Middle Of Nowhere

CHAPTER 66

Boldt's plan came down to the next few hours. If he was to turn circumstantial evidence into incriminating evidence, he believed it would happen before morning.

He lived twenty minutes from Pendegrass, and he spent much of the time with his eyes trained on his rearview mirror and his right hand gently touching the videotape in the seat beside him. He couldn't be sure, but he believed the same car that had been following him all night-to Chapman's, downtown, and to Pendegrass's-was still back there: a narrow set of headlights with a blue cast to the light itself.

Riorden and Smythe lived the closest to him, and he assumed one of them would be awaiting his return home. Either there would be an offer to trade tapes, or violence. He doubted any call would be placed to his home with an offer-even Property cops knew better than to leave a paper trail.

As he pulled into his driveway, a Seattle mist filled the air, fog passing so low to the earth that it gently rinsed everything, everyone, in its path. He ran his wipers even though it wasn't completely necessary: He didn't want any surprises.

He turned off the car, that dreaded sense of foreboding enveloping him, as well as a deepening sadness that cops were involved. He loved the uniform. He loved the department and what it stood for. It was as simple as that.

He picked up the video and slid it beneath the seat as he and LaMoia had planned. Once outside the car, he used the remote to lock all doors at once. He slipped the bulky keys into his pocket, wondering what felt so wrong. After three or four thoughtful steps he realized what it was.

The silence.

The neighbor's dog did not bark at him, did not scratch at the fence. If Pendegrass, Riorden and Smythe had been the three men who had assaulted him a week earlier-which he now believed-then they knew well enough about that dog. Its silence became all the more frightening.

Pendegrass had taken the bait.

"Hello?" Boldt called, lugging that walking cast along with him. His hand sought out his weapon. The back door to his house suddenly seemed extremely far away.

He reached the bottom of the back steps. It was dark up there on the porch. There wasn't a light on in the kitchen or the back of the house, which was not the way Liz would have left it. Someone had shorted the circuit, blown a fuse. He didn't want to go up there, but didn't want to drag the cast around to the front door, even though there would be street light there, and neighbors who might see him or hear him if he called out.

He heard a car door thump shut behind him. One street away. Connected, or coincidence? he asked himself. Adrenaline filled him, for he'd been here before in nearly this exact situation. Only now there was no dog to come to his rescue. Now he carried this cast on his leg.

He glanced back toward the car, wondering if he could beat the arrival of whoever was coming through the woods toward him-whoever had parked a street away and was now breaking twigs and brushing past bushes to reach him. With a good leg he might have made it. But as it was, he simply stopped and listened.

He had believed that Pendegrass would demand an exchange of tapes. He'd made contingency plans, but he didn't want to exercise them.

The sounds from the woods stopped. Whoever was there was quite close now. Boldt switched the weapon to his left hand, grabbed the wooden rail with his right, and started the climb up the back porch stairs, one clumsy step at a time. He slipped, let go the rail and fished his keys out of his pocket. Only a few feet more to reach the back door. He wanted to get the key in the lock and the door open as quickly as possible.

This was how Sanchez felt, he decided. Someone had cut the lights, the walk from the garage to the house impossibly far.

He fingered his keys.

Again, noise came from behind him in the woods.

Boldt turned at the top of the stairs. "I thought you were going to call," he shouted, eyes straining to see in the dark.

"I thought you would have headed straight downtown," the muffled voice of Pendegrass said. He stepped out from the thick shrubbery that separated Boldt from his backyard neighbors. "That would have been the right card to play. Coming home. That was a stupid move."

He heard someone immediately behind him, in the dark of the porch. "Riorden?" he asked.

Whoever was back there didn't answer. That troubled him. If it was negotiation they were after, why remain silent?

Pendegrass stepped closer, barely visible in the dark. He wore a balaclava over his head. "You think too much," he said, adding, "Sometimes a person is better off just accepting the way things are."

"You haven't seen Sanchez," Boldt reminded him. "To me, that's the way things are."

"She's getting better, I hear," Pendegrass said. "Movement in both legs. She'll pull through this, you watch, and then what'll be the point of all the fuss?" He repeated, "What'll be the point of all these heroics on your part? Who'll care? Flek did Sanchez, and Flek's dead. Case closed."

"If only it were true," Boldt lamented.

"And that's worth getting the shit beat out of you?"

"Already had the shit beat out of me," Boldt re minded him. "Is that all? And here I was thinking you're going to kill me."

