Boldt 04 - Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

  The investigation rolled on, regardless of his wants. He took a walk downtown for forty-five minutes, up past the Four Seasons and down 5th Avenue’s fashion stores and office malls. He wanted a shot at what the kid knew. Kids saw a lot more than adults. Maybe a lead to the accomplice. Open him up with a lineup, something to jog his memory, work him into the smaller details. Pick his brain. He bought tea to go at a coffee stand by Nordstrom’s and came back up 4th, stopping to window-shop at Brooks Brothers, where a gray cashmere sweater costing most of a week’s pay teased him. He moved on, weary and worried. Pedestrians avoided him.

  He used such walks to try to jog loose a fresh idea. He needed a fresh idea, if another life was to be saved. He mentally reviewed the most recent note:

  You cannot look for the answer,

  you must be the answer.

  Daphne had traced it to Rita Mae Brown. The ATF’s Casterstein had told them to let the next fire burn itself out—no water, no overhaul. Boldt understood that the fire could come any night, that another life could be lost. The responsibility he bore for that life was but one of the pressures he endured.

  His present worries were twofold: the publicity generated by Hall’s arrest might invite copycat arsons; or it could push the Scholar either into hiding or, worse, into a frenzy of activity—as Daphne predicted—fearing his own arrest imminent.

  Boldt’s best ideas came to him at strange times, so it was no real surprise to him that while coveting a gray cashmere sweater in a storefront window he hit upon a realization: With Hall’s arrest, the arsonist’s supply of accelerant would stop.

  His cellular phone pressed to his ear, Boldt shouted people out of his way as he sprinted back toward quarters. Panting, he gasped through the phone to Shoswitz that they needed to conduct an immediate inventory of all fuel storage at Chief Joseph Air Force Base. Until that moment, under orders from the Captain of the Criminal Investigations Division, they had been intentionally leaving the Air Force in the dark, fearing a bureaucratic nightmare of jurisdictional infighting. “We blew it, Lieutenant. We had the trap all set, all perfectly baited, and no one was there to watch, to spring it.”

  “What trap?” Shoswitz demanded.

  “If I’m right, there has been a break-in at the Chief Joseph base within the last forty-eight hours. After the news broke the story of Hall’s arrest.”

  When Boldt walked into the office twelve minutes later, Shoswitz was waiting by the elevators. “How in the hell did you know about that break-in?”

  Boldt answered, “I’m going to get LaMoia. Tell Bernie to rally some technicians. We treat it as a crime scene. We share it, no matter what kind of heat we take.”

  “Yeah, but how the hell did you know?” Shoswitz barked at his sergeant.

  Boldt didn’t stop to answer, but he turned and said, “Supply and demand.”

  Chief Joseph Air Force Base was right out of a film studio back lot: parklike grounds interspersed with ugly shoe-box barracks and tightly grouped three-bedroom ranch-style brick houses for officers. With nine hundred family units and over one thousand dorm units, it had once employed or played home to 4,800 military personnel, 6,200 dependents, and 2,400 civilians, meaning its average population had once been over thirteen thousand people. It had its own movie theater, bowling alley, golf course, day-care center, beauty shop, bookstore, and PX. Base population was currently two hundred military, one hundred sixty dependents, and seventy-six civilians. A ghost town covering over two thousand acres, including what had once been the third largest airport in the state. The streets were straight and curbed and deserted. Grass grew out of cracks in the pavement. Boldt and LaMoia rode in the front seat, Shoswitz alone in the back. They followed a sheriff’s vehicle that followed an FBI vehicle that followed an ATF vehicle that followed a Military Police Jeep complete with camo green, black, and brown paint.

  The base commander was a surprisingly soft-looking man in his fifties. The FBI team, led by a man named Sanders whom Boldt knew well, did most of the talking. The negotiations began to bog down, at which point LaMoia, uninvited to participate by anyone, said, “We’ve got several people dead, sir. We think we know exactly what was stolen—hypergolic fuel, but we need to know in what quantity. I for one would just love to listen to you guys jaw all day, but meantime we know for a fact that this wacko is preparing yet another fish fry. So what say we cut to the chase and you give us some keys to the appropriate buildings while you gentlemen rub the gums?”

