The Body of David Hayes

FOUR

UNACCUSTOMED TO SUCH THINGS, LIZ suffered a bout of depression as she rode an elevator toward the fifth floor of the Public Safety Building and her husband’s office. Revisiting the Affair-capital A-was certain to disturb and disrupt Lou, was certain to strain and test their marriage, and just the thought of that made her skin clammy, her neck tense. She’d never once been called to the principal’s office, but now she knew how it felt.

Like this old public building, there had been an earlier time when their marriage had shone in all its glory. Now the place existed in a ponderous state of absolute cheerlessness. She hoped their relationship was not destined to suffer a similar fate.

Required to check in with an attendant outside of Crimes Against Persons, Liz indirectly alerted Lou to her arrival and he was waiting for her as she was buzzed through the door. To her relief, he looked neither troubled nor angry, and just seeing him made her feel better.

“Hey, you,” she said.

He said nothing, escorting her into his office and shutting the door. Seeing their children’s artwork taped and tacked to the walls and corkboard alongside crime scene photos and photocopied memos twisted Liz into a knot. She wanted-needed-to keep this businesslike yet personal, honest and yet not too specific, keeping in mind his feelings above her own. He was certain to take this as being as much of a shock as she had when she’d received that first call from David. She remembered her own reaction as breathless and frightened, and wanted to remember to give him a chance to recover, regardless of what his steeled exterior revealed. As a cop, Lou Boldt could hide anything going on inside him.

She sat down, and to her great relief Lou turned a chair to face her, forgoing his regular chair behind the desk. “Hey there yourself,” he finally said.

She kept in mind that he questioned people for a living. He turned them around on themselves to where they would confess to what they had no intention of revealing. Both a good listener and quick on his feet, Lou was not to be challenged. She schooled herself not to get competitive or defensive.

“We need to go back several years,” she began, “to the embezzlement.”

“Okay.” But it wasn’t okay and he knew that, for it also marked another event in their lives.

She plunged in. “In all this time, you’ve never asked me with whom I had the affair.”

“You’ve never told me,” he said, making a point of his impression of the proper order of things.

“I can’t tell you how much I respected you for that. Appreciated your leaving that choice to me. I know it can’t have been easy.”

“None of this has ever been easy,” Lou said, “for either of us. I wanted to know so I wouldn’t keep guessing every time we attended a bank function. I didn’t want to know because comparisons were inevitable, and I didn’t want to carry my own inadequacies around, didn’t want to face where I’d failed you, didn’t want to judge you for your taste in lovers and hate you for it. For the record, I’m over that stuff now. It’s history.”

He had a tendency to speak like this, adopting phrases from his work-“for the record”-and subjecting her to them.

“It’s David Hayes.”

She watched as the news hit him, actually glad to see he couldn’t carry this off with a stone face and calm exterior. He paled, nodded. “The embezzler. Danny Foreman’s stakeout.” He nodded again, pieces fitting together for him.

“He was with I.T. Back then. This is before I was promoted to oversee the department.”

“Did you know anything about it at the time? The embezzlement?”

The similarity of this question to that of Danny Foreman bothered her.

She rehashed for him the known facts of the embezzlement-the wire fraud, the missing seventeen million, the belief that the money still resided somewhere on the bank’s servers, and Danny Foreman’s determination to intercept any attempt to retrieve the stolen funds and the software responsible for hiding it, and to identify the people whose money it had been. Her husband stayed with her, never interrupting, his ear turned slightly toward her, his eyes fixed as if she’d winded him.

“David contacted me at the office yesterday, and I went to see him.”

Lou nodded. She wanted more from him than this, any expression of his internal emotions. Anything but talking to a robot.

She described the threats Hayes had received, the physical beating he’d taken, and her insistence he go to the authorities to make a deal. “I took all this to Danny Foreman today,” she described. “We made a deal that I’d try to get permission to release some of the classified bank information to him if he’d work on a deal to get David and his mother relocated.”

Boldt said calmly, “There’s a saying in witness protection: The difference between deal and dead is one letter.”

“Right, well… what I want to say is I’m embarrassed and ashamed by all of this, by everything that’s happened, back then, now, the fact he contacted me. But I can’t hide it, won’t hide it. And I won’t give anyone the chance to use that against me, against us.”

“I know how hard this must have been for you. Coming here. Explaining this. But if you expect me to thank you-”

“I don’t expect any such thing. Do I want you to thank me? No! But a reaction would be nice. Shout at me, scream at me, be angry with me. What are you feeling in there, and why won’t you show me?”

