No Witnesses

TWENTY-SEVEN

“Come up the park steps to the guest house. No lights. I’ll meet you there.”

Click. Daphne hung up the phone, checked the clock: twelve midnight. Owen had risked a call. That alone told her enough about his state of mind; the palpable fear in his voice told her more than she wanted to know. She jumped up off the stool, quickly buttoned her jeans, and left her project on the counter. It was the affidavit requesting the New Leaf bank records that she had meticulously reviewed with Striker over the phone. In order to mark where she had left off, she pointed the lead of the pencil to the word intractable.

Leaving the houseboat, she took special care to arm the alarm system, locked up, and hurried to her car.

Made somewhat frantic by that tone of voice of his, she drove around the lake, crossed at the Fremont Bridge, and took Leary and Market out to Shilshole Marina, entering the park and winding her way up the series of switchbacks until she reached the picnic ground on the left. She parked deep into the area, and it was not until she climbed out into the darkness, the traffic below whining eerily, that she became aware of her isolation. She took her bearings, allowing herself a quick pang of fear-the woods were dark and she was still far below the estate. Her fears were only partially alleviated by the presence of her handgun. She had never seen a handgun as any kind of solution. Had there been any choice, she would have gladly entered through Adler’s front gate. But Adler could not be seen having any contact with the police-the threats were adamant in that regard-and so she felt obliged to approach the estate from the back side, as he had asked of her. And to do so secretively, without being seen.

She had been on several long walks with Owen during which they had descended through the forest trail to this same picnic area, and farther down to where the same road looped back around and lower again to the condominiums that lived uncomfortably, like unwanted in-laws, on the shore’s edge bordering the marina. She had never hiked it in darkness, never by herself-had never climbed the trail’s precipitous steps, but only descended.

Her key chain carried a strong penlight, and despite Owen’s instructions to the contrary, she felt tempted to use it. She always carried her small handbag with her because of the weapon and identification it contained. It usually hung at her side suspended by a thin strap. But it was also capable of being secured to a belt, European-style, which was how she presently carried it.

This, the park’s steepest and longest stretch of steps, had not been maintained since the city park system, citing budget constraints and angry over Adler’s challenge of a right-of-way across his property, had abandoned its maintenance several years before. For his part, Owen claimed they had closed the stairs after settling a lawsuit out of court. The result of this abandoned maintenance was an impossibly steep and dangerous set of rotting railroad ties engulfed by untold species of junglelike plants. At a few of the more treacherous switchbacks, the route offered an occasional steel-pipe handrail, though they were not to be trusted. She entered the trail and began the arduous climb, finding more light than she had expected. The going was slow, and she stopped repeatedly to catch her breath and contain her frantic heartbeat. Halfway up, she wished she had made other arrangements.

It was during her third rest break that she at first sensed, and then heard, movement deep within the woods, realizing to her considerable alarm that she was not alone.

“Hello?” she called out reflexively, then chastised herself for doing so. Despite her suspicions over the past two weeks, she still failed to think like a victim. Ever a cop, never a victim. Within seconds of her outcry, she began moving again, aware that an object at rest offered an easy target. It occurred to her that it was faster to descend than continue to climb, but the sound had come from below and to her left-on the trail itself, and not very far back.

She moved quietly, her ears alert, telling herself that a deer, a dog, even a squirrel might cause such sounds. She stopped again, and there it was: but this time above her and to her right, nearly the opposite direction as before.

Struggling against the idea, she convinced herself that someone, not something, was out there, and he or she knew that she was on this trail.

The psychologist in her realized that fear could be dissipated only by acceptance, not challenge. To challenge fear was to succumb to paranoia and terror, both of which she had experienced in the last several weeks. She focused on turning off all thought and allowing the fear to rise in her chest. There was no choice but to take this back route. Tempted to cry out, she channeled this release into her legs and bounded up the trail at an all-out sprint. On the run, she reached into her purse, removed the handgun, and with the touch of a finger ensured that the safety was engaged. She welcomed the weapon defensively-a scare tactic if needed.

Finding her pace, she moved fluidly, following the steep switchbacks. Her eyes now fully adjusted, she kept watch for a place to duck off the trail and hide, deciding it would be foolish to lead a possible pursuer to Owen’s guest cottage. She had three strong candidates for who was back there: first-and the most likely, it seemed-a reporter; second, whoever had been following her; third, Harry Caulfield. But it was a possible combination that charged her with energy: Had it been Harry Caulfield following her and watching her?

Her foot punched through rotten timber and she fell hard, looking out at a short, level stretch of trail connecting to another set of steps. Hearing her pursuer even closer, she ducked into the woods. She was quite near the top, as little as forty yards to go, the surrounding terrain quite steep, the trail wedged between a V of rock and offering the only clear way up.

She hid herself against a cedar tree and muted her keys as she sought them from her pocket, interested solely in the penlight attached to them.

Below and to her right, her pursuer approached up the trail, not twenty yards back. She visualized the area through which she had just passed, settling her nerves with deep breaths and planning her actions like a hunter in a blind.

The next thing she heard was ragged breathing and the rapid approach of footsteps. And then complete and total silence-the drumming of blood in her ears. Her hands shook, belying her self-confidence. Again, she trained her fear into the center of her chest, allowing it a physical presence in her like some kind of demon, and her hands steadied.

How close was he?

No sooner had this thought entered her mind than the looming shape of a man appeared within a few feet of her, stealthily moving up the trail. He, too, appeared on edge-he had lost track of her.

She sprang with incredible force and speed, driving her heel into the side of his knee, her right shoulder into his left, and propelled him to the trail’s dirt floor. In this same steady motion she delivered her words loudly and with great authority: “Police! I am armed. Do not move!” The flashlight came on brightly under her direction and found him facedown. His hands were empty of any weapon, instead clutching that painful knee. He moved his arms slowly for her, like the wings of an awakening bird.

“Easy,” he announced. “I’m on your side.”

