Beyond Recognition

7

Homicides were about victims. The way a victim had lived often told more about his or her death than the way a victim died.

Boldt was scheduled to meet with Dorothy Enwright’s mother and sister. It was an interview that he would have rather pawned off onto a detective, but he did not. He wanted to know what kind of life the dead woman had lived, her friends, her enemies. Something, somewhere in Dorothy Enwright’s past, had ensured her untimely death. She had most likely been robbed, caught in some act, or loved the wrong person. It was Boldt’s job-his duty-to identify that individual and bring him or her to the courts with enough incriminating evidence to win a conviction. A deputy prosecuting attorney would accept nothing less.

Lou Boldt would accept nothing less. From the moment that Dixie had confirmed the existence of a bone in the rubble-a body-Boldt’s central focus was to see a person or persons brought to justice, to force Enwright’s murderer to capitulate and repay society for the victim’s undeserved and unwarranted death.

Arson investigator Sidney Fidler showed up at Boldt’s office cubicle just in time to delay the sergeant’s departure for the interview with Enwright’s relatives. Boldt felt like thanking him.

Fidler was anxiously thin and prematurely bald. He wore clothes that didn’t match, and he always looked half asleep, though he had one of the finest minds of anyone Boldt had worked with in years. It was too bad that Fidler was a fireman on rotation to SPD rather than a permanent member of Boldt’s homicide squad. In terms of ability, there weren’t many Sidney Fidlers out there. Single and a loner, he looked and acted about sixty. He was somewhere in his early thirties.

“I thought I might interpret this lab report for you, Sergeant.” Despite his diminutive size, he had a deep, rich voice. He looked Boldt directly in the eye. “And to bring you up to date on some of the particulars.” He didn’t wait for Boldt’s reply but continued on, confidently, passing Boldt the report. “It’s a preliminary report in the form of a memo, to give us an idea of what we’ll receive.” Boldt adjusted himself in his seat. Such memos were courtesy of the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, typically offered only on cases where the information was so hot as to ensure it would leak. The memos gave investigating officers a head start on the findings and were themselves rarely leaked to the press. But the existence of a memo told Boldt that the lab findings were significant enough to expect a leak. Not good news.

“Sure thing,” Boldt said.

“Bahan and I had a parley with a couple of the task force boys-”

“Was Garman there?” Boldt interrupted.

“As a matter of fact, he was. You know him?”

“Not well,” Boldt answered. “Go on.”

“These Marshal Five guys are older by a few years, but they’re wiser too. There’s five thousand firefighters in this city, assigned to forty-two stationhouses. There are only seven Marshal Fives, okay? Between them they’ve got maybe two hundred years’ experience on the line. I say this for your own education, Sergeant. Forgive me if I’m telling you something you already know.”

“No, no,” Boldt corrected. “I appreciate it. Go on,” he repeated. He felt anxious about these findings. Fidler’s setup had left him guessing.

“A fire inspector, a Marshal Five, follows a burn to its area of origin, hoping to lift samples of the accelerant for the chemists. As you know, the Enwright fire was a bastard because the area of origin was nearly entirely destroyed. Maybe that explains it, and maybe not, but the guys on the task force think not. The thing of it is, Sergeant, the lab report is going to come back negative for hydrocarbons. That’s about the gist of it. I imagine in your area of expertise it would be like finding a drowned body with no water in the lungs. Quite frankly, it’s baffling.”

“What’s it mean?” Boldt asked.

“Honestly? Not much. But it won’t look good. Our best defense to the press is that we didn’t locate a good pour, so the analysis came back negative. It also happens to be the truth. But we did locate the spalling and the blue concrete, and that sure as hell should test positive for accelerant, and that’s the baffling part, if you ask me. Why no hydrocarbons, no petroleum products whatsoever? This is not the end of the story, not by any means. The collective wisdom of the Marshal Five boys is that we repackage some new samples and send them off to Chestnut Grove, the ATF lab. They’re good guys, great chemists. And Chestnut Grove specializes in arson and bombs. We ask for a rush, maybe we hear back in a couple of weeks. Most likely they pick up what we missed.”

Fidler paused, training his rich brown eyes on the sergeant, allowing a moment for his words to be absorbed. He then said, “You asked what it means. There had to be one hell of an accelerant in that fire. You don’t go to eleven hundred feet and turn concrete blue with only a match set to the two-by-fours. We could have missed it for any number of reasons. Best bet is to send it to the Feds and try again. They’ll scare up something.”