  Everyone in attendance stared at LaMoia dumbfounded. To which LaMoia, who could never keep his mouth shut, said, “Ah, come on, people! This is bullshit. We haven’t got the time.”

  Boldt caught himself holding his breath. The base commander nodded to a uniformed aide standing at his side, and the young kid hurried inside and returned with a ring of keys, which he passed to his superior. The commander clasped his thick hand around the keys and said, “We will certainly cooperate to our fullest with an active homicide investigation, but at the same time it is imperative that we share, gentlemen. Our Ordnance Recovery Division is responsible for returning to base any stolen ordnance. Our Criminal Investigation Division will take the lead and report directly to Special Agent Sanders.”

  Shoswitz objected bitterly to military CID attempting to lead the investigation. Boldt grabbed his lieutenant firmly by the elbow and squeezed, expressing an attitude of cooperation—an act for which the hot-headed Shoswitz would later thank him.

  The first of the buildings was called Arsenal D and was on the far western side of an enormous airstrip. Arsenal D was, in fact, a former jet aircraft hangar, in all appearances an oversized Quonset hut, ribbed galvanized sheet metal walls and roof, the latter with dull ivory skylights, the former with a minimum of windows. There were nine men involved in the fact-finding expedition, including Lofgrin’s three-member forensic team and a pair of base MPs. In private, LaMoia whispered to Boldt that once CID arrived from McChord the trouble would begin. Special Agent Sanders led the way. A bright shiny padlock came off a bent and rusted door that swung open on complaining hinges.

  One of the uniformed MPs explained that during morning rounds on Saturday between 8 and 9 A.M., the door had been discovered pried open. Lofgrin’s team began work on the door itself immediately, photographing and dusting for prints. CID would later complain about this intrusion. Boldt and the others followed Sanders inside.

  The sergeant was immediately struck by the effect of perspective. From outside, the hangar had seemed quite large; once inside, its size tripled. At the top of the arch of the curving roof there was perhaps sixty feet of clearance; the far wall felt as if it were a football field away. Between the two walls and perhaps forty feet high in twenty-two rows, each ten barrels wide, were stacked dark blue fifty-five gallon drums looking like spools of sewing thread. There had to be several thousand of them, Boldt realized, perhaps two hundred thousand gallons of fuel or more. Five gallons of that fuel, when mixed with its second element, could level a standard home. The firepower represented by this hangar was so staggering that at first, while the other men followed the MP down an endless aisle formed by the towering stacks of drums, Boldt stood transfixed, absorbing the absurdity of it all. Hall could have dipped into any one of these drums, siphoning off a few gallons here and there; in typical government fashion, the overkill, the embarrassment of riches, would provide the cover needed. An accurate inventory, especially given the small size of the crew on the base, seemed an impossibility—months, perhaps years away.

  Boldt had not realized that LaMoia had remained with him, standing only a few feet behind his sergeant, respectfully awaiting orders. There were times, Boldt thought, when LaMoia actually resembled a cop.

  Eyeing the thousands of drums, Boldt said, “He could have enough fuel to burn a dozen Dorothy Enwrights, a hundred! We’ll never know.”

  Shaking his head, John LaMoia said, “God bless America.”

  42

  Ben missed Emily. Daphne wouldn’t answer any of his que
stions about her, pretending she didn’t exist. He was shuttled back and forth, between talks with Susan, school classes with juveniles in detention, and evenings with Daphne. He used to think he had it bad living with Jack Santori, putting up with the parade of drunken women and the awful groaning downstairs late at night. But isolation was worse. The only thing keeping him from running away was Daphne’s threat to put Emily out of business. Ben wouldn’t do that for anything, not even his own happiness.

