No Witnesses

THIRTY-TWO

Boldt had been to over a hundred such crime scenes, but with his friends and coworkers involved, this hotel room looked somehow different. Shoswitz had assigned Sergeant David Pasquini as primary in the officer-involved shooting, and Boldt tried to stay out of the man’s way.

According to a uniform by the door, Danielson had gone out on a stretcher, alive but critical; Striker was in handcuffs, ranting and raving about what a lousy shot he was.

There was a good amount of blood on the bed, and two piles of clothes on chairs, with Danielson’s weapon still snapped into its holster. Four shells had been discharged onto the carpet. An ID man was taking photographs of them. The air still smelled of cordite. Boldt crossed the room and glanced out the window. Downstairs on the street, a media circus was brewing.

“Where’s that coffee?” Pasquini shouted after cracking open the bathroom door a few inches.

Boldt, back at the room’s entrance, grabbed the green Starbucks coffee from the patrolman and delivered it himself, inching the door open with his foot and not allowing Pasquini to get full hold of it.

“Okay,” Pasquini said, relenting, and admitting Boldt to the tiny bathroom.

Elaine Striker, wearing a hotel towel wrapped around her middle, sat on the closed toilet. A woman officer was braced in the tub, a notepad in hand.

Boldt pushed the door shut.

Pasquini removed the lid from the coffee and handed it to the woman, who used both hands to steady the cup before taking a sip.

Elaine had mascara on her cheeks, bloodshot eyes, and a mottled chest. Her skin was freckled-a good deal of it showing-and her tousled red hair framed her face in a ring of fire. She looked up at Boldt with hollow, apologetic eyes. “It just happened,” she said.

Pasquini wanted her talking to him, not Boldt. “He had a key?”

“He came in without us knowing. We were … busy. He must have just stood there watching.” She broke down crying. Pasquini shook his head impatiently and took the cup from her as she spilled some coffee across her hands. Boldt offered her a towel. She dried off her hands, tucked herself into the towel that was wrapped around her, and looked back up at both policemen. “Chris sat up, and Mike started firing.”

Boldt could see the blood in her hair. There was some on the left of her neck, too. And only then did he notice the small pile of bloodstained washcloths used to clean her up.

“How many shots?” Pasquini asked.

“No idea.”

“One? Ten?”

“More than one. Several. And then Chris-” She broke down again. Boldt had heard enough. He leaned in closely to her, offered some reassurance, and took her hand as she reached out to him. It took a few seconds to win his hand free again, and he left.

Using an address listed on Caulfield’s employment form with Pacer Trucking, warrants were issued to search the rooming house, and that afternoon seventeen uniformed and plainclothes officers descended on Caulfield’s room like a swarm of bees. A check of records confirmed that Caulfield had moved out of the hotel the day following the murder of Sheriff Turner Bramm-a date Boldt could not get out of his mind. Since that time, the room had been home to a grunge musician and his girlfriend, destroying any chance the lab techs would recover anything of use-and nothing admissible in a court of law. Boldt was reviewing the search with Shoswitz and Lofgrin when Daphne entered the lieutenant’s office and said, “I can get us into Striker.”

The nurses in Harborview’s psych ward knew Daphne by name, and allowed them to bypass much of the red tape usually required. Even so, before being allowed into the ward that housed Michael Striker’s barren hospital room, she and Boldt were required to leave behind their weapons, badges, belts, pens and pencils, and Boldt’s shoelaces. This was their first indication of Striker’s condition. Daphne had stretched the truth to gain them access so quickly, saying she was here for “a session” with the suspect, and explaining Boldt’s presence as “some protection.” After the shooting, Michael Striker had broken a patrolman’s arm before jumping into traffic in an apparent act of suicide. This, she explained to Boldt, was the reason for his admission to the psych ward, and his doctor’s refusal for police interrogation. A male nurse unlocked and then relocked the door behind them.

Striker had cut up his legs by running into traffic, though nothing was broken. He was under physical restraints. And Daphne informed Boldt in a whisper that he was also mildly sedated.

“Hey,” Boldt said, trying to sound casual.

The room’s mood was grim. In place of a real window, there was an electronic contraption mounted to the wall that emitted light and offered an incredibly lifelike pastoral view of the Canadian Rockies.

