No Witnesses lbadm-3

by Ridley Pearson

  Boldt did not like car discussions, and his wife knew it. He had to wonder why she had waited until now to start this conversation. They had just spent twenty-four hours in the solitude and quiet of the lake, and she waits for the morning commute that affords no eye contact, no real contact at all, to launch into this.

  “You’re upset,” she said.

  “The timing is all.”

  “Car talk.”

  “Right.”

  “But it’s easier sometimes for me. Can you see that? For all the reasons you don’t like it, it makes it easier for me. I can avoid those hard looks of yours even though I feel them.”

  “I never mean to exclude you from anything,” he apologized.

  “I know that. You do it, but I know you don’t mean to.”

  “And I can use all the help I can get.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear,” she said, and she reached for the radio knob. This time, Boldt stopped her.

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  “I need to make some phone calls, research a few things. But I didn’t want to put the time into it, I didn’t want to do it, if it was something that might cause us problems. We have enough of those.”

  Boldt took his eyes off the road briefly and met hers. He went back to the dotted lines and the turn signals, but that look of hers hung like a transparency through which he saw all else. She was as terrified of their future as he was, and for some inexplicable reason, he found this comforting.

  He slid his hand down onto the seat and inched it over and found hers, and they rode down into the city’s sparkling skyline hand in hand, Miles grunting and fidgeting from his car seat. Part of Boldt wished he could just keep on driving.

  It was clear from looking at her that Daphne Matthews had not taken the weekend off. “I spent most of Saturday and all of Sunday and Sunday night with Dr. Clements, going over the profile. He’s upset about those two faxes coming in on the same day and the lack of any attempt to place blame in the extortionist’s demand.”

  “So you were right about that,” he reminded her, trying to cheer her up. But it was not the opinion of Dr. Richard Clements that was troubling her, it was the fax she handed to Boldt.

  “This just came in,” she told him.

  HAVING A CRAVING FOR SWEETS?

  MOTHER WARNED THAT CANDY IS BAD.

  BUT YOU DO NOT LISTEN, DO YOU?

  YOU WILL WISH YOU HAD.

  Boldt reread the message several times, though there was no need to do so. She pointed out that in this fax the placement of blame had returned, and she did so in a forceful way that carried a subtext that she failed to explain to him.

  “Caulfield bought those candy bars at Foodland for a reason,” he said. He had sensed this from the moment of discovery, but had hoped differently.

  “They substituted all their candy products,” she reminded, though she gave away her own fears in the tight knitting of her brow and the way she entwined her hands in a squirming knot. “He told me about your conversation.”

  “You’ve seen him?” Boldt protested.

  “No, not in the flesh. But we call each other, both of us from pay phones-it’s really a perfect arrangement,” she snapped sarcastically. “Don’t worry, Sergeant,” she said caustically, annoyed with him, “we’re taking all necessary precautions.” She added, “And let me say that I consider my private phone calls my own damn business.”

  “I respect that.”

  “I certainly hope so.” She was clearly miffed. Her exhaustion hung over her face like a veil. “He’s incredibly angry over the possible cover-up. He offered to help get any paperwork we need, but I told him that we were more likely to subpoena what we’re after from here on out, so that we kept it admissible. I can see you’re worried, but let me tell you something: Owen Adler can handle any amount of stress and keep a poker face through any dealings. We don’t have to worry about him, Lou. He’s not going to give any secrets away.”

  “I know this must be hard on you,” he offered.

  “It’s hard on all of us. But thank you. Yes, it is.” She still was angry, though less so perhaps. With him, or with the situation-he was not certain.

  He placed the fax down onto his desk. “I would hope that we’ve learned enough from his earlier threats to issue a second recall immediately. Threat or no threat. Freeze all sales at the retail level and try to trade out product again. Restock the shelves overnight and hope that Harry Caulfield doesn’t hear about it.”

  She agreed that he should fax Adler with the request immediately.

  “You know what really ticks me off?” Boldt said. “Another couple of days, the new soup labels will be ready to go. And now he goes switching products on us. And more curious to me-is he just lucky, or does he know which ATM machines we’ve got under surveillance?” On his desk were field reports for the ATM hits that had occurred both Saturday and Sunday nights. A combined amount of forty-two hundred dollars had been withdrawn. No agent had been within ten blocks of the ATM machines chosen for the hits. He did not tell her that Fowler now had a copy of the surveillance map and that they had effectively doubled their team, because to include her was to involve her-and if it went up in flames, he did not want her part of it. Boldt said, “He’s got over ten grand already.”

  “Not bad for less than a week of work.”

  “A little more than my take-home.” He won a slight grin from her, though it did not qualify as a smile. “So we wait for him to kill someone?” he asked. He reminded himself that Adler had offered to pull all their product and that he, Boldt, had talked him out of it. He reminded himself of the lab’s discovery of strychnine in the Longview ashes, Bernie Lofgrin’s reference to the Jim Jones tragedy, and his reasons for convincing Adler not to panic. But it was Lou Boldt who now felt in a state of panic.

