Tito Lee, “is try to raise her. Is she carrying a hand-held?” he asked the dispatcher, in part to get him back on track.

  “She’s carrying a unicom,” he replied, explaining that she should have been hearing all directives from the step van. “I put it out on the unicom,” he offered. “But even if she heard it, it would take her a minute to get back to the truck and respond. She’s not authorized,” he explained, and Boldt understood that she, along with others in the operation, was not in possession of a walkietalkie capable of transmitting on secured frequencies—only a few of the hand-helds could do that. This technical restriction isolated her.

  Boldt said, “Am I mistaken, or will an animal control van have a radio capable of—”

  “Oh, shit, you’re right,” interrupted Lee. “She’s restricted to line-of-sight reporting over the unicom. Emergency reporting of contact with the suspect.” To minimize radio traffic and to reduce the chance of the press catching on, most of the radios in use were under the same restrictions.

  Shoswitz chimed in. “So we put it out over the unicom that we want Branslonovich to make a land line call to headquarters. That will force her back into the truck, to a pay phone, and we can deal with it from there. Settled?” he asked rhetorically, his mind already made up. “Do it,” he instructed the dispatcher. He glanced over and caught Boldt staring at him. “What?” he asked, still at a shouting volume.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Boldt objected. But inside he was thinking that Branslonovich was Vice and was more than familiar with field operations, and such a summons would mean only one thing to her: She was being called in. So, he reasoned, the first time she received the message over the unicom she would ignore it and say later that bad reception had interfered with the signal. The second time she might be forced to respond, but at her own speed; she would take her sweet time about coming in. With each successive attempt by dispatch, she would increasingly suspect that the only explanation for these attempts was that she was in a hot zone and because she was a woman officer the male pigs that controlled such operations were recalling her. This, in turn, would keep her in the field all the longer. And the truth was, as far as Boldt could tell, she probably was in the operation’s hot zone, somewhere within a city block of Boldt’s house.

  “You’re pissing me off,” Shoswitz declared, glaring at his sergeant.

  “Then give me your keys,” he said, standing up from the milk crate and hunching into an uncomfortable stooped crouch. He sensed that at first Shoswitz was reluctant, but the change in expression on the lieutenant’s face revealed his decision to pick his fights carefully. This fight would be lost on his part, no matter how adamant his attempt. He handed Boldt the keys. They both understood that Boldt intended to go after Branslonovich himself. He rarely felt prescient about a situation, but Branslonovich was in danger. Lou Boldt felt certain of it.

  Shoswitz directed his anger to the dispatcher. As Boldt slipped out the back of the step van he heard the lieutenant bark, “Try sending it out over the unicom again.”

  It was a moonless night, inside-the-stomach dark. An ocean smell permeated the chilly air and brought back images of Alki Point, where Boldt had once stood staring down into the crab-eaten eyes of a decomposing corpse.

  A dead body, he thought, hurrying toward Phil’s car. All at once it felt as if he might be too late.

  Cole Robbie found the darkness of the trees comforting. A moment earlier he had been ordered to adopt his night-vision goggles, which meant discontinued use of the flashlights. It was a good call on the part of the ERT commander, because it allowed a return to hand signals and silenced the winking flashlights that seemed to shout every time a signal had been sent.

  The world was now a green and black place, with few shades of gray. The tree trunks rose like black cornstalks from the forest floor, looking to Robbie like irregularly placed bars to a jail cell. Three dimensions were reduced to two—he felt as if he were walking inside a green and black television set. Inside these goggles, motion blurred; fast motion s
ometimes vanished completely. It was rumored that the FBI had seriously superior night-vision headgear presently “in testing,” which was a euphemism for proprietary ownership. What the FBI got, others waited for—sometimes for years.

  A hand signal from his right. Robbie caught it, returned it, and then passed it along to the officer twenty-five yards to his left. All this occurred with Robbie feeling as if he were on autopilot. He noticed that the line was stretching apart, stretching thin. Pretty soon they would be too far apart for hand signals. He wondered if anyone else had noticed. It was just such sophomoric mistakes that hurt operations. Just the kind of thing that got someone killed.