She knew the voice, though she could not place it. The light followed his motions. “Mackensie?” Formerly Detective Mackensie of Major Crimes. Recruited by-“Mac?” she asked again, though it was clearly he. She staggered back a step and made her weapon ready and returned it to her purse. “Why are you following me?”

“Following you?” Mackensie inquired, adding his own emphasis, working his knee carefully and sitting up. “Don’t compliment yourself.” Trying his knee again, he said, “Jesus, Matthews, you coulda broke it.”

“What are you-”

“What am I? What are you doing here? I’m perimeter patrol. Kenny’s got one of us on all four sides of the estate. You’re lucky it wasn’t Dumbo you tried that on-he’da broke your collarbone and then some.”

“Patrol?”

“He is the boss, Matthews. The CEO. Hell, he doesn’t even know we’re out here. But here we are.” He stood up and brushed himself off. “What’s left of us,” he said sarcastically. “In case you haven’t been paying attention, there’s a wacko out there drilling holes in his soup cans. It’s our job to make sure he doesn’t try to drill a hole in the boss. Comprendo?”

“Kill Owen?”

“It’s one of his stated aims, right? Or are you going to try and throw some psychobabble shit at me that says this boy is going to play by the rules? Don’t do that, okay? Not with me. Play Dr. Ruth with someone else.”

Mac Mackensie was so much the opposite of what she had expected that she felt momentarily speechless. Fowler had stolen him away from the department less than a year before for a huge salary, a company car, and six weeks’ paid vacation. Mackensie was a good cop-or had been. He was a prime example of the brain drain being effected on SPD by the private firms.

“What exactly are you doing here?” he asked in a lower voice, touching her hand and convincing her to extinguish the flashlight. “I mean I know you two … you know … but I thought … I was under the impression that …”

“It’s not that,” she fired back at him, realizing that sex was the only possibility in Mackensie’s perverted mind. “It’s an emergency,” she explained. “He wouldn’t say what. And if you make a crack about that, I’ll snap your other knee.”

“If you tell anyone about this,” he warned, defending his manhood, testing his knee and finding it sound, “I’ll make some serious trouble for you, Matthews. And that’s no shit.”

“Go lift your leg on a tree, Mackensie. I’m terrified.” She added, “Do not follow me any farther!” and broke off at a run.

As she approached the summit, she wondered why she had failed to consider the possibility of an attack on Owen, why this had not come up in her discussions with Clements. Had it been kept from her because of her personal connection to Adler? She moved faster, her imagination explaining the reason for Owen’s call. Had there been an attack? She ran now. Was that why Mackensie was patrolling the woods? The thought of losing Owen terrified her. And this fear of losing him seemed to further define her feelings, to illustrate to her just how committed to him she was. Since the start of their relationship, she had taken on more work, hiding. Afraid to get too close. Her volunteer work at the Shelter, her contact with her girlfriends had suffered as well. She thought about him all the time, and she ran from those thoughts. But now she ran toward him, terrified by the thought of a world without him.

She swung open the cottage door and spotted his distinctive silhouette against the blank pane of a darkened window, hurried across the room, and threw herself into his arms. “Thank God,” she said.

He held to her tightly and said how nothing was worth their separation, how worried he was about losing her-and she laughed that they could be thinking the same thoughts. Perhaps, she thought, she finally knew love.

After several minutes of holding each other, they settled into a comforting stillness and a satisfying warmth. Later they untangled themselves, and she said selfconsciously, “You didn’t call me for this.”

“It’s nice,” he admitted.

“Then what?”

“He called me.” He stated this so matter-of-factly that Daphne nearly missed the content. She studied his face in the ambient light from the main house that penetrated the large window. “I wasn’t sure what to do.”

“Called you?” Although she had clearly heard his words, the professional in her vied for time, attempting to fit this behavior into something she understood.

“I answered the phone and there was this silence on the other end. It’s funny, because I normally would have hung right up-wrong number, prank call, one of Corky’s friends too bashful to speak, a phone solicitation. But I didn’t hang up. Somehow, I knew. Don’t ask me how.”

She studied his face to measure his state of mind. How far could she dig? He seemed rattled, but okay. This was her chance to hear the truth. His mind would betray him; his memory less clear. Embellishments, omissions. She faced these with all witnesses.

Adler said, “‘It’s me,’ he said, ‘the one you’re after. The faxes.’ And I couldn’t speak. I froze. I’ve been in dozens, maybe hundreds, of complex negotiations and I’ve never frozen like that.” His next words came out with difficulty. “He said that I took everything he loved away from him, that I had ruined everything, that I had lied and cheated long enough. He told me that I could stop it. And that if I failed to, he would take everything away from me. He said something like, ‘How simple it is for you to stop it. And yet you won’t, will you? And you know why, don’t you? We both know why-’” Adler’s voice caught and he looked away. In doing so, his face was blanketed in shadow and she could not make out his features, only the top of his head, which he hung in shame.

“Owen?”

“He called me a coward-which I am, of course-”

“That’s absurd and you know it.”

“He asked if I had heard the late news. He said, ‘It can get much worse. It will get much worse. Time is running out-you know that, don’t you? Tic, tic, tic, tic, tic.’ He made noises like a clock. He said, ‘It will be too late to stop it.’ And he hung up. Strange thing is-I never said one word. He might have been talking to a baby-sitter, for all he knew.”

A cold, penetrating chill started at the back of her scalp. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Never a word.”

She grabbed on to his shirt, slid off the couch, and pulled him to the floor with her. “Daffy!” he protested, but she quieted him with a “Shh!” and led him crawling across the floor and into the windowless bathroom. She pushed the door shut, locked it, and turned on a pale night-light that colored the white walls cream. Her clothes were damp from the exhausting climb up the trail.

“What are you doing?” he asked tenderly, grinning, amused with her, fingering a lock of her hair that hung in her eyes.

She glanced at him hotly, afraid, fumbled through her small purse, and pulled up the antenna on the cellular phone. She questioned, “How did he know it was you on the phone, Owen?” She keyed in the phone number too hastily and made a mistake, forcing her to cancel several digits and reenter them. Angrily she asked, “How did he know?”

Adler’s mouth slacked open.

