No Witnesses lbadm-3

by Ridley Pearson

  Their waists. The backs of their legs. The elevator was dead even with the second floor. It continued to climb.

  Daphne reached the stationary floor gate, diamonds of accordion steel. By contrast, the elevator’s gate was slanted slats of wood. In order to pass the keys into the elevator, Daphne would have to negotiate both patterns at once. Her plan was to toss them inside and duck out of sight, at which point Frankie could claim he dropped them.

  The floor of the elevator ascended past her ankles.

  She held the keys, debating when to throw them. Started to, but stopped. Lifted her arm.

  Frankie turned and looked right into her eyes. He must have sensed her, for his attention fell immediately to her hand-the keys-and without thinking, she lunged her arm through the steel grate attempting to pass them.

  For Daphne, all motion slowed.

  “Hell of a rain,” Frankie said to Taplin’s bald spot, taking a step back, his fingers twitching behind him for the outstretched keys. “Give me them!” this hand seemed to say. But as the elevator continued its steady rise, the pass became impossible, and worse, Daphne suddenly realized her arm was in too far: the bottom lip of the elevator could take off her hand at the wrist like a paper cutter.

  Taplin’s bald spot moved, as he swung his head to speak to Frankie.

  Daphne ducked from sight, her arm high overhead, the steel lip of the elevator heading for her forearm like a butcher’s cleaver. Her watch caught on the diamond steel gate, trapping her hand. Inches to go!

  She tossed the keys, jerked her hand hard, and broke her watchband.

  The keys splashed to the floor of the elevator.

  Daphne flattened onto the floor.

  Something thumped softly onto her back. Her watch. Frankie had kicked it out of the elevator while bending to retrieve his keys.

  “Man, but I’m clumsy,” she heard Frankie say, his voice rising with the elevator. “Damn near lost these.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Taplin said. “I’ve got my key with me.”

  All for nothing! Daphne realized, heading back to the stairs and descending quickly. Boldt had the file, and she was anxious to see what it contained.

  When she reached her car she leafed through the file quickly, nervously, eyes alert for the document that had become so familiar to her. Buried in the middle, she found it: the State Health lab report-and by the look of it, this was no copy.

  SIXTEEN

  The hours passed slowly while they awaited the initial results of the lab tests on the State Health document. The interviews with the Foodland customers dragged out, and those reports Boldt did receive suggested to him that too much time had passed. People simply did not remember much about grocery shopping.

  Several calls placed to Sheriff Turner Bramm went unanswered and unreturned, infuriating Boldt. As Boldt’s shift came to an end, replaced by DeAngelo’s squad, there was a good deal of mumbling about what Boldt was really up to. Danielson had cleared a hit-and-run and they had leads in a liquor store assault, but it was clear to all from looking at the Book that most of Boldt’s squad was, admittedly or not, detailed to whatever consumed Sergeant Boldt. Danielson was running a one-man show; Lou Boldt, in effect, was running a small task force.

  On Friday morning, with the discovery of three hospitalizations in Portland that matched the symptoms of cholera-395, Boldt flew down for an eleven o’clock meeting with the Portland Police Department. At the same time, because the crime had now crossed state lines, the local field office of the FBI was alerted, and two Special Agents attended this meeting. Fortunately for Boldt and the investigation, he knew both agents personally and there was a good deal of mutual respect between them.

  In an act of cooperation, the FBI field office deferred to Boldt’s request for advice and assistance but not intervention. For the time being, the Bureau agreed to stay on the sidelines, offering its services but not its leadership. The SPD would continue to run the investigation with the PPD and the FBI as silent partners. The FBI’s Hoover Building lab was made available, and Boldt passed along Daphne’s request that the Bureau’s behavioral psychiatrist, Dr. Richard Clements, contribute to a psychological profile. This was met with enthusiasm.

  By four o’clock that Friday afternoon, some of the energy and urgency of the Tin Man investigation had begun to dissipate because of general inactivity and a lack of leads. Shoswitz settled back into his normal routine and left for home with the shift change. Lou Boldt did not.