  “Call Clements,” he told her, passing her the phone. “Ask his opinion about pulling the candy bars immediately instead of waiting until tonight. And see what he would think about putting out the recall on the news-about warning the public about this.”

  She looked as terrified as he felt. She dialed the number from memory to the room, and was put through. They talked for the better part of five minutes in the middle of which she shook her head at Boldt-Clements was advising against violating the conditions of the threats. She hung up and said, “He’s taking Caulfield at his word. But it’s still your call.”

  He tasted biting sarcasm on the tip of his tongue, but kept it in. He kept in his fear as well, as best he could. Over the next few hours the clock hands actually seemed to slow down, and it seemed incredible to him that these were the same minutes by which he lived his life. They seemed hardly related at all. He willed his phone not to ring, and yet heard the endless ringing of the phones around him in a way he had never before experienced. There was rarely a moment of silence on this floor. There always seemed to be someone talking, a phone ringing, a door shutting, a shout, a reprimand, a curse. He wanted to yell for them all to shut up. Each time a phone purred, he thought it signaled the end of a life. And many of these calls did, even though they had nothing to do with the work of Harry Caulfield. The business of Homicide went right on without Lou Boldt. The teenagers, the lovers, the drownings-all required investigation. Pasquini’s squad was up to their waists in new cases.

  But the department’s only black hole belonged solely to Lou Boldt, and the fax staring back at him was a signpost of what lay around the next curve-and Boldt had no desire to get there. He mentally backpedaled, knowing full well it was as useless as swimming from a waterfall.

  At a few minutes past six o’clock, Owen Adler instituted the second secret recall of all Go-Bars and Mocha-Latte Peanut Crunches, a costly, time-consuming effort that Boldt feared would prove too late. To date, as far as Boldt could tell, Caulfield had only sent a threatening fax once the contaminated product was in someone’s hands. He could envision the man as he stood around and watched, as he inspected the shelves periodically to see if his prize had
been taken.

  LaMoia brought Boldt some Thai takeout before heading out on ATM surveillance duty. He offered it to both Daphne and Boldt, but neither touched the food. Boldt had not eaten all day-a day that dragged interminably into evening.

  When phone calls did come, Boldt answered them tersely, prepared for the worst: more cholera, more illness, more people clinging to their lives. He answered them rudely, hung up quickly, and he found it difficult, if not impossible, to get any work done.

  BUT YOU DO NOT LISTEN, DO YOU?

  YOU WILL WISH YOU HAD.

  He thought many times of his conversation with Adler, of his efforts to convince him to allow the product to remain on the shelves. Even with the support of Dr. Richard Clements, he could only see this now as a huge mistake.

  He prepared himself for nearly every eventuality-except the one that finally came. He noted the time of the call-7:22-out of habit. And out of habit he checked for his weapon, for his identification wallet, and for the keys to his car.

  There were two boys dead-still up in their tree house, he was told by the 911 dispatcher. Not cholera. No chance for emergency rooms or resuscitation. Without any pathology report, without a lab test or a professional opinion of any sort, Boldt knew both the murder weapon and the cause of death.

  A chocolate candy bar. And strychnine.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The bodies had been discovered in Wedgewood, in the backyard tree house of a home in the thirty-one-hundred block of Northeast Eighty-first Street. The hysterical mother explained to the 911 dispatcher that the boys had not responded to her summons to come inside. “They’re just sitting up there!” she had sobbed over the phone. “Just sitting there.” Because it was a death by suspicious causes, the 911 call was first relayed to Wedgewood authorities, then mistakenly to King County police, and finally, because of an astute switchboard operator, to Boldt’s office phone.

  Boldt arrived reluctantly, not wanting to get out of his car. As in one of his recurring dreams, he had a longing to turn back the clock to that moment immediately before the incident and to be there to save these victims.

  The evening sun worked unmercifully to blister the tree house’s Cape Cod-gray paint. An old wooden ladder with initials carved into the stock stretched up into the darkened hole above. The tree house itself was not like the ones Boldt remembered from his own childhood. It appeared more the product of a catalogue purchase.

  He elected not to speak with the hysterical mother, but headed directly to the crime scene instead. There would be time later for talking. Too much of it, as far as Boldt was concerned.

  A uniformed officer stood at his side, and she knew better than to say anything. Boldt had a reputation as a loner at homicide crime scenes-and every uniform was aware of it. Dixie was on his way, as were Bernie Lofgrin and his ID crew. It was all being done as quietly as possible, though this time there was sure to be press, and this time there could be no stretching the facts to include E. coli contamination. Certainly Caulfield knew that the press and the police had to be involved-and this, above all else, terrified Boldt the most: Caulfield no longer cared; something inside him had changed.

  Facing the press would not require the public information officer to make any mention of Adler Foods, or, for the time being, the candy bars that Boldt felt certain to find in the tree house above him. The press would be told that the case was an active homicide and was under investigation. No more, no less.

  He looked up the long stretch of ladder once again, up into that dark mouth in the floor of the Erector Set tree house. She handed him a flashlight without a word, and he reminded himself to get her name later and to thank her for her professionalism. A few more cops arrived in the backyard, but seeing Boldt at work, they left immediately and kept others out. Only Boldt and his uniformed sidekick remained.

