No Witnesses

TWENTY

On Wednesday morning, two weeks since Daphne had involved him in the case, Boldt was in the midst of dealing with the first ATM withdrawal when LaMoia arrived and made his announcement. This first hit had come at eleven-thirty the night before: Twelve hundred dollars had been withdrawn in three consecutive transactions. The nearest surveillance personnel had been eleven blocks away. By the time this undercover cop reached the first ATM, a second machine was hit, this time another ten blocks away. The dance had continued for ninety minutes, at the end of which thirty-six hundred dollars had been withdrawn, the police never anywhere near a transaction. It was an embarrassing display of Boldt’s lack of manpower; Shoswitz was chewed out by Captain Rankin, and in turn spoke his mind to Boldt: They would have to do better …

Boldt thought one answer might be the ATM card’s PIN number. Lucille Guillard, the Pac-West bank executive, had informed him that the PIN number had indeed been requested by the account holder. People requested specific numbers because they were easier to remember; and they were easier to remember because they held some significance to the account holder.

Therefore, Boldt reasoned, this number-8165-held some significance to the killer. It was a piece of evidence that Boldt intended to follow.

Data processing was presently searching these four digits against phone numbers, driver’s licenses, vehicle registration numbers, Social Security numbers, other credit card PINs, active credit card account numbers, and bank account numbers. He even went so far as to request a list from the Washington State Department of Revenue for all individuals born on August 1, 1965, or January 8, 1965. The Postal Service was to provide the names of any individuals owning post office box number 8165. He used the tax assessor’s office to generate the names of residents at any addresses that included 8165. Somehow this number meant something to the killer, and Boldt was pursuing every possibility.

LaMoia charged through the security door that accessed the fifth floor’s Homicide unit, looked around quickly, and shouted to Boldt, “I found a witness!”

Boldt led him around the corner and into the privacy of a tiny interrogation room that smelled like sweat and cigarettes. When LaMoia became excited, his brown eyes grew large, his face thinned, and his voice cracked.

“Okay, so here’s the thing. I’m doing an interview, right? I mean typical WASP housewife: Volvo. Hardwood floors. You know the type. And when I introduce myself at the door, she kind of sags, right? Like she’s seen cops before. Maybe too often. I’m thinking her husband’s a drunk, or a gambler, or is a regular at Vice. Or maybe he’s using or dealing or something, and she’s worried sick. We get talking about Foodland-because she’s one of the ones shopping-one of the ones on the list of thirty-four-and she’s noticeably upset, right? And she is a major strikeout. I mean, before I can ask her the question, this one is already shaking her head at me and glancing toward the door. You know the kind? She wants me gone. I’m thinking maybe the husband is expected home early. Then I’m thinking maybe it’s her-maybe she’s getting some on the side. What do I know? But she’s a mess. And then I hear the back door, and the mother practically does an Exorcist thing with her neck-like an owl-trying to cop a look into the kitchen, but I beat her to it, right? and who do I see but her?”

“Her?” Boldt inquired.

“Our vidqueen, Miss Foodland. The one with the floppy hat and the pierced ears.”

“Her?” Boldt repeated, excited now.

“You’re thinking there’s no way I could make her considering we hardly got a look at her in that video-but what I’m telling you: You know me, right? I know women. What can I say? We’ve all watched that video how many times? And this MacNamara girl had the exact same moves. Right down to the way she turned her head when she saw her mother talking to me. And another thing: She knew I was a cop. You know what I’m saying? You can feel it. She knew-and she wasn’t sticking around to small talk.”

“Did you interview her?”

“Hell no. A minor. The mother seeming the protective type, figured you’d want to maybe try for a warrant. See if we could turn up the clothes we saw in the video.”

“We’d never get a warrant,” Boldt said.

The detective reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Striker took care of it. Said because she’s a minor and we’d never get a look at her record without someone like him requesting it.”

“Her record? A minor?” Boldt asked.

“She’s a klepto. Seven arrests for shoplifting in the last six months. And I mean klepto! Drugstores, department stores, hardware stores-you name it. Big-ticket items. Stuff it’s damn near impossible to get out of a store without getting caught. So maybe it’s a game for her.”

“But if she’s a kleptomaniac-” Boldt began.

“Then chances are she was lifting, not putting poisoned soup onto the shelves.”

“Which means she’s not our suspect. But she may have seen him. The timing is right, after all. There’s only a seven-second envelope during which someone put those five cans of soup onto the shelf.”

“When can we interview her?”

“Do we know that the girl will be home?”

