No Witnesses lbadm-3

by Ridley Pearson

  Boldt switched on the tape recorder and spoke clearly, listing the location, the time of day, and those present.

  Caulfield’s pewter-gray eyes ran over them. The man looked so normal.

  Clements pulled up a chair beside the bed. Boldt and Smyth remained standing.

  “I’ve got nothing to say,” Caulfield informed them.

  Smyth said, “The difference to you, should you cooperate, may mean life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.”

  “I want to hang,” Caulfield said, stunning both Boldt and Smyth.

  Clements smiled and said softly, “Of course you do.”

  Caulfield eyed him peculiarly.

  Clements said, “But not before clearing Mark Meriweather’s good name. Hmm? Think about it.”

  “You know about that?”

  “We know about everything, my boy. We are very interested in Mr. Meriweather.”

  Caulfield looked at him curiously, wondering how far he could trust the man. “Bullshit,” he said.

  “Meriweather was set up, son.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Very well. What would you like me to call you? Mr. Caulfield? Harold? Harry?”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “If I leave you alone, attorneys like our Ms. Smyth here will get their hooks into you and that will be that. You’ve been through this before, Harry. You know what I’m talking about. If you had wanted that, you would not have waived your right to an attorney.”

  “Attorneys suck,” he said directly to Smyth. “No attorneys.”

  “Let’s talk about your hanging for a minute.”

  “I want it over.”

  “I understand. But why so fast? What about Mark Meriweather?”

  “He’s dead. It’s over.”

  “You loved him.”

  “He was good to me.”

  “They broke him.”

  “They lied.”

  “Yes. We know that.”

  Caulfield sat forward slightly, stopped by the pain of his wound, but his neck remained craned forward.

  Clements said, “Oh yes. We know about it all. They laced the birds. They paid people off. They placed the blame on Mark Meriweather.” He paused. “They made you kill the birds.”

  The pain on Caulfield’s face cried out. The last thing Boldt wanted was to feel sorry for this monster.

  “That wasn’t easy, was it? Killing those birds.”

  Caulfield shook his head slightly. He seemed to have left the room.

  “You had never seen Mr. Meriweather like that, had you?”

  “So much blood,” Caulfield whispered.

  “He wasn’t himself.”

  “He changed.”

  “Yes, killing the birds changed him, didn’t it?” He added, “Changed you all.”

  Caulfield nodded.

  “You loved those birds.”

  He nodded again.

  “We need your help, Harry. If you help us, we will help you. Sergeant Boldt here knows all about what happened out at Longview Farms, but we need to hear about this soup. What you did to the soup.”

  “The birds were not sick.”

  “We know that. And you blamed Mr. Adler.”

  “They lied about us.”

  “What about the soup, Harry? Tell us about the soup.”

  “They poisoned our birds. I warned them. They didn’t listen.” He had a glazed look, no longer directed at Clements or Boldt or Smyth, but somewhere on the ceiling or the back wall. Off on his own. “I thought the cholera would convince them.”

  “You put the cholera in the soup?”

  He nodded.

  Boldt glanced over at the tape. Still running.

  Clements saw this and said, “I didn’t hear you, Harry.”

  Harry Caulfield just stared at the wall.

  “We need your help, Harry.”

  “I did it because they did it to us. I did it to show them that they had better listen.”

  “Did what?”

  “Poisoned the soup.”

  Boldt and Clements met eyes. There it was-and captured on tape.

  Caulfield attempted to sit up once again, but was beaten by the pain. He pleaded, “Why didn’t they believe me? Why did they let those people die?”

  “Excuse me,” Smyth said. She was pale and his lips were trembling. She walked quietly to the door and left the room.

  “Tell me about the money,” Boldt said.

  “What are you talking about?” His eyes burned into Boldt.

  “The extortion money,” the sergeant reminded. But Caulfield’s face went blank, and Boldt felt certain that this was no act.

  “You’re out of your mind.” To Clements he said, “All cops are out of their fucking minds.”

  “Are you out of your mind, Harry?”

  “Who is this guy?” he asked Boldt. To Clements he said, “A shrink, am I right?”

