Boldt 03 - No Witnesses (53 page)

“But not at night,” Uli complained.

“It’s orders. I have to go.”

“A half hour, that’s all,” Uli stated as a requirement.

“I thought you didn’t like cops,” Daphne reminded her. She edged toward the closet.

“I like your gun. I don’t suppose you would leave me that.”

“You’ll be fine.” She reminded her of the code, although Uli had used the system before. “Lock up behind me.”

“No,” the woman snapped sarcastically, “I think I’ll leave it open so Fowler can just walk right in.”

Daphne stepped up to the closet door and said, “Oh hell, I don’t need a coat,” and smacked the door firmly, pushing it shut. A small triangle of Boldt’s sport coat stuck out by the hinge like a tiny flag.

Boldt was not big on claustrophobic environments. He was large enough that even the front seat of a car seemed tight to him. The minutes ticked by interminably long. He monitored the time by pushing the button that lit the display on his Casio watch.

Four minutes after Daphne’s departure, Boldt heard softly in his ear, “Suspect is departing his domicile. Repeat: Suspect departing.” They had intentionally given Fowler only a few minutes in which to react, because they knew their operatives could not stand inside a coat closet remaining absolutely silent for more than thirty minutes, and because they hoped to force an urgency upon him that would require a quick, perhaps irrational, decision to act. This also accounted for Shoswitz’s announcing to Daphne an advanced trial date.

“Suspect headed east on Denny Way,” Boldt heard in his ear.

Boards creaked overhead—Uli was in the bedroom watching television, unaware of Bobbie Gaynes lurking in the shadows only several feet away.

The surveillance traffic crackled in Boldt’s ear. Fowler drew progressively closer, and when he eventually turned north toward the lake, Boldt knew he was headed here. Seven minutes.

“Suspect has arrived at destination,” came the dispatcher’s bland voice. Boldt could not stand the lack of air another minute. He tugged on the closet door and cracked it open again, delivering fresh air, and leaving him a tiny slit through which he could see.

Somewhere around three minutes later, the back door came open, Kenny Fowler using a master key for locks that his own people had installed. He punched in an override code that circumvented a customer’s PIN—supplied to alarm companies by the manufacturer in case a customer
forgot
his or her security PIN. Then he shut the door and reset the alarm.

Cornelia Uli’s ears were aided by the fact that she had muted a commercial, and because Fowler proceeded to step on the same noisy board that had gotten him into trouble with Daphne. Uli came charging down the ladder calling out, “Changed your mind?”

Boldt watched as Fowler came into view. He wore a dark-green oilskin jacket. Bold could not see Uli.

“Oh shit!” Uli barked out, seeing him.

“Relax! I’m not here to kill you.” He sounded emotionally drained.

“Bullshit.”

“
No
shit.” He produced a fan of cash—twenty-dollar bills. “We’re getting you out of here.”

“What are you talking about, out of here?”

“I’m giving you a choice,” he said calmly. “You can take a plane ticket and three thousand bucks right now, or you can get on that stand tomorrow morning—”

“It’s
not
tomorrow morn—”

“Shut up! There’s no time, Corny.” Fowler evidently cared for the woman. Boldt had not anticipated this. “You get on the stand and you lose your memory. No ATMs. No Kenny Fowler. No testimony. It was all your idea. I can tell you how to make it sound convincing. You do that, and I’ll give you thirty thousand when you get out.”

“I’ll
never
get out.”

“Four years, maybe six. And thirty thousand at the other end. I’ll deposit half in your name
before
you get on that stand.”

“I take the fall for you.”

“Something like that.”

“Jesus,” she said. Boldt realized she was actually considering it.

Boldt reached down and depressed the radio’s call button twice:
Click, click
. Overhead, he heard Gaynes move. He saw Fowler turn as he must have heard LaMoia. Boldt swung open the door, his weapon already drawn.

Cornelia Uli screamed.

Fowler scrambled for his weapon, completely caught off-guard.

“Three of us, Kenny! Drop it!” Boldt announced.

“Hands high!” LaMoia warned from behind.

Gaynes leapt down the ladder and tackled Uli, shielding her.

