Middle of Nowhere (21 page)

“Please, Maria,” Daphne pleaded.

“Yes,” came the answer.

Boldt experienced a combination of relief and anxiety. Sanchez had been working an I.I. prior to her burglary assault. A dozen questions danced on the tip of his tongue.

“Did the investigation involve Property?” he asked.

She stared at the ceiling. Unable, or unwilling to answer? Boldt wondered. “Krishevski?” Boldt asked quickly, for his suspicions remained with the Property sergeant.

The ceiling. But he thought she struggled not to answer.

“Pendegrass?”

The ceiling. Perhaps she was overmedicated, he thought.

“Chapman?”

Her eyelids fluttered, she squeezed them shut tightly. When they reopened, she stared at the ceiling.

“Maria. . .” a frustrated Boldt pleaded. “Please. You’re the only one who can answer these questions.” He allowed this to sink in. “Do you believe someone—anyone—from Property was involved in your assault?” He asked this with as little emotion as he could summon, and yet his own convictions surfaced.

“No,” replied the injured woman.

Daphne glanced at Boldt—Sanchez’s first definite answer took Property out of the assault. A part of him felt satisfied. He could focus on the burglary and let others turn over the rocks—if those rocks even existed.

But Chapman’s anxiety the night before remained in the forefront of his thoughts, and cautioned against accepting Sanchez’s answers.

“Do you believe your assault was related in any way to your I.I. case?” Daphne inquired.

Again, she stared at the ceiling. Boldt’s frustration built.

“Maria, we have two more officers in this hospital this morning. We have suspicious movements from officers in Property. We have far more questions than answers, and you’re apparently one of the few people who knows what’s going on. I know it’s asking a lot—too much even—but please, help us out here!”

Her eyes shone. A tear escaped down her cheek.

“We’ve upset you,” Daphne apologized to the woman. “Are you avoiding answers, Maria, because we are not I.I., not directly your superiors on this case?”

“Yes!” Somehow those eyes shouted.

Again Maria stared at the ceiling, tears running.

“But we want to
help!”
an exasperated Boldt pleaded.

Daphne repeated softly, “Do you think your assault might be connected to your I.I. case?”

Her eyes shut and reopened. “Yes,” she replied, now staring directly at Boldt.

Daphne looked across to a relieved Boldt and said, “We need this burglar in custody. If he can give us an alibi for the night of her assault, then—”

“Maybe that would be enough to take a good long look at whatever case she was working,” Boldt interrupted. The secrecy surrounding I.I. cases was notoriously impossible to crack. He said, “You’re right about the order of things—this burglar just might become our star witness.”

A
nthony Brumewell caught a glimpse of himself in the driver’s side mirror as the garage door flipped shut electronically and he stepped out into his garage. Working nights was not his thing; he felt exhausted. He entered the home’s small kitchen, dumped his briefcase onto a kitchen chair, and headed straight for the refrigerator and a Coors Lite. He yanked down ajar of dry-roasted peanuts, popped off the yellow plastic lid and spilled out a handful. He blindly reached over for the TV’s remote and came up empty. When he turned toward the TV itself he realized there was no remote control because there was no TV. And that was when the first pang of dread overcame him.

What the hell?
he wondered, his mind fishing for a recollection that might explain its absence. He dropped the beer can on the counter. The peanuts spilled like pebbles onto the floor, and his heart raced furiously. The television had been stolen, he realized now. Was someone still
inside
the house? He panicked.

He picked up the wall phone. No dial tone. “Hello?” It was off the hook somewhere else. There were two other phones: one in the living room, one in the bedroom. He scrambled to get out of the house. Only then did he notice his home security box had been smashed up.

Terrified now, Brumewell hurried back out to the garage and into the safety of his car. He locked the car doors, tripped the garage door to open, turned the key and shoved the car into reverse, knocking a mirror off in the process. He reached for the car phone, already stabbing the three numbers he had never before dialed: 911.

A
nother break-in. Boldt contacted the Brumewell crime scene by cell phone and uncharacteristically drove over the speed limit to get there. Phil Shoswitz had caught him while he was on his way to the Jamersons’ for breakfast. Shoswitz’s burglary unit had drawn the investigation on a chaotic morning when nearly nine hundred officers—out of the eleven hundred who had walked out—had returned to work “unexpectedly.” The media was camped in the lobby of Public Safety, making a zoo out of the place. The victim—the owner of the house—was waiting for their arrival. The radio led with “breaking news” that the strike had been broken by a tough stance from the new chief. Rumors and stories abounded.

Without asking if the victim’s home had a garage, Boldt requested that the garage’s clicker be waiting for him.

SID had not yet arrived. The sunrise had brought rain, then sunshine, now rain again—like Boldt, it couldn’t make up its mind. There had been no assault and therefore no detective initially assigned. It was only through the diligent eye of a dispatcher that Shoswitz had been notified at all. With Flu-time burglaries at an all-time high, and low on SPD’s priority list, Anthony Brumewell might have been missed by the radar entirely.