“So I can’t jump out,” Striker informed him from his bed. “They pay ten grand for those things. Supposed to help improve your state of mind.” He grinned thinly at this. “Supposedly, the thing even does sunrise and sunset.” He wore a blue-and-white hospital gown that used Velcro instead of ties, to eliminate the chance of hanging oneself. Striker had sad, lifeless eyes. He had hollow, drawn cheeks and bulging eyes that indeed made him look a little crazy.

“They’ve got so much shit in me,” he said, “that I’m basically a walking pharmacy. Check that,” he corrected. “I’m not doing much walking.” He tugged at his strapped-down arms.

Daphne spoke with him for the better part of twenty minutes, through which she remained incredibly calm and Striker slowly began to make some sense.

“Listen,” he said, in what sounded to Boldt like the man’s familiar intolerant attorney voice, “I was out of my gourd to do what I did. And that includes diving for the grille of that truck. But it’s over now, and I feel great. Valium is a wonderful thing.”

“Can you tell us about it?” Daphne asked.

“What’s to tell? The guy was fucking my wife; so I fucked him.” His cheek twitched and he asked Boldt to scratch his neck for him.

Boldt said, “You found him with Elaine. Is that it, Mikey?”

“You warned me, Lou. I know that. I thought about that right after I did it, too.”

“But you followed her anyway.”

“Sort of. Right.”

“Is there something you want to tell us?” Daphne asked. Boldt felt the avoidance in the man, too, and it impressed him that Daphne seized upon it so quickly.

“Jergenson was the house dick. Remember Jergenson, Lou? I offered him a fifty, and he said how it was on the house because catching people fucking was part of his job, and he remembered me. People don’t forget this,” he said, indicating his prosthesis. “The one shrink I’ve seen make a big deal about my mitt. Talked a lot about manhood and what I tried to do to Danielson. No offense, Matthews, but the guy is full of shit.”

“I’m not a shrink,” she said.

Boldt was not sure if Striker even heard that. He did seem pretty stoned.

“It had a lot less to do with my mitt than it did with my dick and my heart. She tore my heart out is what she did. Especially at the end there: She wasn’t trying to hide it at all. Just wave it in my face and head out the door all dolled up. Came home smelling like love. Jesus.”

“So Jergenson let you in.”

“Right.”

“How did you know which room, Mikey?”

He looked over at the Canadian Rockies, and when he did, Daphne shot Boldt a quick look of apprehension.

“And he was … And you should have seen her … He had her on another planet. He had her so far gone that I’m not sure she even recognized me. Know what I mean?”

Boldt could sense it, and he thought Daphne could as well-that was what that look had been about, though he felt at a loss as to how to get at it. This was her territory; he felt more like a spectator, and yet Striker seemed more comfortable talking to him. He did not look at Daphne at all.

“Did this man Jergenson know your wife?” she asked.

“Nah. He was a beat cop once upon a time. Spent his last years as a court guard. That’s how I knew him. I’m surprised you don’t remember him.”

Daphne inquired, “So it wasn’t he who told you where to find your wife.”

Boldt asked, “Did you follow her? Was that it?”

“It’s not what’s important,” replied the attorney authoritatively. “They were in the act. Boy, were they. And I caught the bastard, and I blew him away. What little shooting I’ve done in my life was done right-handed. If I hadn’t had this,” he said, indicating his prosthesis, “I’da hit the target.”

They remained silent.

“Not easy to shoot left-handed is it, Lou? You ever done it?”

“I’m still a little confused about something, Razor,” Boldt said. “When we talked out in front of my house, you said that you weren’t comfortable following her. You asked me to do it for you. So did you change your mind, is that it?”

“You’re missing the point,” Striker repeated, avoiding an answer, attempting to use his attorney skills that were considerably dulled by the drugs coursing through him. “I had to have proof. Can you understand that? I’d been through her dirty laundry-and I don’t mean that figuratively; I had asked questions and had studied her carefully for her reactions-it’s my job to spot the guilty. I knew I was getting lies, and there were times she would come home and completely avoid touching me until she’d had a bath or a shower, and when you see enough of that, you no longer wonder what’s going on. But I had to know. That’s just part of who I am. I’ve got to know.”

“Is there something you would like to share with us about how you identified the particular hotel?” she asked.

