Ridley Pearson - Middle Of Nowhere

"I'll call down a number," Boldt told him.

"Oh, goodie," Lofgrin said. "Because by that look on your face, I was afraid it was personal. And you know the new lab policy about doing personal work for officers."

"No, it's not personal."

"Not that I wouldn't make exceptions for my closest friends," Lofgrin said, still prying, "but I'd have to know to make those exceptions well before the computers became involved. You can see my point."

"I see your point."

Lofgrin added, "How's Floorshow doing anyway?"

Boldt felt a hole in the center of his chest. He hadn't checked up on LaMoia in days. He felt awful about it. "Better, I think," he said.

"Give him my best."

"Right."

"Here we go," Lofgrin said, indicating a lab woman approaching Lofgrin's office. "Your ballistics report."

She knocked on the open door and Lofgrin admitted her, introducing her to Boldt, who missed her name. She looked first to her boss, then to Boldt. "Is this some kind of test or something?" she asked them both, clearly irritated. To Lofgrin she complained, "Does the upstairs brass know that we didn't lose anyone to the Flu? That we don't need this kind of thing to prove our competency? Our loyalty." To Boldt she said, "Are you the messenger here, Lieutenant? I've got better things to do than be tested like this." Addressing Lofgrin she said, "Maybe we should remind the brass that we're civilian employees, that we have actual, active cases to work-pressing cases-and that school got out for most of us ten years ago." Throwing the file onto Lofgrin's desk, she said meanly, "Someone tell the person who did this to stop blowing smoke up my ass." Meeting eyes with Boldt, she said, "I quit smoking." She stormed off.

Lofgrin grinned. "I just love a passionate employee," he said.

"What the hell's going on?" Boldt asked.

Lofgrin opened the manila folder and read from the single page it contained. He nodded to himself and smiled. "Oh, I get it," he mumbled.

"I don't," Boldt said.

"Somebody's pulling your chain on this slug, Lou. No wonder you didn't want to give me a case number- you sly dog! Are you in on this?"

"In on what?" Boldt said, raising his voice.

"Someone is apparently testing us."

Boldt said, guessing, "Fired from a Chinese manufacture assault rifle? Can you determine that?"

"You're not serious? Come on! This slug? This baby was fired from a rifle that's down in Property. Confiscated in that gang raid where Williamson and Hobner were both shot. This is the rifle that winged Williamson. She's right: I mean why waste our time with something like this? And you, Lou, a part of it? You ought to be ashamed."

Boldt repeated for his own sake, "This gun is supposed to be locked up in Property?"

"Supposed to be?" a confused Lofgrin replied. "This is some kind of joke, right?"

Boldt didn't think so. He'd been on the receiving end.

Addressing Sergeant Ron Chapman from outside SPD's Property room, Boldt said, "Ronnie, we've got some confusion about a confiscated weapon." He handed the man some paperwork from SID. It bore a reference number for the rifle that had fired on Boldt.

"Is that right?" Chapman replied. "What kind of confusion?"

"Just need a look at it, is all," Boldt informed him.

"That, I can do."

While Chapman consulted the computer, Boldt flipped pages in the log book-accomplishing what Riorden had refused to do for him.

"Help you there?" Chapman inquired.

"Looking for visits by Schock and Phillipp." Boldt added, "I asked Riorden. I'm not sure he had time to check for me."

"They're in there somewhere," Chapman answered dryly. "They've been down here."

"Since the Sanchez assault, or before?" Boldt asked, flipping more pages, looking for the right date.

"Couldn't say."

Boldt found the records of Sanchez's four visits and worked forward. On the next page he found Schock's and Phillipp's signatures. Again, as with Sanchez, there were no case numbers listed. "No case numbers," he mumbled. Looking up, he caught Chapman staring at him-something was wrong in those eyes, though the man volunteered nothing. "Ronnie?"

"It's down in the warehouse," he said. "The rifle. You want a look?"

Technically, the Property room consisted of two different secure storage facilities, both located in Public Safety's sub-basements. "The boneyard," located on Public Safety's ground floor, held any physical evidence involved in an active case or any case pending trial within the next calendar year. Caged and managed by an armed uniform officer of at least the rank of sergeant, along with a staff of two or three plainclothes officers per shift, the boneyard remained open twentyfour hours a day. Several years earlier, Narcotics- Drugs, as the officers called it-had managed to administratively separate the chemical evidence confiscated in arrests from the guns, knives, magnets, and bell bars that typically populated Property. The Drugs evidence was kept locked in a vault inside its offices on the fourth floor, just down the hall from Burglary.

Property's second facility-"the warehouse"-occupied half of the building's lowest floor, on the same grade as the lower level of SPD's sub-level parking garage. The warehouse was located behind a double-wide four-inch solid steel vault door with a combination tumbler and two-key perimeter locking system and a security alarm that had to be turned off from inside the boneyard-a floor above-no more than five minutes prior to entry. All this because the warehouse not only accepted all the overflow weapons and munitions from the boneyard, but also the heavier artillery that occasionally surfaced in raids.

Entering the warehouse always gave Boldt a chill because of its size and contents. The Public Safety Building occupied most of an entire city block, and half its basement was one enormous room. Boldt's first reaction-no matter how many times he came here-was awe. The room was crowded with row after row of floorto-ceiling freestanding steel shelving, and was dimly lit by bare bulbs in the ceiling.

Chapman read from the clipboard, dragging himself down aisles of shelves stacked high and deep with tagged items of every description, though predominantly weapons-from Swiss Army knives to machetes; zip guns to flame throwers. House lamps. Garden hoses. Gloves of every make and description. The space smelled musty despite the constant hum of overworked dehumidifiers.

Chapman said something about Ken Griffey Jr.'s homerun count. Boldt barely heard it, his gut churning, his mind racing. Sanchez had visited Property and had ended up in the hospital; Schock and Phillipp, the same. Boldt had called down to Riorden the night before and had nearly been shot. He had thought Flek had thrown that shot, but he had not. And where did Chapman fit in?

The Property sergeant dragged a rolling ladder down the aisle and climbed high up to the sixth shelf. He banged around up there for several seconds, descended the ladder and returned to the end of the stack, where he verified the row number and letter.

Chapman's movements were lazy-too many years on the job to get worked up over another man's worries. That, or he was trying to cover for his own nervousness.

Chapman climbed the rolling ladder for a second time. He dug around on a shelf and handed down a tagged rifle.

For a moment, Boldt felt a sense of relief, for his fear had been that the rifle wouldn't be there at all- that it had been removed from Property and used in an attempt to assassinate him. He sniffed the barrel- not used recently. Then he held the rifle at arm's length as Chapman climbed back down to his level. And his chest tightened. He fumbled for the label. The numbers were right. He double-checked them.

"Something the matter?" Chapman inquired, sensing Boldt's disposition.