Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

  He reached the office on the radio from the car. The dispatcher put him on hold; he felt it was something of a permanent sentence.

  The man came back on the channel and said to Boldt, “Message is from Detective John LaMoia. Would you like me to read it?”

  “Go ahead,” answered Boldt, driving the car into traffic.

  “Message reads, Must talk immediately. Please notify ASAP.”

  Boldt squeezed the talk button and said, “Tell him I’m on my way.”

  He felt like a traitor and a cheat.

  He stopped at a church on his way downtown. To his surprise, he felt a lot better.

  49

  As the elevator doors slid open on the fifth floor of the Public Safety Building, the painful silence inside Boldt’s shattered psyche was cracked open by the cacophony of a dozen reporters all shouting at once, boom microphones waving in the air, and the blinding glare of television floodlights. One of the reporters shouted, “Do you have the Scholar in custody or not?” Shoswitz anxiously fought a path through the press, made his way to Boldt, and escorted his sergeant to Homicide’s door, shouting, “No comment! No comment!”

  As the door opened for the pair, the press remained at bay, stopping at an unmarked line like a dog pulling up short at a buried invisible fence. But the noise of the reporters was not silenced, only replaced by the comments of half as many of his own people. They fell in around him and behind him like the Texas Rangers. Bobbie Gaynes was speaking, but Boldt couldn’t hear her. LaMoia was there, Bernie Lofgrin from the lab, and several of the uniformed officers who had previously volunteered on the task force. He noticed a woman named Richert from the prosecuting attorney’s office. All spoke at once, some shouting to be heard over others. Shoswitz joined right in with them. They continued as a group, making for the conference room. There was only one person noticeably absent, and then Boldt caught sight of her standing alongside the briefing room door, arms crossed at her chest, hair impeccably groomed, eyes trained on him, an expression of concern worn like a veil. Only she knew him well enough to take note of his condition; Shoswitz had missed it, too concerned with the media; the others had missed it, more intent on reading from their notes than studying their sergeant. But she saw it. She knew, well before the moment they came face-to-face, and asked him, “What is it?”

  He felt himself on the verge of telling her, when an exasperated Shoswitz proclaimed, “You know what it is! It’s another poem!”

  She informed Boldt privately, as if it hardly mattered, “He’s all worked up because a reporter found it in Garman’s morning mail. Not us.”

  “The Scholar is still out there!” Shoswitz declared.

  Boldt just looked at him and shook his head. “Everybody out!” he told those gathered. He held Daphne by the elbow, retaining her. “John, you stay.” When the room was empty, Boldt closed the door and the three of them were finally alone.

  LaMoia explained. “A reporter for the Times thought to check Garman’s mail each day. He probably had some inside help, but whatever the case, he knew in advance of that latest threat being delivered.”

  Boldt said, “And of course it’s postmarked after Garman’s arrest.”

  LaMoia nodded, “You got it.”

  “What is it, Lou?” she repeated, still showing concern.

  His look told her to drop it. That hurt her all the more. She turned away briefly.

  “The content of the poem.” Boldt asked, “Is it significant?”

  She answered with her back to him. “Significant? I fouled up. He’s no scholar, Lou. Probably not well read at all. The profile is off.” She faced them both. Her confession won LaMoia’s undivided attention. Boldt was able to leave his own sorrows briefly and recognize how upset she was. “There’s a park built on top of the I-Ninety tunnel coming in from the floating bridge, a bike path running through it.” She described her discovery of the various drawings and quotations, though she didn’t say she had taken Ben there to meet Emily. She repeated reluctantly, “The profile is all wrong.”

  An uncomfortable silence was broken by LaMoia. “How wrong?”

  “Uneducated. Sociopathic. If I didn’t know the facts of the case, I would have put money on there being a revenge issue with Garman.”

  “That fits with what I’ve found out,” LaMoia said, surprising Boldt, who expected LaMoia to pounce on Daphne’s misfortune. The detective continued, “Garman’s tax returns for the seventies show two dependents.”

