No Witnesses lbadm-3

by Ridley Pearson

“Billy, what’s the address?” Boldt asked hurriedly.

  The dispatcher checked with the field agents and reported back.

  Boldt signaled Locke like a conductor, and she repeated the address to the Ma Bell supervisor she had on the line. Within seconds, her pen was moving rapidly. She tore off the piece of paper and handed it to Boldt, who scanned it quickly and passed it to Billy, asking him to put them up on the screen. A minute later, six pink stars with a T in the middle appeared on the electronic map.

  Over the course of the next few minutes, reports streamed in that the suspect was repeatedly attempting to start her car. During this time, Sheila Locke determined the physical locations of the pay phones according to their addresses: Two were behind the suspect in a McDonald’s and a Burger King, respectively; one was across and up the street in a strip mall; one each in a pair of competing gas stations nearly half a mile in front of her, near the interstate; and one in a booth adjacent to a bus stop not a hundred yards ahead.

  Boldt instructed the trailing Tech Services van to set up with a view of both the Datsun and this bus-stop pay phone. Three minutes later, NetLinQ’s center screen showed a grainy black-and-white telephoto image of the sad-looking Datsun pulled awkwardly onto the shoulder of soft grass.

  “Suspect is moving,” announced a male voice in the headset.

  Boldt and Billy met eyes. Billy’s earlier doubt that had been present when Boldt elected to follow rather than apprehend was now gone, replaced instead by a confidence that bordered on admiration.

  On the screen, the woman climbed out of the car, clearly disgusted. She looked both ways, trying to decide where to find a phone. Boldt silently urged her to head back toward the fast-food chains; he did not want her seeing the bus stop. But as if hearing him and going against his wishes, she elected to walk in the direction her car was headed.

  Trying to consider every possibility, Boldt advised Locke, “Get in touch with the local bus service and find out their schedule. Any bus due at that stop in the next ten minutes we want detoured. Tell them we’ll want an empty bus on standby ten blocks back. And get the chopper back here. I may want a lift.” She scribbled all of this down. “And let’s see how many taxi companies cover that area. We’ll want our people in as the cabbies. And no patrol cars,” he emphasized. “I don’t want to see a patrol within ten blocks of that area.”

  For the next several minutes, Locke and Billy occupied themselves with Boldt’s requests. Field agents were deployed to two area cab companies and the bus company. The regularly scheduled bus was diverted, the driver telling her passengers that an accident blocked the road ahead and thereby required a detour.

  The camera followed Cornelia Uli, who was by no means a fast walker. Nervous, or perhaps just worried about her car, she continually checked over her shoulder, island-hopping from one parking lot to the next in search of a pay phone.

  Overhead, Boldt heard the mechanical thunder of the helicopter.

  “It’s going to be the bus stop,” Boldt predicted.

  “Chopper’s down,” Locke announced.

  Boldt said to her, “Tell the phone company which phone we think it’s going to be and that we need a realtime report on whatever numbers she calls.”

  “Got it.”

  To Billy he said, “I want seven passengers and a driver on our bus. Mix it up. More of our people on the stops along the route, with everyone keeping a strict eye out for Caulfield. We’re going to have to allow civilians onto the bus, in case Caulfield sends a go-between, so I want to make it real clear: No cowboy theatrics. We consider her armed, but any civilians are our first priority. If she calls for a stop near her place on Airport Way, that’s our cue to take her. I don’t want her getting inside her place before we do. Got it?” He added, “And give me someone at the bus stop now. Right away. I want to hear what’s said, if at all possible.”

  Billy had to work quickly, though his motions conserved energy and his voice never indicated the slightest degree of excitement.

  Sheila Locke turned and told the sergeant that the phone company was all set.

  On the screen Boldt saw the suspect cross one final parking lot and quicken her step as she spotted a pay phone. In the distance of the same frame, a young woman approached the bus stop. Boldt asked, “Is she ours?”

  Billy nodded.

  Boldt thought to himself, These people are amazing.

  He asked Locke, “Do we have an open line to the phone company?” She nodded confirmation.