“Did you come by the tunnel?” she asked. Again, he failed to answer.

Adler had purchased two water-view estates on Loyal and had connected them into one. The former landowner, a product of the paranoia of the early sixties, had installed a bomb shelter in his backyard, at great expense, with an underground tunnel connecting it to the main house. Owen now used the bomb shelter as a wine cellar, and had also connected the guest house to it via a tunnel so that guests could share access to the fine wines and, more important, avoid the miserable rains when going back and forth between the two houses. It was a gimmick, and used rarely, because Owen Adler rarely entertained overnight guests with his busy schedule. Still he loved showing off both the tunnel and his extensive wine collection, and he used the tunnel whenever possible-even in nice weather. “Did you-”

“Yes, the tunnel,” he managed to say.

Boldt was not home. She apologized to Liz for calling late, hung up, and called Boldt’s pager number, keying in her cellular phone number when the recording asked for it. For two minutes she and Owen Adler sat shoulder to shoulder in an awkward silence on the bathroom’s tile floor.

Her cellular phone chirped, and she answered it instantly. “It’s me,” she told Boldt. “I’m at Owen’s. He was here, Lou-Caulfield-he may still be here.”

“What?” Adler exclaimed.

“Right!” she said into the phone. “We’re in the guest house. We’ll wait.”

“Corky!” Adler said, thinking of his daughter. He came to his feet, but Daphne caught hold of his shirt.

She disconnected the call. Still holding him back, she told her lover, “I’ll go.”

Adler’s face contorted. “Here?”

She spoke rapidly. “He knew it was you on the phone, Owen. You said so yourself.” She waited briefly for this to register, but Adler was a mass of confusion. She said impatiently, “He knew because he was looking-he was watching you.”

Adler sprang for the door, but Daphne blocked him with a straight arm and ordered him to lock the doors behind her. “It’s you he wants. I’m going for Corky.”

“To hell with that,” he said, shoving her aside abruptly. He threw open the door and ran for the tunnel.

Daphne followed, but failed to catch him. The concrete tunnel consisted of two long subterranean passages that met outside the wine cellar’s vaultlike steel door. The passage to the main house was noticeably older, its lights more widely spaced and therefore darker.

When she did catch up to him, he was in Corky’s room, his arms wrapped around his eleven-year-old, who was caught halfway between waking and dreaming.

Corky wrestled loose of her father’s constraints, jumped out of bed, and assaulted Daphne, leaping into her arms, “Daffy!” she exclaimed, using Boldt’s nickname for her that followed her everywhere.

Carrying the heavy child, who hung from her neck awkwardly, Daphne edged to the windows and pulled the drapes. Seeing this, Adler helped her, and the darkened room became darker still.

“What now?” he asked her, helping Corky off her.

“You stay right here,” Daphne said defiantly. “I’ll get the lights and lock up.”

This time Adler nodded.

“Are you cooking breakfast?” Corky asked her. This was the euphemism they used when Daphne spent the night.

“No, not tonight,” Daphne answered. She met eyes with Owen. His eyes were filled with tears.

Boldt understood immediately the difficulty he faced. If he descended on Adler’s estate with ten patrol cars and the entire late-shift ID unit, and if the estate were being watched, the involvement of the police would be rather obvious. On the other hand, if the Tin Man were somewhere on the property and Boldt passed up an opportunity to contain him and apprehend him, then he was throwing away innocent lives.

He checked his watch: His squad’s shift had ended at midnight, forty-five minutes ago.

He reached LaMoia at home, and ten minutes later, Bobbie Gaynes at her apartment. He tried Danielson’s apartment, failed to reach the man, and had the dispatcher page the detective, hoping for a call back on the cellular. He called in five patrol cars, each with two uniforms, and deployed them roughly around the perimeter of Adler’s estate-not an easy task given the terrain and layout of the Loyal area. One officer from each team was to stay with the car, the other to make ready to work his or her way toward the main house, if requested.

He roused Shoswitz and prosecuting attorney Michael Striker and informed them of the developments. It was during his conversation with Shoswitz that he learned that two different ATMs had been hit that night and yet another three thousand dollars withdrawn.

Boldt arrived at Adler’s nine-thousand-square-foot home ahead of either of his detectives. He pulled Daphne aside and the two talked over Boldt’s plan for several minutes. “It’s pretty low-profile at the moment,” Boldt explained. “In case things change and we need it, Shoswitz is arranging for KOMO’s traffic chopper for air surveillance.” The news radio chopper-its services often lent to SPD-would also carry a SWAT sharpshooter, but Boldt left that part out. Daphne abhorred the entire approach of SWAT-shoot first, talk later.

He was shown to Adler’s sumptuous office, which was hidden behind a moving bookshelf. The decor reminded Boldt of an English manor home. The office window faced out to the water and the precipitous terrain leading down to Daphne’s unseen car parked far below in Golden Gardens Park. “The only point of view into this office,” Boldt observed, “would be from the lawn or one of those trees.”

They looked out at the broken teeth of the jagged horizon. In private, Daphne told Boldt about her encounter with Mackensie in those very woods, and Boldt weighed what to do about it. As Gaynes and LaMoia arrived separately, but nearly at the same moment, Boldt was on the phone to Fowler. The security man dodged any direct answer about the estate’s surveillance and said he would look into it. Boldt, furious, advised that he look into it quickly. “We’re going into those woods with our safeties off,” Boldt explained. “You had better get your people out of there.”

By the time a nervous and perspiring Boldt had quickly briefed his two detectives, Kenny Fowler called back. “There’s no one currently deployed,” Fowler told him. “But we have a slight problem on this end-might be technical. Might not be. We can’t seem to raise Mackensie.”

With Daphne’s help, they searched the house thoroughly, checking every possible hiding place, and then locked it up tightly and armed the security system. Outside, LaMoia took the high ground, assigned to check the gardens and shrubs and landscape. The three of them used secured police-frequency radios that connected them to one another and with the perimeter patrol personnel, who were put on an armed-and-dangerous alert. Boldt and Bobbie Gaynes took the hillside, while Daphne patrolled the home’s interior.