  “Two?” Boldt echoed curiously, marveling at the detective’s contacts.

  LaMoia said defensively, “I tried calling you on the cellular but you weren’t picking up. I wish I could take credit, but Neil”—Neil Bahan, he meant—“has been digging into Garman’s past since the arrest, trying to develop a book on the guy. He’s got the firehouse connections, so it only made sense. He came to me to dig up the tax records. He had evidently heard something. I know you kicked him out of here just now, along with the others, but you may want to talk to him.”

  “Get him,” Boldt ordered. LaMoia hurried from the room.

  They stood facing each other, Boldt and the woman. He didn’t see her as beautiful at that moment, not like other times. There was no beauty compared to Liz’s. There was only an empty darkness.

  “So Garman has a child,” Boldt said, voicing what the tax records confirmed. “Does that fit?” he asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” she answered ominously.

  “A father would certainly cover for his child,” said Boldt, the father.

  “And a child would vent anger against the father. Given the right circumstances, a child might symbolically kill the mother, repeatedly kill the mother—or the mother’s look-alikes. Send the father threats. Do the kills on the father’s turf, using what the child learned from the father: fire.”

  Boldt felt a chill, not heat. “Why?”

  “Anger.”

  “That’s a lot of anger.”

  She nodded, then shook her head. “Perhaps Garman’s only guilty of being a protective father,” she whispered. “Probably thought the killings would stop if he took the fall, if he ended up in jail.”

  “Will he talk to us?” Boldt asked.

  “I’d like hear what Bahan has to say,” she answered. “The more we hit him with, the better our chances. If we go in fishing, he’ll lock up on us. If we go in swinging, it’s a whole ’nother matter.”

  “He’s targeted another woman,” Boldt said, referring to the latest mailing. He checked his watch; it wasn’t getting any earlier. “Jesus God. We’ve got to do something.”

  “Put someone undercover in the tunnel park. Have them watch the bike path,” she advised. “We have the artist’s rendering. He visits that park, Lou. He must live nearby.”

  Boldt reached for the phone. The door swung open: Neil Bahan with LaMoia. Bahan spoke before Boldt had a chance to dial. “It was something that happened in North Dakota,” he said. “One hell of a fire.”

  A decade before, City Jail had expanded out of Public Safety across the street to the basement of the Justice Building. Extreme cases were held there, leaving the group lockups in Public Safety for gangs and the homeless, drunks and druggies, car thieves and burglars. The murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults were, for the most part, kept separate.

  Although it was equipped with four bunks, Steven Garman had his cell to himself. It had a simple sink, a single toilet, an overhead light protected by a wire cage, and graffiti on the walls.

  Daphne shivered. She had never liked jails.

  Garman wore an orange jumpsuit, usually a humiliating look, but Daphne thought him handsome. His cheeks were florid, his eyes a keen dark brown, and though she didn’t care for facial hair, the dark beard and mustache looked good on him.

  “I don’t see my attorney,” he said, as Boldt and Daphne stepped through the cell door and it was closed behind them. LaMoia remained on the other side of the bars, holding them and pressing his face close between the c
oldness of their steel. “I’ve got nothing to say without my attorney present,” Garman added.

  Daphne and Boldt sat down on the bunk opposite. By agreement, no one spoke. Daphne would be the first to break the silence. They would take turns after that; it was arranged.

  They remained perfectly still for the better part of five minutes, Garman looking between them and over at LaMoia as well. As the minutes passed, the arrested man looked increasingly nervous. He finally said, “You’d think they would paint the walls, get rid of the graffiti every now and then. It’s offensive stuff.”

  She said, “We can’t match a single letter in any of the notes with your handwriting.”

  Boldt told him, “The individual committing these arsons weighs sixty pounds less than you do.”

  LaMoia chimed in. “All the quotes used in the threats are collected in a single source. Maybe you might enlighten us as to what that source is.”

  Garman’s eyes continued to tick between them.

  LaMoia said, “What is the common source to these quotations you mailed yourself?”