  Up ahead to the north, the park fed into a hillside neighborhood falling toward Green Lake. The occasionally glimpsed light from those houses momentarily blinded the night-vision goggles, burning a bright white hole in the dense green and black. For that reason, no sooner had Robbie donned the night-vision goggles than he shifted them to his forehead and avoided their use. Previous experience with “golf balls”—the ERT name for the blinding flashes and burnouts in the light-sensitive goggles—had educated him to avoid the goggles in the presence of any artificial light. Whether or not any of his other teammates also elected to skip the goggles, he couldn’t be sure. He would still need to use them every four minutes for hand signals, but in the meantime he preferred the uniformity of the darkness.

  Immediately a slight glint of yellow light high up in a distant tree caught his attention and provoked him to stop. An airplane light seen through the towering limbs? he wondered. Something wet in the tree, reflecting light from the ground? A person? He quickly tried the goggles but preferred it without them, his peripheral vision expanded. He hadn’t seen exactly where … the sound of an airplane briefly convinced him that it was nothing.... There! Another glint of light, thirty or forty feet up in a tree perhaps fifty yards directly ahead.

  He depressed a small button on the device clipped to his belt that allowed him radio transmission within the ERT team. “Operative Three.” He announced himself at a whisper. “Eye contact with possible suspicious object. Five-zero yards. Eleven o’clock. Elevation: four-zero feet. Advise.”

  “All stop,” came the commander’s voice through Cole’s earpiece. The line hissed static as the commander checked in with the command van, but Cole knew what was in store for them. A minimum of four operatives would converge on that tree.

  With God’s guidance, Cole Robbie thought, this one was over before it had barely begun. They had their man. He stayed where he was, eyes fixed on that elusive spot, hoping beyond hope that what he had just witnessed had nothing whatsoever to do with aviation traffic and everything to do with the suspect they pursued.

  As it turned out, because of his disdain for the night-vision device, when the first and only firestorm occurred Cole Robbie was the sole ERT officer not wearing goggles and so not blinded, the only operative able to function, the only operative to see a spinning body burning as clearly as if it were a Christmas tree afire. He was immediately struck by the irony of an arsonist setting himself aflame.

  But then, as he began to run toward the animated orange puppet that spun like an unpracticed dancer, he heard it screaming like a woman—worse, in a voice familiar to him. It was, in fact, a woman, a woman consumed by pain and fear. By fire. Worse yet, the voice of a friend. The closer he drew, the more convinced he was that it—however indistinguishable, for it was no longer human—was the voice of Vice officer Connie Branslonovich.

  Boldt found the animal control truck parked well up the hill from his house, half a block from Greenwood, two blocks from Woodland Park and the well-discussed anticipated escape route of the arsonist.

  He glanced down driveways, around corners of houses, up and down the road, hoping for a glimpse of Branslonovich. He carried a unicom walkie-talkie concealed inside his sport coat, a single wire leading to an earpiece. He hoped like hell to hear Branslonovich or the dispatcher announce that she had reported in. Instead, he heard the order for the thirty-four uniforms to leave the buses and begin closing the net. The operation was in full swing.

  The radio channel came ablaze with communication traffic as a small army of uniformed patrol officers was unleashed onto a four-block area.

  ERT was somewhere inside the park setting up a back line to net the escaping arsonist. Suddenly the entire effort seemed so futile to Boldt, so absurd. It was based on the assumption that Boldt’s house had been rigged with accelerant, as yet an unproven fact. He reviewed the logic, aware he might need it later to defend the decision to the brass. But the more he examined the thinking, the more he liked it. If the uniforms were presently being deployed, the sirens and the lab truck were only minutes from screeching to a stop in front of Boldt’s house—an act certain to dislodge the waiting arsonist, accepting the theory that the arsonist was indeed watching. Although he could make sense of it in his head, he wasn’t too confident how it would sound to a review board. He had convinced Shoswitz easily enough, but he and Shoswitz had a long history together, a working relationship, and the lieutenant had grudgingly come to trust his sergeant’s decision-making process. It didn’t mean that others would understand it. Not at all.