  When Daphne showed up in the middle of classes, Ben knew it meant trouble. Anything out of the ordinary routine meant trouble. She briefly consulted with the teacher and Ben was excused, to the heckling of others. He met up with Daphne in the hallway, his heart beating fast with concern.

  She was wearing black jeans, a sweater, and a leather jacket. She carried a large purse by a thick strap over her shoulder.

  “We need to ask a favor of you, Ben.”

  “Who, you and Susan?”

  “Boldt and I. The sergeant.”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “You should,” she said, a little stunned by his remark. “It’s good to have him on your side.”

  He was loath to admit it, but he liked Daphne. He even felt sorry for her in a way, because all she seemed to do was work and talk on the phone. She said she liked to go on a run in the evenings, but she’d only managed one run since he’d been staying with her. “What kind of favor?”

  “Sergeant Boldt wants to ask you some questions. Show you some pictures. You know what a lineup is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe do a lineup.”

  He didn’t want to show her how he felt about any of this. “What if I don’t want to?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Then I talk you into it,” she answered honestly.

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “Bribery, probably.”

  “Like what?”

  She answered with a question. “How about seeing Emily?”

  He felt like shouting a resounding “Yes!” but tried instead to hide his feelings, not give her too much leverage.

  “It can’t be at her place,” Daphne said. “Maybe at the library, somewhere like that. I can work on it.”

  “Work on it,” Ben said, but she glared at him and he added quickly, “please.”

  On their way to her car, Ben asked her, “Are you divorced?”

  “No,” she answered, clearly surprised.

  “My mom was divorced before she met him.” He had not told her much about himself, though she seemed to know a lot. Initially, he had feared the police were after him for the five hundred dollars, that they would arrest him and lock him up. But that was no longer the case; he knew it had to do with Nick. Putting Nick in jail would be a real pleasure.

  “A lot of people get divorced these days,” she explained. “It doesn’t make your mother any less a person.”

  “I thought she went away,” he said, his voice catching in his throat. Daphne started the car but glanced over at him before shifting gears. “She did, sort of. Go away. You know?” He felt tears coming and turned to look back at the building from which they had come. “He told me she left me. That she left us both. And I believed him.” He felt a tear run down his cheek then, and he kept his face toward the glass of the window so she couldn’t see. The car backed up.

  “Ben, you’re old enough to understand that people like Jack Santori do bad things. They hurt other people. Those of us who end up victims face some tough choices.” She had started to drive, but she pulled the car over and put it in park and turned to face him. Her eyes moved as if she was thinking hard or remembering something. “If we dwell on being victims, we often never escape. The better choice is to move on. Talking about things can help.” Too many memories for her. She felt herself break.

  She had tears running down her cheeks; so did he. For an instant she reminded him of his mom, because his mom seemed always to be crying, especially in the months before she left. He thought of the lie—she had never left—and cried all the harder. She had been lying down there in the cold and the damp, down there with mice and spiders and ants and God knows what else. Nothing left but some bones and that gold ring.

  He relived the experience of finding that ring for the first time since promising himself not to think about it. As Daphne reached over and hugged him he felt her warmth, and he smelled her sweetness, and he buried his face in her chest and fell apart, images surfacing, feelings surfacing that he had no idea were buried inside him. He saw himself as a child. He saw his mother naked in the bathtub, running her toes under the hot water and laughing. He saw her bruised face, her swollen eye, and her fat lip, and he remembered her warning in a frightened voice, “Don’t you say a thing about this in front of him. When you look at me, you don’t see it. When he looks at you, you act no different, Benjamin. You’re my best boy, right? You gotta do this for me.” She’d been protecting him; he realized that, though too late.

