The Art of Deception

Throwing the Net

When the phone rang at 10:15 P.M., there was no doubt in the Boldt home who should answer. He received fewer of these calls since the promotion to lieutenant-paper pushers weren’t in demand as much as squad sergeants-but he still kept his finger in the pot. Boldt’s team rarely made major decisions without his input. He’d been hoping for word from Sandra Babcock, hoping to gain access to the Underground given that the city had refused him entrance through the sinkhole due to safety concerns.

He answered the living room phone, listened to LaMoia on the other end, and agreeing with everything his sergeant suggested, grunted out “Yes,” five or six times in a row. As he hung up, it suddenly felt more like 7 A.M. inside his head-wide awake.

By this time Liz had appeared in their bedroom door wearing a sky blue pajama top of a synthetic that had all the qualities of satin, hanging on her like a coat of paint down to mid-thigh. He knew she wore only that top and nothing else, for that particular choice was her signal for what she had in mind, and he felt sorry to disappoint them both. As he cradled the receiver, he also hung his head.

“Too bad,” she said. “You would have liked it.”

“Yes.”

“Me, too, for that matter.”

“Nice to hear.”

“Can you be twenty minutes late?”

“Wish I could.”

“Yes, you do,” she said, offering an understanding face and sympathetic eyes. Being a policeman’s wife couldn’t be easy.

He knew this and tried to cushion the blows whenever possible.

They’d made it through the most dangerous years, the most stressful years, both of them straying from the marriage, but only once as far as he knew, though Liz for a much longer period.

He’d never learned the identity of her lover and wondered if he ever would. As a lieutenant, the demands were on his time, the pressures more political in nature, the internal problems of his people leaving him feeling like a camp counselor. This call proved a little bit of all three. She wouldn’t want to hear about it. They both worked hard to leave their jobs at the office-an unattainable ideal, but one worth striving for.

“How long?” she asked.

“An hour if I’m lucky,” he said. “All night, if I’m really lucky.”

He won a grin from her, a small but important concession.

“Good for you.” Had they not been personally tied to the disappearances, it would have been out of bounds for her to ask if it involved Susan Hebringer, and Boldt might have felt uncomfortable about including her. But the rules had changed since the mother of their daughter’s classmate had gone missing, and Boldt thought maybe it was for the better-Liz deserved to know more about what took him away at 10:15 at night.

He told her that LaMoia had called, that Daphne Matthews had jammed herself up, and that it needed untangling, but that yes, there seemed to be an unexpected connection to Hebringer and Randolf.

“Then go,” she said, knowing this made no difference to his decision, and yet it did. “I’ll stay up and do some prayer work.”

They came at life’s solutions from two different angles, but Boldt had finally settled into feeling right and good about it, believing that maybe one couldn’t exist without the other, that the material and spiritual were far more interconnected and yet entirely separate at the same time. He was still learning about her world; she’d given up on his the day she walked out of medical treatment for the lymphoma. And yet there was a meeting of the minds more often than not. “I could use that,” he said, wanting to support her efforts.

She had something to say to him but kept it to herself, a coy grin taking the place of the words. He wanted to hear it but knew better than to ask. The secret to the success of their marriage these days was as much about knowing what not to say as it was knowing what to say. He admired her for her restraint.

They shared a kiss. She smelled softly of the lotion that he knew her to spread all over her body prior to bed.

This was a night of great sacrifice indeed.

“Where is she now?”

“Back at her place,” LaMoia answered, the two of them at a near run as they approached Homicide’s situation room. When Boldt shot him a disapproving look, LaMoia explained that they had a patrol guarding her dock.

“Everyone else is here?”

“Heiman, Gaynes, DeLuca, and Morse. Brandon’s home sick, Marsha’s still on pregnancy leave.”

“Listen up!” Boldt shouted, addressing the gathering, as he and LaMoia entered the bland conference room that served as a staging area for major investigations. The four detectives were strewn around the room, Heiman in a chair, Gaynes propped against a file cabinet, DeLuca towering over a stack of equipment trying to get the room’s video projector switched off before Boldt realized they’d been watching a movie on TBS. The room smelled of coffee and old socks. The video went to a solid blue panel, though the sound of the action flick lingered for another few seconds until DeLuca found the right switch.

“Research,” Morse said, winning a round of nervous laughter from his colleagues.

Boldt managed to suppress a smile-the trick to effective leadership was to keep people guessing.

“Here’s where we stand,” Boldt explained in a military-like tone. “Matthews had a call suggesting a possible lead in the disappearances. Name of the contact is Ferrell Walker, brother of the jumper-the case that LaMoia caught a little over a week ago. We have a sheet, including a Department of Licensing photo,” he said, indicating for LaMoia to pass out the flyers.

“Note that the photo is a couple years old now. He was just a kid at the time. This guy’s gone seriously downhill. He’s wearing the street, looking about twenty years older. Last seen in dirty jeans and a ratty sweatshirt that zips up the front. Navy blue, or black maybe. Works day labor cutting up fish down at the fishing docks on the canal. Might have friends around there.

Made a reference to Matthews that he was basically homeless, so that’s what we’re assuming. We’ve got to keep the patrol units on the construction sites and the hotels. We’ve got another on Matthews’s residence, so we’re a little short-handed in terms of uniforms available to us. You all clock out in an hour, but I want you to stay on this at least until two-until we find him, if we’re lucky. LaMoia has assigned each of you a section of the city. I want you to toss every homeless person you encounter until we find Walker, or where he might be holed up. Bring him in for loitering, vagrancy, public nuisance-I don’t give a damn, just get him in here.”

LaMoia added, “Consider him dangerous. He carries a blade-a serious knife-like a goddamned sword.” He indicated his right side. “Over here, in a scabbard.”

“Sounds like a fucking pirate,” DeLuca said. A couple of the others chuckled.

Boldt addressed DeLuca. “Brian, you’ll work the bars around the canal.” He and LaMoia had worked out the assignments that went with the sheets. “But listen, I want all of you to get the word out on the street that there’s a Hamilton for information that proves good.”

“Each of you grab a radio,” LaMoia said. “Along with cell phones, we’ve got no excuses for losing touch. No lost time: no doughnuts or burgers or fried chicken,” this to Morse, “no video games or talking up the waitresses a few minutes longer than necessary. Okay, guys?”

“This is Hebringer and Randolf Walker’s talking about,”

Boldt reminded. “Let’s not forget that.”

If anyone had been thinking of throwing a wisecrack into the mix, Boldt’s comment stole the oxygen from the room.

“Go,” LaMoia said, watching the four hurry and feeling a sense of power that his word counted for so much.

Gaynes paused by her bosses. “You need a woman to hang with Matthews, I’m good for that. Whatever the hour, I don’t care.” She moved on, knowing better than to wait for a reply.

“You?” Boldt asked his sergeant.

“Something you said just now …” LaMoia tapped his temple with his index finger, “… you got the juices going, Sarge.”

“Are you going to share this kernel of wisdom?”

“I’m gonna skate by Matthews’s crib and roast a few marsh-mallows with her. Anything comes of it, you’ll be the first to hear.”

“Why do I doubt that?” Boldt asked.

LaMoia flashed him the trademark smile, a Tony Randall smile complete with the animated sparkle coming off the front tooth.

“Get gone,” Boldt said.