Boldt 04 - Beyond Recognition

by Ridley Pearson

  Over the years she had come to develop certain instincts about her work, her patients. She could sense when a suspect was lying, could feel the truth. She knew when to push and when to pull back, when to work psychological games on an individual and when to talk straight. Jonny Garman would have taken the bait; she felt it to her core. The tape proved her wrong.

  She ejected the tape and placed it to the side. The screen was a sky blue. She shut off the gear, the sense of failure a bitter taste in her mouth. Danny Kotch of Tech Services, who had always had a crush on her, caught up to her in the hallway and handed her Ben’s backpack, returning it, reminding her of the boy and further disappointment. She carried it to her car and tossed it onto the seat.

  Daphne drove with her headlights on through early evening rain that continued to hold the city in a perpetual dusk. She was going a little too fast for conditions when the light changed. She always drove fast anyway, and her anxiety over Ben only served to increase her speed. Green to yellow: She downshifted and tapped the brakes. The rear end swerved, but she recovered with a tug on the wheel. Yellow to red: She downshifted again and gave the brakes an extra effort. The rubber met the road cleanly and firmly, and the car slowed hard.

  The backpack flew off the front seat and onto the floor mat.

  The car lurched to a stop at the red light and rocked on its springs.

  Daphne leaned forward and grabbed for the small backpack and hoisted it by one of its black straps up onto the seat.

  The light changed, but Daphne didn’t see it.

  A car horn sounded behind her, but Daphne didn’t hear it.

  Traffic swerved around her, taking advantage of the green light, and one of the drivers flipped her his middle finger. Daphne did not see this either. Her full attention was fixed on the backpack. In her mind’s eye she saw Garman briefly glance into the back of the Explorer as he climbed into the car to wash its windows; she measured a count of two, as Garman, then in the back seat, dipped out of sight, coming back up a moment later with an ashtray that needed dumping.

  The backpack had been in the back seat—she had placed it there herself. The same backpack that was currently in the seat alongside of her. She stared at it, transfixed. For there on the backpack, slipped into a plastic window designed for just that purpose, was a small identification tag listing Ben’s name and Jackson Street address. Even the phone number was there, she noted.

  Jonny Garman had not needed to open the glove box. The address he sought was available to him in the back seat, something he had probably determined within seconds of climbing into the car. She recalled the video tape and Garman’s brief disappearance as he sat up with an ashtray in hand. Ben’s backpack had been in the Explorer’s back seat. Garman would have had time to memorize the address.

  The police had established an elaborate surveillance operation at the wrong address. If Garman was watching any house, it was the Santori house on Jackson, not 114 Lakewood where Martinelli was ensconced.

  As she hung a U-turn in the middle of oncoming traffic, Daphne wasn’t thinking about Boldt or the investigation; she was thinking about Ben and the fact that she had not bothered to check his home, where he clearly might hide in a panic. She would not tell Boldt or the others, not yet. They would want Martinelli, not Daphne, to arrive at the house on Jackson, more worried about their trap than the emotions of a frightened runaway boy.

  She owed this to Ben. She would not drive him away again.

  It never occurred to her for a minute that at a distance, in the dusk, she and Martinelli did not look so very different.

  59

  Boldt was both annoyed with and concerned about Bobbie Gaynes. She had called in to dispatch an hour earlier, explaining she was going to walk to Seattle University—the location of Garman’s surprise bicycle disappearance—and had not been heard from again. She didn’t carry a cellular phone and she was clearly away from her vehicle, because she wasn’t answering radio calls. She was one of only two detectives to whom Boldt could turn for his surveillance team, and he felt forced to chase her down.

  He drove to the corner of Broadway and Columbia and immediately spotted her department-issue four-door parked a half block down the hill. At that point, his concern gave way to worry.

