Beyond Recognition

30

Another poem. Garman had delivered it downtown while Boldt had been visiting Bear. Both his pager and cellular phone had sounded nearly simultaneously. He drove home to tell Liz in person that it was going to be a long night. He didn’t want to tell her by phone. The claw-foot tub was the first place he checked, placing his large hands against the side wall, searching for evidence of lingering warmth. Stone cold, like his heart. He felt an immediate pang of regret. Trust had been the cornerstone of their renewed attempt at marriage, and here he was, creeping around and feeling up bathtubs.

Together they put the kids to bed, Boldt looking for a chance to tell her he was going to leave her alone. Getting the kids down took longer than he expected. Things rarely went the way he expected. He finally sat down to a reheated dinner at a kitchen table cluttered with several days of mail-bills, mostly.

“You know,” she said, absentmindedly opening a piece of mail, “I was thinking that I might leave Miles with you and take another weekend up at the cabin.” The announcement-for that was what it was, an announcement, not a request-stunned him. She had never been a big fan of the cabin. What had changed? “Maybe this weekend.”

“By yourself?” he blurted out.

“No, with my lover,” she snapped sarcastically. Or was she using sarcasm to hide the truth? Would she, when he finally found out, remind him of this evening when she had mentioned a lover over the dinner table? “I’m whipped, Lou. Burned out. I could use a weekend by myself. I’ll take Sarah, of course. A good book.” She added, “Not away from you, just this.” She motioned around the room. He knew she meant him. She meant Miles, who at three and a half was a handful. Although a good mother-especially, he thought, for a working mother-she reached these tolerance points with Miles; it wasn’t the first time. More important, he thought, trying to see the positive, she trusted him to take good care of their son.

“It’s not the best time,” he answered honestly, aware that he had worked three seven-day weeks in a row. Aware he needed to get back downtown. “This case-”

“Oh, come on,” she complained. “Marina can help you. Besides, you can’t work every weekend. Phil won’t allow that. If he knew the schedule you were pulling he’d throw a fit.” Then she caught on and he winced before she voiced it. “You haven’t filed for the overtime, have you,” she stated incredulously. Liz ran the household budget-being the banker in the family-and Boldt knew he had serious trouble with this discovery: unpaid time at work was time he could be with the kids, or working on the house, or spending time with her. This could provoke a firestorm.

“It isn’t as simple as that. I’m sort of on loan to the fire department. I’m essentially pulling double duty as it is; managing the squad and working these arsons.”

Her expression remained hard. “If you’re expecting violins, forget it. I need this time, Lou. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. If I could do it without Sarah-if I could express enough milk-I’d leave her with you too, but I can’t right now.”

Boldt went over to the sink to pour himself a glass of filtered water and noticed immediately that the view out the window was remarkably cleaner. He noticed this because cleaning the windows was his responsibility and he had let this duty slip, and it seemed inconceivable that Liz had washed them, which meant she had paid to have them washed, and this in turn helped him to understand her independent and somewhat foul mood: If he slacked off on his jobs around the house, she came in behind him and hired them done, and it annoyed her to no end. He asked, “Is it the windows? Is that it? You got them washed, didn’t you? Listen, I meant to.”

“No, it’s not the windows,” she countered.

“You got them washed,” he objected. He could see that they had been washed-and a good job at that. Professional. He even felt a little envious at how good a job it was.

“It was a mistake,” she said, clearly frustrated at his attempt to steer her away from the issue of the overtime pay. “The point is, if you’re not filing for over-”

“Getting the windows washed was a mistake? I don’t think so. They look great to me.” He hoped he might be able to press this toward humor and deflect her anger, because taken together the two added up to real trouble: He wasn’t charging the department for his overtime, and he wasn’t home enough to do his chores, so the overtime pay wasn’t there to cover the added expense of hiring people to pull his weight.

Speaking in a patronizing, condescending way in which she accented every syllable, she told him, “A mistake. The … wrong … house. I did not hire any window washer. You are the window washer. The guy was off by one street. It was a mistake … on … his … part.”

Boldt smelled a scam. “Did he try and charge you for-”

“No. We cleared it up. He packed up, and he took off. He was perfectly nice about it.” She lightened up a little. “In fact,” she said, “he did a pretty good job.”

“Better than that other guy you’ve got,” he said, meaning himself.

She came out of the chair then and, suppressing a slight grin, approached her husband and threw her arms around his neck and drew them close together. He felt like stealing a glance at his watch, but he didn’t. “Why is it I can’t stay mad at you?”

He felt better than he had in ages. He didn’t want to let go. He clasped his arms around her waist and squeezed tightly, and she got the message and squeezed back, and he could feel her breath beneath his ear, and he put his lips to her ear and said, “I miss you.”

“I need this weekend, Lou. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.” She added, “Please.”

He felt himself nod, although it wasn’t automatic; it was born of great reluctance and trepidation. He felt some fear along with his love, some suspicion, even some anger. He wanted to keep squeezing until the truth came out of her, but Liz took her time. She needed time to think; he understood this. Her return from the cabin would bring with it a request to talk with him alone. He knew this woman well enough to understand that a change was coming-a decision. The baths were part of it: isolation, a time to think; perhaps that was all they were about. He leaned back and looked at her; he thought her darkly handsome and intelligent-looking. She looked a little tired. Troubled. “You okay?” he asked.

She squinted. That meant don’t ask, so he didn’t push it. A pit of concern burned inside him.

“I’ll take Miles,” he conceded.

She hugged him thanks.

“And I’ll get the rest of the windows.”

She kissed him on the lips. “We’ll talk,” she said.

“I know we will.”

“It’s going to be okay.” She attempted to reassure him, but his years with her contradicted this; her tone of voice belied her message. It was not going to be okay, and this realization terrified him. He forced a smile, but he thought she probably saw it was forced. Their moment of peace was passing. They released their hug.

Boldt headed to the refrigerator and poured himself a glass of milk.

He heard Miles calling from the nearby room. “Da-a-ddy.” It was not a cry of alarm but of longing-the father could easily discern the difference-and it caused a warm stirring in Boldt’s heart. He stopped at the kitchen doorway and turned toward his wife, the first nibble of concern beginning chew on the inside of his chest. “How old?” he asked.

Liz, who had poured the teakettle full of water and headed for the stove, replied, “What are you talking about?”

“How old?” he repeated, this time more strongly.