“Hydrocarbons,” Boldt provided for him. “They’ll find hydrocarbons.”

“It would certainly surprise me if they didn’t.”

“And if they don’t?” Boldt inquired.

“Let’s take it one square at a time.”

Boldt didn’t like the sound of that. “Maybe you should brief me, just in case.”

“Clutter your mind with worthless facts? What kind of person does that?”

“Ignorance is bliss?” Boldt asked. He suddenly felt uncomfortable with Fidler. Was he trying to hide something?

“If you want to take a master’s in pyrotechnic chemistry, that’s your business, Sergeant. Me? I like waiting for the lab reports and learning what it is I need to know for that particular burn. How were you in organic chemistry?”

“Next question,” said Boldt. He didn’t want to admit that as a junior in high school he had taken the senior chemistry course and earned one of two A’s given out for the year. It would mark him as a nerd. His comment caused Fidler to grin; the man needed some dentistry. Boldt said, “Blue cement and negative lab reports. Is that about the sum of it?” He paused. “Tell me, Sid, what do you think of the stuff that Garman received? Related or not?”

“The timing’s good. Weird note. Don’t know about the plastic.”

“I sent it all downstairs for analysis.”

“What’s your opinion?” Fidler asked.

“We would give it weight in a straight homicide, especially if the victim had received it.”

“But if you had received it?”

Boldt answered, “Yeah, I suppose if I’d received it I might give it weight too.”

“So it’s Garman getting it that bugs you.”

“He’s on the arson task force, I understand that. But Enwright’s home isn’t in his district.”

“His battalion,” Fidler corrected.

“Whatever. So if it’s legitimate, why did the torch send it to a different Marshal Five? I mean, if he knows so much about the internal structure of fire investigations, why send it to the wrong guy?”

Fidler’s face screwed up into a knot and his lips pursed. “Hadn’t thought about it that way.”

“It bothers me,” Boldt said.

“Yeah, right. You’re right,” Fidler agreed, “he screwed up.”

“People screw up for two reasons, Sid. Either they make a mistake or you make a mistake in thinking that they made a mistake.”

“Accidentally or intentionally.”

“Exactly. And if it’s intentional, it isn’t their mistake at all, it’s only yours for reading it that way.”

“So if it wasn’t a mistake?” Fidler tested. “If he meant to send it to Garman?”

“Why Garman?” Boldt asked. “You see?” He could watch Fidler’s thought processes displayed across his face. “It may narrow down the search for us. Someone Garman put away? Someone he knows, works with?”

“Shit,” Fidler gasped. “That complicates things. It takes us away from the woman-”

“First things first,” Boldt replied, interrupting. “I start with getting to know Dorothy Enwright, post facto. Things are rarely as complicated as they appear at first glance.”

“And me?” Fidler asked.

“I’ll tell you what: Why don’t you get to know Steven Garman?” Boldt instructed, adding, as an afterthought, “Just in case.”

The two Enwright women, mother and sister, had refused Boldt’s efforts for a meeting in the mother’s home, a condominium in Redmond. Despite the drive, Boldt had wanted the mother on relaxed ground, a place she wouldn’t be afraid to cry, a place she might be more open and honest. But the victim’s sister worked downtown, and Boldt’s attempts to separate the two women into different interviews failed, and in the end he agreed to meet them at four o’clock in the Garden Court of the Four Seasons Olympic hotel. He asked them both to bring photographs.

Located on Seattle’s fashionable 5th Avenue, the Olympic was one of the country’s few remaining grand hotels, ornate, opulent, and spacious, restored lovingly and sparing no expense. The lobby was glorious, the service impeccable. Boldt was no stranger to the place. His love of a formal tea service brought him there several times a year, in spite of the fourteen-dollar price tag. It was one of the few treats he allowed himself. His colleagues spent their money on Scotch and ball games. When he could afford it, Boldt preferred tea at the Four Seasons or dinner and a show at Jazz Alley.