  “How do you feel about these murders, Harry? Tell me about these murders.”

  “Ask Owen Adler. No fault of mine.”

  “Tell me about the murders.”

  “I didn’t murder anyone.”

  “Yes you did, Harry. You have murdered twelve people, including two peace-”

  “I didn’t murder anyone! And I don’t know anything about any extortion money, or whatever the hell it is you asked me,” he said to Boldt.

  Clements scooted farther forward, leaned in closely, and whispered intimately, tenderly, “We’re listening, Harry. We want to hear whatever you want to tell us. Doesn’t matter what.” Caulfield’s eyes brimmed with tears. “The world has not treated you fairly, have they, son?” This time, Caulfield did not object to Clements’s using the term. Instead, the patient shook his head and tears spilled down his cheeks. Clements said warmly, but in a strangely eerie voice, “No one has listened, have they? I know what that’s like, son. Believe me, I know. They just never listen.” Caulfield shook his head again. “You told them about what happened at Longview, and did they listen? Is that fair? You told them about that drug charge-oh yes, I’ve read the piece. It’s a brilliant piece of writing, son. Something to be proud of. I’ve read it all.” Caulfield groaned. “But no one ever listens, do they? They tell you to come back. They tell you to go away. They treat you like a child. But they never listen, do they?” He paused. “No one has ever listened like Mark Meriweather listened. And they took Mark away from you. They ruined him, didn’t they?”

  The cry that came from the man might have been heard across several of the hospital’s wings. The patient’s mouth hung open and he wailed at the ceiling, rocking his head on the pillow, and Dr. Richard Clements threw his own head back, closed his eyes, and listened like an opera patron enjoying an inspired aria.

  “I’m listening!” Clements shouted in the middle of one of these cries, and it only encouraged the patient louder. Boldt glanced at the tape recorder-no one was going to believe this, he thought.

  Before the male nurses threw open the door, Clements had already raised his hand to stop them and wave them off. Boldt had not heard their approach.

  “We’re fine,” the doctor reported. “A little healthy release is all.” He said to the patient, “They heard you, Harry. Do you see? We’re listening now! We can hear you!”

  Caulfield stopped and opened his tear-stained eyes, and Boldt thought he was witnessing a soul’s final glimpse of sanity, that Harry Caulfield had made a fateful journey. But Clements did not seem bothered in the least. For the benefit of the troubled male nurses, Clements said to the patient, “We’re fine, aren’t we, son? Better now, aren’t we?” To the nurses he said, “You see?” And he waved them off contemptuously, a move he finished by sweeping off the lapels of his double-breasted blazer.

  “Now let’s start at the beginning, shall we, son? Every action starts with a thought. Can you tell me, please, about the very first moment that you knew Owen Adler had to pay for his crimes? The very first inspiration. I have all the time in the world, son. All the time in t
he world.”

  Clements looked over at Boldt, beaming a smile.

  Boldt was not certain who was crazier. “The money,” Boldt repeated.

  “I don’t know anything about any money,” Caulfield repeated angrily. For the second time, Boldt believed him.

  He did not have all the time in the world. He grabbed the tape recorder and headed straight to the office to have it transcribed.

  Boldt slept for fourteen hours, awakening at two in the afternoon. He ate a light meal, called the office, and fell back to sleep. At eleven that night, he found himself wide awake with a dozen thoughts colliding in his head. He kissed his sleeping wife, changed clothes, and returned to the office. DeAngelo’s squad was on rotation. Everyone congratulated him on the Caulfield raid and on the confession, treating him like a hero, but Boldt did not feel like a hero: The extortionist was still at large.

  He checked with Lockup. He checked with Daphne-but could not find her. Cornelia Uli had a public defender assigned to her. She was in the system now.

  With no evidential connection yet made between Uli and Harry Caulfield, no money found in Caulfield’s possession, no ATM cards, and Caulfield’s denial of extortion-while confessing to cold-blooded murder-Boldt felt compelled to believe that Caulfield had had no connection to the ATM scam.

