No Witnesses

TWENTY-NINE

I READ ABOUT THE TWO BOYS YOU KILLED.

AND YOUR FRIENDS WITH GUNS

SHOULD NOT WANDER THE WOODS.

YOU JUST WON’T LISTEN, WILL YOU?

I MEANT WHAT I TOLD YOU-YOU WILL PAY.

SOONER THAN LATER.

AND MORE WILL DIE UNTIL YOU DO.

MANY MORE.

Two newspaper articles were included at the bottom of the fax-one about the boys, and one, the mysterious murder in Golden Gardens Park. Technical Services informed Boldt that the articles had been scanned into a computer and pasted into the fax, which had been transmitted electronically from a pay phone on a side street near the King-dome. This was all supposed to mean something to Boldt, but it did not. His entire interest lay with the words at the top of this page, and the implication that Clements was right: Harry Caulfield was running out of patience. Time was almost up.

Like water seeking its own level, Boldt sought out the evidence, calling Bernie Lofgrin and complaining to him about the delay in the FBI report on the Longview Farms evidence. Lofgrin suggested he lodge the complaint with Clements; Boldt did so, and Clements promised to do what he could.

For his part, Clements believed he had convinced Captain Rankin to rescind the Adler recall that he had threatened, though the psychiatrist admitted to Boldt that Rankin was “a difficult bastard to read.”

There was a lot of talk and little action. Public Information called repeatedly, frustrated by a press corps that sensed a much bigger story than two boys dying in a tree house. Boldt issued a string of denials and no-comments but could see the inevitable coming. The story was going to break, and when it did there would be a recall. According to Clements, if anything was certain to push Caulfield into following through on his threat of mass murder, it was this combination of events.

MANY MORE.

Boldt could not get the words out of his head. Again he waited for his phone to ring with the news of more murders. Again his mood went sour and his squad steered clear of him. Again his appetite deserted him. His bowels bled, and the Maalox did nothing more than make his breath smell like lemon creme.

He did a quick turnaround at the dinner hour-refusing food, but swallowing down a Zantac-and prepared to join Ted Perch at NetLinQ where tonight, for the first time, Lucille Guillard’s monitoring of the Pac-West ATM network had been brought on board. The time-trap software had been expanded to cover 60 percent of the NetLinQ system.

Liz was ironing a pleated skirt for the following morning.

“I owe you a champagne dinner for that software,” he told her.

“Make it in Rome and you have a deal.”

“Rome it is.”

She laughed.

In the corner by the dryer was piled a gigantic stack of clean laundry that was his responsibility to iron, and he looked away from it because it made him feel guilty to see so much of it. In his exhausted state, it seemed to him a physical manifestation representing his total failure as a father and husband.

“If you leave, what do I tell poor Michael Striker?”

“What about Striker?” His shirt tucked in, he leaned for a kiss.

“He called when you were in the bathroom. Said he was coming by. He was checking to see that you were here, and I told him you were.” She tugged at the skirt and said down to the ironing board, “My guess is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with work. He feels a lot closer to you than you do to him.” She looked up at him. “That’s true of a lot of your friends, you know.”

He knew her well enough to know when she was concealing something from him. “Liz?”

She said calmly, “I thought that he probably wanted to talk to you about whichever detective of yours is screwing Elaine.”

“What!” Boldt bumped the ironing board, and the spray bottle fell to the floor. Miles, who should have been in bed two hours earlier, began pounding the floor with a spatula. Up until that moment, his father had not realized the boy was on the other side of the inverted laundry basket, although it helped to explain Liz’s constant distraction, Boldt realized. This discovery that he had overlooked his son’s presence for the last five minutes hit him hard. Boldt asked Liz, “Are you sure about this?” knowing that she had to be. Liz was not a gossip.

“I’m sure he’s coming over.” She added, “And it’s kind of an odd time to talk shop. Are you telling me you really hadn’t heard anything?”

“Do you know who it is?”

“No. Only that he’s fifth floor and that he’s on your squad. They met when whoever it is came knocking on the front door one Saturday afternoon looking for Michael’s approval for a warrant-something like that. Only Michael was on the back nine and Elaine was feeling pretty mad at him for spending his weekend with a golf club, and maybe she was feeling a little bit creamy as well, and anyway: She jumped your boy’s bones. The way Suzie tells it, makes Elaine sound like she knows how to pick them. Evidently, your boy is a rocket in the sack. And it didn’t end with the back nine either-just in case he asks. It’s a near-regular thing now.”

“LaMoia?”

She laughed. “That’s exactly who I guessed,” she admitted. “Great minds.”

Boldt had often accused Liz of having the hots for LaMoia, though it had always been teasing.

“Suzie doesn’t know who the mystery man is, only that it’s incredibly hot sex and that Elaine claims to be in one of those self-discovery phases.”

Liz had had her self-discovery a few years earlier, though they never discussed it anymore.

“Jesus. Razor will kill the guy if he finds out. Talk about having a short fuse.”

“Laws of nature, love. Survival of the fittest, and all that. We have no place in this.”