"Giving up the tape buys you a simple beating. Call me generous." He had reached close enough for Boldt to make out the dark clothing and the ugliness of the faceless balaclava.

"I thought we were going to trade."

"That's what I mean: you think too much," Pendegrass said. "And don't be thinking about that gun. You're outgunned here, old man. Drop the gun. Keep it at a simple beating." He waited only a moment before ordering Boldt for a second time to drop his weapon. But Boldt held onto his gun, albeit with his left hand.

"Is that Riorden or Smythe behind me?" Boldt asked the night air. "Because whoever it is… he gets my first shots."

"Drop the gun. You think that vest is going to save you?" Pendegrass asked.

"It forces you to aim," Boldt replied, disappointed that Pendegrass had spotted the bulk of the vest.

"I'm aiming right at your head," came a deep voice from behind Boldt. Smythe.

Chills ran down his spine. Boldt didn't know the man well, but he knew him to be a crack shot. He tossed his weapon into the grass at the base of the steps, mentally marking its exact location. "You missed the first time you tried," Boldt said, assuming the attempt on his life had come from Smythe, not Pendegrass, who drank too much to be a good shot.

Pendegrass said, "I thought that was your friend from Colorado. Your dead friend."

"Have you informed Smythe here, that if he hadn't been so greedy and had returned the rifle as Krishevski ordered you to do with all the other rifles… if he hadn't been so stupid as to use it on me… maybe I'd never have been the wiser about any of this?" Boldt saw Pendegrass's hand twitch-the one holding the sidearm. Body language, Daphne would have told Boldt. The bulge at the man's ankle filled in the blanks. It was a drop gun- a second gun. And its purpose became clear.

Boldt had half expected a confrontation like this. But only then did he understand Pendegrass inviting Smythe along. It wasn't for the man's marksmanship. Boldt sensed a hesitation in Pendegrass that he blamed on how dark it was up on the porch. The man's handgun carried a barrel-mounted silencer. He'd come prepared.

Turning his head slowly, Boldt asked the shadows, "Why'd he ask you along, do you think?"

"Shut up," Pendegrass called out, a little loudly for a residential neighborhood. If Boldt could keep him at that volume, maybe someone else would notice the dog had been silenced.

Boldt answered his own question. "One guy against a guy in a cast? How hard can that be? I'll tell you why he invited you-"

"Shut up!"

"He needs it nice and clean. Needs it to look like I shot you after you shot me. Only it's Pendegrass who shoots us both." He looked back to Pendegrass. "Isn't that right, Chuck?" He spoke again to the dark porch. "You sure you want to be aiming at me? I'm not armed. But he is. And look at his ankle. He's carrying a drop as well. What's with that?"

"Shut up!"

"Because otherwise… if I get shot, if there's an officer down with no one to blame… there's gonna be one hell of a manhunt. If you'd hit me the other night… it might have been blamed on Flek. But Matthews interviewed him before he died. Did you know that? Now you boys have made a mess of it. And Chuck here intends to clean it up and keep himself in the clear."

"That's bullshit, Rod," Pendegrass called out.

Boldt reminded him, "He had me inside his house, tape in hand. Why'd he let me go? Why'd he let me come back here?"

"My wife!" Pendegrass answered quickly. He ordered, "The tape, Boldt. Now! No more of this! I want that tape."

"It's in the car," Boldt said.

"No fucking way," Pendegrass barked.

"Search me. Ask him," he said motioning to the porch. "He was here waiting for me. He saw me get out of the car." He turned slightly. "Did I have a videotape on me?"

For a moment there was only the drone of an airplane far off, and the low constant hum of traffic.

"I didn't see it on him," Smythe confirmed.

"Untuck your shirt," Pendegrass ordered.

Boldt did as he was told. No tape fell out. "I'm telling you, it's in the car." He added, "But then again, I wouldn't shoot me just yet, if I were you. What if I dropped it off at a friend's on the way over?"

From Boldt's right, a third voice. "Then I'd have seen you," Riorden said. Also wearing a balaclava, he stepped around the corner of the house, there to block any attempt at an exit to the street. To Pendegrass he said, "He didn't stop anywhere."

The third part of the puzzle. No more surprises.

"No one's going to shoot you, Boldt," Pendegrass stated. "All we want is that videotape."

"We were going to trade," Boldt reminded.

"Change of plans. You ever get any idea to breathe a word of any of this, and Matthews ends up like Sanchez or worse. That's my leverage on you. That, and the tape. That's my promise."