They started down the steep hillside trail together, but quickly separated, because it became obvious that the only trees offering a view of Adler’s office were perched near the very top of the incline. Boldt went left, Gaynes right.

He checked behind him frequently, watching for the beam of her flashlight as it swept the trees and ground cover. From training, he mentally divided the area into a number of grids and approached his search as he would a homicide crime scene. Methodically, he moved from grid to grid, patiently alert for some sign of recent activity.

He found just such a sign about twenty yards into the thicket-deep enough that when he turned, he could no longer see the light from the efforts of Bobbie Gaynes. The stems of a large plant were crushed, and a few feet farther along he noticed a skid mark where a boot or shoe had recently kicked a rut into the fallen brown pine needles. Beyond this, he encountered yet another swath of broken twigs through a thicket. It smelled moldy deep in the woods; it smelled of decomposition and too much moisture and not enough sunlight. Boldt used the radio to softly announce that he had picked up signs to follow. He advised Gaynes to return to the main trail and descend slowly, alert for indications of where the man may have departed from it. LaMoia was to stand guard at the top of the trail in case they flushed the suspect.

Boldt moved slowly now, painfully aware of the easy target he offered by carrying a lit flashlight. Within a few yards his trail ended at the trunk of an extremely climbable tree. The bark was scarred pale where a clambering shoe had scraped it clean. Boldt shined the light up the tightly spaced branches. Considering himself too big and too clumsy for such acrobatics, Boldt nonetheless snapped his weapon in tightly, stuffed the light into his coat pocket so that it aimed up, illuminating his ascent route, and began to climb.

He did not have to climb far. Fifteen feet up, he got his first look at the house. He could see LaMoia pacing impatiently at the top of the trail steps near the guest house. He climbed up higher and discovered a large, heavy branch that ran nearly level and probably offered a fairly comfortable perch. The flashlight revealed that here the dark tree bark was excessively shredded yellow. Someone had spent some time here. He did not climb up onto the branch, for he wanted to leave it for ID, who were waiting for a call while parked only a few blocks away. But there seemed to him little question as to the quality of the unobstructed view this offered of Adler’s home office.

He aimed the light back down to the ground, with a little voice calling to him never to look down, and experienced a brief sensation of vertigo. But it was as he was planning his descent through the branches that his eye caught the flash of something bright. Suddenly his planned route meant nothing to him. He descended out of the tree as effortlessly as would a chimpanzee.

From above they had looked like yellow pine needles, and yet unnatural and misplaced. Boldt counted three of them-not pine needles at all. Each chewed to a pulp on both ends-discarded as the Tin Man had sat patiently up in this tree biding his time, waiting to place his call. Toothpicks. Three of them. Freshly chewed-damp to the touch at one end, dry on the other.

The radio spit static and the urgent voice of Bobbie Gaynes said, “Sergeant, I need you down here. I’m about thirty yards lower than where we split up. I’m waving my light.”

Boldt covered his own flashlight and saw the beam from hers reflected in limbs of the trees. “I’ve got you.” He took note of his surroundings so he could find this same spot again. He contacted Bernie Lofgrin’s ID crew and told them to come onto the property and to wait with LaMoia at the top of the trail. LaMoia copied.

Boldt contacted Daphne and asked her to relay to prosecuting attorney Michael Striker that they needed an immediate access to the calling logs of all the area cellular phone companies. If it had been Caulfield in that tree, and if he had made the phone call from up there, then it had to be from a cellular phone. If Caulfield had a cell phone, then he had an account; if he had an account, he had a mailing address. Striker was to contact Boldt the moment he located a record of any such call.

The park trail was rough going at a run. Boldt punched through a railroad tie, crashed, and recovered himself, but not without winning some bruises to show for it.

Gaynes was fifteen yards off the trail into the woods, in an area that seemed to Boldt nearly directly beneath the observation tree. As Boldt approached, she asked, “Did you have dinner?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re lucky. I just left mine in a bush over there.”

Boldt did not think of Gaynes as having a tender stomach. He reached her. He could smell the metallic bite of fresh blood in the air well before he saw the body. She lowered her light onto Mackensie’s corpse. The branch that had been used to cave in his face was lying a few yards from the twisted wreck of a body, and Boldt thought that the man might have survived that blow had his hands not been cleaved from his arms at the wrist with something incredibly sharp. But there they lay-at the ends of his arms looking like a pair of deerskin gloves. Mac Mackensie, knocked unconscious by that branch, had bled to death, his face now the color of a bedsheet.

A few minutes later when LaMoia arrived, he said to Gaynes, “Come on, help me. I think we should give him a hand.”

At three in the morning, Boldt drove Daphne down to where she had parked her car in the picnic area.

“You’re awfully quiet,” he said.

Daphne nodded.

“You’re just tired,” he tried. “It’s late.”

“I’m wide awake,” she answered. She could not think how to explain what she felt to another person; she barely understood it herself. As a psychologist, she wanted to be strong and able to quickly overcome such pain-to adapt. But as a woman, a human being, she ached not for Mac Mackensie, but selfishly, for herself. Then she thought that Lou Boldt, of all people, would understand. “Five minutes either way,” she whispered hoarsely, her voice giving her away.

Boldt pulled the car next to her Honda and left it running. “And it would have been you,” he said.

She nodded, and she felt the choking sensation in her throat, she felt the tears, and she hated herself for this reaction. She leaned forward and Boldt put his big hand on her back and rubbed her there, and it comforted her. “That was too damn close for me,” she said, sobbing now. “And it’s me I care about, not Mac Mackensie-can you believe that? And you know how he went out? He went out being a jerk. A real goddamn prick. And that’s the last thing he ever was-a jerk. A real jerk. Listen to me!”

He continued to rub her back, and when his hand reached her neck, she felt the tension spill out of her and she found her self-control again. “Sorry,” she said.

“Whenever a cop-someone I know-goes down, my first sensation is gratitude. Glad it wasn’t me. My turn. I always felt guilty about that-until now. I’ve never talked about it with anyone, never shared that part of me. Not even with Liz. My second thought is for the deceased-it’s not that I don’t care; but my first reaction is a huge sense of relief. I dodged another one-something along those lines.”

