Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

“A third element,” Boldt muttered, reaching unsteadily for a chair and sitting himself down.

  45

  When she looked at him, she wanted to cry. His pale innocence as he struggled with his homework. The simplicity of movement, unaware of her presence. He had lived so long in a home where he was unwanted that he didn’t notice others around him.

  In this, as in so many things with Ben, Daphne was wrong. The plain truth was that she had not lived around boys enough to read one correctly. He looked up at her and said, “Why do I have to do this shit?”

  “Watch the language!” she scolded.

  “Stuff,” he substituted.

  “It’s homework, Ben. We all had to do it.”

  “So what? That makes it right? I don’t think so.”

  “What’s five times twenty-five?” she asked. His face went blank and she explained, “Some guy offers you twenty-five bucks an hour for five hours—”

  “I’ll take it!” he answered quickly.

  “How about five bucks an hour for twenty-five hours?” she fired back.

  Confused, Ben scribbled out numbers on a piece of paper. “It’s a hundred and twenty-five bucks.”

  “And how many work days is twenty-five hours if you work eight hours a day?”

  “So you need math,” he conceded, without doing the numbers.

  “Some people will tell you that the difference between not having an education and having one is whether you want to work with your body or with your mind. Whether you want to make a little money or a lot of money. But it goes way beyond that. It’s the way you enjoy things. The more you know, the more you get out of it.”

  “Einstein flunked math,” he reminded her.

  “And PhDs can be the most boring people on earth,” she agreed. “I’m not saying it’s some kind of cure-all. It just gives you a head start, that’s all. You like computers? You like special effects in movies? A computer is no good if you don’t know how to run it.”

  “What about yours?”

  “My what?” she asked.

  “Your laptop. Will you teach me how to run it?”

  She was caught. Stuck. She was protective of her laptop, always keeping it with her, locking it down with password protection when she left it behind at the office for a few hours; she felt it was something personal, not for others. And yet she couldn’t deny the boy. “Sure,” she said reluctantly, wondering how she had boxed herself in that way.

  “Really?” His face brightened in a way she had not yet witnessed, like a kid on Christmas morning.

  She nodded. “I’ll need to get some games for it. I only have solitaire.”

  “How about a database?” he asked her, stunning her. “Does it have a database?”

  It had one as part of a suite of applications, though Daphne used it only as an address book.

  She thought if the definition of love was that you would lay down your life for the other, then she loved Ben. For she would never allow another person, or anything at all, to harm him again. She would wrap her wing around him, pull him close, and protect him from the coldness of the world. He had seen his share and didn’t need to see any more.

  “Does it have graphs?” he asked.

  “I think the spreadsheet does, yes.”

  “We’re doing graphs,” he said, tapping his homework.

  He scratched at the paper with his eraser. How she wished she could erase those past few years of his life, clean the slate! She had the professional tools within her reach to begin the process, but Ben would have to want it.

  “If I show you the laptop,” she tested, “will you tell me about Jack and your mother?”

  “Like a trade?” he asked. “Are you trying to bribe me?”

  “Absolutely,” she confessed. “I don’t know very much about you, Ben. It bothers me. It’s what makes close friends out of people: sharing. You know?”

  “Will you tell me about this guy Owen?” he asked, sounding a little jealous.

  “How—?” She cut herself off. He had overheard some of her phone conversations. Her crying? He probably knew more about her than she did him. Which one of them was the psychologist? she wondered. “Will you go trick-or-treating with me tonight?” He had not wanted anything to do with Halloween.

  He set his pencil down and, facing her with a deadly serious face, asked, “If I agree, does this mean we have a relationship?”

  Daphne bit back her grin and, when she felt herself losing it, turned her face away, so he couldn’t see. “Yes,” she said, and smiled widely, all the way over to the laptop.

  46

  The killer was still out there. Boldt felt certain of it, though as yet he had no conclusive proof.