Boldt felt another chill race down his spine. Pendegrass had made the wrong threat. He had also just made an admission of guilt by mentioning Sanchez. Boldt had much of what he wanted. "Front seat of the car," Boldt said. "Take the tape and get out of here before I lose my temper."

Pendegrass chuckled, amused. "I'm quaking all over." He moved toward the Crown Vic, though never taking his eyes off Boldt. He tried the passenger door, but found it locked. "Keys," he called out to Boldt.

Boldt let the keys dangle from his right hand, thinking that if Pendegrass or the others had half a brain they would wonder why he'd opted to have his keys out and ready in his right hand. Smythe might think he'd intended to open the back door of the house, but then why not switch hands with the gun when Pendegrass had walked out of the shrubs? But they weren't thinking: That was just the point. They hadn't been thinking when they'd stolen the guns off Krishevski's tip about the strike; they hadn't been thinking when they'd broken Sanchez's neck in an attempt to rough her up and get her off the I.I. investigation; they hadn't been thinking when they'd tried to cover it up by making it look like Flek. Guys like this didn't think-they reacted. It was all they were capable of. "Thing's got a remote," Boldt informed him, letting the keys hang from his hand. "I'll do it for you."

He lifted his right hand, pointing the small remote device toward the car the way people aim clickers at their televisions. Straight-armed and determined. Again that eerie silence, punctuated only by the keys ringing together like tiny bells. Boldt pushed the button. The doors to the car clicked open. Pendegrass pulled on the door handle and opened the passenger door. He leaned inside.

Boldt pushed the remote's other button. As the car's trunk popped open, Boldt shut his eyes, collapsed to the steps and rolled down them.

LaMoia came up out of the car's trunk lobbing a phosphorus grenade, a police issue semi-automatic clutched tightly and ready to fire. Boldt heard one shot; he wasn't sure from where. He caught hold of his fallen handgun on the roll, and opened his eyes to the devastating pure white glare of Pendegrass coming out the passenger door, burning brightly in that light like an angel. He had let go of the videotape, and it floated through the air in an eerie slow-motion arc. One hand shielding his eyes, casting a triangle of black across his brow, he raised the tip of that silencer toward Boldt, who saw no choice but to fire. He aimed low, tracking his shots as two holes appeared in the side of the Crown Vic, and a third found the man's knee, bludgeoning it into a bloody pulp.

The force of a ton of bricks hit Boldt's chest, knocking the wind out of him. He'd been shot.

"Drop the weapons!" he heard LaMoia order through his wired teeth. A siren cried in the distance. "On the ground! Now! No one gets hurt!" his sergeant shouted. They had two witnesses to Pendegrass's mention of Sanchez: Boldt and LaMoia. Even if other charges failed, they had all three on assaulting police officers, attempted murder and deadly force.

Boldt felt down and determined he'd been hit in the vest, not flesh. It didn't feel that way. His breathing was labored, he couldn't speak.

The phosphorus died down, hissing like a winded runner, and Boldt could see again.

Smythe was down, fatally wounded-Riorden's doing, not LaMoia's. In testimony it would come out from Riorden that he and Pendegrass had in fact intended to kill both Boldt and Smythe, just as Boldt had guessed. Boldt for obvious reasons; Smythe for his stupidity and greed.

Pendegrass lay bleeding, passed out against the car, the fallen videotape just out of his reach, his fingers still stretching for it.

LaMoia, soaked through with sweat, kept his weapon aimed at Riorden's back. The man was leaning spread out flat against the wall of the house, bleeding from his left arm. "You got him?" LaMoia inquired, indicating Pendegrass.

"I've got him."

"It's a mess."

"Yes, it is," Boldt agreed.

LaMoia hopped out of the trunk, walked over to Riorden and placed the barrel of the weapon against the base of the man's skull. "The location of the Denver video," he said ominously.

"John," Boldt complained, "that's not how to do it."

"We did this your way, Sarge. We do this other thing my way." He jabbed the gun. "You give up the video and your shooting of Smythe goes down as a stray bullet. With all this other shit, you'll still get life, but you won't get lethal injection." He added, "You've got three seconds to decide. One… two…"

"Chuck has it!" the man spit out onto the wall. "Locked up, I think. I don't know."

LaMoia backed off, pulled his cell phone from his pocket and hit a button. "You there?" he asked, when a voice answered. "It's Pendegrass. And you've got all the probable cause you need."