  The suspect stepped up to the phone and seconds later was dialing.

  Boldt sat half off his chair, his attention split between the giant television projection on the wall and the back of Sheila Locke’s head.

  For these few seconds, the room went absolutely silent save for the hum of the equipment, everyone hanging on this phone call.

  The agent on foot arrived at the bus stop late. The suspect dialed, waited, and hung up. There was no way to tell from the camera’s angle and distance if she ever spoke.

  “What the hell?” Boldt let slip. Both Billy’s and Boldt’s attention focused on Sheila Locke, who thanked someone, asked this person to “stand by, please,” and turned to tell Boldt, “It’s a business number. They’re searching.” Boldt wished there were a way to effect a line interrupt and to listen in on whatever conversation took place, well aware of the technological ease with which such an interrupt could be accomplished. But he was equally aware that any such interrupt required warrants and legal red tape that, where pay phones were concerned, took a minimum of several hours to accomplish. The same system established to protect a person’s rights limited Boldt’s ability to carry out his job.

  Locke touched her finger to her earphone, listened, and then told Boldt, “It’s a paging service. She would have keyed in a personal identification code, but the phone company’s software doesn’t trap any numbers dialed following line connection.”

  Boldt felt crushed by this news. Over his headphones, a woman’s voice spoke incredibly softly: “The phone’s ringing. Whoever she paged is calling her back.” He could hear the ringing of the phone. It was the field agent at the bus stop, a few short yards from the suspect.

  “Sergeant?” It was Billy. He directed Boldt’s attention to the screen.

  Cornelia Uli answered the phone.

  Boldt said to Locke, “Get in touch with the-”

  “Paging company,” Locke interrupted. “Already on it.”

  Billy said, “Turn up your headphones, Sergeant. We’re going to try something here.”

  Boldt adjusted the knob. He heard a raspy, steady breathing loudly in the headphones, and then in the background he picked up a woman’s voice bitching about the “stupid car.” In a pause, Billy explained quickly, “That background noise is the agent’s breathing. We have a thirty-DB boost on her condenser.” The suspect mentioned the bus stop. She paused. She said “okay” twice, and left the phone dangling as she approached the bus stop. There was a tremendously loud click in the phones, prompting Boldt to jettison his headset. It tumbled into his lap. Grinning, Billy said, “That was the agent turning off her mike.” He added, “But we should thank her. If she had spoken she might have made us deaf.”

  “I’m going out there,” Boldt announced. “Can you communicate with the chopper?”

  Billy said in that unnaturally calm voice of his, “Sergeant, Tech Services can do anything.”

  The chopper ride was brief, and a little terrifying at night. They stayed low, and the buildings swept beneath them with ridiculous speed, toylike in appearance. Boldt was left off in a school soccer field, seven blocks from the waiting bus, so that there would be no sound of a chopper anywhere near the suspect. He was met there by a field agent by the name of Nathan Jones, whom he recognized as King County Police. “We’re all ready for you,” the agent announced, showing Boldt into the car and racing down the streets, oblivious to any of the traffic signs.

  As they approached the bus, it looked ominous to Boldt. It was pa
rked alongside the road, its interior lights shining yellow. As he stepped aboard, there were seven people sitting in the various seats. He introduced himself, studied them briefly, and asked two to exchange seats and two to sit together. If she looked closely, Cornelia Uli might notice a similarity in age and appearance among several of them. Only one of them looked over fifty: another KCP detective Boldt knew casually, though he could not remember his name. “We’re going to give her a lot of room,” he announced. “If she signals early, then you”-he pointed to one of the three women-“will get off at the same stop. Don’t follow too closely, but keep us advised. Remember,” he said, addressing all of them, “we’ll have support all around us, in every direction. My information is that she’ll have to switch lines to head toward town. I think we can safely afford for four of us-me, and you three-to make that switch with her. We are going to make every attempt to have that be a dummy bus as well. Our people will be coming onto the bus at various stops. You two will disembark at the third and fifth stop, respectively. If we go the distance. If she holds off and stays on until the five-hundred block of Airport Way, when she stands, we take her. We do it fast and without fanfare, and she does not get off this bus. Any questions?”