But he knew the hotel well and welcomed the soothing ambiance of the ficus trees, the gentle sound of the running water, the thirty-foot ceilings, and the classical piano. The room was open, in three tiers, and smelled of a flower garden. The women servers all wore shimmering gold dress uniforms, while the waiters wore white jackets. The hum of active conversation was muted by the plush carpet. Boldt gave the attractive receptionist, an Asian woman in her twenties, the name Magpeace, Dorothy Enwright’s maiden name. She seated him on the second level near the waterfall on a love seat in front of a table with starched linen and bone china.

Mrs. Harriet Magpeace and her thirty-year-old daughter, Claudia, entered ten minutes later, wearing grim faces to the table. They shook hands all around. Boldt held the chair for Harriet. His notebook lay open on the table. It seemed odd to order tea and scones and cucumber sandwiches on the edge of discussing a young woman’s brutal murder, but he knew from experience that people seek comfort in extremely individual ways at such times. He’d gone on a long walk once with the husband of one murder victim, the man claiming he had barely stopped walking since the death: all hours of day and night, any destination, it didn’t matter. Two weeks later, Boldt had arrested him for the murder.

Harriet Magpeace kept her graying hair short over her ears. She had Irish coloring and a long elegant neck, around which she had fastened a string of pearls. She was dressed in gabardine slacks and a black cotton sweater, nice but not showy. Her daughter, who had inherited her mother’s Irish green eyes, was wonderful to look at. She wore a modest gray suit, appropriate for her job in a downtown advertising firm. If Dorothy had looked anything like her sister, she had been a beauty.

The mother removed a small group of photos from a Coach purse and slid them disdainfully across the linen toward Boldt, as if not wanting to see them herself. “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you at the police station or my home,” she apologized, glancing around. “This is better.” She did not look comfortable.

“We do want to thank Detective Matthews for telling us about the arson before the press got hold of it,” the daughter said meekly. Matthews was not a detective; she was the departmental psychologist, a lieutenant, but Boldt did not correct the woman.

“Obviously it’s a shock,” the mother said. She tensed, and Boldt worried that she wouldn’t hold up.

A violent death was more than a shock; he understood this well. It was an invasive event that pried open the victim’s life in a sterile, analytical way that was like shining too much light onto a face or into a room. It bared all. It left the victim defenseless to explain the hidden bottles of vodka, the nude videos, the love letters, the stash of crisp hundred-dollar bills. It rolled the rock off the dark places of a private life. He hated to do this to Dorothy Enwright.

Boldt explained, “This is a lousy job at times. This is one of those times. I have to ask questions that imply I don’t trust the quality of Dorothy’s character. I want you to know right off that that is not the case. I would love to approach this a different way, but I’m afraid the truth is often more elusive than any of us would believe. What my experience has taught me is that none of us want to be here, and that by getting to the point we get it over more quickly, which is what we all want. Again, I do this only for the sake of getting to the truth, not because I’ve formed any advance opinions of Dorothy.”

“I think we understand,” the dark beauty said. Her mother nodded.

Boldt said, “If she was murdered”-at which point Harriet Magpeace twitched violently-“then we start first with looking at people close to her: a husband, a lover, a co-worker. Since the house may or may not be involved, itself a victim, we might want to look at repairmen, contractors, service providers. What I need from you is a snapshot of Dorothy’s life, including, but not limited to, the events that led up to the day of the fire.”

The older woman stared at Boldt sadly. “Yours is a morbid life, isn’t it, Sergeant?”

Boldt winced. He didn’t appreciate his work-his life-being reduced to such a statement, hated it all the more for the truth of it. Death was a way of life for him, it was true; but for Boldt it was seen as a means to an end, the only acceptable end being justice and the imprisonment of the party responsible. An investigator who relied upon the victim to tell the story-a man who even lectured on the subject-Boldt understood the intricacy of the relationship between victim and killer. That he exploited this relationship was nothing he tried to hide or make light of. That it often bordered on the grotesque was inescapable.

“I’m sure my mother means that sympathetically,” Claudia interjected, attempting to lessen the blow and come to her mother’s aid. “We certainly appreciate all you’re doing to find Doro’s killer-if that’s actually what happened. I have to tell you, the whole thing is a little fantastic. Arson? Murder? Doro? I mean, come on!”

Boldt was prepared for disbelief. He hesitated to tell them that no one-no one! — ever anticipated murder, except on television. Even the parents of known drug dealers were stunned with surprise to learn of their child’s death. Boldt said the few words he would rather have not said. “Can you tell me a little bit about Dorothy?”