  He parked and walked quickly through the small campus, eyes and ears alert. There was no more daylight left, only a strong twilight glow off the clouds, bouncing back a muted, ambient light that stuck to anything pale in color. Gaynes could have covered the area in no time, he realized, wondering why she had not returned to her car and reported back to dispatch. He had no time to chase detectives around the city. Increasingly impatient, he widened his area of search as he believed she would have. He had been on foot for twenty minutes when he found himself waiting for a car to pass at the intersection of Broadway and James.

  He looked up at the many office buildings surrounding him, at first taking in their contrasting brick and concrete architectures, preferring the older brick look, but then assessing their purpose as professional buildings—medical offices. The area was known as Pill Hill. All at once he knew why he had lost Bobbie Gaynes; she too had made this same discovery. Medical offices, and their suspect with a reconstructed face.

  Boldt began to run in the direction of Harbor-view, where he hoped to catch Dixie, still in his offices. As medical examiner Dixie would have access to professional listings. The man often worked late; Boldt felt he had a chance.

  Each building he passed had some connection to the medical world. The signs, the names shouted out at him. He couldn’t run fast enough. He cut across to Boren and down Boren toward the hospital, out of breath but not slowing his stride.

  They had run driver’s license and vehicle registration checks on Garman, he recalled. Had LaMoia run credit checks and medical records? He couldn’t remember. But then he thought they must have, because they knew the exact date of Jonathan Garman’s admission for severe burns in the hospital at Grand Forks. And, if so, they had not discovered any record of medical insurance or they would have had an address to run down, even if only a mail drop.

  Think, think! he told himself. And as the idea struck him, Boldt pulled an abrupt about-face, cut back across the street, and ran at a full sprint back toward the school campus.

  Less than five minutes later, he burst through the door of the First Hill Medical Clinic, a welfare outpatient service only a block south of the university. It operated out of an old dry-cleaning shop, the rusted mechanized clothes hanger chain still suspended from the ceiling like recovered dinosaur vertebrae.

  Bobbie Gaynes was standing at the counter, halfway through a serious pile of paperwork. She viewed a sheet and turned. Viewed and turned. She took no notice of Boldt until he stood panting only a few feet away. Then she glanced over at him and said, “Well, don’t just stand there, Sergeant, take a chunk of this.” She passed him two inches of paperwork. As if they had been discussing the case together, she said, “Shifts changed at six o’clock, so no one here now saw him come in today. But one of the girls recognized the description. Garman uses the clinic, though she says the name doesn’t sound right. She says the plastic surgery was a lousy job—it’s always infecting along his ears. They’re not so pretty, evidently; he wears the sweatshirt hood up to hide them. And they’re real painful. If he was in today, he’s in these piles. And if he’s in these piles they have some paperwork on him. Everyone has to register here. It’s kind of like an uninsured HMO.”

  A female nurse called another patient’s name into the crowded room. A male nurse answered the phone and sat down at a computer terminal.

  “You didn’t call in,” Boldt said. Leafing through the doctors’ reports, he asked, “What do I look for?”

  “An injection of this.” She passed him a Post-It that bore the handwritten name of an antibiotic. “That word will be in this space here,” she said, indicating a box on one of the forms. “But doctors can’t write, so it’s hard to know what you’re looking at. How can guys
who spend ten years in graduate school write like they never made it through sixth grade?”

  “How could you go an hour without checking in?”

  She indicated the pay phone. There was someone on it, and a line waiting. “This place has been jumping. I figured, Do the job at hand. I know it’s a long shot but—”

  “No, Bobbie, it’s a stroke of genius.” He didn’t often hand out that kind of compliment, and it stopped her for a moment.

  “When that gal said she knew the disfigured guy with the sweatshirt—well, it kind of felt like Christmas. I wanted to unwrap the present for you. That’s all.” Suddenly she barked, “Got it!” and tugged one of the forms from the pile. She shouted to the male nurse at the computer terminal. “Jonny Babcock! Everything you’ve got on him!” The man hesitated, having no idea who Bobbie was. Boldt and his detective both produced their shields nearly in the same movement.

