The First Victim

CHAPTER 60

With SPD monitoring his every footstep, nearly his every breath, Rodriguez was carefully followed, first to an all-night pharmacy where he bought a bottle of aspirin, some cough syrup and a head cold decongestant, and subsequently to ‘‘A place on Military Road in Federal Way,’’ as LaMoia explained to Boldt, who had returned to the office to oversee and direct the surveillance from the situation room. ‘‘He climbs up into an eighteen-wheeler cab-a flatbed-and takes a two-hour nap. I got a hunch that truck’s his home for the time being. But then he fires it up and drives off. What’s that say to you, Sarge?’’

‘‘Mama Lu was right about the new moon,’’ Boldt answered. ‘‘There’s a shipment coming in. Tomorrow? The next day? Soon!’’ The truck was intended to move a container.

‘‘So then he drives a couple miles, parks it and takes a lawyer’s lunch at a greasy spoon-only it’s after midnight. He’s in no sign of being in any hurry.’’

‘‘We know for certain he’s in there?’’ Boldt pressed.

‘‘Cranshaw is getting his fill of cherry pie and coffee. We got a visual.’’

‘‘Waiting for a meet?’’ Boldt proposed.

‘‘That or a call. Got to be. You want I should bring him in for a chat?’’

‘‘Negative,’’ Boldt stated. The evidence they had against Rodriguez was entirely circumstantial. ‘‘I could try for a trap-and-trace on the diner’s pay phone-’’

‘‘Now there’s a long shot.’’

‘‘Never get it,’’ Boldt admitted.

‘‘Let’s hope this guy’s girlfriend doesn’t have a thing for the inside of truck cabs or something. I hope to hell we’re not wasting our time

here.’’

‘‘Is sex the only thing you think about?’’ Boldt asked.

‘‘No way!’’ LaMoia answered without missing a beat. ‘‘I’m pretty fond of money, too.’’

At 3:00 A.M. Wednesday morning the flatbed semi with Rodriguez behind the wheel finally left the diner’s gravel lot. Boldt was awakened from a nap in a storage room where a bunk bed offered detectives a chance to lie down. Surveillance was tricky at that hour, and with Boldt’s request for a phone warrant denied, all the police could do was guess at the call Rodriguez had been seen making from the diner and to follow him at a comfortable distance.

Thirty minutes later he used a bolt cutter to enter the gates of a naval storage depot that proved to have been part of the 1988 base closures that had caused a brief downward blip in King County’s otherwise stellar economy. Rodriguez pulled the flatbed down to a dock area where a pair of towering cranes pointed up toward the night sky. It was those cranes that caught everyone’s attention.

Fifteen minutes later, as LaMoia and two other detectives made their move to get a better vantage point, Rodriguez was spotted crossing through the navy yard’s side gates on foot. A moment later he dragged a motorcycle out of the weeds and took off without lights, catching the surveillance team by surprise and LaMoia in the midst of cutting a chained gate accessing a dark spit of land that looked directly across a small thumb of water at the navy yard. Detectives pursued in unmarked cars, but Rodriguez took the cycle off-road and disappeared.

‘‘Eluded?’’ Boldt roared into the phone.

‘‘We screwed up, Sarge.’’

‘‘And then some,’’ Boldt said.

‘‘Didn’t expect the bike.’’

‘‘Don’t try for sympathy from me. You lost our prime suspect.’’

‘‘We still have the flatbed,’’ LaMoia reminded, attempting to salvage something from his loss, ‘‘and the two cranes. Gaynes is still on Coughlie. He paid a visit to KSTV. He took a brief ride on a city bus. You got that, Sarge? A city bus!’’ He added cautiously, ‘‘This navy yard has got to be the place. It’s perfect. The cranes, for Christ’s sake! I’m gonna issue a Be on Lookout for Rodriguez. We’ll set up out here. If we’re right about this drop, Sarge, we had better be prepared for an all-out war. I’m thinking Mulwright and Special Ops.’’

‘‘I’ve got to report it to Hill, John.’’

‘‘I understand.’’

‘‘Hang in there.’’

‘‘Right.’’

As the sun crawled into a slate gray sky looking like a bug light held behind a curtain, three men pushed a step van out onto their surveillance point to avoid having to run the van’s motor and risk its being overheard. LaMoia and two technicians climbed into the back of that van, dog-tired, hungry and humiliated. They took turns with twenty-minute catnaps, but nothing helped LaMoia. Failure was the worst kind of fatigue.

The barren spit of land with its rough gravel and broken glass was littered with the skeletons of commercial fishing equipment: buoys, engine parts, booms, cranks, winches and miles of coiled and damaged fishing net wound onto enormous spools. Water slapped against a sea wall of boulders, chunks of former roadway and the rusting carcasses of dead automobiles and railroad boxcars. The seawater, a murky green, moved like mercury. A light but steady breeze colored the air with a salty ocean spray.

At 6:00 A.M. that Wednesday morning, LaMoia received word over the radio that they had trouble at the gate. He slipped out the back of the van wondering when the trouble would stop. Every time he turned around there was a screwup or a problem.

The problem this time was a rent-a-cop with a company called Collier Security. He wore a gray-blue uniform with a can of pepper spray where on a cop the gun would have been. The Collier logo on the arm patch tried too hard to look like SPD’s. The name badge pinned over the right pocket read Stilwill.

‘‘Mr. Stilwill, what’s the problem?’’ an exhausted and agitated LaMoia inquired.

‘‘What I’m telling the officer here is that I got me a job to do, Lieutenant.’’

‘‘Sergeant,’’ LaMoia corrected.

‘‘Cops or not, you can’t be here on this property without the owners knowing about it.’’

‘‘We will handle notification,’’ LaMoia assured him. ‘‘For the time being it would be whole lot better for everyone if you just continued your rounds. Forget about us. We aren’t here. That would save us all a trip downtown and a lot of lawyering.’’

‘‘Yeah, but like, you can’t be in here. See? It’s private property. And the equipment on it is private property. You got a warrant?’’

‘‘I’ve got probable cause. This is an active investigation,’’ LaMoia said dryly, his patience running thin. ‘‘You have a clear choice here, Stilwill. It’s your call to make, right or wrong.’’

Detective Heiman crossed the road from an unmarked car and hurried over to LaMoia. Out of breath, he spoke a little too loudly for the situation. ‘‘Port Authority has six freighters scheduled for arrival over the next twenty-four hours. Three of them listing Hong Kong last port of call.’’

‘‘Give me a minute here, Detective,’’ LaMoia said, well aware the security man had overheard.

Stilwill looked out over the water and clearly took note of the cranes. ‘‘That container thing?’’ he asked. ‘‘You’re on that container thing?’’

‘‘It’s an undercover surveillance operation, Mr. Stilwill,’’ LaMoia explained, avoiding a direct answer. ‘‘You want me to say good things about you, you’ll just pick up and move on. ’Cause otherwise I’m gonna rain down shit on your parade so deep you’ll drown in it.’’

Stilwill glanced around nervously, outnumbered.

‘‘What you need to do,’’ LaMoia repeated, ‘‘is move on and forget about this. Are you listening, Mr. Stilwill?’’

‘‘I hear ya,’’ he said, his attention remaining on the view of the naval yard. ‘‘That over there has been deserted for years. Ain’t never seen nothing over there. Where’d that flatbed come from anyway?’’

‘‘You need to think about our little situation here.’’

‘‘What situation?’’ Stilwill asked, intentionally naive, offering LaMoia a shit-eating grin.

‘‘That’s better,’’ LaMoia said, but inside he didn’t trust the man.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 216 DAYS MISSING