“I’m thinking you’re the one that needs protection.”

“Not thinking,” she complained. “Feeling. What are you feeling?”

Lou straightened up and waited for her eyes to meet his own. “I don’t feel in this office. This is not a place for that. I work here. I process facts. I process death. I occasionally allow myself to feel when I get into my car and head home, but even then I turn the radio up real loud, put the windows down, and stay quiet about it. You feel for about the first six months on this job. That would be a while ago for me. After that you try not to let emotion overcome reason. Not that you’re always successful. You’re not.

“What am I feeling now?” he continued. “Hurt. Trapped. Concerned for you. Worried about Danny Foreman being involved because he’s famous for what we call a Lone Ranger attitude and I don’t want you caught up in that. At the same time I’m grateful to be included, I do thank you for that, and while I’d like to be feeling more, at least for your sake, I find myself instead trying to jump ahead and get this thing contained, because you’re my wife and I don’t want you in the middle of this.”

“Trapped?”

“Did I say trapped?”

“You did.”

“I don’t know what I meant by that.”

Despite his outward façade of complacency, she recognized his fixed stare. He was lost to thought. She felt this kind of information was better doled out in doses than dumped all at once as she had done, but she’d had little choice.

“So what do we do?” she asked.

“I talk to Danny. We sort this out.”

“And me?”

“We handle it from here, Liz. If he contacts you again, then that’s where you’re involved again. But that’ll be by phone only. You’re not to make any kind of physical contact with him again.”

Any kind of physical contact; she resented him including that. “I wasn’t the one who made contact. I thought I explained that.”

“You went to see him,” Lou reminded. “You cooperated. That wouldn’t look good to a judge or jury.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What if it comes down to his word against yours that you had nothing to do with the original crime?”

“We’re past that. We’re way past that. Don’t you think that just might have come out in the original trial?”

“How is the bank going to feel about you taking a meeting in secret with a convicted embezzler? Was the bank notified?”

“It’s none of their business!”

“It’s exactly their business. It’s none of your business, or shouldn’t be.”

She processed this and knew he was right, and this filled her with an added dread.

“I’ll talk to Danny,” Boldt said again.

She didn’t want Lou comparing notes with Danny Foreman, but any thought of containing this was long gone.

“Who else has access to I.T. the way you do?”

“That’s what Danny wants too.”

“I’m not Danny.”

“I do. Tony does, of course. Phillip-goes without saying.”

“Maintenance?” he asked. “Programmers?”

“A dozen or more for the UNIX system, sure. Not the AS/400s. Tony’s the only programmer we have who works with the AS/400s. Typically we outsource that work to IBM anyway. They’re their own worlds, the AS/400s.”

“So, in some ways, Tony LaRossa is more important to Hayes than you.”

“Except that David has a past with me. He thinks he can use it to his advantage. He’d have to strong-arm Tony or try to bribe him, and neither of those is even a remote possibility.”

“Either is a possibility,” Lou said. “These people drugged Danny. You said they pulled a couple fingernails off Hayes. They killed a dog. Threatened an old lady. What makes Tony LaRossa immune?”

“Okay,” she said. “So Tony’s in the picture as well. I’ll call him.”

“No,” Lou said sharply. “You’re discounting the possibility that Tony was involved from the beginning.”

“Tony? He’s my director of I.T.!” She said this but felt a worming sensation overcome her. “Tony? We barbecue with Tony and Beth. The twins-”

“… were an expensive adoption,” Boldt interrupted, finishing her sentence for her. “The failed in-vitros must have run in the tens of thousands. Where’d Tony get that kind of money?”

“He makes a good living.”

“He’s worth a look.”

“We all get favorable loan rates. Don’t lump Tony in with David Hayes. He’s not that kind of person.”

“And you are? Stay clear of Tony, Liz. Not a word until we’ve had a chance to run some background.”

“I didn’t come here to turn the investigation over to you, Lou. I came here to be honest with you, to include you.”

“Consider me now included.”

“Not like this.”

“What’d you expect? I’d let Danny run you?”

“No one’s running me.”

“Hayes is running you. Or trying to. Going to Danny before coming to me… How am I supposed to feel about that?”

She hadn’t considered his professional pride might be more wounded than his husband’s pride. Then, realizing the two were impossibly intertwined, she resigned herself to the fact that she’d botched the whole thing from the start. Without thinking, she asked, “Are you alright with this?”