“Can’t you talk to Elaine?”

“Me? I hardly know Elaine. And besides, Suzie promised she wouldn’t tell a soul, so I’d just be getting her in trouble. If Michael says anything about it to you, you had better look surprised, buster.”

“I am surprised.”

“Laws of nature.”

“I can’t hang around for him,” Boldt complained.

“Oh no you don’t. You’re not sticking me with him.” She suggested, “Why don’t you put ‘himself’ to bed. He’s up late as it is.”

Boldt spent the next twenty minutes with his son. He changed the boy’s diapers-knowing they neared the day when they could do without-gave him a quick sponge bath with a warm hand towel, and had another of those limited-vocabulary conversations with him that amounted to listing quite a few nouns and the occasional verb: “Wa” meant both “water” and “wash”; “bunky” meant “bunny”; and “mama” meant that it eventually required Liz alongside to coax him to give sleep a try. They returned to the laundry room, where Liz was still ironing the same skirt. Clearly sensing a comment coming, she said, “I’m not very good with pleats.” And when Boldt offered to give it a try, she kissed him on the cheek and started folding what was just coming out of the dryer.

As he ironed, watching her fold the clothes, he wondered if she felt envious of an Elaine Striker with her young lover, the fawning and attention, and the hot-blooded romance. He felt tempted to ask, but decided against it. There were some things a husband should not know.

They hadn’t talked about her pregnancy in days, so he asked her about it, but she immediately changed subjects, mentioning something about a yoga class she wanted to attend, and he was reminded of his wife’s superstition about pregnancy in the first trimester.

Striker pulled up out front just as Boldt held the freshly ironed skirt at his waist and asked, “What do you think?”

“You’d look better in something brown, and below the knee,” Liz fired back, deadpan.

Striker’s steel claw clicked like a telegraph key, and he circled the small front porch like a dog searching for a spot to lie down. “Awfully late for you,” Boldt observed, trying to initiate some kind of dialogue. Watching a colleague bounce off the railing of his front porch was not great sport. He glanced at his watch, impatient to get downtown. An air force of small black bugs convened around the porch light.

Striker explained, “I didn’t want you to think that I had let you down on this cellular phone thing. All three companies searched their calling logs for a call placed to Adler’s home number, and all came up blank. Since we’re pretty confident about how this went down-Caulfield making the call while up in that tree-I pushed hard for some results, and two of the companies actually tried the search for a second time, but they still came up dry. About an hour ago I talked to a supervisor in data control and she said their lack of record could be explained technically, but I didn’t ask.”

“He burned us,” Boldt summarized.

“It looks like that, yes.”

Striker stared, his eyes dead and distant, his prosthesis chattering like cold teeth.

Boldt asked, “So? You heading downtown?”

Striker’s face contorted into an unforgiving knot.

“Razor?”

“Better than going home,” Striker said.

“Problems?” Boldt asked as innocently as possible.

“She’s never where she says she is, Lou. And she’s smelling a little too good these days when she leaves the house. She’s a little too happy. You know? And worse, her friends are doing a shitty job of covering for her. It’s like everyone knows the secret but me. But eventually you figure it out.”

Striker met eyes with Boldt, who saw the anger and hurt in his friend’s expression and offered what he hoped was good advice. “Forgive her, Razor. In the long run, it’s the only thing that works.”

He said, “You’ve been there, right?”

“Right,” Boldt confirmed. “I feel for you, buddy-I want you to know that. But at the same time, this stuff happens to all of us. And sometimes what we think is happening isn’t happening at all. It’s pretty easy to allow your emotions to give false reports.”

“She’s definitely screwing someone,” he said bluntly, giving in to the anger. Chewing his upper lip, eyes downcast, he repeated, “She’s screwing someone-and in our bed-in my bed, if you can believe that shit!” He turned away. “And I don’t know what the hell to do about it.”

“Have you confronted her?”

Striker looked over with tears in his eyes. He was pale and his nostrils flared as he spoke. “I’ll knock her head off.”

“Razor … You want to think before you do anything. On second thought, maybe it’s better you don’t confront her,” he said, backtracking. “Maybe it’s better if you do some counseling together. Work this thing out with a professional. Hell, I’m no professional.”

“In my own fucking bed!”

No pun intended. “Maybe it’s not like that,” Boldt tested. He wondered if Liz was right about the lover being one of Boldt’s detectives. He hoped not. He also hoped that Striker didn’t know anything about who it was, did not have a name, because where Striker might restrain himself from hitting his own wife, he would go after her lover with a vengeance. Boldt had no doubt about that. “Listen, I need you on this investigation,” Boldt said honestly, selfishly. “You want to watch yourself.”

“You want to talk about watching?” Striker asked, following his own skewed logic. “I can picture her, you know, in the act with him. Enjoying it. Getting off. She used to really get off, you know? Not so much anymore-pretty bored, really. I bet she gets off with him.” He grew paler. His eyes fixed on a stationary object and his lower lip trembled. Boldt could hear the bugs striking the glass bulb around the light. Down the street someone had their television too loud. He felt it weird to have this discussion with a laugh track running faintly in the background.

