Ridley Pearson - Middle Of Nowhere

"Correct."

Boldt opened the front door and inspected the mechanism. "No night latch," he said. "Keyed dead bolt and keyed knob."

"If I may, sir?" the young woman officer inquired.

"Go ahead."

"Upon being admitted through the back, my partner and me found this particular door's dead bolt in place. That is, a keyed dead bolt as you've pointed out. Subsequent inspection of the back door-the door through which we had entered the premises-indicated the same basic arrangement. The victim, Ms. Kawamoto, could not recall if she had thrown that particular dead bolt or not. So my assumption was he both entered and departed the premises via that back door." She took a breath and dared to submit speculation. "I'm thinking that subsequent to the offender's departure our vic locked the door-whether or not she's currently aware of that fact."

"It's a kitchen door?"

"No, sir, the kitchen door accesses the garage. This would be off the living area, sir."

So the doer watched the house, Boldt thought. Knew which door to hit-a back door typically left unlocked. And it had to be from a vantage point that provided a view of that back door. "I'll keep your partner assigned to the front door," Boldt said loudly enough for the other officer to hear him too. "You will canvass the neighbors with an eye toward anything. The of fender, his vehicle, anyone seen parked around here in the last couple days."

"Yes, sir." The recruit seemed thrilled. Boldt had little choice: he didn't have much of a pool from which to draw.

She left through the front door, passing Gaynes, who was on her way in. As the Boy Scout opened his mouth to speak, Boldt lifted a finger and said, "Not now, okay, unless it's a top priority. I need quiet. Your job is to keep everyone and anyone out until either Detective Gaynes or I give you the nod. Okay? First one through that door is to be SID, but only on our say-so. No matter what, you remain outside along with everyone else." Reading the nameplate pinned to the uniform, he said, "You okay with that, Helman?"

The kid had the wherewithal to nod sharply rather than open his mouth again.

"Good," Boldt said.

Gaynes said, "I'll take the basement and the ground floor, L.T. You'll take upstairs." Ordering around her lieutenant was an uncomfortable act at best. "If that's good with you?"

"Fine."

"The assault happened up there on the stairs. She came to rest on the landing."

"I'll tread lightly," Boldt offered.

Despite the dozen cases back on his desk, and the dozen more that would be assigned in the coming days, the Sanchez assault and the Kawamoto break-in were what interested him. Any investigator liked a clean case that cleared quickly. But Boldt had worked dozens, perhaps hundreds of such cases; he lived now for the challenge-not the black holes that would never be solved, but the cases that both meant something and offered contradictions. Sanchez and Kawamoto appeared vaguely related-burglaries gone bad, women assaulted. They presented an urgency, both for the sake of the public, and the media.

There was no apology to be made, no words that would return Cathy Kawamoto's sense of safety. She would never fully trust this city again, would never feel safe, even behind the locked doors of her own home. This weighed heavily upon him. Boldt felt that as a peace officer, his role was to preserve a sense of safety, and yet Cathy Kawamoto would have none now, he knew.

Boldt felt the case closing in on him-it just wasn't coming together. He carefully climbed the stairs, on the one hand wanting a few minutes alone to immerse himself in the crime scene, on the other wanting the differences sorted out and the offender in lockup by evening, well before the news dumped it on the dinner plates.

A crime scene, alone, in silence. Lou Boldt felt alert and alive.

As an investigator, Boldt experienced no prescient sense from the perspective of the offender. He could not transport himself into this role as some investigators suggested was possible. He saw the crime scene from the role of the victim-often viscerally, but exclusively from this side of the crime.

Boldt headed upstairs in the footsteps of Cathy Kawamoto, a woman about to disturb a thief. He assumed the thief was a planner-not some junkie kicking in doors and stealing a purse or string of pearls. And here comes Cathy Kawamoto up the stairs, chasing noises. He stopped briefly to study the landing because the freshie had told him the victim had recovered consciousness on the stairs. This was supported by the drying bloodstain he saw there, the result of a bloodied nose.

If the offender had shoved her downstairs and yet fled the premises, he had jumped right over her. This thought coincided with Boldt's observation of a long, black rubber smudge on the wall that seemed to fit with a person in a hurry jumping over a body on the landing. He made a note to have the SID techs sample the rubber smudge, and to analyze it. "No stone unturned," he mumbled to himself, well aware that the press and the public would attempt to connect this to Sanchez- and perhaps even Carmichael-and that on top of the Flu, public concern would figure politically in both investigations, demanding immediate arrests.

He found the offender's apparent target in the bedroom: A corner hutch that faced the victim's bed. A television, VCR and one of those all-in-one music centers with CD player, double tape system and stereo receiver. The offender had not had time to steal the electronics-Kawamoto had headed upstairs at an inopportune time. But the man had moved the hutch from the corner in an effort to free wires. Boldt peered behind. The television had been unplugged, its wire neatly coiled and fastened. What kind of person took the time to neatly coil wires before heisting a television?

More than the coil of wire, it was sight of the white plastic loop secured around the coil that intrigued Boldt. A sophisticated version of a garbage bag tie. Had any such ties been inventoried at Sanchez's, he wondered. Another contradiction? The other wires were snarled in a tangle and covered with dust. Who was this guy? What kind of burglar showed such confidence? Daphne would have a heyday evaluating such a personality.

Then a second thought occurred to him: If the thief had possessed plastic ties at the Sanchez break-in, why not use them to bind her wrists, instead of shoelaces?

Why shoelaces and not the plastic ties?

He took notes, albeit unnecessarily-he wasn't about to forget any of this. Perhaps the Burglary unit had files on record that mentioned white plastic ties being used. He had in hand the physical evidence he'd hoped for.

Now, he had to connect it to a suspect.

" I need help, Phil. I need the names of who did this to Liz, and I also need your Burglary files for the past month. I thought you might be able to speed things up for me on both counts," Boldt said. "Unless you're 'too busy,' " he added. He needed to connect the white plastic ties to earlier burglaries, to establish a pattern crime, to widen the scope of evidence and increase the number of leads to follow. Captain Phil Shoswitz seemed the means to that end.

"Are you suggesting I'm intentionally slowing things down around here?" Shoswitz questioned defensively. In point of fact, some of the lower brass had effected a slowdown, and Shoswitz was probably part of it. The man paced his cluttered office. A baseball fanatic, the captain of Crimes Against Property (which included Burglary) had bookshelves overflowing with intramural trophies and major league souvenirs. A bat autographed by Junior. A hardball scrawled upon by the entire Mariners team. A photo of himself taken outside Safeco Field on opening day, his ticket proudly displayed. He rubbed his throwing elbow-a nervous tic that indicated both deep thought and irritation. "I detest what happened to Liz. You know I'm with you on that-everyone's with you."