  Boldt announced them: “Police!”

  The resulting commotion behind them sounded like a stampede. Boldt turned around in time to see four youths already out the door and sprinting down the sidewalk.

  Typing the name into the terminal, the male nurse observed, “Well, that’s certainly an effective way to thin the waiting room. Thank you. I’ll have to remember that.” Looking back at his screen he said, “Babcock, Jonathan. No phone. Apartment Two-C, 1704 Washington Street South. You want me to print it for you?”

  Not hearing an answer, the man turned around. The two police officers were already out the door.

  60

  Daphne parked a block short of the Santori house on Jackson, where she and Boldt had arrested Nicholas Hall.

  She reached for her cellular phone to call for backup, an involuntary action born of the scar on her neck, but reconsidered, both for Ben’s sake and, more honestly, because she wanted to avoid making a fool of herself for the second time in the same day. Prudence dictated that she investigate further before calling it in.

  Taking her weapon into her hand inside the purse, she hung the purse casually off her right shoulder. She would not go into the driveway because she had the wrong car; Martinelli had driven an Explorer. Instead, she would park where she was and walk, head down. It seemed to her entirely plausible that Garman had gleaned the address off Ben’s backpack. If so, the Scholar might be watching the house from a tree or preparing his accelerants in a makeshift lab somewhere. He might be carving a biblical reference into a tree trunk. But she would not look up into the overhead branches, would not risk giving herself away. She would go inside and hope to find Ben. After that, she wasn’t sure.

  With her sweaty fingers gripping the handgun inside her purse and her heart racing painfully in her chest, she took one final deep breath and left her vehicle. She had things under control, she convinced herself. No reason to panic.

  Daphne barely took notice of the light drizzle, of the damp chill in the air. Falling mist was more common than sunshine as winter approached: one day Indian summer, the next a cold drool. Up the hill was a small park. Tall trees, she thought, believing Garman would be found there. She regretted not calling Boldt, not calling for backup, but was again reminded of the fiasco of the failed surveillance.

  She walked to the back of the house and climbed the stairs to the landing. A sheet of plastic covered the hole of broken glass where Nicholas Hall had forced his way inside. If she were being watched, she couldn’t stand at her own backdoor all day debating whether to enter or not. She tried the door. It was locked. She raised her hand as if using a key and punched through the plastic and let herself in. The door fell open and she stepped inside. It banged shut as she closed it.

  Daphne’s finger hesitated at the light switch, wondering if it was possibly a trigger. She glanced around the worn kitchen, suddenly thinking of everything as a trigger—the furniture, the faucets, the toilets, the thermostat, the phone—as if any step she took might initiate an explosion or a fire. The place gave her the creeps. She wanted out of there.

  She decided to place her faith in Bernie Lofgrin: The trigger was always in the plumbing, not the wiring. She counted to five and threw the light switch. Nothing happened.

  She moved through the kitchen and into the living room, slowly and cautiously, step by precious step.

  Would he have had time to set his charge? She doubted it. Watch the house for action tonight, wash the windows once Daphne left in the morning.

  She switched on several lights and called out Ben’s name, moving room to room. A cold shiver passed through her. She could picture herself as Dorothy Enwright or Melissa Heifitz. Another victim.

  Garman was watching the house—she could feel it.

  61

  Ben heard the back door of his own house slam shut and immediately lifted his head to the open window of the crude tree house. Jack Santori was still under arrest, as far as he knew, so who the hell …? The kitchen light came on and, a few seconds later, the living room light.

