Ridley Pearson - Middle Of Nowhere

He would want to speak with all nine burglary victims; visit them in person, if possible. Daphne should accompany him, to read their answers. What they didn't say, and how they didn't say it, was often more important than what they put down for the record. He felt high, his spirits lifted by the discovery. Taken together, the reported crimes had been committed in broad daylight, in houses where the occupant had vacated the premises, in houses left locked, often with the home security system armed-with not one of the security systems announcing an intruder. Sanchez's assault remained the anomaly-committed at nighttime, with the security system engaged, but the same high-end electronics stolen. Location was another possible tie-some of the burglaries had occurred in the North Precinct; others in the East or South, but always in white, uppermiddle-class neighborhoods.

Boldt's excitement grew as he sat back down. The cases looked damned good strung out in a line. Stacked in a pile. They made sense as a package. It was dark outside and nine o'clock. He had missed the family dinner at John and Kristin's, had missed putting his kids to bed. Had worked through a date with his wife and family and friends. At 9:30 he called Liz and apologized. She sounded a little upset but said she missed him, which he reciprocated. He didn't mention his partial victory on the case because it didn't seem appropriate at the moment. Missing dinner was one thing in their family; missing the kids' bedtimes another. He hated to disappoint Liz, even for a good cause.

He and Liz had formed their courtship around jazz, films of every kind, and late-night dinners filled with stories and laughter. He had thought her too pretty for him; she'd feared even early on that he was too much of a workaholic. They had married young and for years had kept the marriage that way as well. Careers and the pressure to consider a family had briefly driven Liz to an affair, which in turn had encouraged Boldt to give in to temptation with Daphne Matthews for a single night. But that original connection between husband and wife had never been severed-it remained strong, if strained. They rarely made it to movies as a couple any longer-it was all Disney videos and the occasional Ice Capades musical. Boldt sometimes played Happy Hour jazz piano as a distraction, but Liz stayed home with the kids. The connection remained. Sometimes it took the form of a late-night movie or a rented video, a shared bath, or love-making on the couch with the kids asleep. Sometimes, nothing more than a look or a tone of voice. A long talk. They practiced mutual tolerance, mutual support; they limped through the challenges thrown up by daily life, sometimes overcoming, sometimes only surviving. But on this night he could feel Liz attempting to be tolerant and not entirely succeeding.

"Call me in the morning," she suggested, a little too quietly, but still gently.

"Sure will."

"Maybe you can come over for eggs."

"Maybe so," he replied.

"You'll keep working tonight," she said.

"Yes."

"Okay." She didn't sound overjoyed about that.

They said their good-byes and hung up.

With a monthly calendar laid out on the desk before him, Boldt charted the nine burglaries that seemed to have led up to Maria Sanchez's tragedy. Sanchez-if part of that string-was number ten. Kawamoto, eleven. There was no particular day of the week to tie the events together, no exact hour, though all but the Sanchez crime had occurred during daylight; nor had there been a particular neighborhood. At first blush, a detective's nightmare-circumstantial connections linking the crimes but lacking the hard evidence necessary to provide a trail to follow. Nonetheless, for Boldt the sim ilarities remained substantial enough to impress him. He believed all eleven were connected, even if it wouldn't be easy to prove it. He had yet to discover how the burglar selected or targeted the homes-and this was, of course, of primary importance to the possible identification of a suspect. Certainly the residences had not been chosen at random-not since they were loaded with high-end electronics. The connection between these targets-an insurance provider? a security company? — eluded him, but remained a top priority.

Or so he thought. Those priorities began to shift when he noticed a circled pair of initials on the top of one of the nine files. The initials crowded the box reserved for the investigating detective, for in this particular box two detectives had left their initials. The home belonged to a couple listed as Brooks-Gilman, living over in Queen Anne, a mitt-shaped neighborhood immediately north and west of downtown. The BrooksGilman case had been passed to a second detective, probably as a result of the Blue Flu. The circled initials were elegant and easily read:

Maria Sanchez? he wondered, as he then noted the date on which the detective in question had accepted responsibility for the case. That date was just two days before the Sanchez assault. That exceeded the boundaries of acceptable coincidence. MS. Maria Sanchez. Had to be.

" I don't see what we're after," Daphne said, hurrying to keep up with Boldt as he ascended the hospital stairs.

"Her connection to the Brooks-Gilman burglary investigation," he answered.

"I understand that much," she said, a little miffed that he wouldn't give her at least some credit. "I read the memo!" Boldt had circulated an interdepartmental E-mail requesting any information on all cases Sanchez had been working prior to her assault. "But how does that get us any closer to the thief? So she took over some cases after the walkout happened. We all did. So what?"

Boldt didn't answer her. Not one person had responded to his E-mail, again reminding him that the Flu had sympathizers still on the job. He felt disheartened, even defeated.

Daphne matched strides with him in the long hallway. "Lou, she's my case. It's only right you tell me what you're thinking."

"Shoswitz said his boys would not appreciate any of us doing their work for them. The implication being pretty obvious."

"We're considered scabs," she gasped, "just because we accept some assignment passed to us by Dispatch?"

"Maybe Sanchez was. Maybe they got pissed off at her for crossing over into their department. The only way a strike is effective is when the work doesn't get done. Maybe I got that brick through my window because I'm supposed to stay in Homicide, not take cases from other departments."

She mumbled, "So to make the strike effective, they intimidate us."

"Or worse," he said.

"Break her neck, strip her naked and tie her up?" she questioned. "Does that sound like cop against cop? I don't buy that."

"Hey," Boldt defended, "I'm not selling. I'm just investigating is all. Leaving open all possibilities."

"There's a big difference between a brick through a window and what happened to Maria Sanchez."

"I don't disagree with you," Boldt said. "I'm just investigating is all."

They reached the door to Sanchez's room and showed their badges to the hospital security guard posted outside. He carefully checked the IDs, then permitted them to go in.

Sanchez's condition had deteriorated since their first visit. The decline had manifested itself in her skin tone and in the proliferation of ICU equipment that was now attached to her. Daphne acknowledged her read of the situation with a grim look that told Boldt to proceed with caution.

Daphne stepped closer to the tangle of tubes and wires and said the patient's name softly. Maria's eyelids strained open, followed a moment later by recognition.

Boldt's overwhelming sense of concern momentarily prevented him from speaking. He felt painfully reminded that homicide cops rarely deal with the living.

"We promise to come right to the point," Boldt informed the patient, stepping closer, so he could meet her now haunted brown eyes.