“She’s on a juvenile home-release program. Summer school and not much more. Comes home from school and stays put. At least, she’s supposed to. That Foodland tape is time-stamped. Holly was a bad girl; she wasn’t supposed to be in that store.”

Boldt explained, “If she’s been picked up for shoplifting this many times, a quiet chat in her mother’s living room is not going to get us anywhere.”

“You’re probably right,” LaMoia agreed.

“What I’d like to do is hit the house hard. A really thorough search-something to shake her up. Something she hasn’t seen. And I want her watching. I want her there. Then we bring her up here to the box and let Razor read her the gospel. Then I chat her up and hopefully she sits up and flies straight. And if she doesn’t, we book her on violation of home release; we print her and strip-search her and toss her into a jumpsuit and let her spend the night in the juvenile pen. Then,” Boldt said, “we go at her again.”

“You’re certainly in a charitable mood,” LaMoia replied.

Within the hour, Boldt sat down with one Mildred MacNamara, mother of their possible witness.

Boldt held up the large, clear plastic bags containing her daughter’s clothing, and if the mother had herself been a detective assigned to the fifth floor, she might have also noticed that the various labeling of the bags lacked a case number-this because the Adler blackmail was still not in the Book, was still in many bureaucratic ways an unofficial case. “This hat and jacket were found in your daughter’s wardrobe.”

“Why aren’t we on the juvenile floor?” she asked.

“Because I’m Homicide, and I’m running this case. And your daughter is a possible suspect.”

“Dear Lord …” She broke down. Boldt slid a box of tissue in front of her. “What about her attorney?”

“As lead detective, I’m in a pretty unique position, Ms. MacNamara. What I say goes-pretty much, anyway. Which means that if I say Holly walks out of here with no charges, then that’s what happens.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I need to talk to your daughter, as an adult, on her own. Have you ever known an attorney to simplify a situation? Think about that: They may help you, but they always complicate matters. In matters of juvenile crime, there are so many gray areas right now-legalistically-that if we bring in the attorneys, we’re both going to be here for a month of Sundays, and chances are I’m going to be required to charge your daughter just in order to speak to her. I don’t want that; Holly doesn’t want another charge on her pink sheet, and I have a hard time believing you would either.”

“Of course not! But how-?”

“Holly violated the terms of her most recent sentencing. We have proof of that. And as I’ve read it, that was pretty much a last shot for her.” The woman confirmed this with a nod. “So basically all I have to do is charge her and eventually I’ll get my interview with her. But, cards out on the table, I can’t wait until ‘eventually.’

“So what I’m asking for is written permission from you for me and some of my colleagues to ask her a few questions. It isn’t much, from your side of this-I know that. All I can do, as a parent, is give you my word that if there’s any way to avoid charging her, then that’s the way it’ll work out. But there are no guarantees,” he added reluctantly. Honestly came at a price.

There was no need to tell her that the search of her daughter’s belongings-an exhaustive one-had offered no proof of any connection to Pac-West Bank or an ATM account. The search had, however, uncovered a hidden stash of stolen goods from CDs to jewelry-the knowledge of which Boldt kept to himself, to be used as a crushing blow should he need it. This single lack of discovery seemed to support LaMoia’s theory that Holly MacNamara had been in that aisle within seconds of the drop having taken place, but was not herself responsible.

“May I call my husband?”

Boldt told her she could do whatever she pleased, but repeated to her what he had told Betty Lowry two weeks earlier, that the husband might overreact, and if so, Holly’s chances for clemency were lost.

“I don’t know …,” she gasped, and broke into tears again. Boldt found room to really hate himself. He waited her out, and when he saw the faintest of nods, slid the minor’s consent form in front of her and asked her to press hard. “It’s in triplicate,” he said, “like everything else around here,” hoping to win back a smile, but admitting to himself-correctly, as it turned out-that there was little hope of this.

“I don’t like you, Sergeant. And if you’ve lied to me, if you’ve tricked me,” she said pushing the form toward him, “then you’re no better than the people you go after.”

Boldt took the form and hurried from the room.

Holly MacNamara sat quietly with Daphne on the other side of the cigarette-scarred table in interrogation room A. Boldt and LaMoia faced them, and everyone sat in uncomfortable straight-back metal chairs. The large plastic bags containing the hat and the dark coat with the hidden pockets sewn into its hem were in full view, like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Boldt switched on the tape recorder, named those present, and stated the time and date.

Striker joined them a few minutes late, his prosthesis clicking nervously, and Boldt added his name to the tape, too.