“I was there,” she said softly. “I heard someone in the woods. First to my left, then below me, then later to my right. I heard two people, not one. He was there. For all I know he was coming for me when Mackensie caught up to me. For all I know he was right there.” She looked over at him then with surprise in her eyes. “For all I know it’s been him following me all along.”

“Or Mackensie for that matter,” Boldt suggested.

“No,” she said, “Mackensie was just doing a job. After he left me, he didn’t make it far.”

“He probably heard something. Wandered into the woods. Caulfield jumps up and hits a home run into the side of his face. The hands were an afterthought, I think. Maybe Mackensie tried for his piece. Maybe he grabbed for a radio or something. I think Harry used the hands to buy himself time-no time to tie him up, so he cuts them off. Something that simple. The question I have to ask is what the hell kind of knife is he carrying around?”

“You’re trying to say there was nothing I could have done. You’re trying to make it right.”

“It wasn’t you who disobeyed the signs.” Boldt pointed through the windshield to where the headlights caught the parks department sign. It read: FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY, PLEASE STAY ON THE TRAIL.

Daphne parked her car down the street and across from the houseboats in a space for which she paid seventy-five dollars a month. It was a well-lighted lot, which lately made her appreciate it all the more. She turned off the car, locked it, and made the trip to the houseboat at a brisk pace. It was after three-thirty in the morning and all of her neighbors were locked up and dark.

She reached the door, unlocked and opened it, and headed directly to the home security box that she found flashing its violation, indicating her entry. She rekeyed the device, locked the front door, and turned on more lights than necessary, keeping her purse at her side while she made a full trip around every room, checking coat closets, even under the bed, and confirming to herself that she now qualified fully as a paranoid.

She convinced herself that at this hour any sane person would head straight to bed, but on this night it was not for her. She considered a bath, but not tonight. Sleep would not come for another hour or so, and to try to force it would only delay it more.

She unbuttoned and unzipped her pants, slipped off her bra without taking off her shirt, washed her hands twice in a row, and poured herself a glass of Pine Ridge.

She set down the wine, pulled out the stool, climbed up onto it, and let out a long and meaningful sigh. She was in the middle of a second sip when her heart fluttered. She felt her eyes go wide, and acting on instinct, she was suddenly off the stool, pants still unfastened, over to her purse … her shoes … the alarm … out the door … lock it! Feet not fully in the shoes … running … shoes flapping … refusing to look behind her … running … up the gangway … past the mailboxes … down the street toward her car … A dog lunged from a shadow, and Daphne screamed at the top of her lungs and ran faster … faster. Into the parking lot … straight for the car … unlock it! Inside! Relock it! Start the engine … She pulled out of the lot, spinning gravel behind her tires, and fastened her seat belt on the fly. Ran a red light, horn sounding … Ran another …

She would take a hotel room. Charge it to the department, for that matter. She would not return to her own home until it was light again. She would not tell anyone if she did not find some other piece of evidence. And perhaps-she allowed herself to believe, now that she found herself in the safety of the vehicle-perhaps she remembered wrong.

But the image in her mind stung her with certainty: She had left the mechanical pencil pointing at a word. What was the word? What was it?

Intractable-she remembered!

And now that same pencil was sitting alongside her papers. Pointing nowhere. Which was not how she had left it.

And that was wrong.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Boldt stood before the bathroom mirror shaving when he heard Liz climb out of bed. Miles was still asleep. As he shaved, she slipped off her nightgown and pressed her warm, sleepy body against him.

“Honey?” he said cautiously.

“I have something for you.” She reached around him, grabbed a hair band, and put her hair back. She meant business. Elizabeth did not let her hair down before sex, but put it up instead. Reaching around him, she unfastened his pants.

“I’m going to cut myself,” he warned.

“Be careful,” she said, teasing his chest in a way she knew he liked.

“I have something for you,” she repeated. He dropped the plastic razor into the water and it splashed into the islands of shaving cream. She led him over to the counter, sat up on it, and wrapped her legs around him. “Come and get it,” she said.

Later, she leaned her head back against the wall, but refused to let him go. She was sweating and her eyes looked dreamy.

She allowed them to separate then, and her legs sank down, but she did not move until Boldt finished shaving-and then only once she had talked him into running the shower for her.

Drying her hair in the living room, a white terry-cloth robe cinched tightly around her waist, and watching her son, who was now awake, she said to Boldt, “They had a similar case in London,” which won his attention.

“Who did?”

“The London authorities. A kidnapping. Ransom by ATM machine. I told you I had something for you.”

“I thought you meant-”

“No,” she corrected. “That was for me.”

“Liz?”

“They paid out one hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds over a ten-month period. If your case goes on for ten months, I figured we would end up divorced, so it was in my best interest to get to the bottom of this.” He moved closer to her. She smelled good. “From what I can tell, it was incredibly similar to what you’re facing. The guy moved from one ATM to another, one town to another, making withdrawals, and no matter how fast the police responded, he was always long gone.”

“That’s us exactly,” Boldt replied, anxiously awaiting whatever else she had to tell him. Elizabeth could not be rushed. She had her own timing-in everything.

“At one point, if I’m right about this, they had over two thousand police watching ATMs. They still couldn’t catch him. But there was a reason, of course: the average ATM transaction is only a matter of seconds. It’s what makes it such a clever way to collect a ransom demand.”

“And they found a way around that obstacle,” Boldt speculated, seeing that sparkle in her eye.

“Yes, they did. A couple of brilliant computer hackers were called in. They devised something they called ‘time traps’-software that slowed down the entire system.”

“We talked to the switching station here about doing just that, slowing down the network, but starting from scratch they claimed it could take months.”

“They’re right. It did take months. But it has already been done. All these networks, all these systems speak the same computer language-they have to in order to interface, in order for you to make a withdrawal from an ATM in Paris on your Seattle account. So it seems to me that whatever time-trap software they came up with should be easily adapted for use here. If not, right up in Redmond we have some of the brainiest software wizards in the world; they should be able to port it for you.”