“What? Who?”

“The window washer,” Boldt answered, and by then his body had seized on the idea, and it infected him, from the center of his chest outward through his shoulders, groin, and into his limbs. He felt this flood of heat like a sudden fever. “A ladder?” he barked at his wife, passing along his alarm to her, for her head snapped up disapprovingly, and even to his son, whose nearby cry suddenly raised in pitch and severity.

Her hand trembling, she placed the kettle onto the stovetop, attempting to carry on as usual. She knew that tone of his. She detailed for him: “Midtwenties. Early thirties? Thin.”

“His face?”

“He was up the ladder. His face? I don’t know. I was over by the garage. He wore a sweatshirt up over his head. We said about five words. I went inside, and he was gone. Lou?” She reached down to turn the knob on the front of the gas stove. That knob was suddenly all that Boldt could see-it loomed huge in front of him, occupying his vision: a trigger.

“Don’t touch it!” Boldt shouted loudly.

Liz jumped back. Terror filled her face.

Miles cried out, the fright contagious. “Daddy!”

“Don’t touch anything!” he cautioned. “Don’t move, for that matter.”

“Lou?” she pleaded, anxiety dissolving her.

His mind racing, Boldt hurried outside, into a dark and gripping terror. A window washer. A ladder.

It was dark out, and as he ran down the back steps he headed directly to his car and retrieved the police-issue flashlight from the trunk. He hurried around the side of the house, the glaring white light fanning out across the grass and throwing moving shadows in its wake. Boldt glanced up at the kitchen window and saw Liz, wide-eyed with concern, looking directly out at him. Her expression told him not to bring this sort of thing into her home, her life, onto her children. In all his years of service, no physical threat or trouble had found its way across the threshold of his home. There had been phone calls once-even with the number unlisted-but these had been quickly handled. Never this close.

He inspected the grass bib alongside the narrow apron of foundation planting that surrounded the house. He could picture Liz in summer shorts and a scoop-necked T-shirt, toiling over the flower beds. Flooded by such memories, he felt a stopwatch running inside his head. He imagined flames, concave walls sucking the life out of everything within …

The light illuminated two parallel rectangles pressed down into the grass. The evidence-sensitive cop in Boldt prevented him from stepping forward and contaminating the area. He looked carefully for any boot or shoe impressions, cigarette butts, matches, any possible evidence, while his heart was tugging at him to step closer and check those ladder impressions for the telltale chevron pattern left at the two arsons. The two homicides, he reminded himself grimly.

Any grass lawn collected and concealed evidence. As empty as it appeared under the glare of this light, the area of grass surrounding the ladder impressions was a potential gold mine to evidence technicians. Technically, he should have waited, but instead he stepped forward and trained the light down into the first of the impressions. Recognizing the chevron pattern, he cursed and ran toward the back of the house, Liz staring coldly at him through the freshly cleaned glass of the kitchen window.

“Get the kids!” Boldt ordered frantically, once inside. His imagination created an inescapable inferno at the center of the house, oxygen starved and impatient. He hurried toward their bedroom, where Sarah would be in her crib. “You get Miles,” he shouted. He reached inside the bedroom door for the light switch, but his mind’s eye suddenly enlarged the action to where he saw only a fingertip and the toggle of the switch, and as the two connected and Boldt was about to throw the switch, he caught himself. A trigger!

“Don’t touch anything!” he shouted as a panicked Liz sprinted past him. “Just get him and wait for me.”

He suddenly saw everything as a potential detonation device. Sarah, startled by her father’s voice, began to cry.

Liz stopped at the doorway to their room, held by the sound of her daughter’s crying. “Be gentle,” she said. Boldt turned around in time to see Liz reaching for the light switch.

“No!” he hollered, stopping her. “Touch nothing. Watch for wires. Anything that doesn’t look right.”

“A bomb?” she gasped, suddenly catching on.

“Get Miles, Liz. Quickly. We’ll go out the back door, not the front. We’ve both used the back door, right? So it’s okay. Just hurry.”

When residents panicked, they fled out their front doors regardless of their clothing or appearance-any cop, any ambulance driver, any fireman had experienced the half-naked family standing out on the front lawn, toward the psychological safety net of the neighborhood. But to Boldt, the front door could be the trigger.

Liz scooped up Miles. Boldt snagged his daughter, drawing her into his arms and pressing her warmth and her sweetly perfumed baby skin close to him. He was drenched in a nervous sweat. “Good girl,” he said, as she calmed in his embrace.

The parents met at the door leading into the kitchen, each bearing a child. Liz was fraught with raw nerves-eyes wide, jaw dropped, breathing heavily, panting from fear. “Let’s get out,” she said hoarsely.

“We’re going,” Boldt answered, his voice cracking, his eyes scanning the kitchen floor for anything unusual. His paranoia ran rampant. He pictured everything a potential trigger. He suddenly froze, fearing the trigger immediately before them. Miles struggled restlessly in his mother’s arms. Sarah wiggled to be free of Boldt, reaching for Liz, who pleaded, “If we’re going, then we’re going. Please.”

“We’re going,” Boldt announced dryly. He cut a straight line across the kitchen, out the door, down the steps. “No,” he called out, stopping Liz as she headed for her car. He stepped closer to her and kissed her on her damp cheek. “We’re out for a walk with the kids. Leisurely. Easy does it. Okay?”

Tears ran down her cheeks. She nodded, glancing around.

“No,” he cautioned. “It’s just us. The two of us with our kids, out for a walk. Nothing to it.”

She nodded again.

They walked west on 55th up to Greenwood and a corner convenience store run by a pair of Koreans whom Boldt knew by name from so many trips for eggs or milk.

He dialed 911 into the pay phone mounted outside the store, with Liz and Miles at his side and Sarah in his arms. Graffiti was scrawled around the phone, foul jokes, and a message: Zippy was here.

“You can go in,” Boldt told his wife.

“No,” was all she said. She stayed close, to where her elbow pressed against him, and he felt her warmth with the contact. That simple touch was enough to tighten his throat as he spoke into the phone. In his twenty-plus years on the force, he had never dialed the emergency number. He asked to be put through to Homicide and was informed that it couldn’t be done. He asked, sternly, for the on-call identification technician and received the same curt reply. He hung up and, lacking a quarter, borrowed the use of the phone behind the counter.