Striker snapped his head toward Boldt so hard that his neck cracked loudly. “What the hell did you do when you found out Liz … you know?”

Boldt closed his front door and led Striker down the steps, and they stood in the small front yard with insects swirling overhead and the sound of that laugh track even louder. He did not know how, but somehow people had found out about Liz’s affair with a coworker. To Boldt it was ancient history now; he didn’t even think of it as having to do with her. It was something that had gone wrong with them-like a disease they had shared. As far as he knew, only Liz was aware of his one-night adventure with Daphne. But Liz’s distraction had gone on for several months. He said, “What I would do if I were you is start with myself. With you. Because when a relationship goes south, it’s both of you. It’s never-ever-a one-way street.”

“Cliches?” he said, furious. “I show you my dirty laundry and you hand me a bunch of cliches?”

“I’d start with myself is all,” Boldt repeated.

“Me? I work too hard. I know that. So what? I break the little promises, okay? I’m home late. I work weekends, or I hit the links. I’m selfish with my time: I know that. I’m away from the house too much-I know that? But not the big promises! Okay? Am I getting laid on the sly?” he asked hoarsely. “I’m not like that, damn it? She’s not like that.”

“Maybe it just happened, Mike. Maybe it’s one of those things that just happened. I think you start by keeping your head and opening a dialogue. I think you go into that dialogue well aware that you are half the problem, and you use a counselor-”

“I am not seeing a shrink!”

“A counselor as a referee-a go-between. A therapist. A shortstop. However you want to think about it.”

“I don’t want to think about it. I want to catch the guy-catch them both in the act. I want to prove this one way or the other. But I don’t have a clue how to go about it. You on the other hand-”

Boldt saw the trap he was being led into. “You don’t want to do that, Razor. That’s a bad idea.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“You want to catch her in the act,” Boldt repeated, so the man could hear his own words, so he could face the reality of it. “When? Just before? In the middle? When? Think about it.”

“Shut up.”

He was thinking about it, and Boldt thought that was good, because a guy with Striker’s temper had to be discouraged from this at all costs. “Is it for you or her that you want to catch her in the act?”

Striker’s one good arm was incredibly powerful, and when he shoved Boldt with it, the big man tripped on a lawn sprinkler and went down hard. “You see?” Boldt asked, sitting on the damp grass. “You want those kinds of images permanently living inside you? Worming around inside you? Do you? Because I’ll tell you something? They eat their way right back out eventually. Those kinds of things will kill the relationship forever. You can’t erase that stuff. It’s a big mistake. If you’re smart, you’ll stay as far away from that as possible. What you want to do is talk. To listen. You want to sit her down and talk, and you’ve got to accept what she says-no matter what she says.” He added, “No matter what, because she may be a little hateful right now. Feeling guilty. And that’s where therapy comes in-because a therapist won’t let you play games with each other. She’ll call your number.” Boldt came to his feet. Striker appeared lost. “You with me, buddy?”

Striker did not answer for a long time. “What do you care? You got things straightened out.”

“Razor, I do care. I care a lot.”

The attorney hurried to his car.

Boldt ran after him. “Mikey …”

“Fuck you!” He climbed inside the car.

“Mike, listen-”

But the man drove away. Boldt chased the car on foot, calling after him, but pulled up short when he saw it was a lost cause. His son’s three-wheeler was crashed into an azalea bush. He fished it out and carried it around back and left it with the other stuff. He could not believe the mountain of toys this kid had.

He saw Liz through the kitchen window, holding Miles. The boy had not stayed down. She was watching him with a worried expression. He shrugged. She shrugged right back.

“I’ve got to get going,” he reminded her when he reached the kitchen. She opened her arm and the three of them hugged. Miles touched his father’s face and nearly poked him in the eye.

“I’m sorry you have to go through this stuff,” she said.

“There are always a couple of blowouts on a case like this. Always happens.”

“So long as it isn’t you,” she said, holding to him tightly. “We’re lucky,” she added. She did not try to look into his eyes. “What do you think? About him?”

“I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that.”

“This could make trouble for you, couldn’t it?” she asked.

“It’s all right,” he answered. But she knew him better than that.

“Da-da?” Miles reached out for his father. “Go-fo-wak,” he slurred.

Boldt stood him on his right shoe, and the boy clung to his thick leg as if it were a tree trunk.

“Go for a walk,” Boldt announced. His son stared up happily into his eyes with unrequited love, and Boldt began walking him slowly around the kitchen, his son squealing with joy.

“Don’t get him too worked up,” Liz reminded, well aware that with Boldt leaving, she would have to face the terror of Miles on a roll.

Boldt wanted this and only this: to be in his kitchen on a summer night with these two people; to hear squeals of joy coming from his son. To be free of the Tin Man and Michael Striker and Adler’s nine-thousand-square-foot estate. To play along with a Scott Hamilton cut when no one was listening.

A few minutes later he walked out to his car, climbed inside, and drove off. As he passed the house down the street and the sound grew louder, it seemed quite obvious that the laugh track was laughing at him.