“‘Conflicted,’ I think it’s called.” Sarcasm was misplaced in him, like a preacher swearing. “I obviously failed you as a husband. No matter how far in the past, that kills me. Your taking this to Danny before me also hurts and, I might add, makes it all the more difficult for us both. Unlike Danny, I put your safety first, the investigation second. Whether or not I can make that happen at this late date is anybody’s guess, but it has to happen because I am not exposing you to this guy again.”

“I won’t have his mother’s murder on my conscience, Lou. That might not make any sense to you, but I want you clear on this. I will be involved, at least to the extent David thinks I’m involved. I want to be cooperative, I want to work this out, yes, but as wife and husband, not informant and detective.”

“I can’t make any promises. At least not the one you’re asking for. I’ll need to make some calls.”

She felt a victim again, much as she had after the meeting with David. Lou had boxed her into something she’d not seen coming, and she deeply resented the way he felt it was his right to make decisions for her.

“I’ll try to do whatever you and Danny ask, Lou, but I will not be excluded from the decision-making process. You, or someone, is going to offer David a deal. I will bring him that deal, if necessary.”

“We’ll protect the mother if we can. Depending on where she lives.”

“California, somewhere.”

“That’s more problematic, but not impossible. As I said, I need to make some calls.”

She felt the principal had dismissed her, but she wasn’t done. “As far as I’m concerned, the worst thing that can happen is that we allow this to drive a wedge between us.”

“Which is why Danny and I are now in charge,” Lou said. “Because that’s not the worst. Truth be told, it doesn’t even come close.”

Alone now, Boldt wondered why her affair had to resurface, why Liz had to remind him that he should feel something more than his general sense of numbness allowed. Over the past six years, he’d figured out how to hide much of this behind a carefully erected wall. Now, despite all his emotional masonry, that wall had crumbled down around him. Around them both.

Boldt phoned Danny Foreman, prepared to feel impotent and the source of another’s unspoken amusement. Cuckolded. He lacked a cohesive strategy but knew time was of the essence. Danny would already be working angles that he, Boldt, had yet to see. To wait too long was to be completely excluded. Liz had put herself in the center of this, and now Boldt needed to extricate her as quickly as possible.

Foreman didn’t pick up at his office, nor did he answer his mobile. Boldt left a pair of messages, but he knew in advance that there was good reason for Foreman’s silence.

Danny Foreman was already hard at work, and Boldt was playing catch-up.

It was an unspoken rule in the Boldt home that police business not be discussed, and so the collision of these two worlds caused repeated violations, begun the previous morning with the discussion of Danny Foreman’s assault and continued now through the post-dinner kitchen cleanup. As Liz patrolled the table and countertops, Boldt parked himself in front of the sink and splashed his way through a pile of pots and dishes, most of which were on their way to the KitchenAid dishwasher to his right, a noisy, prehistoric contraption that needed replacement. The thing would outlive most dogs without ever failing, but its churning, swishing, and occasional grinding amounted to an invasion of privacy, as far as Boldt was concerned, so he didn’t turn it on when the time came. Instead, he eavesdropped on his son, Miles, practicing piano.

“It’s beautiful,” Liz said, finishing off a countertop with a damp sponge. He sensed in her the desire to reestablish their lives as normal.

“It’s astonishing,” Boldt said. “His age… and as little training as he has had.” He was wondering what came next and how he could work to separate Liz from the investigation.

“Chip off the old block,” Liz said. “Off the old bolt,” she corrected, amusing him. For a moment, even to him, they felt like husband and wife again.

“I don’t have a tenth of that kind of talent.”

“He got it listening to you. Watching you practice as much as you do.”

“I’d love to take credit for any of that, believe me. But that’s more your department… more divine intervention than learned behavior. He’s special.”

“You’re both special,” Liz said. “And Sarah, too.”

The wall phone rang, interrupting the few moments of distraction away from the case. With the chiming of those tones, both husband and wife went silent, caught in a pregnant pause of indecision as to who should answer, and who should listen in. Boldt had never loved the phone, considering evening phone solicitation a crime on the level of a felony, and now had no desire to ever hear it ring again.

They both expected it to be Hayes, but it was Laura Towle, inviting them to a dinner with the school board member who represented their district. Boldt listened one-sided as Liz accepted. She knew that her husband supported her own passion to improve the early reading program. But the intrusion registered on both their faces as Liz hung up. David Hayes had stepped into their lives. There was no getting around it.

Not long after that they rounded up the kids and got them to bed. Familiar routines that settled Boldt’s anxieties and reminded him how important this family life had become for him.