He called his lieutenant, Phil Shoswitz, at home rather than the department. He explained his suspicions, requesting the bomb squad, a backup fire truck, and evidence technicians. He suggested the adjacent homes be evacuated, but Shoswitz refused this last request, wanting more proof before attracting “that kind of attention.”

The comment reminded Boldt of a conversation with Daphne that the majority of convicted arsonists admitted to watching the burn. Witnessing the burn was itself a major if not primary motive for committing the crime. Boldt debated returning to the house to get Liz’s car, but decided instead to ask a friend to come pick them up at the convenience store. A plan was forming in his head. He was a cop again, the father’s panic subsiding.

The ladder, and whoever had scaled it, had been in their side yard that same afternoon. The arsonist, if the house had been rigged, could be watching the house at that very moment. Depending on what vantage point he took, what distance he chose, he might or might not have seen the family leave. It seemed possible he was still in the neighborhood. Boldt suggested this to Shoswitz. Listening in, Liz went noticeably pale.

After a short argument, in which Boldt found himself on the side of sacrificing his home if necessary, it was agreed that the various squads-lab, fire, bomb-would be placed on call but would not arrive at the residence until a police net had been put in place in an area extending from Woodland Park to 5th Avenue, Northwest. The net would be tightened, in hopes of squeezing the arsonist into its center. Shoswitz, typically tight with the budget, responded admirably. Faced with a possible crime against a police officer acting in the line of duty, he made not one comment about money. No crimes drew more internal support.

If and when the bomb or accelerants were found, their existence proved, then whoever had perpetrated this act had, in the process, crossed a sacred boundary, a boundary Boldt and his colleagues took seriously, one that was intolerable and unforgivable, the reaction to which would be the unvoiced but unwavering goal of revenge and punishment.

Twenty minutes later, Liz and the kids were headed to Willie and Susan Affholder’s house for the night. If possible, Boldt would join them later. He and Liz kissed through the open window of Susan’s Explorer, a heartfelt, loving kiss that meant the world to him. As they drove away, as the red taillights receded, Boldt knew in his heart that even if there had been an affair, it was over now. His wife and his family were whole again. They were reunited by this incident.

By 9:15 P.M., eight unmarked police cars had taken up positions along the corners and side points of an area roughly a half mile square, with Boldt’s house at its center. Two decommissioned school buses, painted blue, typically used for the transportation of convicted felons, awaited the drop-off of thirty-four uniformed officers, nine of whom were on walkie-talkies with earpieces, the rest on hand signals. The buses were placed to the north, at Greenwood and 59th, and to the south, at Greenwood and 50th, seventeen uniforms each.

Before this, a black Emergency Response Team step van deposited nine of SPD’s most highly trained field operatives onto the southwest corner of the zoo. Woodland Park was believed by the ERT to be the suspect’s most likely route of escape. Each of the nine ERT officers was armed and wore a hands-free radio headset and night vision equipment.

Boldt climbed into the back of a maroon step van marked in bold gold letters, TWO HOUR MARTINIZING. The van had been confiscated as part of a greyhound gaming bust several years earlier and was presently in service to the police as a field communications command center. It was parked on a hill on Palatine Place, a block and a half from Boldt’s house.

Shoswitz occupied an office chair bolted to the floor, as did the two techies-a communications dispatcher and a field operations officer. Shoswitz owned a long, pale, pointed face, overly large eyeballs that registered perpetual shock, and busy fingers that reflected his nervous disposition.

Boldt checked his watch. Even secured radio frequencies could be, and occasionally were, monitored by the more creative members of the press assigned to the police beat. The best technologies could be compromised, given time and determination. He knew at least two reporters capable of such tricks. He estimated the operation had about fifteen minutes in the clear. Boldt made specific note of the time: 9:23. They needed to be well along by 9:45, or the press might spoil the operation. Impatience tested him.

“All set?” the field operations officer asked Shoswitz. Phil glanced over at Boldt through the dim red light of the step van’s interior. There was no other chair, so Boldt squatted on an inverted green plastic milk crate. The sergeant nodded at the lieutenant; it was an uncomfortable moment for Boldt, this prerequisite use of chain of command necessary to all multitask, multidepartmental operations. With one hot glance in the sergeant’s direction, Shoswitz let Boldt know that responsibility for the hurried operation was all his. Phil Shoswitz was already distancing himself.

The dispatcher flipped some toggles and said, “Attention, all units.”

Boldt closed his eyes and, listening to the continuous stream of radio traffic, envisioned the events unfolding in the dark outside.

As residents in the neighborhood watched TV, ERT and uniformed police stole through their lawns, down the alleys behind their homes, and around their garages and carports, with almost no one the wiser. One child of nine announced from his bedroom that outside his window he had just seen a Ninja in the backyard. The father hollered up the stairs for the kid to go to sleep and stop bothering them.

A human net constricted toward its geographical center: Lou Boldt’s home.

Boldt, eyes closed, pictured a cool and hardened killer, lurking somewhere out there in the dark, anxiously awaiting the spectacular light show he had planned, awaiting an event that Boldt prayed would never come to pass.

ERT officer Cole Robbie was one of the voices Boldt heard speaking across the nearly constant radio traffic. He was a tall man, a little over six foot one, and on that night he wore all black, including a flak jacket and leather jump boots. He wore his black ERT baseball hat backward, the brim covering the back of his neck, the adjustable plastic strap biting into his forehead. Robbie had a young daughter, nine months old, named Rosie, and a wife of four years called Jo, for Josephine. Rosie was, without a doubt, the most amazing thing that had ever happened to him. Jo was probably the finest woman on the face of the earth, given that she pulled two jobs and still managed to keep Rosie happy and the house happening. Only a few days earlier, in the middle of prayer at church, Cole Robbie had realized he had everything he had ever hoped for, everything and more than a person dared ask for. On that night, sneaking through people’s backyards, aware that many if not all people in these neighborhoods armed themselves, aware that his job was to apprehend some unknown, unidentified assailant, quite possibly dangerous, quite possibly a murderer, his heartbeat was clocking a hundred and ten, and he was thinking, Let it be someone else. He had no intention of being a hero. He was, in fact, seriously considering applying for an interdepartmental transfer. After all his years of training and angling for a place in ERT, a desk job suddenly looked real appealing.

Cole Robbie crept over a low fence and into a fire alley, which was considered city property and therefore public land. Sneaking through backyards was not exactly legal, it was just easier at times.