  Garman blurted out “Bartlett’s,” with some authority.

  LaMoia made the sound of a game-show buzzer, indicating error.

  Garman appeared shaken by his mistake.

  Daphne said, “The lab has identified the chemical composition of the ink used in the threats. You don’t own a pen that comes close. You don’t own the paper. We could only find three stamps in your place, and they aren’t the kind the Scholar uses.” She studied the man’s eye movements and body language. She watched for a busy tongue or other indications of a dry mouth.

  “You never reported your pickup truck stolen,” Boldt said.

  LaMoia added, “You never applied for the insurance money. How is it you lose a seven-thousand-dollar pickup truck and don’t apply for insurance?”

  “Curious,” Daphne said.

  A sheen of perspiration glowed on the skin knitted beneath Garman’s eyes. He rubbed his index finger against his thumb so tightly that it sounded like crickets chirping.

  “My attorney,” he mumbled.

  “We’ve called him. We’ve notified him. He’ll be here,” Boldt informed the man. It was the truth. What Garman apparently did not know was that his attorney was, at that moment, in court. It would be hours before he made it down to lockup.

  “Tell us about the fire,” Boldt said, intentionally ambiguous.

  “Which fire?” Garman asked, finding room for a slight smile. “I’ve seen a few.”

  “But how many have you started?” LaMoia asked.

  “Nick Hall sold me the hypergolics,” Garman began, repeating his radio performance. “I knew about their destructive power from my work at Grand Forks.”

  “The North Dakota Air Force base,” Daphne said. “Your service record shows you as fire suppression, some demolition work.”

  “That’s right. It was dangerous work.”

  Boldt began to enjoy the process. Little by little, Garman was talking more than he intended. Coming apart. Little by little, they were zeroing in on the questions they wanted answered. Daphne had devised the order of questioning. “Tell us about the fire,” the sergeant said.

  Garman’s eyes flashed between the three.

  “The trailer,” LaMoia said. “Your trailer. It burned to the ground, burned down to nothing, according to the reports. Listed as accidental. But Fidler—you know Sidney Fidler—spoke to a couple of folks who remembered that burn quite well. It was extremely unusual in that the water hoses appeared to add fuel to the fire. The thing just got hotter and hotter. That’s hypergolic rocket fuel, Garman, the same thing we’re seeing here. You understand our curiosity.”

  This time it was footsteps down the hall, not Garman’s nervous fingers. A guard approached, signaled Boldt, and passed a piece of paper through the bars. Another trick of Daphne’s. Bahan had come through with the name of Garman’s son only moments before the questioning. He had pulled it off of medical insurance records that painted an ugly picture. She had decided some theatrics wouldn’t hurt any. There was nothing written on the piece of paper passed to Boldt, but he read it with great interest. He looked up from the note with wide, expressive eyes of pure shock.

  Garman leaned a little forward with expectation.

  But Daphne spoke, not Boldt. “Was Diana unfaithful? Was that it?”

  The suspect’s jaw slacked open, and his cheeks lost their color. For a moment he didn’t breathe, didn’t move. He said vehemently, “You don’t know anything about it.”

  She glanced at Boldt and offered him a faint nod, though Garman’s comment churned in the pit of her stomach.

  Boldt said softly, “Jonathan Carlyle Garman. He was admitted to the hospital on the Grand Forks base, June 14, 1983. Third-degree burns to the face and upper body. Seven months of reconstructive surgery followed.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” LaMoia asked.

  Daphne pleaded, “Tell me it was Diana you meant to harm. Tell me you didn’t mean for the boy to be hurt.”

  “Mother of God!” the suspect said, hanging his head into his huge hands, his back shaking violently as he cried.

  Daphne took the opportunity to glance over at Boldt. She nodded. But she, unlike LaMoia, was not proud of their accomplishment. A contagious sadness surrounded her and infected Boldt.