The mother blinked rapidly. This was where business and the nature of that business collided. Claudia filled in quickly. “Doro was divorced two years ago. Bob’s an architect. Doro writes-wrote-for garden magazines and a few of the food magazines as well. She … it was Doro’s fault-the divorce.”

“It wasn’t her fault!” the mother snapped.

“She fell in love with another man, Mother. It certainly was her fault.” To Boldt, Claudia said, “The boyfriend died of cancer a few months after the separation; she lost him. It was awful. For everyone,” she added. “Dorothy lost the child in the divorce. She only got visitation rights. It was miserable.”

“She was miserable,” corrected the mother.

“But there was no hostility on her part. She understood the judge’s ruling, as much as she hated it. We talked about it. It’s not like she threatened Bob or anything.”

“She was a lovely girl,” the mother mumbled.

“You spend all those years with someone,” the sister said, “and you just expect them to be around. And then they’re not. There are so many things I want to tell her.”

Boldt nodded. This, too, he had heard a hundred different times.

Claudia said, “I know what you’re looking for, Sergeant. At least I think I do. But I just don’t see it. Bob would never, ever, do such a thing. Not a chance.” She hesitated, studied Boldt, and then rattled off Bob Enwright’s office and home phone numbers, knowing Boldt would want to talk with him. She was right.

The sergeant asked, “Did she own the house?”

“A rental,” the sister replied. The mother looked lost. Claudia said, “You were thinking insurance, weren’t you? She burned it for the insurance and got caught in the fire? No chance.”

“We consider every possibility,” Boldt said.

The mother said, “Someone murder Dorothy? Why?”

“That’s why the sergeant’s here,” Claudia said perfunctorily.

“Don’t patronize me, dear. I’m your mother. I know perfectly well what we’re trying to do: to give someone a reason to kill Dorothy. It’s absurd, don’t you see?” she directed the question to Boldt.

“The child had last visited the mother-”

“The day before,” Harriet answered.

“Two days,” Claudia said in disagreement.

That also was to be expected, Boldt thought. Take down five eyewitness reports of the same crime and be prepared for five different stories-occasionally, completely different stories.

Claudia said firmly, “It was two days before. Remember dinner, Mother?”

The mother squinted, considered this, displayed an expression of self-disappointment. “Two, you’re right.”

“The father picked up the child?” Boldt asked.

“Not typically. I would doubt it.”

The mother said, “No. Dorothy dropped him off.”

Claudia explained, “Doro was the more flexible of the two.”

If given half a chance, if at all average, they would lie to get custody of the child; they would be eager to conspire against the former husband. Boldt had come prepared to see through this. When they failed to make any such attempt, Boldt felt somewhat disappointed. Could Dorothy Enwright have committed suicide? he wondered. Watching out for the sister, he said, “Dorothy was a gardener. Obviously a good one. One would assume she stored fertilizer, used various fertilizers in her work.”

“In the shed, not the basement.” Claudia added, “She wasn’t in the habit of making bombs, if that’s what you’re driving at. Whatever happened to ‘innocent until proven guilty’?”

“Making bombs?” the mother inquired.

The daughter answered, “You can make a bomb out of fertilizer and gasoline, Mother. The detective is implying-”

“Nothing,” Boldt interrupted, cutting her off. “I’m not implying anything. Asking questions is all. It might be easier for everyone if we could just deal with the questions rather than jump to conclusions.”

“I see where you’re headed with this,” the victim’s sister cautioned, ignoring his suggestion.

“I don’t,” the mother interjected.

“He thinks maybe Doro was plotting something sinister. He’s a policeman, Mother. They’re all suspicious by nature.”

“Not by nature, by occupation,” Boldt corrected, meeting the daughter’s eye. “I think we’re off to a bad start,” he said. He directed the next question to the mother, hoping to avoid the sister for a moment. The mother glanced at her daughter disapprovingly. “Do you know of any work being done on the house? By the landlord, perhaps?” Boldt asked.

Harriet replied, “No. Not that I’m aware of. She was quite happy there.”

Wanting this over, Boldt asked Claudia, “Any boyfriends out of her past? Anybody you think I might want to speak with?”