  Once again he telephoned the office first and then the residence of Sasquaw’s sheriff, Turner Bramm. On the sixth ring the man’s wife answered. Boldt had a brief conversation and hung up. He felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him.

  Detective John LaMoia entered Boldt’s office cubicle saying, “Narc, narc, anybody home? Feel like a pizza?”

  LaMoia, in his late thirties, was a twelve-year SPD veteran, and had spent six years on Boldt’s homicide squad. He stood six feet one with curly brown hair, a mustache, and had a drawn face, high cheekbones, and large brown eyes. He wore pressed blue jeans that carried a heavy crease down the center of both pant legs; he worked out and had a reputation for being a womanizer. Everyone liked LaMoia-from the meter readers to Captain Rankin. He brought humor and sparkle with him, and he effortlessly crossed the line between the uniforms and the detectives.

  “Sarge?” LaMoia was one of the more observant detectives.

  “He never came home last night,” Boldt mumbled.

  “Who’s that?”

  Boldt said, “I’ll pull the car around. You call KCP and let them know we’re heading out to Sasquaw. If they’ve got somebody in the area, we may want backup.”

  “Backup?” LaMoia asked curiously.

  But Boldt did not answer him. He was already off across the fifth floor at an all-out run.

  By the time Boldt found the farm, it was dusk. They had become lost twice, and LaMoia had demanded they drive through a McDonald’s. Using the cell phone, Boldt obtained a telephone warrant from deputy prosecuting attorney Michael Striker and district judge Myron Banks, giving him authority to search the premises. His mouth full of hamburger, LaMoia said, “You’re starting to worry me, Sarge.”

  Boldt answered, “I’d double-check my piece if I were you.” LaMoia tended to his weapon immediately.

  A group of farm buildings spread out below the county road, barely visible in a determined starlight.

  LaMoia switched on a flashlight, aimed it directly at Boldt, and said, “You should have eaten something. You look like shit.”

  “I sent a local sheriff here to nose around,” Boldt explained. “He hasn’t been seen since.”

  LaMoia switched off the light. In the silence they could hear the hum of the overhead power line.

  The two hung their shields around their necks on thin black strings, and LaMoia crossed himself, and no one made any jokes. Boldt thought of Miles and that if he never saw him again, there would be no way to explain the reason a cop had kicked in a door in the middle of nowhere; and then he thought of Sheriff Turner Bramm’s wife-the fear he had heard in her voice-and he opened his car door and headed toward the farmhouse.

  The two men walked in silence, their city shoes juicy in the mud but neither complaining. They walked to the Powder River gate and LaMoia opened it, quietly closing it again behind them. There were no lights on in the house, though it didn’t mean anything: The driveway showed signs of recent use. A mercury light filled the distance between the house and outbuildings with a garish glare that seemed brighter than Arizona sunshine. With the shades up, there would be plenty of light inside with which to see. They were sitting ducks out here.

  Boldt threw a hand signal at LaMoia indicating the dark side of the house, and the detective squatted and slid off into shadow where only the owls could see him. Deafened by the pulsing in his ears, Boldt slowed his advance, buying LaMoia a few needed seconds and forcing himself to think this through once again. A missing sheriff. A deserted farmhouse. His two-
year-old son waiting at home. He withdrew the weapon from his holster, engaged the recoil and the safety, and gripped the stock between both hands. A bead of sweat trickled down his chin. His mouth was dry. So maybe Liz was right about a desk job. So what? There was nothing to do about it now. His police vest was in the trunk; he should have thought to put it on.

  He walked faster now, his system charged with adrenaline, cutting quickly across the brilliantly lit farmyard and reaching the door to the farmhouse, a building in total disrepair. The white paint was coming off like sunburned skin, the windows were gray with grime, and the brown-bristle welcome mat had disintegrated at the center, leaving a frayed rope-weave underpinning.

  Boldt held his breath to allow him to hear the slightest sound, then knocked loudly, paused, and knocked again. The wind blew high in the cedars and the mercury light hummed, sounding like a huge bug. Boldt peered through the gray glass at the inside of a cluttered kitchen. Although clearly well used, this was the back door. He circled the house, locating another door and knowing LaMoia would be keeping him in sight.