Twenty minutes after the kids went down Liz’s cell phone rang, and this time her face collapsed as she answered. Boldt edged up next to her and she cocked the phone away from her head just far enough for Boldt to overhear.

Hayes made it short and sweet. She was to withdraw five thousand dollars in cash from the bank, deposit it into an aluminum briefcase sold by a Brookstone store in the small mall beneath the bank, and carry it with her out of the bank and onto the streets. Additional instructions were to come by cell phone then.

“They’re willing to deal,” Liz said, stretching the known facts. “The details aren’t worked out, but they’re sympathetic to your situation. They’re willing to protect you and your mother. Let me work this out for you, David.”

The long pause on the other end of the call seemed good reason for hope.

“Don’t let me down, Lizzy. These guys… there’s no deal that could possibly be good enough. Help me out here. Do this for me. Tomorrow, four P.M. sharp.”

The line disconnected.

Twenty-five minutes later, at Boldt’s beckoning, Danny Foreman knocked on the back door, and Boldt let him in. He was out of breath, his forehead sparkling, his eyes frantic, betraying a cluttered mind.

“Let me explain this,” Foreman said, looking too big for the lovingly restored parlor chair that had once been Liz’s great-aunt’s. He sat forward, dispensing a sense of urgency that Boldt found contagious.

Boldt reviewed the Hayes phone call with Danny Foreman as if Liz weren’t in the room, an attitude corrected after a series of glaring looks on her part. He built up to a point where he felt himself capable of negotiating Liz out of the money drop that Hayes had requested. It was then that Foreman jumped in with his own news.

“I’ve spoken to Paul Geiser. Any deal is predicated upon the recovery of the software or whatever means was used to hide the money as well as the identification and apprehension of whoever’s money it was in the first place.”

“But that’s ridiculous,” Liz blurted out. “That’s not a deal. That’s conscription. He’s not a cop, for heaven’s sake.”

“Paul is just a prosecutor. He’d have to pull some serious strings to provide permanent relocation for Hayes and his mother. Witness protection like that is only done on the federal level.” Boldt felt himself nodding along. The state could protect an important trial witness for a matter of weeks, or sometimes even months, but true relocation was a matter for the Justice Department. “If he can put a racketeering charge onto whoever’s got a thumb on Hayes, then the U.S. Attorney’s Office takes over and he says relocation is possible, not guaranteed, but possible. But that’s the only way it’s going to happen.”

“It’s too much,” Liz said.

“You’re speaking for him now, are you?”

“Lay off, Danny,” Boldt said.

Foreman sat back and collected himself. “Paul asked if Liz would go along with us, at least far enough to obtain what he calls the ‘cloaking’ software-whatever means was used to hide the money. I told him I doubted it, given your involvement.”

“You’ve got that right.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions, okay?” Liz leveled a look at both men. “Did you tell this prosecutor about David and me, Danny?” Foreman looked as if she’d slapped him across the face. “He knows, Danny,” she said, indicating Boldt. “I told you I wasn’t going to hide any of this.”

“He knows I have some juice on you, yes, because he asked how far we could push you.”

“And you answered, how?” Boldt asked.

“I was clear that the degree of her involvement would probably be defined by you more than by her.”

“But you said you had juice.”

“I did, but Paul has no idea of the nature of that.”

“He can guess,” Liz said.

“No. If he guesses, it will have to do with internal politics, because that’s the way Paul Geiser thinks.” Foreman looked around the room, his eyes landing on the kids’ books and toys. Boldt wondered if he was thinking that had Darlene lived, such clutter might be on the floor of his own living room. “I want her to make the drop.”

“Absolutely not.”

“To show goodwill. To show him she means business, that he can trust her.”

“Hayes needs her and her security clearance in order to access these computers. That makes her a constant target of possible abduction. A drop like this… for all we know, it’s a trap being laid to kidnap her.”

Liz interjected, “Then why wouldn’t he have simply taken me when we met earlier? He had a terrific opportunity. No, it’s not the way David operates. He’s not going to kidnap anyone. If he can’t get me to do this for him, he’ll think of something else.”

“We do not want to lose contact with him,” Foreman pressed. “Liz is that contact.”

“So we’ll give him what he wants,” Boldt said.

Liz asked, “Will someone please tell me what we’re all agreeing to?”

“Give us a chance to set it up,” Boldt told Foreman, who looked as surprised as Liz that he had acquiesced. Boldt told them exactly what he had in mind.