Boldt felt warm, and the room was not warm. Not unless that fake window was responsible. He felt anxious, because Striker was incredibly nervous, and the sergeant knew that if the claw had not been tied shut, it would have been chirping away.

“I’ve fucked things up for you,” Striker apologized.

Boldt said, “I’ve always wished I could throw you a curveball, Razor, but I’ve seen people try it in court and I’ve seen you blow them away, so I’d just as soon lay it right out there.”

“Do it.”

“Who did you hire to follow Elaine?”

Striker shook his head like a person who had a bug caught in his hair. Boldt took inventory of Daphne, who gave him a slight shake of the head, indicating for him to let Striker be. Her eyes said, Don’t push.

Striker took a moment to recover. This was the first time he met eyes with Daphne, and she sensed in him a hatred of all women, and took this as normal. She offered, “I can leave the room if you like.”

“No. It’s not that.” He looked at Boldt. “I didn’t hire anyone, Lou. It wasn’t like that.”

“Okay, so you didn’t hire anyone. After you spoke with me, did you ask someone else in the department to do this for you, or maybe one of the investigators in your office? Someone like that? No curveballs, Razor. I’m putting it to you straight: you have screwed things up for me. I need answers.”

“I received a call.”

Boldt glanced over and met eyes with Daphne as she sat forward in her chair. “A call?” Boldt asked, as calmly as he could force his voice to sound.

“I received a telephone call telling me that if I was looking for Elaine, I could find her in room four-seventeen.”

“Male or female?”

“Elaine is female, Lou.” This was the medication talking, and though Striker chuckled for a little too long, Boldt waited him out.

“Male,” Striker answered.

“Did you recognize the voice?”

“No, I did not.” He seemed a little bored, a little let down in himself for talking about this.

“But you believed him. You went there prepared to shoot a man.”

“I didn’t think about it. I was on autopilot.” He laughed more strongly this time. “You know, I’ve put guys away for twenty years who tried that line on me! Talk about the tables turning!” He hesitated and said, “You’re messing with my head here, Lou, because I hear what you’re saying to me. You’re saying someone fed me that phone call knowing damn well that I’d go and blow the guy away. Counting on me to do it. And if you don’t mind, right now that’s a little much for me, okay? Because I know what people think about my temper-I mean, it’s no secret.”

Boldt asked, “When did you receive this phone call?”

“A little after ten.”

“At the office?”

“Yeah, the office.”

“And is that number published?”

Striker nodded. “I see what you’re getting at, Lou, but it’s no good. I didn’t recognize the voice. I’m being straight with you on that.”

“You were set up, Razor,” Boldt informed the man. “Someone wanted you or Danielson or both of you out of the way.”

“Yeah?” Striker said angrily. “Well, I couldn’t care less about that. If I got that phone call again, I would go right back there and finish up what I started. I swear I would. My one and only one regret is that I missed. I wasn’t aiming to kill him. A PA knows the difference between assault and murder one. But I missed, goddamn it. Four shots and I couldn’t hit the damn thing. Four damn tries. Not that it was very big anyway. So much for the myth-I’m here to tell you.”

At first the laughter seemed all right, though Daphne looked concerned. And then Boldt realized that the laughter would not quit, and after a minute it frightened him, because Striker had lost all control. He was crying and laughing and looking at them desperately as though he did not understand where it came from and that they should pull the plug and shut off the machine. He was laughing ten minutes later, when the male nurse kicked them out and delivered a shot of something that Daphne said would take care of it. But it did not. When they reached the car, Boldt imagined he could still hear the man’s laughter, as if it had penetrated the electronic window, reverberating down to the parking lot below. Even the car door closing did not shut it out for Boldt. And he told Daphne this.

“You know what those two words are together?” she asked, placing the car in reverse. “Man’s laughter? Combined?” she asked. “What we witnessed up there is how most of them pay for it.”

Boldt combined the words in his head and spoke softly: “Manslaughter.”

She said, “Michael Striker has a long road ahead of him.”

He placed his hand on hers and stopped her from backing up the car. “How good is your memory?” he asked, taking his hand away.

“You know damn well that I pride myself on it.”

“I forget who it was,” Boldt said, “but someone told me that the bump on your forehead was from a box coming down off a shelf.”

“That was Lofgrin or LaMoia or Bobbie. They were the only ones who asked.” She said, “It’s after seven, aren’t you supposed to be over at NetLinQ? You want me to drop you?”