He remained in shadow as often as possible, moving slightly hunched, shoulders low. In his right ear a constant stream of radio traffic became a din, and though he listened for key words that might have relevance to his own situation, for the most part he tuned it out. In any field operation that involved uniforms there was too much radio traffic. Left to ERT-as it should have been, in Robbie’s opinion-an operation like this one would have been substantially simpler.

His wrist vibrated silently under his watch face. He stopped, stepped out of shadow, and looked once left and then right. He waited. A moment later he looked again and this time saw both of his fellow squad members, one on each side, perhaps twenty to thirty yards away. There was no attempt made at hand signals. Conserve movement.

In four more minutes his wrist would vibrate again, and he would wait for visual contact with his team members. If, within a minute of this, either should go missing, Robbie would attempt radio contact through Command Center Dispatch. If this failed, he and his fellow ERT teammates would search for the missing officer until the reason for his absence was explained. Sometimes it proved to be nothing more than a neighborhood dog preventing egress. Sometimes it was a matter of the officer getting lost or forgetting his route; even the best trained made mistakes. Once-only once, Robbie reminded himself-a missing ERT operative had been found with his spinal cord broken in two places and his skull cracked open. He lived through it, but David Jefferson, who had changed his name to Abdul Something-or-other, now worked the phone bank for a telemarketing firm from the confines of a wheelchair. Robbie had had a pizza with him a couple months earlier. The man’s life was a wreck: He had lost his wife in a bloody divorce and was twenty grand in debt. Cole Robbie wanted nothing to do with that. He stepped quietly forward. The section of park on the far side of the zoo that the suits believed was this perp’s most likely escape route lay just ahead and was Robbie’s destination. It was pitch dark beneath those trees. Visual contact was out of the question once they were inside there. His heart rate climbed above one-ten. He loved this work.

Boldt opened his eyes and craned forward in the odd red light, attempting to see whatever it was that the field operations officer, Tito Lee, was attempting to show him.

Pointing to a map, Lee said, “We got ERT in a line right through here. They’re moving good and should be in position within five, maybe ten minutes. At that point, we got a human wall between Phinney Way and the zoo. Our perimeter patrol cars are all in place. The two buses are in position as we speak, but no one’s going anywhere until we give the high sign. You want to start to close this gnat’s ass, you let me know.”

“What-who? — was that woman I heard a couple of minutes ago?” Boldt asked.

“What we got there is an undercover officer working the streets in an Animal Control vehicle up to the west side. She’s driving around real slow, like she’s after something, which of course she is, technically speaking.” He seemed proud of this concept. He grinned. “It gives us an operative on the specific street; she’s headed for your place. She’ll get out of the vehicle there and go door to door, heading toward Woodland, asking about a Doberman reported wandering loose.”

“She’s alone?” Boldt asked apprehensively. “I thought everyone was going to be partnered in this-”

“Who’s alone?” Shoswitz interjected, suddenly interested.

Lee answered the lieutenant, turning from Boldt. “The dogcatcher. One of the Vice dicks, Branslonovich. She’s undercover as a dogcatcher,” he repeated, for the sake of the bewildered and concerned Shoswitz.

“No one goes unpartnered on an operation like this,” Shoswitz echoed, suddenly concerned. “Who authorized?”

Lee said defensively, “We put this together in forty-five minutes, Lieutenant. It’s not like-”

“I want her out of there.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Team her up with someone. I don’t care if her partner ends up in a dog cage in the back, I want everyone paired. I thought I made that clear!” Shoswitz delivered this invective and then glared over toward Boldt; the lieutenant hated the unexpected. He dreaded these operations-he was too close to retirement to risk his career on hunches. He disliked Boldt at that moment; the sergeant could feel it.

Cole Robbie moved evenly and fluidly, avoiding jerky motions. If one were to have caught a glimpse of his dark form, it might have been mistaken for a tree trunk or a waving shadow from the occasional car headlight that sneaked into the copse of trees through which he navigated. He was, at that moment, no longer a corporeal entity, no longer a body of heartbeats and sensations, for as he negotiated through the trees, so did he negotiate a transformation of spirit, divesting himself of the material and turning himself over to God. That was something he never discussed with anyone other than Jo, who fully understood such transformations and, even had she not understood, would have supported anything that might keep her husband alive through another tour of duty. Through this surrender of spirit, Cole Robbie believed himself an instrument of God, all knowing, all encompassing. If he were meant to engage with a psychotic arsonist, so be it; he would do his best and hope for divine guidance. He trusted that same divine guidance to carry him on the proper route through the forest, to deliver him to a point, the significance of which he might not understand but would willingly accept. Understanding, even knowledge itself, was beyond his capacity at that moment. His training occupied a spot within him far inferior to his trust and confidence in the correctness of the moment. He accepted his role, his route, his destination without question, and whereas others often mistook this for an admirable sense of loyalty to his team, the truth was far different. His misperceived loyalty was nothing more than an adherence to the doctrines of faith and the acceptance of Divine Principle.

“Come and get it,” was Cole Robbie’s last conscious thought before he surrendered completely and turned himself over to his Keeper. From the corner of his right eye, he registered the quick white wink of a flashlight signal, and he returned and then relayed this signal to his left without thought. Through the trees it sparked, linking the various members of ERT, connecting the chain. All was well. His confidence was second to none. He knew and he accepted, though he did not dwell on the fact, that at that moment he was the best cop out there. He was part of an entirely different team. Only time would tell, but something told him this was his night.

“Where then?” Shoswitz barked from the back of the step van. The pale red light cast from above created hollow black eye sockets and doubled the size and distorted the shape of his already prominent nose. He looked to Boldt like something satanic. His teeth shined wet and red in that light. His index finger pointed straight and shook authoritatively at Tito Lee. The lieutenant’s question was in response to Lee’s having said that the Vice officer Branslonovich, who was posing as a dogcatcher, was clearly not in her vehicle.

The operations officer answered by asking a question of the dispatcher. “Can we raise her in the field?”

Shoswitz, rarely content to speculate, shouted into the cramped confines, “I want her back in that truck and the doors locked, and her rolling, this instant. How we deal with this can be discussed later. Copy?”

Lee shot Shoswitz a hot glance.

The radio dispatcher looked distressed as well, and that troubled Boldt because the dispatcher’s role was critical to such a complex and quickly conceived operation.