  Through his sobs the suspect said into his hands, “She took him with her. Kidnapped him. And not out of love, but because of the things he knew, because of the things she had done to him.... What kind of woman is that?” He pulled up from his hands and looked Daphne directly in the eye.

  “We’re not here to judge you,” she whispered. “Only to find out the truth. To help Jonathan. It’s the boy who needs our help.”

  Garman sobbed for five of the longest minutes in Boldt’s life. Would he cooperate or demand an attorney? The minutes ticked by, the evening drawing ever closer and the promise of another arson along with it. Another victim.

  The phone company had no record of a Jonathan Garman; there was no driver’s license or vehicle registration in Motor Vehicle’s database. Other sources were being checked, but it appeared that the arsonist either existed outside of the paper shuffle or within an alias.

  “I never meant it the way it happened,” Garman finally gasped. “She had been selling herself. Made the boy a part of it.”

  Boldt released a huge sigh and sat back on the bunk. Sometimes he hated the truth.

  The footsteps suddenly coming down the hall were not part of the plan, and all three police officers looked in that direction as they drew ever closer, wondering what in the world they could possibly mean. The guard handed Boldt a second message.

  Boldt looked up from this second note. “It’s a car wash,” he said.

  The building momentum that captured Boldt’s investigation had exercised its influence on Bernie Lofgrin’s identification technicians. In the same afternoon, the lab techs determined that the blue and silver cotton fiber evidence collected from the insides of the windshields on the cars of two of the arson victims matched, not only one to the other but to the fibers found on Boldt’s kitchen window and those collected at the base of the ladder at the Enwright fire. It was just such evidence that gave a lock on a case, and as Lofgrin was pursuing Boldt to give him the good news, his assistants were tracing the sale of that particular silver ink to a total of only five silk-screen printers in the Northwest.

  The fifth printer contacted, Local Color, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, recognized the order by its color combination: hand towels ordered by Lux-Wash and Detailing, Inc., Seattle, Washington, printed in silver and green ink on a blue background—Seahawk colors. The towels carried the Lux-Wash logo and the addresses of the chain’s three locations. On the reverse side was printed, GO SEAHAWKS! Local Color was on their third printing, of fifteen hundred towels.

  Back in the conference room, which was churning with activity at a deafening roar, Boldt sat down heavily into a chair. He said to
Detective Bobbie Gaynes, “So it could be any one of fifteen hundred Lux-Wash customers.”

  “One thousand,” the detective corrected. “The last five hundred haven’t been shipped yet. And no, I don’t think it’s a customer. This is a yuppie scrub. Eleven bucks a wash, if you can believe it. Customer gets out and goes inside and drinks espresso while the wheels go down the line. Total vacuum, full wash and optional wax, and windows inside and out. The line finishes with a drying crew out the other side—and yeah, the towels the drying crew uses are these promo towels. Hence the fibers found inside the windshield.”

  “Three locations,” Gaynes said.

  “Two in the city, one in Bellingham,” LaMoia informed him, reading a briefing note.

  There was so much talk, so much urgent excitement in the room that Boldt felt tempted to stand up and call for a time-out. But better judgment intervened, for he could see the same desire on Shoswitz’s face, and he learned from seeing that expression. The team had worked long, hard, unthankful hours, both as individual detectives and combined as a squad. To mute that enthusiasm was to rob them of energy; they were running on vapors as it was. Boldt assessed the situation and contained his impatience, grabbing as much as he could from the words hurled at him.

  “We’re pulling employment tax records,” Gaynes announced.

  “He may not be on the payroll,” advised Daphne. “He’ll work part time, possibly for cash.”

  Lieutenant Shoswitz, listening in, cautioned, “We run everything we have. There’s no jumping to conclusions. Acquire and assess. Collect and evaluate. Don’t assume anything.”

  A uniform agreed with Daphne. “If he’s drying windshields, he’s working for cash and tips. That’s the bottom of the food chain at a car wash. Those guys aren’t on payroll because they don’t last long enough.”

  LaMoia added his opinion. “Our boy Jonathan has been at this awhile.”