  A tape played inside his head and he heard them arguing and he heard her being hit, and he heard her say, “I’ll do it! I’ll do anything. Just not my boy.” After that the bed had pounded against the downstairs wall for a long time, and later he’d smelled smoke and, worried the guy had passed out while smoking, he went to look and found his mother sitting in a chair smoking a cigarette. He went down the stairs quietly and walked right up to her—she didn’t smoke cigarettes, not as far as he knew, and it upset him to see her smoking and he told her so. She was staring at the drawn curtain; she didn’t seem to hear him. The room was dark, and as his eyes adjusted, each time she drew on the cigarette a red light spilled over her body, and he realized she was sitting stark naked in that chair. Then, as the cigarette drew down, he saw that her body was covered in red, angry scratches, some of them deep enough to still be bleeding, black ugly bruises as big as potatoes. She exhaled and, without looking at him, said, “Go to bed.” Tears ran down her cheeks. He hurried up the stairs, but he didn’t go to bed; he sat in the shadows and watched her instead. She smoked four cigarettes in a row, found a coat in the coat closet, and put it on. She sat on the couch for a while, and when Ben awakened from an unplanned nap, she was in a different chair, looking out the window again, as if she wanted to be out there. She smoked two more cigarettes. Ben caught himself hugging his knees, crying into his pajamas. Jack called from the bedroom, “Get in here. We’re gonna play a little more.” Ben’s mom glanced up toward where Ben was hiding, as if contemplating something. She snubbed out the cigarette—he would never forget that because she used her bare foot to grind it into the rug; he had looked at the burned spot often and thought of her. She unzipped the coat, shedding it and leaving it on the couch, and walked slowly toward the bedroom, almost like a zombie. He heard the guy say something, heard his mother’s voice though not her words, and then caught the distinctive sounds of a hard slap and his mother’s groan, and he had covered his ears with his palms and run to his room and buried his head under his pillow, as he had so many nights before.

  “He killed her,” Ben said to Daphne, between his sobs. She squeezed him all the tighter. “He killed my mom and put her down there.” Daphne didn’t tell him to be quiet; she didn’t tell him everything would be all right. That had been what he had feared the most, being told to shut up or that things would work out. Because they weren’t going to work out, and Ben knew it.

  Daphne said, “You can tell me anything that comes to mind. It doesn’t have to make sense. I want to hear it, if you want to share it.” These words seemed to come from the voice of an angel to him. He cried all the harder. She said, “You’re safe here, Ben. Emily, me, Susan—we’re not going anywhere. We’re here for you. We’re your friends. You can talk to us. You can share with us. It’s safe.” She squeezed him again.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, admitting aloud for the first time something he had lived with for what felt like forever.

  “Me too,” said Daphne. “And you know what? It’s okay to be afraid.”
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  He looked up at her then, and for a moment he forgot everything. There was only this woman and the feeling that whatever was wrong was suddenly okay. That he was safe.

  He shut his eyes and tried to hold it there forever.

  The big man was Boldt, he knew that much. He wasn’t so much tall as big, and yet his hands belonged to a different person, with their long fingers. They looked like he kept them in his pockets all day or something. Hiding them. Protecting them. Ben had never seen hands quite like that.

  The other guy to visit the houseboat was some sort of artist. He had a gentle face and kinky hair and went by the name of Andrew or Andrews; Ben couldn’t tell if it was a last name or a first name. He set up his pad of white drawing paper under a lamp on the small countertop bar that separated Daphne’s galley from the tiny sitting room that housed Ben’s fold-out couch. There were three tall stools at the counter where Ben usually sat while Daphne cooked.

  The one called Boldt brought a videocassette with him that Daphne put into the machine and set up for Ben to view. Boldt explained, “You’ll see five men, all standing alongside one another—”

  “I know what a lineup is,” Ben interrupted. He wanted these guys gone. He wanted Daphne to himself. He wanted that meeting with Emily she had promised. For the first time in a very long time he felt as if things weren’t as bad, as scary, as they had seemed, and he didn’t want to lose that feeling.

  Boldt glanced over at Daphne, who asked Ben politely not to interrupt, saying that Boldt and this other guy had a job to do and it had to be done in a certain way, and even if all of them knew exactly what was supposed to happen, the sergeant still had to explain everything to Ben—which he then did, without interruption. Boldt thanked him at the end of the explanation, and it made Ben feel better about the whole thing. He wasn’t used to a guy thanking him for anything, only ordering him around.