Middle Of Nowhere

CHAPTER 3

" It's a difficult situation," Boldt said.

"So talk me through it. Is it the strike, or this case?" his wife, Liz, asked.

"Both," he answered. The Sanchez assault was nearly twenty-four hours old. No arrests. No suspects. He feared a black hole.

The Boldt kitchen confirmed the laws of chaos, a study in the science of randomly placed objects: dinner food, dishes, pots and pans, plastic toys scattered as an obstacle course, a high chair, a booster seat, stained dish rags. Something sticky had been spilled by the pantry door. A path of mud and pebbles led from the back porch, despite the door mat. Boldt stood at the sink, elbow deep in dishwater.

By nine o'clock they typically would have had the kitchen cleaned up-with or without each other's help-but their daughter Sarah's upset stomach had kept them busy these past several hours. With both kids finally asleep, husband and wife tackled the cleanup.

"Wish that dog would stop. Does it ever shut up?"

"Maybe they wouldn't have bought an attack dog if you guys hadn't gone on strike," Liz teased.

Boldt groaned. She was trying to make light of it, but it struck a nerve. "It's not a strike, it's a sickout," he corrected her.

Liz policed the countertops and the kitchen table, which looked as if a food fight had taken place. Boldt watched her in the reflection of the window above the sink. In his opinion, she still needed about twenty pounds. The cancer had won that as well as her hair. Most of her hair had returned, but not the weight. And the hair looked wrong, because she had always worn it longer than that. Boldt wrestled with the carrots burned onto the bottom of the saucepan. That dog just wouldn't stop. If Boldt hadn't been a cop, he might have called one.

Liz brushed against him as she shook crumbs out of a rag. He enjoyed the contact, any contact at all, anything to remind him of her presence.

"So what's bugging you?" she asked, adding quickly, "besides our neighbor's dog?

"The Flu. I realize it's complicated." A new sports stadium had gone over budget. The mayor instituted cost-saving measures. The new police chief cut overtime pay for detectives and, at the same time, restricted offduty work for uniforms because one off-duty cop had embarrassed the department. "But it has messed up everything," he said.

"Listen, I hate to see you like this." She offered, "Maybe it's worth thinking about how much you, personally, can do about any of it."

"But that's the point! It gets worse every day. Now Phil and the other captains are effecting a slowdown. Doing just enough work to get by, which isn't enough, of course. It's their way of supporting the sickout."

"But if you're working as hard as always, what more can you ask of yourself?"

"Thanks," he said sincerely.

"Is there anything positive to focus on?" Forever Liz. Spiritually determined.

He answered, "Homicide's bathroom stays cleaner than I've ever seen it. The coffee lounge no longer stinks of burned grounds. Precious little."

"All you can do is-"

"Pray?" he interrupted. He didn't need to hear this right now.

She grimaced. "Not what I was going to say," she said.

He apologized, but she walked away and went about the cleanup.

He didn't mention that the eerie emptiness of the fifth floor, the vacant halls and office cubicles, reminded him more of a school in the midst of a fire drill than a homicide squad. The hallways and offices of Crimes Against Persons required bodies to occupy them-like suits in a storefront window.

Boldt caught sight of himself in the window's glass, and was troubled by the growing exhaustion that hung beneath his eyes. The extra caseload brought on by the sickout meant fourteen- hour work days. Investigators in any department accepted whatever case was handed them. Vice, narcotics, burglary, it didn't matter.

He glanced up again. The window, fogged by steam, offered only a blurred image, but he could still see his face. He could still pass for late thirties. Mid-thirties in low light. In truth, forty had come and gone a few years ago.

These days he was making an effort. No more neckties bearing catsup stains, no more permanent wrinkles in his khakis. A single comment from Liz about how "the run-down-professor look adds ten years" had cleaned up his act. Since then, he'd looked like a new man.

The burn came out of the bottom of the pan, but his elbow ached.

"You know I'll be supportive," Liz said, now tossing the wet wash rag into the sink. "But, Lou, please, try to see that it stays outside the family. I'm afraid for you, for us-" She didn't need to complete the sentence. Those threatening phone calls of the past few nights were on both their minds.

As if on cue, the phone rang. Liz looked over at her husband. They had talked about just letting it ring, to allow the machine to pick up, but Liz instinctively lifted the receiver from its cradle and held it out to him.

Boldt dried his hands and accepted the phone. Liz pushed through the swinging door and into the family room.

"Hello?" Boldt said into the phone.

For a moment he believed whoever had called might have hung up. But life these days just wasn't ever that simple. "Hello?" he repeated.

He heard music, not a voice. His stomach turned: another threat? Pop music-a woman's plaintive voice. "Hello?" he repeated a third time. At first, he took it as wallpaper-background music-and waited for a voice. But then he listened more clearly. It was Shawn Colvin, a recording artist he admired, whose lyrics now gripped his chest. "Get on out of this house," the anguished voice cried out in song.

Boldt understood, though too late: it wasn't a threat, but a warning.

The best explanation for why he ripped the phone from the kitchen wall was that he'd forgotten to let go of the receiver as he ran into the family room to alert Liz, failed to let go until he heard the explosion of breaking glass from the other side of the swinging door. At that instant, both the cop and the husband and the father in him warred over his having locked up his handgun in a closet safe in the bedroom-family policy whenever he crossed the threshold into their home.

He burst through the swinging door, his wife's screams ringing in his ears. He heard a car racing away at high speed. Liz lay on the floor in a sea of broken glass. She wasn't moving.

"No!" he hollered, lunging across the room toward his fallen wife. He heard one of the kids wake up crying. Liz had a strange mixture of fear and confusion in her eyes. He would not soon forget that look… it seemed to contain an element of blame.

He reached out to her and rolled her onto her back. Her forearms bled. Her face was scratched, though not cut badly. She mumbled incoherently at first.

"Shhh," he whispered back at her.

"I thought it was a bomb," she mumbled.

Underneath her lay a brick. It had been painted policeman's blue.