Fowler shook his head. He sat down slowly onto the floor, only inches from the post where Daphne had struck her head. “But how?” he said, glancing toward the wall and one of his hidden cameras.

“We’ve got all the latest shit,” Boldt said, quoting him.

Fowler remained dazed.

LaMoia said, “Hey, Sarge, get this: Tonight you and I came out of the closet.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

At Owen Adler’s recommendation they met at Place Pigalle because it was small and intimate and offered a stunning water view. Boldt noticed Daphne’s new ring immediately, but he said nothing because he was not sure Liz had seen it yet. But of course, she had. Liz did not miss much when it came to Daphne Matthews. The ring was both handsome and elegant, though not showy, and Boldt admired Adler for that.

Boldt had accepted the invitation reluctantly, not wanting to leave his home for any reason, not comfortable with the idea of socializing with the two of them, but he had never been good at denying Daphne much of anything. She had gotten him into this investigation, and now, in her own way, she was letting him out.

Boldt asked, “How do you interpret Fowler’s statement?”

In a plea bargain to lessen the charges, Kenny Fowler had agreed to cooperate by giving a written statement. One of Daphne’s jobs was to analyze the psychology behind it. “From the day he left SPD he told all of us he was going to have his own agency. Working for Owen, he spent as much money as he made—actually more most of the time; he lived beyond his means. He felt inferior—Howard Taplin’s go-and-fetch-it. He claims that the Caulfield case brought all those feelings home. That he suddenly saw a way to make enough money to strike out on his own. He knew the look of the faxes, the language, and the tone—he could imitate the killer and extort money. If people kept dying, he could use this to apply more pressure.”

“But he
withheld
information,” Boldt reminded.

“He lied to
all
of us,” Adler snapped. “If it was a matter of money—” but he cut himself off, clearly too upset to discuss it.

Daphne continued hesitantly, “The statement says nothing about the original New Leaf cover-up, or framing Caulfield on the drug charges. I suspect that his intention all along was to find Caulfield himself,
before
we did, and to take him out. That way he could continue the extortion while the New Leaf connection to the killings remained unproven, probably hoping it would fade away.” She looked out at the view. “He exploited everything and everyone around him.” She clearly included herself in this. Liz poked her husband in the leg, her actions hidden beneath the table. Boldt asked no more questions.

Liz changed the subject, asking questions about Corky, and Adler brightened and told a series of amusing stories.

He ordered champagne, and Liz changed hers to a San Pellegrino because of the child growing inside her. This announcement won several toasts and more talk of Corky, and naturally led into Adler’s blushing, tongue-tied inability to speak, and Daphne’s finally announcing their engagement. She confessed, “It may be the only engagement in history to be consummated not by a kiss, but a handshake.”

Boldt and Daphne met eyes briefly, and he saw in hers a terrified joy that he had longed to see there. Far out on the water the ferries came and went, their lights blurred in reflection. Daphne drank nervously and started telling stories on Boldt, reminding him of things that he pretended to have forgotten.

Adler drank to Liz for the time-trap software, and to Boldt for everything he had done, and to his fiancée “for finding the truth.” No one mentioned Harry Caulfield by name. Howard Taplin was cooperating with authorities, but he received no toasts that night. Boldt said a silent toast for Danielson and Striker—one recovering, the other facing a difficult trial and a messy divorce.

In all, it was an awkward evening for Boldt. He fought Adler for the check and lost, and this seemed significant to him. He drove home in silence with his wife napping in her seat, and when they pulled up to the garage, her eyes still closed, Liz said, “She’ll always be your friend. It won’t change that. You’ll see.”

He had no way to follow that. He got the door for her and they held hands on the way to the kitchen. After checking in on Miles, Liz paid the baby-sitter while Boldt tended to the day’s mail piled by the kitchen phone. Among the letters was a brown package, and like a good cop, Boldt treated it suspiciously, chastising himself once he read the return address.

“I wondered what that was,” Liz said, as her husband opened it carefully. “But I didn’t touch it,” she added. Boldt hated the precautions, he resented so much of his public service. The package was incredibly light and was marked FRAGILE, with a series of bright red stickers.