“All we can do,” Boldt offered, weighing in on the side of Tito Lee, “is try to raise her. Is she carrying a hand-held?” he asked the dispatcher, in part to get him back on track.

“She’s carrying a unicom,” he replied, explaining that she should have been hearing all directives from the step van. “I put it out on the unicom,” he offered. “But even if she heard it, it would take her a minute to get back to the truck and respond. She’s not authorized,” he explained, and Boldt understood that she, along with others in the operation, was not in possession of a walkietalkie capable of transmitting on secured frequencies-only a few of the hand-helds could do that. This technical restriction isolated her.

Boldt said, “Am I mistaken, or will an animal control van have a radio capable of-”

“Oh, shit, you’re right,” interrupted Lee. “She’s restricted to line-of-sight reporting over the unicom. Emergency reporting of contact with the suspect.” To minimize radio traffic and to reduce the chance of the press catching on, most of the radios in use were under the same restrictions.

Shoswitz chimed in. “So we put it out over the unicom that we want Branslonovich to make a land line call to headquarters. That will force her back into the truck, to a pay phone, and we can deal with it from there. Settled?” he asked rhetorically, his mind already made up. “Do it,” he instructed the dispatcher. He glanced over and caught Boldt staring at him. “What?” he asked, still at a shouting volume.

“I didn’t say anything,” Boldt objected. But inside he was thinking that Branslonovich was Vice and was more than familiar with field operations, and such a summons would mean only one thing to her: She was being called in. So, he reasoned, the first time she received the message over the unicom she would ignore it and say later that bad reception had interfered with the signal. The second time she might be forced to respond, but at her own speed; she would take her sweet time about coming in. With each successive attempt by dispatch, she would increasingly suspect that the only explanation for these attempts was that she was in a hot zone and because she was a woman officer the male pigs that controlled such operations were recalling her. This, in turn, would keep her in the field all the longer. And the truth was, as far as Boldt could tell, she probably was in the operation’s hot zone, somewhere within a city block of Boldt’s house.

“You’re pissing me off,” Shoswitz declared, glaring at his sergeant.

“Then give me your keys,” he said, standing up from the milk crate and hunching into an uncomfortable stooped crouch. He sensed that at first Shoswitz was reluctant, but the change in expression on the lieutenant’s face revealed his decision to pick his fights carefully. This fight would be lost on his part, no matter how adamant his attempt. He handed Boldt the keys. They both understood that Boldt intended to go after Branslonovich himself. He rarely felt prescient about a situation, but Branslonovich was in danger. Lou Boldt felt certain of it.

Shoswitz directed his anger to the dispatcher. As Boldt slipped out the back of the step van he heard the lieutenant bark, “Try sending it out over the unicom again.”

It was a moonless night, inside-the-stomach dark. An ocean smell permeated the chilly air and brought back images of Alki Point, where Boldt had once stood staring down into the crab-eaten eyes of a decomposing corpse.

A dead body, he thought, hurrying toward Phil’s car. All at once it felt as if he might be too late.

Cole Robbie found the darkness of the trees comforting. A moment earlier he had been ordered to adopt his night-vision goggles, which meant discontinued use of the flashlights. It was a good call on the part of the ERT commander, because it allowed a return to hand signals and silenced the winking flashlights that seemed to shout every time a signal had been sent.

The world was now a green and black place, with few shades of gray. The tree trunks rose like black cornstalks from the forest floor, looking to Robbie like irregularly placed bars to a jail cell. Three dimensions were reduced to two-he felt as if he were walking inside a green and black television set. Inside these goggles, motion blurred; fast motion sometimes vanished completely. It was rumored that the FBI had seriously superior night-vision headgear presently “in testing,” which was a euphemism for proprietary ownership. What the FBI got, others waited for-sometimes for years.

A hand signal from his right. Robbie caught it, returned it, and then passed it along to the officer twenty-five yards to his left. All this occurred with Robbie feeling as if he were on autopilot. He noticed that the line was stretching apart, stretching thin. Pretty soon they would be too far apart for hand signals. He wondered if anyone else had noticed. It was just such sophomoric mistakes that hurt operations. Just the kind of thing that got someone killed.

Up ahead to the north, the park fed into a hillside neighborhood falling toward Green Lake. The occasionally glimpsed light from those houses momentarily blinded the night-vision goggles, burning a bright white hole in the dense green and black. For that reason, no sooner had Robbie donned the night-vision goggles than he shifted them to his forehead and avoided their use. Previous experience with “golf balls”-the ERT name for the blinding flashes and burnouts in the light-sensitive goggles-had educated him to avoid the goggles in the presence of any artificial light. Whether or not any of his other teammates also elected to skip the goggles, he couldn’t be sure. He would still need to use them every four minutes for hand signals, but in the meantime he preferred the uniformity of the darkness.

Immediately a slight glint of yellow light high up in a distant tree caught his attention and provoked him to stop. An airplane light seen through the towering limbs? he wondered. Something wet in the tree, reflecting light from the ground? A person? He quickly tried the goggles but preferred it without them, his peripheral vision expanded. He hadn’t seen exactly where … the sound of an airplane briefly convinced him that it was nothing…. There! Another glint of light, thirty or forty feet up in a tree perhaps fifty yards directly ahead.

He depressed a small button on the device clipped to his belt that allowed him radio transmission within the ERT team. “Operative Three.” He announced himself at a whisper. “Eye contact with possible suspicious object. Five-zero yards. Eleven o’clock. Elevation: four-zero feet. Advise.”

“All stop,” came the commander’s voice through Cole’s earpiece. The line hissed static as the commander checked in with the command van, but Cole knew what was in store for them. A minimum of four operatives would converge on that tree.

With God’s guidance, Cole Robbie thought, this one was over before it had barely begun. They had their man. He stayed where he was, eyes fixed on that elusive spot, hoping beyond hope that what he had just witnessed had nothing whatsoever to do with aviation traffic and everything to do with the suspect they pursued.

As it turned out, because of his disdain for the night-vision device, when the first and only firestorm occurred Cole Robbie was the sole ERT officer not wearing goggles and so not blinded, the only operative able to function, the only operative to see a spinning body burning as clearly as if it were a Christmas tree afire. He was immediately struck by the irony of an arsonist setting himself aflame.