  There were none.

  “Roll,” he said, grabbing for a handhold as the bus door closed and the vehicle started off down the road.

  They rounded a corner. Two of the agents were reading papers, another a paperback. Two stared blankly out the window. Boldt tried to settle himself. He leaned against the window and relaxed, feigning an exhausted man taking a nap-at any other time, something that would have required very little acting.

  He had abandoned his radio earpiece, stuffing it down inside his collar. The bus and all its occupants, except for the driver, were now isolated from Billy the dispatcher, Sheila Locke, Phil Shoswitz back at the department, and all the support vehicles in place and ready to assist them. They passed the disabled Datsun, the heads of several of the passengers craning to see it, and the bus slowed as it approached the stop.

  The door hissed open.

  Boldt recognized the agent from the live surveillance video. She boarded first, and took several seconds to come up with the right amount of money. Then Cornelia Uli stepped up and called out, “Excuse me!” to the woman agent. Boldt’s heart pounded heavily. He wanted that door closed, and Uli trapped inside the bus. The agent turned. “Do you have change?” Uli asked. She waved a crisp twenty-dollar bill, and Boldt realized this had come from the cash machine. The woman agent seemed paralyzed.

  Boldt silently urged the driver to shut the door.

  The younger man sitting ahead of Boldt jumped up and said, “I do,” fishing his wallet from his back pocket. He gave her an assortment of bills, accepting the twenty from her, and Uli fed one of the ones into the driver’s pay machine. Uli asked the driver, a KCP man, about the route. Fortunately, someone had thought ahead to have a local in the driver’s seat, and the man informed her about the line change that Boldt had just mentioned at the outset.

  Everyone took separate seats.

  The door hissed closed.

  Boldt’s sense of tension increased with every mile. His stomach grumbled noisily. He glanced up just once to look at her. No staring. She wore tight-fitting jeans and that black leather jacket. She had brown eyes, no makeup, and full, pouty lips. She scratched the back of her neck, and when she did this, Boldt’s first reaction was that he had seen this woman before, somewhere other than in the surveillance video, and this continued to trouble him as the bus drove on.

  The driver announced a stop, and handled the bus poorly as they slowed. Boldt faced himself so that he looked out a window, when in fact he was using the reflection to watch the suspect’s profile. If she moved toward the rear exit door, he intended to follow. There was no one at this stop, and without a call signal, the front door never opened. The bus gained speed and continued on.

  At the third stop, an agent disembarked. Another boarded, a pretty woman: FBI, with a simple face and inquisitive eyes. She sat directly across from Uli, who occupied one of the front wall benches. This agent took a look around for any leftover papers, then pulled out a nail file and went to work on her nails.

  As a signal of their identity, all agents had been instructed to touch their left ear prior to boarding, which was why Boldt occupied a seat on the right side of the bus-and he was grateful that Uli had her back to this same side. In this way, Boldt knew ahead of time the status of his passengers. At the fourth stop, a civilian boarded: a portly, toothless man. He showed his pass and asked the driver, “So where’s Danny tonight?”

  The driver answered, “You’re stuck with me.”

  “Never seen you before,” the man said.

  In the window’s reflection, Boldt studied Uli’s response. She seemed to take no notice. The driver handled himself well, though the bus poorly. He lunged ahead too quickly, sending the teetering newcomer charging down the aisle, barely keeping his balance. He smelled of cigarettes and booze as he passed. “Nice job!” he hollered. He took a seat immediately behind Boldt, which made the sergeant uncomfortable. He leaned forward over Boldt’s shoulder and said, “Got a rookie behind the wheel, friend. I can drive blindfolded better than that. Hmm?”

  Boldt made a point of not engaging in any conversation. This man had the feel of a nonstop talker, and that was the last thing he wanted at this point. One of the agents, sensing this, rose and came to this man’s seat. “You mind?” he asked, and without awaiting a response, took the aisle seat next to this man and started him talking, taking him away from pestering Boldt.