Boldt asked, “Why? Why did you invent the box coming down?”

“Because we agreed to keep my break-in at the houseboat between us, and trying to explain running into a post in the dark was a little much. It was a white lie, Lou. So what?” Again she asked, “You want me to drop you or not?”

“And what about Fowler? If you told the others one thing, why tell Fowler something different?”

“I’ve never told Fowler anything about it. I’ve hardly seen the man since then.”

“But he’s seen you,” Boldt said. And her face froze. “I made him nervous with a question, and in trying to get out of it, he made reference to your hitting that post.” He hesitated. “So how did he know?”

“Exactly what are you saying?” Her lips quivered and she crossed her arms tightly. She knew.

“When they put in your security system, they swept your house for bugs, right?”

She gasped. “Fowler’s people.”

Bear Berenson had told him that some people could feel the camera’s presence. Boldt said, “But that feeling never went away, did it?”

She threw her head back as if to keep her tears from running. “Why?” She choked out.

“Longview Farms,” Boldt answered.

She looked over and met eyes with Boldt and tried to speak, but nothing came out.

“I’ve got an idea,” Boldt said.

The device looked like a small squash racquet, or an electric charcoal starter, though it worked more like one of those hand-held metal detectors used at airports. The people in Technical Services referred to it simply as Clark, for Clark Kent, he of the X-ray vision. There was said to be a flyswatter variety, and another in the form of a feather duster that came with a four-foot extension, both of which could be used without telegraphing that the room was being swept for electronic bugs. Detective Laura Battles carried Clark in her briefcase; a wire ran to her ear and would emit a beep if a bug were encountered.

Once activated, a microprocessor inside the device continuously checked for magnetic fields caused by hidden microphones, and was said to be 95 percent effective in detecting them. It was less dependable in the detection of fiber-optic cameras, the latest generation of which were smaller than a shirt button and emitted no magnetic field whatsoever. But Clark, through some advanced technology that no one had ever bothered to attempt to explain to Boldt, scored in the 67 percentile in this department as well.

Daphne, accompanied by Battles, entered through the houseboat’s front door-and by agreement, already in the midst of a real estate discussion. Daphne the seller, Laura Battles the agent. They toured the houseboat room to room. Battles took detailed notes on a clipboard-the studious type.

Back in the parking lot where he had waited, she told them both, “The place is a floating sound studio. Sorry, Daphne,” she apologized. Checking her notes, she informed them, “Audio in the galley, sitting area, head, bedroom, back deck, top deck, and telephone line.” She hesitated, uncomfortable with this. “Fiber-optic in the bathroom, sitting room, and bedroom.” Daphne sank to the gravel. Boldt tried to catch her, but she fought him off. Battles said, “Most of them these days are infrared, night-vision, sensitive.”

“Everything,” Daphne stated. She looked up at Boldt with eyes he had never witnessed in her. He said, “We’ll want to keep them in place, I think.” She sprang to her feet and began hitting Boldt ferociously. He tried to hold her off, but she was hurting him, and as Laura Battles climbed out of the car, Daphne threw her knee into the car door, turned, and threw her knee into Boldt’s crotch and sent him down to the gravel. He heard her say, “Oh my God!” and then her feet took off at a run.

Laura Battles helped him up and seemed more bothered by the dent in her car door than Boldt’s condition. They drove around the neighborhood for the better part of an hour and checked the houseboat twice. “I’ll keep looking,” Battles offered.

Boldt was due for yet another night at NetLinQ. And this time, he had an army at his disposal.

Another night spent at NetLinQ passed without success, the main problems being logistical. With so many people added to the surveillance team, and virtually overnight, tracking them and deploying them proved a technical nightmare. It left Boldt watching technicians switch wires and install sophisticated radio receivers while the extortionist walked away with another $2,400 in cash.

Depressed, he left for home at two in the morning. But on the way he made a detour, after a sleep-interrupting call to Laura Battles confirmed that Daphne Matthews had not been found.

He stopped at the houseboat first.

She was not home. He pounded on both the front and back doors, and was beginning to worry, when it occurred to him to check his voice mail. No message there, either.

He finally thought to call her cellular, and she answered on the first ring.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Room six-fourteen.”

“A hotel?”

“Inn At The Market. Interesting view.”

She sounded terrible. “Daffy? You okay?”