“Time traps,” Boldt repeated.

“You slow down the system and buy yourself time to catch this guy. Another thing that occurred to me?” she asked rhetorically. “Are you aware that some ATMs can be instructed to ‘eat’ ATM cards? They use it to pull the counterfeit cards and bad accounts off the market.”

“We thought about that, too. But we want him to have the card. That card is how we catch him. But these time traps.”

“Go,” she said, anticipating his apology before he ever spoke it.

“You sure?”

“It’s my idea. Go.”

He grabbed his weapon and his badge wallet and literally ran to the back door. The last thing he heard from her was, “And catch the bastard! We could use a little peace around here.”

Boldt exchanged a dozen phone calls with his wife, each bringing him more encouragement. At twelve noon Pacific time-evening in London-in an amazing show of technology, the time-trap software was beamed by telephone company satellites via computer modem and downloaded by technicians at Ted Perch’s NetLinQ ATM switching station. The entire transfer took twenty-two minutes.

With an open phone line to London, NetLinQ technicians worked furiously to install the software, which crashed the first time on-line, freezing twelve hundred cash machines for over fifteen minutes. At 2:18 P.M., July 17, Perch authorized the activation of the software network-wide for a second time. And for seventeen minutes, it held.

The second crash involved a cluster of 120 First Interstate machines, which was later deemed something of a success. By five o’clock sharp, with 17 percent of NetLinQ’s directly controlled ATMs time-trap operational, the first effort was made to place a six-second drag in the transaction time. These intervals of delay were quickly tagged WOTs-for “window of time.” The six-second WOTs were placed between the customer entry of the PIN number and the appearance of the first transaction menu. Remarkably, the system held. For 279 cash machine customers, a brief but effective test pause had been created in their transaction, virtually unnoticed by any of them, but sending up a cheer at NetLinQ that was heard all the way to London.

Through a series of conversations, Boldt encouraged Perch to increase the number of machines that were time-trapped, but Perch was reluctant to risk a third crash in a single evening. “I would like to be working here tomorrow,” he teased Boldt. But Boldt hounded him. By 7:22, another commercial bank’s network had been added to the core group, leaving 27 percent of all ATMs in Washington State and western Oregon under the direct control of time-trap software.

Boldt spent the early evening at NetLinQ monitoring the effectiveness of the new software, and congratulating the crew for their efforts. The ransom account had never been hit before eight o’clock in the evening, leading Boldt and others to suspect Caulfield might be holding down a day job-although Ted Perch pointed out that late evening made sense for such hits. Many banks restocked their cash machines at the close of business; if an extortionist wished to avoid being seen by bank employees, then at the very least he or she would wait until after the close of business-as late as 6 P.M. at some branches.

The NetLinQ operations room was an impressive collection of high technology and reminded Boldt of what he had seen of telephone command centers. It was nearly pitch-black, the focus of the room being three enormous flat-screen color monitors that visually mapped all ATM traffic in the NetLinQ region. The floor descended toward these screens in three tiers, each housing rows of computers, some of which were attended. The far right-hand screen showed all those ATM locations under time-trap control. After pestering from Boldt, Perch reluctantly added another six-second WOT, this time between account authorization and delivery of cash.

NetLinQ’s public information office had earlier distributed a press release, announcing that due to system maintenance some “inconveniences” were to be expected. The eleven o’clock news had promised to run it.

For the sixth consecutive night, an ATM hit occurred shortly after 8 P.M. “It’s getting like clockwork,” Perch said, pointing out the flashing dot on the overhead screen. Clockwork was what Boldt hoped for-the more predictable and repetitious the withdrawals were, the increased chance of apprehending a suspect.

Perch announced, “Five seconds and counting.”

Boldt relayed news of the hit directly to SPD dispatch. “Location is N-sixteen. Repeat: En-one-six.”

“Ten seconds,” Perch tracked. He checked a computer screen. “This one is not under time-trap control,” he warned.

Boldt could imagine one of his plainclothes detectives throwing a car in gear and speeding toward the location. But with less than five seconds to close the gap, he did not see much hope.

He needed more people. He needed more of the machines time-trapped.

“Transaction complete,” Perch announced, dejected.

“Lieutenant?” Boldt barked hopefully into the telephone receiver.

Shoswitz said, “Surveillance is four blocks and closing.”

Boldt felt tempted to cross his fingers. He envisioned the unmarked car running traffic lights and braking loudly to a stop. To Perch, Boldt said, “We need better communication with the field.”

“Tell me about it,” Perch replied, frustrated and upset.

Shoswitz said through the phone, “Nothing. Repeat: No visual contact.”

Boldt relayed this to Perch, who cursed so loudly that he raised the attention of several of the NetLinQ employees.

An hour later there was a second hit, though this time on a machine not under software control. Surveillance failed to close within twelve blocks.

“We need more of the machines on the software,” Boldt complained.

“Don’t tell me my business, Sergeant. We can’t make any more headway until morning. We have two lags in usage: nine-thirty to eleven A.M. and two to five P.M. That’s as soon as we can hope to put more machines on-line.”

“We need them tonight!”

“The system will crash. And if it crashes while this person is online, then it could look intentional. Is that what you want?” he asked heatedly.

Reluctantly, Boldt sat back and watched a third and final hit take place. And for a third and final time that night, surveillance was nowhere close.

At a few minutes before midnight, he was summoned to the hotel room where Dr. Richard Clements was staying.

Boldt arrived depressed and exhausted.

Shoswitz and Daphne reached the Alexis before Boldt, and all were awaiting him when he arrived.

The suite was spacious, with paper Japanese sliding doors separating the bedroom from a sitting room that included a large glass conference table, two couches, a coffee table, several freestanding lamps, a fireplace, and a wet bar. The decor was granite, glass, and steel-ultra-modern-which was not to Boldt’s tastes, and yet here he found it to his liking.

CNN was muted on the television in the corner-Michael Kinsley with his coat off, interviewing an author-and Clements kept the remote within reach.