The note was on personalized stationery and read simply,

For your boy. I forget his name. Did you tell me it? I don’t remember. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste. I know he’s too young. But perhaps someday he can finish this.—Betty

Inside, he found the partially completed model of the Space Shuttle.

THIRTY-NINE

Howard Taplin took the stand for the third time in as many days. He had turned state’s witness, and the convictions were piling up in a case that drew both Court TV and CNN updates. The succession of trials was nearly as exhausting as the investigation for the lead detective. It was in that horrible time of year for Boldt—between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the sky was gray, the air cold, and there was canned Christmas music playing from fuzzy speakers on every street.

Kenny Fowler went down in flames, receiving three thirty-year sentences to be served consecutively. Amazingly to Boldt, Cornelia Uli was acquitted after the prosecution proved without a shadow of a doubt that she had served as Fowler’s accomplice, had opened the phony bank account, and had made over twelve thousand dollars in withdrawals. Television reporters called it a sympathy vote, for Uli had been arrested seven years earlier by Fowler during a gang raid and had been forced to serve as his sexual partner ever since. The jury apparently bought the defense’s position that she had been brainwashed. LaMoia had summed it up as far as Boldt was concerned: “That’s the law for you. Go figure.”

Boldt still owed his wife that champagne dinner, but he had not forgotten, despite what she thought. He was in fact saving up to make it dinner in Rome, though that required another few months of happy hour at the Big Joke. Miles was in the terrible twos, and this, Boldt thought, was the only redeeming value of the endless series of trials.

He sneaked out of the courtroom the minute he was handed the note by the guard, and he knew what to expect despite its vagueness. Reporters’ eyes followed him. These days, where Boldt went, the press followed. He was sick and tired of it. He wanted his life back. But they could not follow him down into County Detention where he was headed; the guards stopped them.

He walked and walked, down into the bowels of a system that failed at every turn. This was but one more example. He felt his gun at the first station, and he flinched when the bars shut behind him, because he always flinched when he heard that sound. His shoes squeaked on the clean cement floor, though he avoided the center drain.

The guard was making excuses, but Boldt hardly heard them. He had argued; he had warned. He had heard the words of Dr. Richard Clements as he had seen him off at the airport: “You keep your eye on him. He’s one determined fellow.”

This was no place for Caulfield. He had been inside before, and the five years he had served for a trumped-up drug charge had helped to buy him a life sentence rather than death row. That was when Boldt had pressed for a suicide watch and had lost. The arguments had centered around transporting him back and forth for the trial, overcrowding, and expense.

They stopped in front of the cell. He hoped the guard was finished making excuses, but the man added, “I guess if you’re crazy, you’re just crazy.”

Harry Caulfield had vomited, much as his victims had vomited. He was lying in the bed, his head cocked to one side, eyes shut. Perhaps it had been a peaceful death.

“You suppose he complained about the rats just so we’d put out the poison? I mean what kind of idiot would do such a thing? What the hell are we going to say?”

“That he got what he wanted.” The morning paper open on the floor meant nothing to the guard. But Boldt saw it was open to the business pages. He knew the article:
ADLER FOODS FILES CHAPTER ELEVEN
. Besieged by lawsuits, Adler had folded his shop, though according to Daphne he vowed to return. Adler was not one to stay down long.

“Crazy bastard,” the guard said.

Boldt turned and headed back for the entrance, passing cell after cell of human beings behind bars. They stood with their hands on the bars, staring out at him, envying his freedom to leave this place.

As he passed the front desk, the guard held out Boldt’s weapon. He stopped, stared at it. The man wiggled it. It grew heavy for him.

Boldt accepted it. Snapped it into the holster.

He flinched as the cell door closed loudly behind him.

About the Author

Ridley Pearson
is a
New York Times
bestselling author of crime fiction (
Probable Cause, Middle of Nowhere
); suspense/horror (
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer
); and children’s chapter books (coauthor of
Peter and the Starcatchers
). His forty-plus novels include
Undercurrents, Chain of Evidence
, and
The Body of David Hayes
. In 1991 he became the first American to be awarded the Raymond Chandler/Fulbright Fellowship in detective fiction at Oxford University. Ridley, his wife, Marcelle, and their two daughters currently divide their time between the Midwest and the Northern Rockies.