  The bus motored along, whining and hissing, one red light to the next. The following bus stop was again void of passengers. At the next, another agent disembarked. The one after that, two more boarded-both agents.

  The bus driver announced the stop. He turned to Uli and said, “Here’s your connection.” Boldt hesitated. He did not want to commit to leaving the bus until he was sure Uli was also.

  As the bus slowed, she rose. Boldt came out of his seat and headed for the front door. Three of the others joined him. They all disembarked, receiving transfers from the driver. They joined two others at this stop. Boldt guessed them both as agents, though there was no easy way for either to offer the signal, so he could not be certain. The bus drove away.

  The night was calm, the air warm. Above them in the darkness two white seagulls swooped over the street and one cried at the other, then they disappeared. Two of the agents discussed a Mariners game. The woman with the paperback found some street light and opened her book. Boldt said to one of the strangers, “Is this the line going into the city?” This man scratched his ear as he thought about it. “International district and downtown,” he said. “You want the U, you gotta change downtown.”

  Boldt thanked him.

  Cornelia Uli asked the woman next to her for the time. She looked restless, and the way she guarded her purse, Boldt assumed it contained the ransom money.

  By now a police car would have pulled alongside Uli’s Datsun. On the off-chance Caulfield was coming for the car while Uli headed home, this was handled in a straightforward manner. The patrolman wrote up the citation and called in a tow truck. The truck took ten minutes to arrive. It would be towed via a combination of the highway and streets-intentionally avoiding the bus route-to the police garage, where it would be given the full treatment by the grease-monkey division of Bernie Lofgrin’s ID unit.

  The bus pulled up to the stop. The driver was cleaning wax out of his left ear with his index finger. As Boldt climbed aboard and showed his transfer, the driver met eyes with him, revealing absolutely nothing in his face, but in the eyes themselves there was a keen energy.

  Bobbie Gaynes was in the fifth seat back.

  There were six others on the bus, all SPD. Seeing these familiar faces, Boldt felt an immediate sense of relief. No matter how much he respected the other agencies assisting him, nothing felt quite as good as seeing family again. />
  Uli took the first seat. It faced the front window. The bus bounced over broken roads and sagged through dips and rounded corners clumsily, cutting them a little too tight.

  As it slowed to the third stop, Boldt looked out the window and felt a rush of heat up his spine. There were two people waiting for this bus. One of them was Digger Shupe, a retired Major Crimes detective. He would recognize at least half the faces on this bus. The other man Boldt did not recognize, and there was no move toward the left ear. He carried a pair of grocery bags in his arms.

  The doors opened and Digger Shupe climbed aboard. The driver shot Boldt one quick, intense look, and then averted his own face so that Shupe would not recognize him. An electricity sparked inside the bus. The two new passengers paid, and as Shupe looked up and saw Boldt he said, “Well, I’ll be damned-” But the driver hit the gas, the brake, and the gas again, and sent the two newcomers sailing. Danny Levin feigned an attempt to help Digger Shupe to his feet, and in the process bent and pressed his lips close to the man’s ear, and Boldt saw him say something. Shupe’s head nodded, and when he climbed to his feet and collected himself, he walked to the rear of the bus, ever the professional, and took his seat.

  The bus driver apologized profusely, especially to the man who had spilled his groceries. The groceries were gathered up, and this man took a seat by Bobbie Gaynes. The bus set off.

  Two stops later Boldt saw LaMoia waiting in the shelter, and again felt a sense of relief to see one of his own people. There was a push to the back as several of the agents selected this stop to disembark.

  LaMoia paid, walked right up to the suspect, and sat down next to her. Boldt, two seats back, felt his stomach roll. Only LaMoia would hit on a suspect.

  “Finally some nice weather,” LaMoia said to her.

  She offered him a weak smile.

  “Of course, summers are the best anyway,” he said.

  No reply.

  “You do any windsurfing?” he asked her.

  She shook her head, but smiled a little at the attention he gave her.