  His current thought process was more clear to him: Thinking like a cop, attempting to retrace Branslonovich’s steps. He stopped and looked around, realizing what a dark night it was. He glanced back at his own house, seeing it differently for the first time—as a target. The arsonist would want a good view, and that seemed most clearly offered from up the hill, which explained the location of the parked animal control truck. Branslonovich had quickly discerned the importance of the elevation of the hill. If the arsonist didn’t care about seeing anything more than the flames, a position in the park would suffice. Boldt chugged up the hill, winded immediately, shoulders hunched, wondering how he had allowed himself to fall into such bad shape and vowing to do something about it. Sometime.

  The arsonist would need a lookout, someplace either secretive—inside an empty house, perhaps—or right out in the open but with a convincing excuse to be there: electric lineman, telephone or cable repairman. Boldt quickly glanced up and scanned the area; he didn’t want to spend too much time with his head up, for fear of being seen and giving away his intentions. A pang of dread swept through him. If Branslonovich had gone around scanning the poles and roofs and windows, she might have given herself away. Perhaps, he thought, she was clever enough to have done so while calling out, “Here, kitty. Here, kitty.” Branslonovich had her share of smarts. Or had she, too, been drawn toward the park?

  He climbed the hill a little faster. He had a bad feeling about this. He felt like calling out, Here, Branslonovich. Here, Branslonovich. The higher up the hill he climbed, the more houses he passed, the more inviting the park seemed. Just across Greenwood, dark, full of places to hide. Branslonovich might have felt this same thing: Why bother with the houses, or any exposure, when the park offered such sanctuary? Furthermore, went his reasoning, an animal control officer had every excuse to roam a wooded area. Boldt walked faster. Branslonovich was in the park. He knew this as a fact, however unexplainable, just as he knew his house was rigged to burn.

  He dodged traffic, cutting across Greenwood, suddenly more hurried. He pushed himself faster and faster.

  He entered the park at a run.

  He heard her before he saw the sweep of her flashlight breaking through the stand of tree trunks. She was moving through the park, perhaps thirty or more yards ahead of him. Her flashlight was aimed high into the overhead limbs. He couldn’t actually identify her as Branslonovich, not at that distance, but he knew. She was on the arsonist like a bloodhound; Boldt could feel this as well.

  “Hey! Are you the dogcatcher?” Boldt shouted, attempting to maintain a modicum of professionalism by maintaining her undercover status. “You looking for a Doberman?” She didn’t seem to hear him, his voice absorbed by the woods. He took a deep breath to shout loudly, but before that same breath escaped his
lips, the ground immediately to her right erupted in a billowing column of purple flame. She had tripped a wire, perhaps, or stepped directly on a detonator.

  The figure ahead of him ignited instantaneously in a bluish yellow flame, as did a nearby tree trunk. She spun once, arms held out, crying for help, a searing, painful cry. And then she seemed to explode. Yellow-blue pieces disembodied from the spinning creature, arching through the black night air like fireworks. As what was left of the body slumped forward and collapsed, the bark on the tree trunk exploded—sap combusting like fuel—punctuating the quiet night with what sounded like cannon fire. The concussion of the erupting flames lifted Boldt off his feet and deposited him onto his back, ten feet behind where he had been standing. He felt deaf, blinded, and as if his back had been broken in several places. Branslonovich issued one last bone-chilling cry; how this was physically possible escaped Lou Boldt as he lay on a damp bed of decomposing leaves, immobilized by the fall, his ears filled with the haunting wail of the detective’s final moment on earth.

  In the distance, sirens.

  Lou Boldt managed to get his hand on his weapon, thinking to himself that in all his career he had only fired it on three other occasions. He aimed straight up toward where the stars should have been and let off three consecutive rounds. With any luck at all, someone would hear it and find him, before the whole forest burned, and he along with it.

  Cole Robbie saw her spin in a complete circle, an all-consuming plume of blinding light, as pieces of her shot out like sparks from the fireplace, streaming through the air like shooting stars. The cacophony in his earpiece distracted him, for the commander had clearly been wearing his night-vision goggles at the time, and the string of cursing that ensued poured over the airwaves. Robbie heard three live rounds, yanked the earphone from his ear, and broke into a run, thinking, Someone else is out there.