“Peachy.”

“Are you with someone?”

“In a roundabout way. No one in the room with me, if that’s what you mean.”

“Did I wake you?” She sounded that way to him-dazed.

“Not a chance.”

“Can you stand some company?”

“If you can possibly forgive me for what I did to you.”

“Make yourself decent. I’m coming over there.”

Room 614 was a suite with a water view. It had to cost three hundred dollars a night. It smelled of Earl Grey tea. She did not allow him to turn on the light, though he tried twice. “No!” she insisted angrily, holding his arm the second time. He caught sight of her in the dimly lighted room, and her eyes looked cried out.

Holding his arm, she led him over to a sitting couch that fronted the huge plate-glass window. A moment later she delivered a tea to him and kept one for herself. She sat down beside him. Two people in a dark room, looking out a window.

“Nice view, huh?”

Boldt looked out across the bay, its surface in a constant shifting motion catching the moonlight, broken only by container ships awaiting a morning dock. “She arrived about an hour and a half ago. They talked awhile-actually he talked at her. He was angry, I think. Then he took her from behind. Right there. She leaned against that table. See that table? I don’t think she liked it much,” she said. “But she put up with it, which tells you something about the way he negotiates a deal. I wonder how much she goes for.”

It was Fowler’s apartment. She was watching Fowler’s apartment, not the water. Not the boats or the moon. A set of gauze drapes was pulled, but Boldt could make out the shapes of two people, clearly a man-Fowler-and a woman. No telling her age or what she looked like.

“This is what he does in his free time when he’s not watching other people.” Her angry tone of voice worried him. “Buy a little piece of ass for a midnight snack. A Hostess Twinkie.” In a Betty Boop voice, she said, “What? Can’t sleep tonight? Dial: One-eight hundred-I-DO-FUCK.”

“I’m right here,” he offered.

Staring out the window, she asked, “Have you ever watched other people screw? Not movies-I mean for real. It was disgusting. It was my first time. It’s really a disgusting dirty little act in many ways-especially like that, at the table like that. All the bumping and grabbing. A couple minutes is all, like alley cats. They never even kissed. Can you imagine? He just took her like a piece of meat. Like he had ordered a pizza or something. I don’t think she liked it,” she repeated.

“Let’s get out of here,” Boldt suggested.

“I’ll bet you anything he watched me and Owen.” She snapped her head toward him then, but looked away immediately. She said, “He didn’t learn anything, judging by his own performance.”

“We could get some eggs,” Boldt suggested, wanting her out of here.

“She’s leaving now. She’s smart.” Boldt saw that the woman was in fact leaving. “Two hours on the nose. Well, not exactly the nose. No matter what he paid her, it wasn’t enough. Not with a man like that. I wonder what two hours cost. Is it by the hour, or what?”

“What does this accomplish, Daffy?”

“If I’m watching him, then I know he’s not watching me. You want to fault that logic?” She added, “I want to bring charges, Lou.”

“Daffy, do whatever you have to do.”

“If you’re going to say something, just say it.”

“We were cutting him out, Daffy. He knew it. He even said as much. You were nosing around some old skeletons, and he wanted to know what you had.”

“No pun intended,” she sniped sarcastically. “I’m quite certain that by now he knows what I have.”

“You want to blame someone, try Taplin. You think Fowler dreamed this up? He takes orders, Daffy. He’s Taplin’s go-and-fetch-it.”

“They probably had pizza parties and watched me take showers.”

“They’re in business. They’re not running peep shows. If you really want to hurt them, then forget filing charges. We wait and we use this against them somehow.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think I can go back there and pretend I don’t know?”

He waited her out.

“You’re saying they’ve already seen all there is to see, so why not?” she questioned.

“I’m not really suggesting that. No. We make an excuse. A friend needs you. Adler asks you to move in with him.”

“We had to stop that because of my badge.”

“We’ll think of something. I’d just rather not blow the whistle yet.”

Fowler’s light went off. It was over.

“You’re staying here tonight?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Are you going to be all right?”

Another nod. “I’m a big girl.” She smirked. “Just ask him.”

“I can stay.”

“Go home to your family.” She glanced over at him. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved. I lost it, that’s all.”

“Yeah. You lost it,” Boldt said. And she grinned for the first time.

He kissed her. She flinched. And he left.