But then, as he began to run toward the animated orange puppet that spun like an unpracticed dancer, he heard it screaming like a woman-worse, in a voice familiar to him. It was, in fact, a woman, a woman consumed by pain and fear. By fire. Worse yet, the voice of a friend. The closer he drew, the more convinced he was that it-however indistinguishable, for it was no longer human-was the voice of Vice officer Connie Branslonovich.

Boldt found the animal control truck parked well up the hill from his house, half a block from Greenwood, two blocks from Woodland Park and the well-discussed anticipated escape route of the arsonist.

He glanced down driveways, around corners of houses, up and down the road, hoping for a glimpse of Branslonovich. He carried a unicom walkie-talkie concealed inside his sport coat, a single wire leading to an earpiece. He hoped like hell to hear Branslonovich or the dispatcher announce that she had reported in. Instead, he heard the order for the thirty-four uniforms to leave the buses and begin closing the net. The operation was in full swing.

The radio channel came ablaze with communication traffic as a small army of uniformed patrol officers was unleashed onto a four-block area.

ERT was somewhere inside the park setting up a back line to net the escaping arsonist. Suddenly the entire effort seemed so futile to Boldt, so absurd. It was based on the assumption that Boldt’s house had been rigged with accelerant, as yet an unproven fact. He reviewed the logic, aware he might need it later to defend the decision to the brass. But the more he examined the thinking, the more he liked it. If the uniforms were presently being deployed, the sirens and the lab truck were only minutes from screeching to a stop in front of Boldt’s house-an act certain to dislodge the waiting arsonist, accepting the theory that the arsonist was indeed watching. Although he could make sense of it in his head, he wasn’t too confident how it would sound to a review board. He had convinced Shoswitz easily enough, but he and Shoswitz had a long history together, a working relationship, and the lieutenant had grudgingly come to trust his sergeant’s decision-making process. It didn’t mean that others would understand it. Not at all.

His current thought process was more clear to him: Thinking like a cop, attempting to retrace Branslonovich’s steps. He stopped and looked around, realizing what a dark night it was. He glanced back at his own house, seeing it differently for the first time-as a target. The arsonist would want a good view, and that seemed most clearly offered from up the hill, which explained the location of the parked animal control truck. Branslonovich had quickly discerned the importance of the elevation of the hill. If the arsonist didn’t care about seeing anything more than the flames, a position in the park would suffice. Boldt chugged up the hill, winded immediately, shoulders hunched, wondering how he had allowed himself to fall into such bad shape and vowing to do something about it. Sometime.

The arsonist would need a lookout, someplace either secretive-inside an empty house, perhaps-or right out in the open but with a convincing excuse to be there: electric lineman, telephone or cable repairman. Boldt quickly glanced up and scanned the area; he didn’t want to spend too much time with his head up, for fear of being seen and giving away his intentions. A pang of dread swept through him. If Branslonovich had gone around scanning the poles and roofs and windows, she might have given herself away. Perhaps, he thought, she was clever enough to have done so while calling out, “Here, kitty. Here, kitty.” Branslonovich had her share of smarts. Or had she, too, been drawn toward the park?

He climbed the hill a little faster. He had a bad feeling about this. He felt like calling out, Here, Branslonovich. Here, Branslonovich. The higher up the hill he climbed, the more houses he passed, the more inviting the park seemed. Just across Greenwood, dark, full of places to hide. Branslonovich might have felt this same thing: Why bother with the houses, or any exposure, when the park offered such sanctuary? Furthermore, went his reasoning, an animal control officer had every excuse to roam a wooded area. Boldt walked faster. Branslonovich was in the park. He knew this as a fact, however unexplainable, just as he knew his house was rigged to burn.

He dodged traffic, cutting across Greenwood, suddenly more hurried. He pushed himself faster and faster.

He entered the park at a run.

He heard her before he saw the sweep of her flashlight breaking through the stand of tree trunks. She was moving through the park, perhaps thirty or more yards ahead of him. Her flashlight was aimed high into the overhead limbs. He couldn’t actually identify her as Branslonovich, not at that distance, but he knew. She was on the arsonist like a bloodhound; Boldt could feel this as well.

“Hey! Are you the dogcatcher?” Boldt shouted, attempting to maintain a modicum of professionalism by maintaining her undercover status. “You looking for a Doberman?” She didn’t seem to hear him, his voice absorbed by the woods. He took a deep breath to shout loudly, but before that same breath escaped his lips, the ground immediately to her right erupted in a billowing column of purple flame. She had tripped a wire, perhaps, or stepped directly on a detonator.

The figure ahead of him ignited instantaneously in a bluish yellow flame, as did a nearby tree trunk. She spun once, arms held out, crying for help, a searing, painful cry. And then she seemed to explode. Yellow-blue pieces disembodied from the spinning creature, arching through the black night air like fireworks. As what was left of the body slumped forward and collapsed, the bark on the tree trunk exploded-sap combusting like fuel-punctuating the quiet night with what sounded like cannon fire. The concussion of the erupting flames lifted Boldt off his feet and deposited him onto his back, ten feet behind where he had been standing. He felt deaf, blinded, and as if his back had been broken in several places. Branslonovich issued one last bone-chilling cry; how this was physically possible escaped Lou Boldt as he lay on a damp bed of decomposing leaves, immobilized by the fall, his ears filled with the haunting wail of the detective’s final moment on earth.

In the distance, sirens.

Lou Boldt managed to get his hand on his weapon, thinking to himself that in all his career he had only fired it on three other occasions. He aimed straight up toward where the stars should have been and let off three consecutive rounds. With any luck at all, someone would hear it and find him, before the whole forest burned, and he along with it.

Cole Robbie saw her spin in a complete circle, an all-consuming plume of blinding light, as pieces of her shot out like sparks from the fireplace, streaming through the air like shooting stars. The cacophony in his earpiece distracted him, for the commander had clearly been wearing his night-vision goggles at the time, and the string of cursing that ensued poured over the airwaves. Robbie heard three live rounds, yanked the earphone from his ear, and broke into a run, thinking, Someone else is out there.

At that same moment he caught a flicker of a shadow to the left of the inferno and tentatively identified it as an object-a human form-moving away from the fire and indirectly toward him, off to his left. The image was there and then gone, the light of the fire so intense, so bright, that one glance induced temporary blindness-like a camera’s flash-and the resulting collage of shifting, slanting shadows turned the landscape into an unrecognizable, eerie tangle of sharp black forms, as if he were suddenly at the bottom of a pile of brush trying to look out.

