Middle Of Nowhere

CHAPTER 30

Upon returning to his job, LaMoia thought the excessive workload facing him must have been some kind of cruel joke, perhaps cooked up by Boldt to prove how hard things had been for him during LaMoia's absence. There were nine active investigations on LaMoia's desk. He had responded to two of the crime scenes and taken reports from the other seven. At the same time, he was wearing the hats of Burglary detective, Special Assaults detective, and Homicide sergeant. And he'd only been on the job for two days.

When some guy identifying himself as Ragman called from Colorado Corrections and mentioned Boldt by name, LaMoia focused his attention on the message being relayed-the name of a possible accomplice.

He scribbled the name Bryce Abbott Flek into his notebook

Ragman said, "Brother Flek owns a pink sheet the length of your arm. A juvie gone bad. His more recent history here puts him in double jeopardy. One more felony conviction and the guy does fifteen without parole."

"Flek," LaMoia repeated, reading from his notes. Having spoken to Boldt earlier, he knew about the failed interrogation out at Etheredge. He had asked a friend at InterCel to identify the cellular phone number called from the prison, and then had spoken with Matthews ten minutes earlier to deliver the bad news: The number had indeed been cloned.

Ragman warned, "His jacket is littered with references to what one officer called 'the volatile nature of his personality.' There's also a reference to a psych evaluation in here, although I don't have my hands on it. Way it looks to me: This is a dog that bites. Little brother is tame by comparison. This one took out two uniforms trying to arrest him back in ninety-three- both hospitalized, one with a broken neck."

"Broken neck?" LaMoia repeated, yanking his feet off his desk and sitting upright in the chair. "You have aliases for this mope?"

"You got a sharp pencil? It's a long list. Better yet, what if I fax you as much of this as I can?"

"Is he on WestCrime?" LaMoia inquired.

"NCD," Ragman said. The National Criminal Database. "You guys lined out with that yet?"

"You bet. We've got access to WestCrime, NCD, and all the federal databases."

"Then you're set on the aliases," Ragman said. "I'll still fax you the liner notes, in case that stuff didn't get posted to the database. The way it shakes out: He's a thief with a fondness for anything electronic, a violent son of a bitch when he wants to be, and I guess that's most of the time. Just so you and your boys know to wear vests."

"Got it," LaMoia said, drawing a thickening ring around the name Bryce Abbott Flek to where it dominated the page.

He called Boldt, who said, "Can't talk on the cellular. I'll call you back from the airport." The line went dead.

He accessed the NCD database and downloaded both Flek brothers' criminal records. Bryce Abbott Flek operated under six aliases, all ending in "ek," or "eck." LaMoia typed in the various names, all separated by commas. He tried SPD records, King County records and state records. No arrests. He tried the man's Colorado motor vehicle registration-a 1991 blue Dodge van. A subsequent request with the licensing bureau kicked five unpaid in-state parking tickets, all within a three-block area of Ballard. The first of these parking tickets was dated a year earlier, the same month as David Ansel Flek's conviction. The pieces started falling into place. LaMoia grew increasingly excited.

Fingers drumming, he considered various means to pinpoint the address and locate Bryce Abbott Flek. One option was to drive around the three-block area looking for that blue van with Colorado plates and put it under surveillance when they found it. He would then wait for Flek to show up and hope to follow him back to an apartment, put that under surveillance. The time and manpower requirements seemed enormous.

He tried a friend at US West. No go: Not one of Flek's aliases kicked for a current listing. No great sur prise-if the man was using a cloned cellular, why bother with a Ma Bell installation?

If Flek was renting a room or an apartment, LaMoia had no way of finding out where. There were no tax records and no utility bills, at least not that he could locate. He racked his brain for some other way to find the guy, and to find him fast, before the news leaks Boldt had warned of reached Flek, and he heard of his little brother's contact with Seattle police. If and when that happened, Flek was certain to go underground, perhaps not surfacing again. He debated whether to put out the word on the street-he had Flek's mug shot, courtesy of the NCD database. He thought of liquor stores and Domino's Pizza, delivery boys. He called a friend at a credit bureau-no credit cards, no loans, no bank accounts under any of the aliases.

In the end, using the patrol force to search Ballard for any blue vans appeared the best choice. He put the word out over the Mobile Data Terminals network- notifying nearly two hundred patrol cars simultaneously.

An hour before Boldt and Daphne's plane touched down at SEATAC, LaMoia was notified by an SPD radio car that a blue van with Colorado plates was currently fueling at a gas station in Ballard, not five blocks from LaMoia's current location. LaMoia had issued the Be On Lookout for the van with little hope. To his surprise, he had been notified of four blue vans in the past thirty minutes. This radio call represented the first mention of Colorado plates. Within minutes, LaMoia confirmed the registration: Bryce Abbott Flek.