  He pulled out Uli’s file and started through it once again, reviewing her past arrests: gangs, drugs, a prostitution charge that had been dropped. He looked at her earlier arrest photos. Sixteen, seventeen years old. A real sultry beauty then. Now, at twenty-one, the street had robbed her of her looks. The gangs were hardest on the young women.

  Each time through, he had been reviewing the contents of the files, quickly passing over the form headings, the departments, the officers involved: the overly familiar information that any cop encountered repeatedly and with little or no interest. But the next time through, a number jumped out at him. One little number typed innocently years before into one little box. So easy to miss. One small piece of information left on a form. Over six years old now. By a cop making an arrest, filling out a blank: Arresting Officer: 8165.

  The ATM PIN number. Boldt picked up the phone, his hand trembling, dialed Daphne’s number again, and again she did not answer. He had to search his notebook to find Adler’s unlisted residence. His fingers punched out the number. He waited seven rings before Adler answered and passed Daphne the phone.

  “I need you,” he said.

  Chris Danielson was asleep when Boldt turned the light on in his room. Daphne and the male night nurse followed at a run. Boldt turned to this nurse, pointed to the other bed in Danielson’s room, and said, “He’s out of here-now.”

  The nurse opened his mouth to complain, but Boldt had already been through hell with him at the nurses’ station, and he had had his fill. “Get that bed out of this room now!” The man mumbled something, but obeyed. Apologizing to Danielson’s roommate, the nurse took him for a ride into the hall, and Daphne closed the door.

  “I need straight answers, Chris.”

  He still appeared half-asleep. “Sarge?”

  “And Matthews,” Daphne announced herself.

  “They’re going to throw me out of here in a minute-we’re still not allowed to see you-and this can’t wait until morning. Are you with me?”

  “Go ahead.” He rolled his head, blinked furiously, and reached for a paper cup of ice water with a straw. Boldt handed it to him and Danielson sucked in a mouthful.

  “You took Caulfield’s file from the Boneyard without signing it out-a day before we identified him. When we did, you returned it. I need to know why.”

  Any minute, that door would open.

  The man had new lines in his face, and a combination of pain and exhaustion in his eyes. A tent frame held the covers off his abdomen, and two large weights held his legs in traction. His voice was dry. “I obtained a state tax record of Longview employees. Caulfield had a record. I pulled the file.”

  “But why?” Boldt challenged. “For money?”

  “Money?” he asked incredulously. “To clear the black hole, why else?” The man was too tired, too medicated for Boldt to read his face well.

  “You were offered a job away from the force,” Boldt speculated.

  “Not true.” He met eyes with Boldt. “I wanted your job.”

  A flashing light passed below the window as a silent ambulance arrived. It pulsed light across all their faces.

  “I wanted this one worse than you did. I’ve been going at this case night and day when I wasn’t handling your paperwork for you. ‘Nice little nigger, sit behind the desk and let the white boys do the big, tough jobs.’ Not this nigger, Sergeant. Bullshit.”

  “It wasn’t like that, at all.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  They both raised their voices simultaneously and began shouting. Daphne cut them off with a sharp reprimand and said to both of them, “Out of order!”

  Unaccustomed to losing his temper, Boldt took a few seconds to pull himself together. He checked his watch-precious seconds.

  Daphne said to the injured man, “Elaine Striker.”

  Danielson looked over at her. “Just one of those things that happened. It’s nothing I’m proud of. She’s lonely and she doesn’t remember what love is.”

  “And then this black hole comes along,” Daphne nudged.

  “Like I said, it’s nothing I’m proud of. Turns out Michael Striker is a talker, that’s all. Turns out his wife knows everything there is to know about this case, and suddenly I’m a lot more interested in the romance-the pillow talk-and she isn’t complaining.”

  “What a sweetheart you are,” Daphne said.

  “I paid for it, Matthews. You want to switch places?” He jerked his head toward the corner of the room where a collapsed wheelchair leaned against the wall.

  Daphne stuttered.

  “Listen, Striker was all messed up about Lonnie-Elaine. He wasn’t thinking clearly. I came to him for a warrant to get the New Leaf bank records-the canceled checks-and it never occurred to him to clear it with you,” he said to Boldt.