Holly MacNamara met Boldt with a steely-eyed determination that he hoped Miles would never adopt. Too hard for her young age, too brooding, too suspicious, and far too self-confident given her present situation. She had dark eyebrows, high cheekbones, and long, dark hair. She had some acne that she hid with cosmetics, and her bottom teeth held a retainer. A child in a grown-up’s game. She wore silver studs in her ears, and was quite confused when Boldt opened the discussion by asking her to remove them.

It didn’t help Boldt to connect her to the woman in the video, but it served to disarm her and set her slightly off-balance, which was extremely important to the interviews.

Boldt said, “On the twenty-first of June, during your house detention, in-store security cameras captured you at the Foodland supermarket over on Broadway. You were dressed in clothes similar to these,” he said pointing to the bags, “and your behavior suggested you were trying to avoid these same security cameras.”

“So?” Holly MacNamara asked.

Daphne, who would play the role of friend for this interrogation, advised her, “You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to, but it’s best just to go ahead and answer the easy stuff.”

“Maybe you were shopping with your mother,” LaMoia suggested, giving her a way around the implication of criminal activity. “You were in the soup aisle, do you remember that?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Try to remember, Holly,” Daphne encouraged.

“Soup?” she asked. “I don’t think so.”

Boldt nodded to LaMoia, who turned on the Sony Trinitron and ran the video that Shop-Alert had dubbed for them. They watched it together: Holly watching the screen, the police watching Holly. When it was just at the point where she crashed into a cart being pushed by a man or a woman-it remained impossible to tell-LaMoia stopped the tape.

“Holly?” Boldt asked.

Maintaining her suspicions of all of them, she glanced toward Daphne, who nodded gently.

Boldt clarified: “We don’t want a made-up story from you, we want and need the truth.”

Striker’s hand ticked several times as he told her, “If you cooperate, there will be no charges against you stemming from this discussion. It’s like immunity. You know what that is; I don’t have to explain immunity to you. Whatever you tell us is off the record, and just between us. But Sergeant Boldt is right: We need the truth. You should also know that we’re prepared to play tough if that’s the way you want it.”

Boldt said, “You saw something just now that made you remember.”

“The thing of it was,” she began in a flurry of words. “Like maybe I’d taken some Better-Veggie-the drink, you know? Like maybe I was thinking about buying some of that.”

Boldt conveyed his doubts with a single penetrating look.

“So maybe I wasn’t going to buy it,” she admitted. “I wasn’t. I’d lifted three cans. And I’d lifted some fruit salad, and something else-I don’t remember. Like there I am, pretty loaded up, and I’m thinking about some V-8, which is the same aisle as the soup, but it’s a hard grab because of that overhead eye, and then there’s this guy-” She caught herself and stopped.

Boldt felt the hairs on the back of his neck go erect. Go on! he wanted to scream. What guy?!

As if hearing him, she met eyes with him and said, “This guy came out of nowhere. I hit his cart-really hit it, you know? And this look he gave me-right through me, you know? Like he knew everything, and I’m in his way. Like he’s a lifter, too, or else a security guy. And I’m thinking I’m busted, but all he wants is me out of the way. And like I’m gone. But I look back, you know, and what’s he do? He drops a couple cans out of his coat into his cart, walks a few feet, and puts them on the shelf! So like I’m thinking, Oh, shit, there is a security guy nearby. He’s dumping his stash. And if he’s dumping his stash then I’m sure as hell dumping mine.” She winced, taking them all in, clearly fearing she had gone too far.

“It’s all right, Holly,” Boldt assuaged her. “You’re doing fine.”

“Doing real well,” Striker echoed.

Daphne asked, “Do you remember anything at all about this man?” Start general; work specific. It had been several weeks-how much could they expect?

“You mean like what he looked like?” she asked nervously. “No way.”

“His clothes,” LaMoia suggested. “You say he dumped his stash out of a coat?” The streetwise LaMoia used her language, making it sound as if it were his own.

“A raincoat. It’s summer,” she reminded them. “You only lift when it’s raining, ’cause like where are you going to stash it when it’s hot out?”

LaMoia said, “A raincoat.”

She nodded. Boldt wrote it down. It’s a start.

“What kind of raincoat? Hip? Conservative? Khaki? Black?” the detective asked.

“Green maybe. Long. Like those guys in westerns. You know?”

Young kids made some of the best witnesses. The girls recalled clothing down to the buttons-male and female. The boys remembered a girl’s face and her body shape.