  He knocked. Waited. Nothing.

  A wave of the hand brought LaMoia out of the dark. They checked the ground floor thoroughly, and found it tightly locked up. “We could kick it,” LaMoia suggested. “Not without a damned good reason,” Boldt clarified. “Not outside our jurisdiction.” Boldt turned around and faced the five outbuildings. A series of muddy tire ruts led into the compound, some of them made recently.

  “Try them first?” LaMoia inquired.

  “Yup,” Boldt said.

  They crossed the farmyard to the first building.

  LaMoia pushed open a huge steel door that ran on rollers. Boldt switched on the flashlight and scanned the interior. A long, narrow corridor faced them, hundreds of tiny wire cages stacked floor-to-ceiling on either side of the wide aisle. It smelled dusty. There were white, yellow, and brown feathers everywhere. Boldt experienced a similar nausea familiar to some homicide crime scenes. “You feel it?” he hissed hoarsely, his throat dry.

  LaMoia nodded gravely. He pulled the door shut again. “Maybe we should call in that backup.”

  But they did not. They walked side by side silently through a patch of weeds that invaded Boldt’s socks, prickling him. The air smelled sour and then suddenly sweet. They stopped in front of the second building, a modified Quonset hut.

  “You okay?” LaMoia asked.

  “No.”

  “Open it?”

  “Go ahead.”

  The door squeaked on its hinges. Boldt painted the inside with the harsh beam of the flashlight. More of the same: hundreds of poultry cages; several rows of high-intensity lights hung from the ceiling.

  Studying the coop, LaMoia said, “This must be the laying coop. They use the lights to trick the birds into producing more.”

  “Feels kind of like a ghost town,” Boldt said.

  “I know what you mean.” They moved on.

  By its outward appearance, the third structure suggested a different use-a tool shed or equipment barn. As they neared its double-door entrance, Boldt stuck out his arm and blocked LaMoia before he stepped on the disturbance in the mud: activity, boot prints, and a series of tire tracks.

  “Pretty recent,” Boldt said, observing their clarity. The summer rains of the past week would have softened the impressions.

  They avoided the disturbed area, cutting around the side of the structure, Boldt leading them with the light. He was already thinking ahead to lab crews and photographers, plaster casts of the boot and tire impressions. Go with your instincts, he had told the students in the lecture hall. His own told him that Daphne was right about a connection between Longview Farms and the Adler threats. He had nothing more than a sour spot in his gut and a few unexplained tire tracks upon which to make this bet. But if challenged, he was prepared to bet it all.

  There was no entrance on the side, but at the far end they found a locked door and a reinforced glass window that had been spray-painted from the inside. They teamed up, Boldt training the flashlight under the crack in the door and LaMoia searching out irregularities in the hasty paint job, his face pressed to the glass. “To the right. More …,” he directed. “There!” he said. It took several blows with a length of scrap iron to punch a hole in the reinforced glass.

  As they stepped inside, Boldt asked, “Do you know that smell?”

  “A nose like yours, you oughta be in perfume.”

  “Smell it?”

  “I do know that smell,” LaMoia admitted. “That’s paint.”

  “That’s right.”

  The building was hot and stuffy. It had a cement slab floor with large drains and an overhead conveyor mechanism with metal hooks.

  LaMoia said knowingly, “This is where they butchered them.”

  “Yup.” Boldt walked a bit faster, approaching the sheriff’s car.

  “Gloves,” he said. They both snapped on pairs of latex gloves. The flashlight caught the windshield and mirrors and bounced light around the cavernous structure in sparks and flashes. The words Sasquaw Sheriff’s Department wrapped around a gold logo of Justitia-Lady Justice-on the driver’s door. The vehicle was locked. Boldt shined the light into the backseat: no body. “Force the trunk,” he instructed. LaMoia searched out his scrap-metal pry bar while Boldt fully circled the vehicle, ending up at the trunk.

  Boldt said, “Clean. Too clean for all this mud. He wiped it down.” His heart pounded painfully in his chest. Dead. He had sent Sheriff Turner Bramm here, had berated him until he accepted the job. He felt that he, and he alone, was responsible for whatever had happened here.