  To avoid any chance of being seen, Ben had been crashed out in his sleeping bag on the tree house floor, basically waiting for tomorrow to come. He would return to Emily and present his plan: They should run away together. No more police. No more Jack Santori. A new beginning. He was too excited by the idea to sleep, so instead he just lay in the dark, listening to the neighborhood, biding his time. And then the back door. Ben recognized that his own curiosity was what had gotten him into all this trouble. It kind of took control of him. Possessed him. He fought the urge to find out who was in his house, reminding himself over and over again that when the sun rose the following morning he was free. All he had to do was cool his jets until then. Sit tight.

  A light went on in his bedroom.

  He needed a better look. He just had to know what was going on.

  He slipped out of the bag but waited before leaving the tree house, because headlights from 31st and 32nd caught the tops of the trees that grew on the western edge of Frink Park, and Ben didn’t want to take any chance of his being seen. He still had control of that burning curiosity that boiled away inside him. He didn’t want to be too impetuous.

  The whitewash of the headlights receded, and Ben crept out onto the main limb, determined to climb higher where he might see down into his own bedroom.

  The noise of the city hummed around him, the droning whine of tires, the distant rolling thunder of jets landing and taking off, the moan of ferry horns out on the water. He started up the tree.

  Some car doors shut not far away, but he couldn’t make out the direction. When a beam of white light spread through the treetops Ben paused briefly, waiting for them to reach him and pass.

  That was when he saw the man perched in a nearby tree.

  If he had been in better control, he might not have gasped the way he did, but he lacked any such control, and his release of air brought him to the man’s attention. The guy was right at the same height, maybe thirty feet off the ground. He was three trees away, braced comfortably in the first main crotch.

  Ben recognized him immediately. He wore a sweatshirt pulled up on his head, though he had ditched the sunglasses since the time Ben had seen him at the airport.

  Another boy Ben’s age might have panicked and frozen in that tree, but Ben had Jack Santori to thank for his ability to move, and move quickly. The headlights swept past. The darkness washed the man out of the tree, and Ben out of his.

  Ben moved faster than his legs had ever moved before. He swung like a monkey, one limb to the next, down, down, down. Faster and then faster still. As his eyes readjusted from the headlights, he glanced left and saw the other guy was descending too. And making better time.

  Ben moved quickly, but the guy in the sweatshirt was superhuman the way he could climb. He was already halfway down his tree, checking on Ben the entire way.

  It wasn’t going to be a social call. He had that same look Jack Santori had on a bad night. He intended to get up close to Ben, the way Jack did. To hurt him. To stop him from telling anyone—which was exactly what Ben had
in mind.

  Down … down … down….

  Ben understood in another flash of headlights that he wasn’t going to win this race. And losers paid, as Santori was fond of saying. The guy had only a couple of limbs to go; Ben had fifteen feet.

  The decision was not so much conscious thought as an act of survival. Had he reasoned, he would have understood the drop was too great, even given the soft damp earth below. He would not have gone with his instincts but instead would have descended further before jumping. But something propelled him off that limb, threw him right off it, into an open-armed jump, that began with a scream and ended with the solid impact of both legs striking the ground.

  He hit hard, but no bones broke; he knew this instantly. And had his glass eye not popped out with the contact before he fully crashed and rolled through the wet leaves, his nose smashed, he might never have thought of what came next. But he had played this game too many times not to think of it, had scared the frost out of a dozen of Jack Santori’s playmates. He played dead.

  He held his breath, popped both eyes wide open, and made no attempt to wipe the trickle of blood that oozed from his nose. Holding his breath was the hardest, but also the most important to the performance. To fool the girls his chest could not move at all.

  The man from the tree was already down by the time Ben hit, and he ran to get a look at the boy. He cut through the dense underbrush and reached Ben’s silent body just as Daphne’s voice cut through the woods, calling, “Ben? Ben?”

  The man glanced hotly in the direction of the voice, bent over, and looked directly into Ben’s face, wincing as he saw the pulpy red flesh of the open hollow eye socket. He tested Ben with the toe of his running shoe, checking for life. The trick to playing dead was just that: Gross them out with the bad eye, and they never looked at much else.