About that same time he double-parked his fire-engine red 1968 Camaro with a view across the street. The gas pump's black hose hung from the van's tank like an elephant's trunk, the driver nowhere to be seen. He spotted the cruiser patrolling a block away, hailed them over the radio and ordered them to park out of sight. He then radioed dispatch and ordered all SPD patrol cars kept out of a ten-block area surrounding the gas station. He didn't want anything, anyone, alerting Flek to their presence. When he requested additional unmarked cars, the dispatcher had the audacity to laugh at him. "Request is noted," the uncharacteristically amused dispatcher announced. LaMoia understood the subtext: In terms of winning unmarked cars and plainclothes detectives as backup, he was in this alone.

The Quik Stop gas station teemed with activity. Some customers pulled up to the pumps; others parked, shopping for a soda, a bag of chips, or a quart of milk. But by his count, every customer arrived and left by automobile. He observed no bicycles, no pedestrians. This latter realization prompted a second study of the back of a big man already a half block behind the Quik Stop and moving away. The man wore a thigh-length leather jacket, blue jeans and high-top running shoes. The telltale sign that got LaMoia's adrenaline pumping had nothing to do with clothes but instead, the lack of anything carried. No paper or plastic bag. No soda. It seemed conceivable the man had purchased a pack of cigarettes or something small enough to be pocketed- it was no crime to leave a Quik Stop on foot-but his recollection of the case file suggested otherwise: The burglar was believed to monitor police radio bands, probably on a portable scanner, and LaMoia had impetuously cleared the area around the Quik Stop by ra dio, naming the gas station's location. Foremost on LaMoia's mind: Where had this guy come from? He had not seen anyone arrive on foot in the last few minutes.

More to the point, according to his criminal records, Bryce Abbott Flek stood six foot one, and weighed in at two hundred pounds. That fit well with the man now nearly a block away.

LaMoia needed someone to watch the blue van while he pursued its apparent owner on foot, but he didn't want the car's police radio to communicate about it. The real Flek, whether or not he was the man on foot, might be listening in, wandering the aisles of the Quik Stop, wondering how to play his situation.

Realizing he had to take a chance, LaMoia grabbed the radio's handset and informed the dispatcher he was switching to one of the four "secure frequencies" used by SPD. Illegally modified scanners could not intercept these digitally secure frequencies. He requested the dispatcher to assign a patrolman from the nearby cruiser to take up a position with a view of the blue van and to report any activity. Naming the cross street behind the Quik Stop-the intersection where the blue-jeaned pedestrian was headed-LaMoia requested that two cruisers position themselves as backup, bookending the street. This done, he took off on foot.

He did not run, but instead walked with a brisk, long-legged stride, calculated to quickly close the distance between himself and his mark. He had not thought to bring along a portable radio from the squad room, and so he was on his own-"cloaked," "in the dark." Only his cellular phone connected him to the world outside of Bryce Abbott Flek-if that was in fact whom he was following.

By the time his suspect reached the intersection and turned right, LaMoia had closed the gap to half a block. Following several weeks of inactivity, LaMoia felt awash, invigorated by the pursuit, hungry for confrontation. He loved his job. There was nothing quite like slamming a mope up against the wall and slapping a pair of bracelets around his wrists, taking another piece of infectious waste off the streets, out of the game. Duty called. He felt positively electric with anticipation.

The first blow came from behind-a devastating show of force, unexpected and overpowering. An openpalm smack to the back of his skull, delivered with such ferocity that his chin bruised his chest, and a whole series of muscles at the nape of his neck ripped loose. He heard his gun clink to the sidewalk, the dull sound of metal on cement, useless where it lay. That blow to the head stunned the muscles of his upper back and numbed his spine to where his arms suddenly weighed upon him like sandbags. He attempted to turn around to fight back, but his arms hung at his side, swinging like gorilla limbs, and the man behind him directed him otherwise, smashing his face into the brick wall twice and then working a volley of rabbit punches from just above his hip points into the center of his back ribs. The man hit, intending to do harm, intending to quickly eliminate LaMoia from the field of play, swinging through the punches at the brick wall, with only LaMoia's flesh and bone in between. The man's knee bruised LaMoia's coccyx, and the heel of his foot found LaMoia's instep to where, as he let go, the sergeant sank to the sidewalk, bloody and broken, a mass of misfiring nerve endings, his lungs burning, his legs unable to support him.

He never even saw the man's face.