He had played team sports in high school and junior college, and his resulting instincts moved him to his left in a line calculated to intercept the path of the human form he had spotted. A few strides into it he dropped all conscious thought, electing instead to turn himself over once again to the power and force that guided his life. He ran like the wind, free of his own misgivings, thoughts and calculations. As if to confirm the correctness of this attitude, he picked up sight of the moving form once again, heading right at him. He felt his hand reach down and locate his weapon without any such thought in his head. Then his hand released the stock and found the TASER stun gun instead-a weapon similar in appearance to a large handgun but one that delivered twenty thousand volts of electricity instead of bullets. The TASER had to be fired within fifty feet of the target-twenty to thirty was preferable for accuracy-as two small wires carried the charge to the inductor needles on the projected electrode. Once hit, a subject was knocked unconscious for a period of four to fifteen minutes by the jolt of electricity. He would take him alive; he would bring home a prisoner, not a dead trophy.

There was no sense of time, except that measured by the change in tone and color of the shadows thrown by the fire. The same hand that held the TASER found the small button on his radio transmitter. Robbie said breathlessly, “Position Three. Suspect sighted. Foot pursuit. Identify before weapons fire.” Whatever the real time, it all happened fast. In a mix of moving shadow, shifting light, and the running human form dodging through it toward an imaginary point directly ahead, Cole felt a part of the forest, comfortable and unafraid.

The suspect was closing fast from his right.

Cole planted his feet, skidding to a stop in the sloppy ground, dropped to one knee, leveled the TASER, aimed into the blackness of space directly ahead, and squeezed the firing trigger. He saw the twin shiny wires glimmer in the brightness of the fire as the electrode raced into space. The suspect, at a full run, having not seen Robbie, bumped into and grabbed hold of a low branch, knocking it out of his way and, as luck would have it, absorbing the electrode into the branch which otherwise would have struck him. The suspect appeared completely unaware of Robbie’s presence, never breaking stride. The ERT man dropped the TASER and reached for his weapon as he came to his feet and continued the chase from behind. The sudden appearance of round white holes in the darkness-flashlight beams-alerted him to his change of angle and the reality that he could not fire the handgun, except in warning, since his teammates were now directly ahead. Robbie, a fast runner, initially gained on the suspect as with his right hand he found the dangling earpiece and returned it to his ear. Then, all at once, the suspect was gone. He had ducked behind a tree in hiding, somewhere up ahead. Robbie instinctively dove to the forest floor, anticipating weapons fire. He tripped the radio transmitter and said quietly, “Operative Three. Kill the flashlights. Go to infrared but do not fire. Repeat, do not fire. Copy?”

“Copy, Three,” said the commander. Robbie heard the instructions repeated.

The ERT weapons were equipped with heat-responsive sighting devices that alerted the shooter to a warm body fix. The infrared devices allowed for nighttime “blind” precision targeting, their only drawback being that they could not distinguish between wildlife and human forms, and occasionally a deer or large dog was shot in lieu of a suspect. What Robbie intended, and what the commander had just ordered, was that the sighting devices be swept through the forest in an attempt to locate a warm-blooded body in the hope of identifying the suspect. If Cole Robbie saw any red pinpoints of light strike his person, he would alert the ERT to a “bad hit.” The lights in the forest went dark; the flashlights were turned off in succession. Between Robbie and the dispersed line of operatives some fifty yards away-and closing-the suspect was hiding.

All senses alert, Cole Robbie rose to his knees and then to his feet and began to creep ahead, one quiet footfall at a time. He realized in that instant that he was dominated by his senses, that he had lost his magical connection with the power of being, of guidance, upon which his confidence relied, the source of all good in his life. He didn’t want to be thinking, listening, watching; he felt trapped in himself.

The suspect came from above, completely unexpectedly, falling out of the darkness and onto Robbie painfully and with determination. A pair of hands found Robbie’s head. One firmly gripped his chin; the other pressed tightly against the back of the cop’s neck. Cole Robbie lay on the ground, face first, still reeling from the impact, unable to gather his senses. He knew this grip and what was coming. The intention was to break his neck with a single jerk, a spine-twisting snap, and leave him lying here. Robbie could defeat the move with a simple anticipation of which direction the suspect would choose. But there was no time for such thought. God help me, he thought, and forced his chin left, just as the suspect made an identical move with his hands.

People would say that Robbie instinctively felt the guy’s fingers against his face and his brain registered that the fingers were on the right side of the face, and therefore the guy was left-handed and would attempt a twist to the left; when combined with Robbie’s choice, the attempt was in part defeated. They would say that all his training and all his experience had combined to save a cop’s life. For the devastating crack the suspect heard, before abandoning the cop for paralyzed or dead, was not Cole Robbie’s neck but his jaw. Robbie would drink from a straw for the next eight weeks, but he would live; he would walk; he would run with his daughter and make love with his wife. And he would know for the rest of his days that his moment of decision had nothing to do with training or experience but was born of those final words he voiced internally before the deed was done.

The suspect cut through the woods, heading back toward the very fire he had himself set, perhaps aware that heat-seeking devices were useless when aimed in the direction of such an inferno, perhaps only lucky to have made such a choice. Cole Robbie watched him run. On that night, it was the last anyone saw of the man.

Boldt was of good stock. After firing those shots, he immediately regretted doing so, because he didn’t want to be in the position of needing anyone’s help. It was the spreading fire that had put the fear in his heart; he wasn’t outwardly afraid of many things, but fire was one of them. He rolled and came to his knees. All he needed for motivation was the sound of those approaching sirens, fire and police. He struggled to his feet, tested out various limbs, and pronounced himself sound. He would be badly bruised, and he would need a hot bath, but he wasn’t going to be admitted to any emergency room. He would accept responsibility for the warning shots, explaining that at the time he was down and unable to move. The truth nearly always worked best.

The fire crews contained what remained of the fire. Strangely, what had begun as a white hot inferno had quickly petered out into one burning tree and some smoldering underbrush. When no detonator and no can or jar that might have contained the accelerant was found at the scene, speculation ran rampant among those in the know. Many theories surfaced; but with no physical proof, excepting some broken glass fragments found much later, the fire that consumed and killed detective Constance Branslonovich was listed as “arson assault by mysterious causes.”