Boldt intentionally blocked the short driveway with the Cavalier. Sunshine again. He hoped it might hold. He didn’t want SID pulling their van in there as they had at the Sanchez crime scene. Cleanliness
was
next to godliness at a crime scene.

The patrolman said, “I’ve got the owner in the front seat of the cruiser, if you want to—”

“Later,” Boldt said, accepting the clicker from the man. “Take down his statement, Officer . . . Mallory. No editorials. Just let him talk. You’ve got five to ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If the press shows up, you keep them away from him. You got that?”

“Got it.”

“SID waits outside as well. Anyone entering while the captain and I are inside will be chalking tires. That includes you, Officer Mallory. You want me, you page me. Dispatch has the number.”

The officer nodded but looked a shade or two paler than a moment earlier. He took off as Shoswitz caught up. Boldt pressed the clicker and the garage door opened out and up, reminding Boldt of a mouth of a tomb. He handed Shoswitz a pair of latex gloves. “You ready, Captain?”

Shoswitz rubbed his elbow violently. Boldt took that as a “yes.”

Brumewell’s garage was crowded, though not cluttered, with collapsible lawn furniture and rusted garden tools hanging from nails on the wall. Boldt and Shoswitz steered their way clear, and then Boldt tripped the clicker he held in his hand, the garage door slowly closing.

“What’s with your interest in the garage?” Shoswitz asked.

“Point of entry,” Boldt answered. “Dead-bolted homes, Phil. It took us a while to see the common denominator. Our boy clones the garage door clickers, probably by hanging around nearby and picking up frequencies. I had someone looking for a name for us, but I haven’t heard from him, so I suspect we’ve drawn a blank.”

“My guys didn’t have this garage thing?” Shoswitz queried, a little troubled.

“Neither did I, Phil. Sanchez gets the credit on this one.” They entered the kitchen. Boldt speculated, “My guess is that the burglar takes only one big risk: He backs his van into the victim’s garage in broad daylight and then shuts the door. If he pulls that off cleanly, he’s home free. Probably carries a police-band scanner with him. If it’s me, I put the scanner in a pocket and an earpiece in one ear. If I hear this address called in, I’m gone. Otherwise, once he’s inside, he’s inside.”

Shoswitz followed Boldt out of the kitchen and into a living area, where several vacant spaces on shelves marked some of the stolen electronics. A cable TV box sat on a table’s empty surface. A VCR, untouched. “My guys didn’t get this?” a frustrated captain repeated.

“Not important,” Boldt said.

“It is to me.”

“You made inquires about an I.I. connection?”

“First thing. But the chances I’ll hear back—”

“I know,” Boldt interrupted.

Boldt had greeted LaMoia’s return to the fifth floor by dumping a copy of all eleven burglaries on his desk and ordering him to use his contacts in the private sector to look for possible insurance fraud.

Standing in Brumewell’s living room, he made notes about the missing electronics.

“Clean job,” Shoswitz said. “It’s no junkie, that’s for sure.”

The comment triggered a thought, and Boldt dropped to his knees, searching the area behind the cabinet that had held the TV.

Shoswitz followed obediently, also dropping to the carpet. A moment later, he asked sheepishly, “What exactly are we looking for, Lou?”

Boldt stretched, squeezing his arm between the cabinet and wall. As he touched the object, his mind leaped ahead wondering where Pendegrass and Chapman fit in, and if he’d ever prove a connection between these men and the assaults.

“This!” he said, suddenly jubilant. Pinched between his latex-gloved fingers he held a white plastic wire-tie.

T
he noon news carried a plea from Krishevski to the mayor to drop the “hardball tactics” and allow police officers to “once again take their place, protecting and serving the city of Seattle.” But it proved too little, too late. The mayor had played his card—health services had invalidated dozens of sick leaves and officers were being fired from the force.

Krishevski attempted to turn Schock and Phillipp into martyrs, claiming that inexperienced officers promoted prematurely by the chief, with the mayor’s blessing, had failed to support the detectives and that the chief should be held directly responsible for their injuries. The pressure failed. In a press release, the mayor announced that the two hundred and twelve firings were not under reconsideration, that health services had determined that these officers claiming sick leave had been perfectly capable of serving their city and had lost the public’s trust, causing permanent damage to the reputation of all city employees and services. Krishevski, it was announced, was himself fired, and the mayor announced he would no longer be considered president of the guild, as this position, according to charter, had to be held by an active police officer.

Viewed as nothing more than a negotiating position, the nature of Krishevski’s status remained in question. A compromise seemed inevitable. The cost to both sides—politically and economically—had not yet been calculated.

“You look awful,” LaMoia told Boldt upon entering the man’s office. “But this . . .” he said, indicating the busy fifth floor, “this, is beautiful.”

The floor teemed with activity.