Ridley Pearson - The Art of Deception

“Look what the dog drug in,” a blinking Foreman said suddenly,his voice slurred behind the drug.

His coming conscious sent the paramedic into high gear, shouting out numbers like a sports announcer.

“You took a stun dart,” Boldt said. “Then they roped you.”

“Feel like Jell-O. No bones,discounting the one I got for Emma,my nurse here.”

“Keep it in your pants,Danny,” the woman said,grinning, “or I’ll search my bag for the hemostats.”

“Emma and I went to high school together.”

“We went to the same high school,” Emma corrected for Boldt’s sake. “Only Agent Foreman graduated twenty-eight years ahead of my class.”

“Always technicalities with you,” Foreman said.

“We met outside of work,” Emma further explained. To Foreman she said,“And here I am with my hand on your heart.”

“Wish our situations were reversed.”

“It’s the medication loosening his tongue,” Emma said.

“Next thing he’ll be proposing. Good part is,he won’t remember any of this.”

“Seriously?” Boldt asked.

“Doubtful. He’ll sleep soon,and when he wakes he’ll have lost most of the last few hours.”

“Good God.”

“Bullshit,” Foreman said. “I’m as clear as day.”

“Starting when?” Behind him Boldt heard the ambulance’s engine rev and a handful of half-assed cheers.

“I’ve got a vague recollection of thinking a dog had bit me, or a bee stung me. That’s about it.”

“A stakeout?” Boldt inquired. “A solo stakeout?”

“Budget cuts.”

“Meaning you will,or will not,share the identity of whoever it was you were watching in that trailer?”

“I’ll need a kiss before I can answer that.” Foreman added, “From her,not you.”

“Fat chance,” the medic said.

As they strapped Foreman into the stretcher,Boldt collected more bits and pieces: Foreman had gone off-radio while on duty, which had eventually caused his own people to go looking for him. BCI had called King County Sheriff,asking for a BOL-Be On Lookout. A patrol unit had found Foreman’s car-a brand new Cadillac Escalade-which had eventually led to discovering Foreman out cold in the bushes. Boldt was told the house trailer held “a good deal of blood evidence.”

While the EMTs loaded Foreman into the ambulance Boldt conducted a quick examination of the trailer. A tube-frame lawn chair in the center of the small living room looked to be the origin of most of the blood. The scarlet stairs radiated out like the spokes of a wheel. Dirty dishes filled the sink and the television was on,tuned to a rerun of Con Air.

The gloved forensics guy told Boldt the only thing they’d touched was the mute button on the remote. “The volume was deafening.” Boldt filed this away as important information.

Several pizza boxes were stacked on the counter,the cardboard oil-stained,indicating age. In the back bedroom,a room about eight by ten feet,he took in the unmade bed and clothes on the floor.

“We seem to be missing a body,” Boldt said.

KCSO CSU was stenciled across the back of the man’s white paper coveralls,the crime scene unit of the King County Sheriff’s Office.

Boldt repeated,“Do we have a body?”

The man turned around. He wore plastic safety glasses over a pinched face. “We’re told we have an earlier ID made on the possible victim by the surveillance team. One Peter Hayes. Male.

Caucasian. Thirty-four. Our guy claims Hayes was observed inside this structure earlier this evening.” Boldt experienced a small stab of anxiety; he knew the name,yet couldn’t place it.

Another unpleasant reminder of his being on the other side of forty.

“Your guy,or BCI’s guy? Are you talking about Agent Foreman?”

“We are. We do BCI’s forensics,” the technician clarified.

Boldt had forgotten about the arrangement between BCI and the Sheriff’s Office. SPD had their own lab and field personnel.

The ambulance driver wouldn’t let Boldt ride along,so he followed in the Crown Vic. Once at the hospital,while they awaited processing,Boldt found himself a sugar-and-cream tea and joined Foreman in the emergency room. No one seemed in any great hurry to help.

“A pro job by the look of it,” Boldt said.

“Sounds like it.”

“Who’s Peter Hayes? And why is his name so familiar to me?”

“It’s a case we’re working.”

“We? Are you sure about that,Danny? Because I may have squirreled things for you there,without meaning to. I called your lieu on the way over here. He said they’d assigned CSU to your assault. He didn’t know anything about any stakeout,anything about a bloody trailer. You put CSU into that trailer when they showed up,Danny,didn’t you? This is before you lost your breath and went unconscious. Isn’t that right?”

“Hayes was paroled from Geiger four days ago. Two years in medium,two in minimum.”

“And someone wanted him more than you did. Why’s that?”

“Seventeen million reasons.”

The light finally went off in Boldt’s head. “He’s the guy-”

“That’s right.”

A wire fraud case involving Liz’s bank,six or seven years earlier. Seventeen million intercepted electronically. Not a penny recovered. “A Christmas party,” Boldt said.

“How’s that?”

“I met the guy,Hayes,at a Christmas party. For Liz’s bank.” Sparks firing on top of sparks. “You were with us at the time.”

“I was in my fifth year with Fraud. Yeah. Before Darlene’s illness. Before everything. Like eighteen-hour shifts for me.”

“It was wire fraud,right?”

“Fucking black hole is what it was.” Police used the term to define an unsolvable case. “We collared Hayes-by luck, mostly. We never recovered the software he used,and we never found the money. More important,we never uncovered whose money it was. We knew it was headed offshore,but it never got there. That means someone had seventeen million bucks he was willing to lose rather than identify himself. That’s what interested us.”

Boldt considered this and offered unsolicited advice. “A cop pulling an unauthorized stakeout on a guy who helped steal seventeen million dollars is going to get asked some questions, Danny.”

Foreman said nothing.

More of the case came back to Boldt. It had been a bad time for him and Liz. He remembered that especially. “So we put the bloodbath in the trailer down to the rightful owners of the seventeen mil coming after Hayes,” Boldt speculated.

Foreman changed the subject.

“We couldn’t prove the money ever left the bank. Bank figured it got deposited into some brokerage account,papered over by Hayes. Still inside the bank’s system. There,but not there.

A real whiz kid,our Peter Hayes. A real wunderkind,” he said with the animosity of a scorned investigator. Boldt knew the feeling. “He was twenty-two at the time,and the bank had basically given him control over anything with a chip inside it.

They even called him that: ‘Chip.’ His nickname.”

“Did you write this up? The stakeout?” Boldt brought it back to the here and now.

“No one in BCI gives a shit about a cold case like this. Ask around. I guarantee you this isn’t anywhere on SPD’s radar either.”

“Tell me you’re not pulling a Lone Ranger,because you know that’s how this is going to play.”

“Do I want the money? Yes. For me personally? Come on.

This is about closing a black hole,nothing more.”

“And you think that’s how it’s going to play?” Boldt repeated. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“We connect the dots on this,Lou,it’s going to prove me out.”

“We?”

“You’re investigating my assault,right? SPD is in on this now.”