“I know you’re only doing your job, Sergeant. I respect that. I apologize. I just don’t think there’s anything to tell you. Doro was a wonderful, loving person. She didn’t deserve this.”

“We don’t know, do we,” the mother asked, “that it was my Dorothy? In the fire, I mean. You people haven’t confirmed that, have you?”

This was the sticking point Boldt had hoped to avoid. The tea and scones were delivered, sparing him an answer. The pit in his stomach had deepened, changing to an ache. The room had lost its glitter; the waitresses had lost a step. The piano sounded a little out of tune on the low end. The glue that held his world together had softened. He felt tawdry, cheap, a gumshoe who lacked empathy and compassion. A woman was dead. No one wanted to talk about it-or even admit it, for that matter. She had had a sad life of late and a sad death and Lou Boldt understood damn well that all the investigating in the world wasn’t going to bring her back. The mother would go on living with her hope that it had been someone else in that fire. The sister would go on defending where no defense was necessary. Boldt would go on with his questions. The victim ruled all his investigations, but ultimately it was not about the victim, it was about the killer, about balance.

Boldt had seen a dead cat by the side of the road earlier in the day, and it had overwhelmed him with a sense of tragic loss. In his mind he transferred Dorothy Enwright, the woman in the photographs before him, to that same place on the side of the road-naked, face down, struck dead. He sat there with his notebook, his pencil, and a haunting determination to find the person responsible. Death made people give up; it made Lou Boldt sit up. He felt bad about that; he didn’t like himself. Dorothy Enwright had no obvious enemies. Boldt could create a dozen scenarios accounting for that fire and that woman in it, but only because he did so day in and day out; his job was to create such situations and pursue them to their outcome, to turn a woman like Enwright into something he could work with.

“You’re not eating,” the mother told him.

“No.”

“You don’t like it?”

Did she mean the scones or the investigation? he wondered, realizing quickly that it didn’t matter; he had the same answer on the tip of his tongue. “No,” said Boldt. With the victim’s finances, correspondence, and paperwork lost in the fire, Boldt requested permission to contact Dorothy’s banks and auditors and look over the accounts. The mother saw nothing wrong with that and agreed.

“I have an image of Doro out in her garden,” said the sister. “You know? The sunlight slanting across her face. She was quite beautiful. Hands working the soil. Weeding, planting. She laughed a lot, Doro did. Used to,” she added. “The last two years took a lot out of her. But I think of her as laughing nonetheless. You know, I have this image, and I don’t even know if it’s real or something I made up to remember her by. And the funny thing is, it doesn’t matter, does it? It’s the image I’m left with. The smile. The contentment at being outdoors and working with plants. The joy of being a mother. She loved little Kenny.”

“It broke her heart when the judge took Kenny away,” the mother said. “I don’t think she ever fully recovered.”

“Was she depressed, drinking, anything like that in the days before the fire?”

Claudia cautioned, “She did not kill herself, Detective. Not intentionally, not accidentally. She kept her gardening supplies in the back shed. You’re out of line.”

“Is that a yes or no to the depression?” Boldt asked, irritated. He kept seeing the cat by the side of the road, then Dorothy Enwright. If there was one thing he had learned early as a homicide investigator, it was how fragile life was, how easily lost. Men stepping out into traffic. Kids playing on the rocks in the hills. Women going home at night to an empty house. One day here, the next day gone. And if the death came with questions attached, it was Lou Boldt’s job to answer them, or to help others to answer them for him. All he needed was a few answers. He couldn’t picture the woman setting fire to a rental house. People did not use fire as a method toward suicide. But he had other problems with Dorothy Enwright. Of chief concern to him was why she had not run from the house when it caught fire; it had not exploded. She had been seen walking inside the house, presumably of her own volition, moments before the blaze. He thought she must have had an opportunity to escape, given the way the fire had burned from a central core outward. It had not trapped her by sealing the doors. Why then had she not escaped?

Had there been someone else in the building with her?

“Dorothy was having problems,” her mother told him, “but she was surprisingly cheerful, wouldn’t you say, dear?”

“Absolutely,” Claudia agreed. “She was a remarkable woman, Detective. She had a great attitude.”

“Who would want to kill her?” the mother blurted out, too loudly for the soft buzz of conversation in the Garden Court. Heads turned. Fortunately, only Boldt saw this.

The two women who sat with him did not see. Their eyes were filled with tears.