  Bobbie Gaynes had set up her office cubicle as an impromptu task force center. Even though Shoswitz had not allocated her time to Boldt’s resources, she refused to be shut out, pulling what amounted to a double shift and looking the worse for wear. On her wall hung several photographs of the early arsons, evidence photographs of the ladder impressions, and magnified close-ups of the cotton fibers mixed into the mud at the Enwright scene. There were photos of all four victims, including Branslonovich. Below these portraits hung a bad photocopy of Garman’s wife, eerily similar to the three dead mothers. Gaynes hung up the phone and told him, “Lofgrin has confirmed that the silver fibers are a silver fabric paint; the underlying blue is the actual color of the fabric. Second, commercially available Seahawk jerseys are not a sixty/forty blend—they’re twenty/eighty, polyester to cotton, so we can rule them out, which is good because they sell everywhere.”

  “And that leaves?” Boldt asked.

  “Silk-screen printers who handle towels or terry cloth,” she answered. “The lab is adamant about these being a spiral-twisted cotton-blend fiber typically seen in a towel or a terry-cloth robe. That works in our favor. We tried the jerseys even though they aren’t a twisted fiber—they seemed obvious because of the colors—but now we’re down to determining what companies produce this particular color in this particular blend and, alternately, which silk-screen companies have purchased that fabric.”

  “I like it,” Boldt said.

  “The larger textile mills are in the South and Northeast. I’m on that. The bad news is that there are more printers than you can shake a stick at—you can’t believe how many. And though you might think that if it’s sold here in Seattle it would also be silk-screened here, it ain’t necessarily so. If it’s cheaper in Spokane or Portland or Boise, that’s where it happens. And most of these silk-screen places are mom-and-pop shops, little independents that crank out sports uniforms, corporate golf shirts, you name it.”

  “How many?” Boldt asked, dread replacing his flirtation with optimism.

  She avoided a direct answer. “Both US West and Pac Bell have their Yellow Pages on CD ROM, which is handy.” She laid a hand on her personal computer. Only a few cops had gone to the expense of providing their own hardware.

  “How many?” Boldt repeated. He sensed her reluctance to tell him, and that drove his curiosity.

  “That’s the trouble. Six hundred ninety-seven printers in the Seattle area alone.”

  Boldt felt the number across his face like a hand slap. When the entire seven-man squad had to make thirty or forty calls, they were stretched to the limit.

  She spoke quickly and excitedly. Gaynes was part cheerleader. “We can rule out a whole bunch. The fast-copy places with twenty-five franchises don’t do silk-screening or fabric, and that cuts the list literally in half.”

  It left them making over three hundred calls. Impossible, Boldt thought.

  “Needless to say, we’re short a little manpower.”

  Boldt was overwhelmed. He felt choked, as if his collar were too tight. With those numbers, pursuing the fibers was an exercise in futility. “We’re stewed,” he said.

  “Have a little faith, Sergeant. Five years ago we would have needed a couple hundred volunteers to make the calls for us. You’ve used the university kids a couple
of times”—she didn’t allow him to interrupt—“but that was with the blessing of Shoswitz. This is without. This requires a little Henry Ford,” she said, a smile twisting her pallid face. “When in doubt, automate.” She continued nonstop, barely taking another breath. “We did it once before, remember? LaMoia has a friend—”

  Who else but LaMoia? Boldt wondered, keeping quiet.

  “—a woman friend who manages a telephone telemarketing service. You know, those awful prerecorded messages dialed directly into your home, selling aluminum siding. He’s checking her out in person, due back here any minute. Thinks he might be able to wangle a few hours of service out of her—her company,” she corrected, blushing. “We post a message that leads off something like ‘This is the Seattle Police, homicide division. Your printing company may have information pertinent to solving a series of homicides in the Seattle area. Your cooperation is critical to our efforts.’ Something like that. Grab their attention, ask for their help. He says these machines, with a short enough message, can do a couple hundred calls an hour and keep calling until they verify a voice answer. I believe it; I’ve gotten enough of the calls myself.”

  “Same,” Boldt said.

  “So, see? Maybe we reach them all. Maybe one of them hears the message and actually does something about it. The beauty is, if she lets us lease her 800 number, we can do the same for Spokane, Boise, Portland.” She lowered her voice to a soft whisper. “We pry a little informant money loose and divert it to this thing—the ultimate informer—and maybe we get lucky.”

  She had clearly thought this through.

  “It makes sense,” Boldt agreed, equally quietly. “Maybe that’s the direction we go. But let’s brainstorm it a minute and see where we get.”

  He could sense her disappointment as she took up a pen and paper, prepared to jot down each thought. They took alternate turns, Gaynes first. “Cotton fibers,” she said.