Clements was dressed casually in linen pants and an Italian-designed white Egyptian cotton shirt, with black loafers and no socks. He was drinking what looked like brandy out of a snifter the size of a fishbowl, and he carried a wad of chew neatly in his upper lip, leaving a bulge there as though he were trying to stop a nosebleed. He wore half-glasses, tortoiseshell imitation that rode on the bridge of his nose precariously. He sat at the glass conference table in a black leather-and-stainless steel captain’s chair, waving a two-hundred-dollar mechanical pencil in the air and punctuating his authoritative instructions.

“You sit there. And you there. No-there, please,” he advised Shoswitz. “Yes, thank you. The Armagnac is excellent, and seemingly endless, and comes highly recommended. Whatever your pleasure.” He looked them over.

Daphne and Boldt declined. Shoswitz requested a Miller Lite, an order that so disgusted Clements he referred him to the wet bar’s refrigerator, advising him to “use whatever’s there.”

Dr. Richard Clements began with a self-possessed arrogance that immediately offended all present: “Before we get into Twenty Questions, let me head off whatever possible by offering you my updated profile.” He rolled the liqueur around in his mouth, and Boldt had to wonder what a mixture of Armagnac and chew tasted like when spilled across one’s tongue. “It’s interesting: Behavior will always tell you more than a rap sheet. I am referring, of course, to the incident in Mr. Adler’s woods and the telephone call that immediately preceded it.

“It’s late, so I’ll try not to bore you. You are all aware of the stalking phase that a serial killer or rapist enters into prior to the attack. Any of a number of specific incidents may precede the stalking phase, including arson, the killing of house pets, voyeurism, and masturbation, but the stalking phase is unique in that it directly precedes the offense. We see it in the wild-a cat, even some packs, will stalk prior to the kill, even if the intended prey is wounded or incapacitated. Still, the stalk. What our Mr. Caulfield is doing is getting up close and personal with his intended prey, Mr. Adler. The fact that he has entered this phase is warning sign enough: It is drawing to a close. We are in the last act. The stalking phase can go on for days, weeks, even months or years, and we are still at odds to know exactly what precipitates the craving for completion of the act. Boredom? Rage? Sexuality? So different in every case.” He swilled more of the snifter’s contents and inhaled, apparently enormously satisfied with the results. His audience was too stunned to interrupt.

“And so we know that he has begun this final coda before the finale.” He waved the pencil in time to music within his head, and Boldt could see his lips close as he hummed silently along with it. “But unfortunately, we do not know the length of the piece. Point number one,” he said strongly, “Adler-or someone in that house,” he conditioned, “-is the target of his intentions.”

He excused himself to the bathroom, and apparently leaving an interior door open, urinated loudly enough that all could hear.

Shoswitz said in a forced whisper, “Is the air-conditioning on, or is it just him?”

Daphne, noticeably upset, reminded in an equally soft reply, “Like it or not, he’s one of the best there is.”

Boldt added, “And he knows it.”

“Point number two,” Clements began anew when he returned, “he is distracted by his own greed. He is withdrawing two or three thousand a day. He finds himself addicted to this easy money. He has a good thing going, so why not prolong it? All of that sounds so logical, does it not? Well, it’s bullshit, plain and simple. What we have is a theoretical conflict that I must admit weighs heavily upon me. On the one side, he has clearly entered the stalking phase; this includes a verbal threat to Adler over the phone, and a use of language, a reference to certain personally historical issues, that confirms a deeply profound sense of injustice. On the other side, he is running around milking ATMs. If this were a game show, the buzzer would have sounded: wrong answer. So which is the real Mr. Harold Caulfield? And to what extent can we predict his schizophrenia, so apparent in these conflicting personalities within him? Will the real Harry Caulfield please stand up? Revenge-motivated killer, or greed-driven extortionist?” He had lost the chew while in the bathroom, for the lump below his nose was gone, and he inflated his cheeks and lips, using the cognac like mouthwash.

“Point number three: There’s method to this madness. It appears increasingly obvious that a grievous wrong was done to person or persons with whom Mr. Caulfield had strong emotional ties, and upon whom he was otherwise financially and emotionally dependent. He appears to have a personal agenda to which he is committed, and I must say from past experience that we should prepare ourselves for the unexpected. Nothing that we can imagine for Mr. Caulfield is out of the question. Kill a hundred? Why not? A thousand? Same answer. Caulfield believes he is justified in this, and that makes him especially dangerous. Drive a truck full of explosives into a barracks of marines? Why not? Blow up the World Trade Center? Same answer.” He reached for the phone, and ordered another. Without asking the lieutenant, he also ordered a Miller Lite, though he pronounced it as if it were a disease. He met eyes with each of them individually and said patronizingly, “Okay, time for Twenty Questions.”

Stunning them all, Shoswitz said, “Twenty minutes ago, when Captain Rankin heard of Mackensie’s murder, he ordered us to pull all Adler products from the shelves by six A.M.. or the start of business tomorrow.”

Boldt felt the wind knocked out of him.

“Is this that bulldog I met? The one with the cheap suit and buzz cut?” Clements asked.

Boldt said, “Captain of Homicide.”

“If you are asking for a prediction of the effects on our Mr. Caulfield of such a decision, I can tell you this: He won’t like it. Pulling the Adler products will signal Caulfield that he has lost control of this-and control, after all, is what is and has been getting him high.” The man closed his eyes and his eyelids fluttered oddly, and he said softly, “Imagine the power he must feel! Dictating demands to a man of position like Owen Adler. Poisoning people with the medical community seemingly powerless to stop him. Withdrawing cash like it’s Christmas. That carries an awesome sense of power and control.” He opened his eyes, stood, and answered the door-before even Boldt with his keen sense of hearing heard any approach-and greeted the room service boy perfunctorily. A moment later he sat back down and began sloshing the liquor around his new fishbowl. “The loss of control, or even the perception of such a loss, will accelerate his timetable. He was unpredictable before; he is even less predictable now. I will chat-up your Captain Rankin.”