  He climbed the ladder slowly, not wanting to see the first true homicide crime scene this case had presented him. Again, there were no witnesses to the actual crime, and again Lou Boldt would have little to go on.

  Boldt recalled explicitly his promise to Slater Lowry’s mother that the boy would be back to finish his model of the Space Shuttle. There would be no such lies to tell this woman inside this house. She had been up this ladder first.

  One of the boys had made for the hatch, for the ladder, but had come up short. He was facedown, his arms outstretched as if reaching for a ball. The other was curled into the fetal position in the corner wearing a death mask of pure horror, as if in the middle of a scream.

  It was a small room. It was going to be hard on all the technicians.

  The weakened flashlight beam illuminated a pink plastic squirt gun, sandwich wrappers, and comic books. A deck of cards. The small white skull and part of the spine of a mouse kept as a game trophy. A Stephen King paperback on the room’s only shelf, its pages curled. There was a candle on the shelf as well, its wax puddled at its base. A baseball, with a tangle of autographs. A poster of dinosaurs and another entitled “The Marine Life of Puget Sound.”

  Boldt could imagine them talking up here. The laughter, quiet now.

  The first candy bar he saw was half-eaten. In bold, excited letters, the wrapper read ironically: NEW! Good for You! It was an Adler Foods granola-and-caramel Go-Bar. Poisoned.

  Boldt recalled the grainy image of Caulfield at the Foodland checkout counter. He recalled the register tape listing three candy bars and some kind of ice cream. He recalled his diligence in convincing Adler to keep the shelves stocked.

  He apologized to the boys, and he caught himself dragging his sleeve across his eyes, and could feel that uniform down there looking up at him, wondering what he was doing.

  “Get out of here!” he shouted down at her. And she hurried away before he could stop her, before he could apologize to her as well.

  He wondered what had become of him, and turning back to these two fallen victims, whatever became of a child’s departed soul.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Come up the park steps to the guest house. No lights. I’ll meet you there.”

  Click. Daphne hung up the phone, checked the clock: twelve midnight. Owen had risked a call. That alone told her enough about his state of mind; the palpable fear in his voice told her more than she wanted to know. She jumped up off the stool, quickly buttoned her jeans, and left her project on the counter. It was the affidavit requesting the New Leaf bank records that she had meticulously reviewed with Striker over the phone. In order to mark where she had left off, she pointed the lead of the pencil to the word intractable.

  Leaving the houseboat, she took special care to arm the alarm system, locked up, and hurried to her car.

  Made somewhat frantic by that tone of voice of his, she drove around the lake, crossed at the Fremont Bridge, and took Leary and Market out to Shilshole Marina, entering the park and winding her way up the series of switchbacks until she reached the picnic ground on the left. She parked deep into the area, and it was not until she climbed out into the darkness, the traffic below whining eerily, that she became aware of her isolation. She took her bearings, allowing herself a quick pang of fear-the woods were dark and she was still far below the estate. Her fears were only partially alleviated by the presence of her handgun. She had never seen a handgun as any kind of solution. Had there been any choice, she would have gladly entered through Adler’s front gate. But Adler could not be seen having any contact with the police-the threats were adamant in that regard-and so she felt obliged to approach the estate from the back side, as he had asked of her. And to do so secretively, without being seen.

  She had been on several long walks with Owen during which they had descended through the forest trail to this same picnic area, and farther down to where the same road looped back around and lower again to the condominiums that lived uncomfortably, like unwanted in-laws, on the shore’s edge bordering the marina. She had never hiked it in darkness, never by herself-had never climbed the trail’s precipitous steps, but only descended.

&nb
sp; Her key chain carried a strong penlight, and despite Owen’s instructions to the contrary, she felt tempted to use it. She always carried her small handbag with her because of the weapon and identification it contained. It usually hung at her side suspended by a thin strap. But it was also capable of being secured to a belt, European-style, which was how she presently carried it.

  This, the park’s steepest and longest stretch of steps, had not been maintained since the city park system, citing budget constraints and angry over Adler’s challenge of a right-of-way across his property, had abandoned its maintenance several years before. For his part, Owen claimed they had closed the stairs after settling a lawsuit out of court. The result of this abandoned maintenance was an impossibly steep and dangerous set of rotting railroad ties engulfed by untold species of junglelike plants. At a few of the more treacherous switchbacks, the route offered an occasional steel-pipe handrail, though they were not to be trusted. She entered the trail and began the arduous climb, finding more light than she had expected. The going was slow, and she stopped repeatedly to catch her breath and contain her frantic heartbeat. Halfway up, she wished she had made other arrangements.

  It was during her third rest break that she at first sensed, and then heard, movement deep within the woods, realizing to her considerable alarm that she was not alone.

  “Hello?” she called out reflexively, then chastised herself for doing so. Despite her suspicions over the past two weeks, she still failed to think like a victim. Ever a cop, never a victim. Within seconds of her outcry, she began moving again, aware that an object at rest offered an easy target. It occurred to her that it was faster to descend than continue to climb, but the sound had come from below and to her left-on the trail itself, and not very far back.