  “You found the payoffs,” she concluded.

  “No, I didn’t. They were more careful than that. It was a long shot was all: Hoping to find a paper trail to the bribe money. I had already guessed who had been paid off, but couldn’t prove it. So I changed tack.”

  “We’re listening, Chris.”

  “Check the transcript of Caulfield’s trial. It was not a good case. But public sentiment toward drugs was bad right then-you so much as said the word cocaine, and in a jury trial the suspect went down for the long count. And what did the case hinge on? Some tip that the arresting officer received. The whole thing turned on this snitch-an anonymous tip. One anonymous snitch, and Caulfield goes away for four and change. Granted, that’s how Drugs’ busts go down: Narcs never reveal their snitches. But if you read between the lines of that transcript, the arresting officer-a cop named Dunham-was nervous as hell up on the stand. Why? Because he didn’t have a legitimate snitch. It was a setup. Caulfield was framed.”

  “And?”

  “And before I got to this Dunham, Striker got to me. Must have followed Lonnie-Elaine-to the hotel.”

  “But you suspected someone.”

  “Wouldn’t be fair. I never did prove it.”

  “Kenny Fowler,” Boldt said, supplying the name. He mumbled, “Badge number eight-one-six-five.”

  Daphne stared at him, dumbfounded.

  Danielson’s eyes flashed. He hesitated, barely nodded, and explained, “Dunham’s partner for five years on Major Crimes. Fowler goes private with a company called New Leaf. Dunham goes over to Drugs. He’s floundering, can’t get the hang of Drugs. Then he does this major bust: Harry Caulfield with a couple kilos of high-quality soda. Four months later, guess who he’s working for? Double the salary, double the vacation. Double the fun.”

  Boldt sagged and leaned onto the frame of the bed. “Jesus.” In a soft, apologetic, guilt-rid
den voice, he confessed, “I got you shot, Chris.” No one said a thing until Boldt spoke again. “I suspected you of stealing that file. I didn’t want an IA investigation in the middle of this black hole. I asked Fowler to place you under surveillance for me. Keep it out of uniform. He lied to me about what he found out about you. Obviously, what he found out was that you were a little too close for comfort and that you were sleeping with Elaine Striker.”

  Another long silence as the sound of the circulating air and the hum of machinery seemed deafening to Boldt. He wanted this man’s forgiveness, and he knew that was impossible.

  “Her PD is on his way,” prosecuting attorney Penny Smyth informed them.

  “But do we wait?” Boldt asked her.

  “No one is forcing her to speak to you,” Smyth pointed out. “You can push, but technically she doesn’t have to talk.”

  “Understood.”

  Smyth was cautious not to give them her outright approval. “You don’t have much time.” She requested of Daphne, “Should anyone ever ask: You loaned me your office, where I remained while you two were in there with her, okay?”

  “Near as I can remember.”

  Boldt and Daphne moved quickly down the hall. “I have an idea. Back me up in here,” she requested, meeting eyes with him as he reached to open the door for her.

  “I’m there,” he promised.

  “We turn the volume way up and she’s going to talk. Bet on it. But it may get a little nasty.”

  “That suits her, I think.”

  He followed her into the Box. Daphne never broke stride. She burst through the door, leaving it for him to close, and she hollered at the suspect, “Out of the chair. Now!”

  Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, Cornelia Uli wore a haggard expression from her two dismal nights in lockup. Uli sprang to her feet.

  “Come over here,” Daphne said, indicating the end of the table. “Right here.”

  Uli stood at the end of the interrogation table, looking concerned.

  Daphne said, “Now let’s get one thing straight: If you do not cooperate with us, your life just got ugly. You’re going where girls do other things to girls that are not pleasant-things you’ve never heard of-and where the guards just do worse things, so no one ever says a thing to them. You keep your mouth shut, unless someone has use for it. That’s option number one. Option number two is you open that same mouth for me, right now. This is not some two-year drug charge we’re talking about. It is not some check-kiting scam. This is not some free ATM card that your pal set up for you. This is murder one. This is the end of your pitiful little life, Cornelia, if you do anything but exactly as I say.”