“A green greatcoat,” LaMoia repeated.

“A greatcoat, yeah. I didn’t see his face.”

“A hat?” LaMoia asked. There had been a glimpse of this individual in the video, though it blurred in freeze-frame.

“Yeah. Baseball cap, I think. Kinda like mine.”

“How ’bout his shoes?” LaMoia tried.

“Boots,” she spurted out. “Not shoes.”

The way it flew out of her, Boldt trusted this. “Boots,” he repeated, making note of it.

“Cowboy boots,” she said. “And blue jeans!” she announced proudly, somewhat surprised with herself.

“Like mine?” LaMoia asked, showing off his Tony Lamas and his pressed blue jeans.

“No. They were worn jeans,” she said. “Like frayed at the bottom, you know? And brown cowboy boots. Muddy maybe. I’m pretty sure they were brown. Maybe they were work boots. Hiking boots. I don’t remember.”

Mud, Boldt thought, recalling how thick the mud was at Longview Farms. He caught Daphne looking at him, her eyes flashing with a heightened energy-she believed the witness; she thought they had a live one.

LaMoia asked, “Jewelry? Tattoos? Scars? A limp? Anything distinguishing?”

“The boots,” she repeated proudly. “I sort of remember the boots.”

“Did he say anything to you? Did he speak to you?”

“No way. But that look he gave me was heavy. Like he was going to kill me for running into his cart.”

“Did you see him again, anytime after that?” Daphne asked.

Holly MacNamara shook her head.

“Take your time,” LaMoia encouraged.

“In line, maybe,” she said to the detective. “The checkout line. He was buying something.” She said definitively, “You always buy something.”

“Do you remember what he was buying?” Boldt asked.

“I’m sure!” she said sarcastically. “I don’t even remember if I saw him in line,” she admitted. “I was in a hurry. I just wanted the hell out of there.”

Boldt leaned to Daphne and whispered, “Get her started on the employee photos-Adler, Foodland, Shop-Alert. Then mug shots.” Data processing had compiled DMV photographs of the Foodland employees. The other companies had their own, for security reasons.

The video, Boldt thought. Was one of the Shop-Alert security cameras aimed down the line of cash registers?

What was that guy’s name? Don? Dave? Ron?

Gus at Shop-Alert, the Redmond-based security company that handled Foodland, greeted Boldt as if he were an old friend. He escorted him quickly to the back room and the plethora of electronic equipment. “The minute I got your call, I started running the data looking for the guy you described. Been at it for the better part of an hour. He’s good, Lieutenant. Very good.” He triggered a key, and a screen-saving pattern left the monitor, replaced by the shadowy black-and-white flickering image of a tall man wearing a Mariners baseball cap and a greatcoat. “This is about all we have of him. And if you watch him closely,” he said, allowing the image to advance in a broken, mechanical movement, “you see he’s using the person at the register in front of him as a shield from the camera. See? He moves right along with this heavy woman-so the camera doesn’t catch much sight of him. He knows what he’s doing. Like I said: He’s very good.”

Two aisles behind the suspect, Boldt caught sight of Holly MacNamara, though she too was screening herself from the camera.

“What about his face?”

“We never see it. I’ve tried some enhancement. I tried some of the other time sequences, but we hardly ever see him. He knows this system well. Too well.”

“An employee?” Boldt let slip, his mind whirring.

“Or a regular,” Gus hypothesized. “Or a guy who’s studied the hell out of it. Done his homework.”

Boldt wrote down the exact time that was electronically stamped into the lower corner of the screen. “Register six,” he noticed.

“Six, seven, and eight are Foodland’s express lanes,” Gus confirmed. “Shoplifters like express lanes.”

Using this time stamp, Boldt hoped it might be possible to cross-check the register tapes and identify the exact items made during this particular purchase.

When he returned to the Public Safety Building, he assigned Bobbie Gaynes the task, and two hours later she entered his office cubicle announcing that with the help of Lee Hyundai, she had found the cash register receipt in question. She handed him an enlarged photocopy grainy from the enlargement, the computerized lettering angular and spotty but still legible. It listed four items purchased at Foodland’s register 6.

Of the four items, listed as CANDY and ICECRM, three were preceded by a four-letter producer code that Boldt had long since come to recognize: ADFD-Adler Foods.

“Adler candy bars,” he whispered under his breath.

“Maybe he intended to eat them, Sergeant,” Gaynes said optimistically. “We don’t know for certain what he has in mind for them.”

“Yes, we do,” Boldt replied ominously. “I’m afraid we do.”