The Seattle press had for some years worked in concert with law enforcement. It was a relationship for which the city government was grateful. The press could kill you if they so chose. The Night of the Burning Tree, as it came to be called among law enforcement officers, proved an exception to the rule. The purple cone of fire had been seen from five miles away and was said to have stretched nearly three hundred feet in the air. An eyewitness put the top of the flames above the Space Needle, but this was gross exaggeration and journalists elected to ignore it. Whereas the fire in the park and the death of an animal control officer (Branslonovich’s identity was temporarily withheld by mutual agreement) were reported at the top of the eleven o’clock news and on the morning edition’s front page, the subsequent detailed search of Boldt’s residence went unreported, based almost entirely on the fact that the press agreed to keep secret the residential addresses of law enforcement officers for reasons of security. The bomb squad, the scientific identification unit, and the Marshal Five arson task force, including Steven Garman, gathered at the Boldt home at 11:45 P.M., thirty minutes after the last of the fire trucks had departed Woodland Park. The bomb squad and their dogs led the first wave, searching doors, windows, switches, and flooring for triggers. The Marshall Fives followed next. Nothing indicating attempted arson was discovered.

At 1:00 A.M., Bernie Lofgrin’s identification unit went to work, beginning with the lawn and perimeter grounds. Plaster casts were made of the ladder impressions, although Lofgrin agreed with Boldt’s assessment that the impressions “appeared consistent” with impressions at the two prior burn sites, an analysis later confirmed by the lab comparison tests.

By the time Boldt entered his own house there were nine other people inside, including an electrical engineer who was using a sophisticated voltage tester to, as he put it, “measure line resistance,” and a carpenter who was drilling holes into various walls so that a fiberoptic camera could be inserted and the inside of the walls examined. This study revealed that the house had adequate insulation, as well as a piece of newspaper dated 1922, and a Stanley screwdriver that was probably equally as old. At the end of three hours of intense scrutiny, the head of the bomb squad and Lofgrin pulled Boldt aside and pronounced his home “clean,” which after that invasion it was anything but. A more thorough examination of the outside wall where the ladder had been placed was scheduled for daylight, and Boldt was ordered to sleep elsewhere, though nothing suspicious had been found.

Garman, who joined the huddle, said, “Your wife’s arrival at the house probably put the guy off his mission.” Boldt was not comfortable with Garman’s presence in the first place. The sergeant grunted a response that no one understood.

Lofgrin said, typically technical, “That would explain the discovery of the impressions and help to explain the absence of any accelerant.”

“It doesn’t explain what happened in the woods,” Boldt pointed out.

Arson detective Neil Bahan said, “Ah, but it might! We don’t know that whoever that was, let’s call him the arsonist, was there to watch or wait. He may have, for instance, been awaiting a chance at a return visit. To finish the job.” Boldt wanted everyone out of there, even if he couldn’t stay. He wanted some peace and quiet. Branslonovich was dead; Robbie was in an emergency room getting his jaw wired. There was no proof that Boldt’s house had been rigged. He was being asked to believe that the arsonist had been hanging around the forest waiting for a good time to return. He didn’t like any of it.

Shoswitz asked to see him in his office first thing in the morning. Boldt feared he might lose the case-a case he had not wanted from the beginning but was, by that time, too personally involved in to want to surrender it to someone else. Thirty minutes later the last of them was out the front door. Boldt locked up tight and called Liz at Willie and Susan’s and woke them all. He spoke to his wife for nearly half an hour, explaining everything as best he could. He felt both embarrassed and ashamed that he had brought this onto his family. She told him that, with the kids asleep, she was there for the night.

Boldt said, “I think the cabin is a good idea for you.”

“For all three of us, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Sorry.” He had all sorts of pat answers ready. Stuff like this happened to cops. They had been lucky all these years to have seen so little of it. He felt tempted to share with her the sight of Branslonovich exploding-for that was the only way to describe what had happened-not so much to frighten her but because he needed to tell someone, needed to vent some of the anger and fear that the violent death had instilled in him. He still saw her spinning around like a dancer-yellow, blue, then white. He still heard that cry.

“You there?” she asked.

“Yeah. Here.”

“You want to come over? Sleep with me? They gave me the guest room.”

His wife asking him to sleep with her, to hold her, to comfort her. He wanted nothing more. He said so.

“But you’re staying,” she said.

“I couldn’t sleep if I tried. I’ll go downtown, try to sort some of this out.” He wanted a look at the most recent poem sent to Garman.

“I’d rather just lose the house, you know. I wish-and I mean this! — I wish he’d gotten the house, that he’d taken the house and left us alone.”

Boldt was silent for a long time.

“I know that silence. You’re saying he doesn’t want the house, he wants you.” She gasped. “Oh, God.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“He wants you. Is that it?”

“We don’t know what he wants. We don’t know who he is. We don’t know much.”

“Someone you put away before?”

“Doubtful.”

“I hate this. Jesus God. What do we do?” she cried into the phone.

“Can you get a leave?”

“I’m owed weeks.”

“Do you mind?”

“Being driven out of my own home? Of course I mind,” she snapped. He waited her out. “No, love, I don’t mind. No, of course not. But I wish you’d join us.”

“The Sheriff’s Department will watch the road. The cabin too, probably.”

“Oh, God. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Could Susan go with you?”

“I can ask. She might. I love you,” she blurted out. “God, how I love you!”

“No music so sweet,” he whispered into the phone.

“Always and forever,” she added.

“We’ll get through this,” Boldt said, “and we’ll reevaluate and we’ll make sense of the last few months.”

“We need to talk,” she said, and to him it rang as something of a confession, and his heart wanted to tear from his chest.

“Yeah,” he agreed. If tears made noise, she would have heard them.

“You amaze me.” Her voice trailed off. “Have I told you lately how much you amaze me? What an incredible man you are?”

“A little overweight,” he said, and she laughed, barking into the phone.

“Not to me,” she said.

“I love you, Elizabeth.”

“Sleep if you can.”

They hung up.

Boldt ignored orders and took a long hot bath in the old clawfoot that had come with the place, running the faucet twice to reheat the water. When he got out, he pulled the drain plug. Ten minutes later, the tub was only half empty. He searched the house for a plunger but couldn’t find one. Not one damn plunger in the entire house!

The kitchen sink still filled with dishes hadn’t drained either, but Boldt didn’t notice it. He was already out the door and on his way downtown, off to prepare for that dreaded meeting with Shoswitz.