  “Maybe he just parked it here so it wouldn’t be seen,” LaMoia said, reading his thoughts, working the pry bar. “The sheriff, I’m talking about. Maybe he and some farm girl are shacked up in the house, doing the business.”

  “Is that all you ever think of?” Boldt said a little too harshly.

  LaMoia did not answer. He caught the lip well, put his weight behind the effort, and popped the trunk.

  “No body,” LaMoia said, relieved.

  “No vest, either. And there’s a shotgun clip on the dash. Empty. And no police radio,” he said. “Torn right out from under the dash.”

  “We gonna kick it now?” LaMoia asked of the farmhouse.

  “You bet we are,” Boldt replied. The flashlight strayed to the cement floor and caught a blend of yellow, blue, and red spray paint, edged by a hard line where a drop cloth had been. LaMoia went down on one knee. He sniffed the paint closely. “There’s the source of the smell.”

  Boldt followed the paint with the light. It formed a large empty rectangle on the cement floor.

  “Spray-painted a car,” LaMoia said.

  “A truck,” Boldt corrected. “With these three colors.”

  LaMoia put his shoulder into it for a third time, and the kitchen door came open.

  The air smelled of food gone bad and windows left shut. The kitchen was small and tidy, dishes drying in a rack and dry, fresh fruit in a bowl-slightly withered. A door immediately in front of them, perhaps leading to the basement, was padlocked shut with new hardware. Using hand signals, Boldt indicated for LaMoia to search the first floor. He, Boldt, would take the upstairs.

  The sergeant passed through a musty-smelling living room and climbed a flight of creaky stairs.

  “Police,” he warned. “We have a warrant to search these premises.”

  He continued his ascent, flashlight in his left hand, his right hand hovering cautiously near the stock of his weapon. Below him something moved. LaMoia slinked silently past, disappearing into a different room. The unusually white light of the farmyard mercury lamp played against the downstairs walls. Boldt ascended, unknowingly holding his breath.

  The staircase led up the center of the house, leaving rooms ahead of him and to either side. “Police,” he called out again, though with less authority. He passed through a pocket of foul odor and stopped dead still, his neck and arms alive with go
ose bumps. He knew that odor, and he identified its source as the room to his right.

  His senses warned him again that this was indeed the home of the Tin Man. The closer he drew to that door, the greater his apprehension. “Police,” he repeated, his weapon already in hand. “I’m coming in.” Not wanting to make a target of himself, he shut off the flashlight and pocketed it.

  He gently rotated the bedroom doorknob and toed the door open cautiously, greeted by a darkened room.

  “Police,” he repeated yet again, reaching for the light switch.

  An empty room.

  The room had been recently lived in. He smelled dirty laundry mixed with that same odor of spray paint. Once again he was struck by the incredible neatness of the room. That neatness troubled him: an ordered mind, compulsively neat. He was afraid, despite his training. He wanted out of here.

  A noise, like a tiny bell. He knew that sound: hangers banging together. Ding! they rang again. The closet was on the far side of the bureau. Someone was inside that closet. A sudden scratching on the ceiling caused him to jerk his weapon overhead, and he almost fired. Rats or bats, he realized.

  As he turned to call for LaMoia, a rustling sound came from the closet, preempting him.

  He leapt forward and yanked the closet door open.

  The hangers rang again. A cat leapt off the shelf and onto Boldt’s shoulder, so quickly that Boldt went down with the contact.

  Empty. The closet, the other rooms-by the last of which LaMoia had joined him.

  “Nothing,” the detective said.

  “There’s that smell in the hall,” Boldt said, leading LaMoia back to the top of the stairs. Any homicide cop knew that smell.

  They both spotted the laundry chute at the same time. “That would be the basement,” LaMoia said.

  “The padlock,” Boldt reminded him, and the look they shared silenced them as they hurried back down the stairs and into the kitchen.

  Using a butter knife that he broke twice in the process, LaMoia removed the hinge pins to the basement door before Boldt had thought how to deal with the padlock. The door came open backward, and LaMoia tore away the lock, doorjamb and all, and deposited it in a crash to the floor. It was dark inside, and it smelled of death.