Boldt decided to reveal what he had mentioned to no one. He glanced at Daphne, then met eyes with Clements, and said, “Owen Adler will pull all the product if given half an excuse. He lobbied me to do just that and I dissuaded him.” Daphne looked horrified that she had not heard of this. “If he gets wind of Rankin’s request, he’ll bypass any of our concerns and get out. He wants out. He is staying with the game plan only because he fears making the wrong decision himself, and I convinced him that to go against the demands was the wrong decision.”

“By ‘get out,’ I presume this to mean pull the product, not conform with the ultimate demand and commit suicide.”

“That’s right,” Boldt agreed. “The killings have weakened him. He feels directly responsible.”

“Which is exactly as our Mr. Caulfield intends. Interesting.”

“What I’m hearing,” Shoswitz said, “is that if Rankin bypasses us and gets to Adler, we’re going to lose this anyway.”

Clements said, “I have little doubt that the intelligent thing to do is to keep as many Adler products on the shelf as possible. We would also like to keep the news media at bay for as long as possible, though we may have lost that battle. The point being-as I think Sergeant Boldt will concur-with these ATM withdrawals, we have our first real chance to trap our Mr. Caulfield.”

“And we are making some progress there, I think,” Boldt interjected. He told them about the limited success of the time-trap software.

“So I suggest we advise your public information department to issue a series of no-comments, and that we staple down the tongues of anyone associated with this investigation. If there are no sources, there is no story; it is that simple. This should include our friends at State Health, this infectious diseases lab,” he said to Boldt, and turning to Shoswitz: “And anyone within your division who may be privy to this.” He sipped the drink. “I will work a little while longer here, and by morning I will hopefully be armed with enough of a profile to convince our Captain Rankin of his ineptitude, and the certainty of his own fall from grace should his orders be carried out. Seeing you work as a unit, I believe in you-in all of you-and I must confess to you now that my secondary role in coming here was to act as a kind of spy, if you will, in assessing your abilities to handle this investigation. I hope you will be pleased to know that my initial report and subsequent follow-ups have been glowing, and they will continue to be. But I should warn you that there are those looking over your shoulders, and they will pounce if given half a chance.” Clements sipped more of the Cognac.

“What about Special Agents?” Boldt asked, spotting an opportunity. He addressed Shoswitz: “What if we requested the Bureau’s assistance with the ATM surveillance? Fifty or even a hundred Special Agents to place in the field? Equal partners, with us drawing on what is admittedly a formidable expertise in ransom situations. This allows them in on perhaps the most critical aspect of the investigation as it now stands, perhaps defusing any later attempts to take over the investigation completely and, at the same time, seems to satisfy a great need of our own, namely a shortage of field personnel.”

Shoswitz considered this.

Boldt said, “I don’t mean to put you on the spot-”

“No, it’s not that,” Shoswitz allowed.

“Perhaps something to give some consideration to,” Clements said genially. “No hurry. Sleep on it.” Boldt sensed immediately that Clements approved of the suggestion and that it might help his own position in walking a line between the two agencies.

“I like it,” Shoswitz admitted. “My only real concern,” he directed to Clements, “is that if we let them in a little, do we give it up completely somewhere down the road? This is our town, our citizens, our investigation. We have our own political concerns. The Bureau has two faces: one is cooperation, one is complete control. Surrendering control of this investigation would not go over well, and is not what we want.”

“I understand. It is one reason I like Sergeant Boldt’s suggestion. Working as equals on the surveillance-and I’m sure that can be arranged, might indeed fend off any …”-he searched for his words-“hostile takeover.” He added, “I can explore such a relationship, if you like.”

Shoswitz thought a long time, checking with Boldt repeatedly by firing off hot glances in his direction. “If we catch him at an ATM, we all win,” Shoswitz said. It was his way of giving his approval.

On their way down in the elevator together, Daphne and Boldt agreed to meet on her houseboat for a recap. It was not very far out of the way for Boldt, and he wondered if she wanted someone to escort her inside and make sure the place was empty, and so he agreed. At one-thirty in the morning, she made a pot of herbal tea and poured them each a mugful.

She began in a tone of voice that placed Boldt on attention. “I completed my affidavit, Striker obtained a warrant, and we made an inquiry with Norwest National to obtain the checking records for New Leaf Foods.” Norwest National was Liz’s bank, renamed after a string of acquisitions, and this was certainly not lost on Daphne, he thought. “I want to see what checks were being written on and around the date of the altering of that State Health report, because I firmly believe someone was paid off, and maybe there’s a paper trail.”

“I have no objection to that. But my focus remains on Caulfield.”

“It’s not that,” she interrupted him. “The bank told me that they had already cooperated with us, had already turned over that information to us with no warrants involved. They complained at having to do so again.”

“Not me,” Boldt admitted.

“Obviously not me,” she agreed.

“Danielson,” Boldt said, guessing. “How is it that Caulfield manages to always be where our ATM surveillance teams are not?”

“Danielson is in bed with him?”

“Do I believe it? No. Can I rule it out? Also, no. Providing he’s not criminal, what would motivate Chris?”

“Money?”

Boldt nodded. “An offer from the tabloids, TV, a book deal, a movie deal-there are a lot of temptations out there for a cop these days. Different than when I was coming up.”

“Chris, sell out? He’s the department’s number one overachiever.”

Boldt hesitated before dropping his bomb, feeding Daphne’s earlier suspicions. “What if Taplin was paying him for inside information? What if Taplin had promised him Fowler’s job if Danielson could settle this affair without the publicity certain to surround a police arrest?”

“Which one of us is the psychologist?” she asked nervously.

“Do you like it?”

“I can see it, if that’s what you’re asking. Yes, it’s possible. It explains a hell of a lot of what’s been going on, and it fits with Taplin’s defensive position. Taplin’s name is in and around all of the communication on the New Leaf contamination. You want to look for someone with a lot to lose if Caulfield blew the whistle on State Health, Howard Taplin tops the list. We need Caulfield for more than these murders,” she suggested.

“We need Caulfield, period,” Boldt said.