  “Silver paint, blue fabric.”

  “Seahawk colors.”

  “Silk-screen paint.”

  “Sixty/forty blend.”

  “The textile mills feed the wholesalers, the wholesalers the printers.”

  “Contract work.”

  “What’s that?” Boldt said.

  “Contract work,” she repeated.

  He nodded slowly. Contract work. Why had that interrupted his thoughts? “Let’s go on,” he said making note of it. “Contract work,” he repeated.

  “Similar fibers were found on your windows and in the mud by the ladder at Enwright’s.”

  “Window washing,” he said.

  “A rag maybe, a torn towel.”

  “Windows,” Boldt repeated. It stuck in his thoughts. Why?

  LaMoia arrived, clearly worked up.

  “Brainstorming,” Boldt said, holding up a hand to prevent LaMoia from interrupting.

  The detective nodded. His demeanor was serious and contemplative. “With you,” he said.

  The sergeant said, “Me, then Gaynes, then you. Okay?” LaMoia nodded. Boldt retraced their steps, saying, “Fibers found on the windows and by the ladder.”

  Gaynes went next. “Window washing. A rag maybe.”

  “Cotton fibers,” LaMoia said, a beat behind in the game.

  Boldt hoped he wouldn’t hinder them. “A bucket of rags? A rag tucked in a belt?”

  “A bucket of soapy water,” said Gaynes.

  “Window washing,” LaMoia said, his voice lower and more ominous than usual.

  Boldt sensed the detective’s head rise in an attempt to meet eyes, but Boldt wanted this purely stream-of-consciousness communication. His own head slightly bent, Boldt said, “Glass.”

  “A squeegee.”

  “Sponge. Rag.”

  “Ladder,” Boldt said.

  “Rooftop.”

  “Glass,” LaMoia echoed.

  “Windows,” Gaynes offered.

  “The cars!” LaMoia said more loudly. “The wheels!”

  Inadvertently, Boldt snapped his head up.

  “The cars,” LaMoia repeated. “My assignment, remember? Lab report placed cotton fibers inside the cars,” he emphasized, his eyes wide, his mustache caught between his teeth as he gnawed.

  Boldt wanted to continue the brainstorming but decided to talk it through. “It’s a natural fiber, John. It’s found everywhere. Every crime scene.”

  LaMoia appeared too caught up in his own idea to be of any help. Ignoring LaMoia, Boldt asked Gaynes, “What about the Seahawks front office? If we’re right about the silver and blue being the Seahawks logo, wouldn’t the Seahawks front office license the rights?”

  Her eyes brightened. “They’ll have a list of anyone authorized to use the colors and logo.”

  “An agent would handle licensing. An attorney probably.”

  LaMoia wasn’t paying any attention. His eyes were squinted shut tightly.

  “I’ll get a name,” she said. He could see optimism in the brightness of her eyes. He appreciated Gaynes for her can-do attitude. Nothing beat her down.

  LaMoia said to no one in particular, “It’s the cars. The lab report mentioned an abundance of cotton fibers.”

  Boldt felt a surge of anger. LaMoia wasn’t listening to himself. It was first-year academy stuff. Attempting to follow natural fibers was like trying to use dust as forensic evidence.

  “What about T-shirt shops?” Gaynes asked. “They wouldn’t necessarily be listed as printers, yet they might have a screen in the back room. Might sell sweat bands, something with a twisted fiber.”

  “Add them to your phone list as well,” Boldt instructed.

  LaMoia snapped out of it and said, “The phone deal is on.”

  “If Bernie says it’s a towel or a robe, we go with that.”

  “Window washing,” LaMoia sputtered, annoying Boldt. “The cars.”

  “What about the silver paint?” Gaynes asked. “The Bureau’s crime lab keeps the chemical signature of paints on file. Maybe they could ID the paint manufacturer for us.” She continued. “We might narrow the printer field considerably.”

  “That’s good thinking,” Boldt told her. “Check it out with Bernie.”

  “Sarge,” LaMoia said, “I need to check something out.”

  “Go,” Boldt told him, happy to be rid of him.

  LaMoia took off at a hurried clip. That from the man of struts and strides? It caught the attention of Bobbie Gaynes as well. She said, “Well, he’s certainly in a strange place.”

  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.