Ridley Pearson - Middle Of Nowhere

Daphne then saw the screen fill randomly with a half dozen red dots and another dozen lines. Some of the lines were as short as half a block, others as long as a mile or more, turning corners repeatedly.

Fascinated, Daphne studied the graphic. She could quickly identify the areas of town where Flek spent the most time. He seemed to avoid the downtown area near Public Safety altogether. No surprise there, she thought.

To the left of the screen she noticed three long pink-to-burgundy lines in the middle of Puget Sound. She turned her head slightly toward these.

"Time of transmission and termination are in parentheses alongside the respective dot or line."

"So we know exactly when he was in each of these locations."

Osbourne glanced over at her. "And I can see your interest lies properly in the lines to the left, those over the Sound."

"What exactly are we looking at there?"

Again, Osbourne tapped the man on the shoulder. He leaned forward and said softly, "Enlargement, please." A flashing box of dashes surrounded the lines in question and then that area of the Sound filled the screen entirely, so that the three colorful lines were between two and six feet long. The respective transmission times could be clearly read: 10:17.47; 20:36.16; 10:19.38. Osbourne explained, "I thought to understand the technology, to understand the situation and make an objective decision on how you wanted to evaluate the data, you needed to see this, Lieutenant, or I wouldn't have asked you to come over. But these three transmissions include the only two that occur at like times, offering the only overlap, the only possible site where you might locate the individual in question."

Daphne shook her head, still not fully seeing what this offered her.

"It so happens," Osbourne said, "that our digital mapping service uses Alpha Maps, with research by Cape Flattery Map Company, the same maps at the front of the phone books. Small wonder, since we're a phone company. The point being that the Alpha Maps include all the ferry routes." Another of those instructive taps on the shoulder. The full screen included the city once again, this time with dashed lines leading from the piers out across the Sound. The dashed lines on the map ran incredibly close to the color transmission lines drawn by the software. Osbourne pointed. "That's the Bainbridge Island ferry route. The Winslow route. He traveled into the city on the ten-fifteen ferry yesterday morning, back out to the island on the eight-thirty- back in on the ten-fifteen this morning." He tapped his wrist. "The eight-thirty ferry leaves in twenty minutes. If you hurry, you can make it."

Daphne shook the man's hand and took off for the door at a dead run.

Krishevski said to Boldt, "You learn to cut your losses in this job. And that's what I recommend. Someone taking pot shots at you-I hear this guy you're after bought a rifle."

"It's not him."

"I don't want to hear that."

"It disturbs you?" Boldt asked. "What? That they missed?"

"It isn't like that."

"Isn't it?" Boldt asked.

"Hey, this isn't my affair." Krishevski leaned on the word. "You know that."

The emphasis destroyed Boldt. He understood immediately where the conversation was headed.

Krishevski glanced hotly toward the door and lowered his voice, and now Boldt could barely hear him. "They have video, Lou. A security camera from a Denver hotel." He added, "I'm not party to this." He didn't convince Boldt. "I'm here strictly out of a desire to keep your personal life from being dragged through the press. Once this surfaces, not only do the wife and kids suffer but one of you is going to leave CAPers, and it ain't going to be the psychologist, on account she's the only one they got. So where's that leave you? Vice? Traffic?"

His ears whined. He needed names. He needed some chance to stop this from happening. "You'll go down with them, Krishevski," he warned.

"Me? Who do you think called you the other night and put you onto Schock and Phillipp's assault?"

Boldt sat there stunned.

"See? That's the whole point of my visit. To cut the losses. They're ready to fry your ass. Don't let them do this. For once, just walk away. Do everyone a favor. Leave it be."

Boldt tried to respond in a voice that said he had no intention of bending, that he knew what he was talking about, "You, Chapman, Pendegrass-"

"It's not what you think."

"Then someone had better enlighten me."

Krishevski couldn't make the recliner sit up. He struggled like a child wanting to be free of a high chair, and finally got it. "Okay, I lied," he said.

Boldt felt a bubble lodge in his throat.

"No one sent me. I'm here to head off our both being dragged through the mud." He met eyes with Boldt and said, "I think I can do that. But I'm in as deep as you are, believe me."

"I don't."

Krishevski smiled nervously. "Chapman had a video. These guys will trade you straight across-that video of Chapman's for the one from the Denver hotel."

Boldt's pager and cell phone rang nearly simultaneously. He shut them both off without paying the slightest attention to them, never breaking eye contact with Krishevski.

"I'm to get this video and deliver it to you," Boldt said calmly. He added sarcastically, "And you're not connected to this."

"Don't go there," Krishevski said emphatically.

"I'm not left a lot of choice," Boldt pointed out. "If you came here on your own-if you're so squeaky clean-then what's to prevent you from talking?"

"I'm not so squeaky clean," he admitted. "I've been fired. I don't want to face jail time as well."

"Uh-huh," Boldt said knowingly.

"My crime-if you're going to call it that-is trying to correct stupidity. Other people's stupidity. Ron Chapman has a video that is trouble for some of my guys. And now I'm jammed because I tried to help. We're all jammed. That's as far as I'll go, as much as I'll say. Deliver Chapman's video, it all goes away."

"And Sanchez? Does she stand up and walk?"

"I'll go out the front," Krishevski said. "Tell Liz and the kids good-bye for me."

By the time Daphne reached the State Ferry Terminal, the vessel destined for Winslow on Bainbridge Island was booked full for vehicles, though was still boarding passengers. She parked her red Honda in the lot and walked briskly toward the ferry. Her purse thumped at her side. A warning light flickered at the back of her brain-the neck scar she carried was a wound inflicted on a ferry while in the line of duty. Boldt had been with her then; she wished he was there now.

All the state ferries were behemoths of welded steel and layer upon layer of white and gray deck paint, weary water buses transporting hundreds of thousands of passengers annually. The ship seemed about as wide as it was long, a mirror image of itself, with two pilot towers bow and stern. It amazed her that something made of hundreds of tons of steel, and carrying in its hold hundreds of tons of vehicles, and on its various decks several hundred passengers, could nonetheless somehow manage to float, to navigate open water. She never felt perfectly safe on one.

Mixed into her thoughts, as she moved up the outer stairs to the vessel's spacious deck lounges in search of Bryce Abbott Flek, was the portrait of the man created from her own psychological evaluation based on his criminal history. Short-tempered, randomly violent, prone to excessive drug use in times of acute stress, he was to be avoided. And she was pursuing him. Alone. On a ship. She would maintain surveillance but not make contact. Eventually Boldt would take her calls, return her messages-she was outraged that he had apparently either turned off his pager and phone or left them behind somewhere. In her mind her job was to identify and locate Flek, report his location to Boldt and consult on what to do from there. Meeting the ferry with an army of Bainbridge Island police was out; she knew that much. Flek was not the type to pressure with hundreds of potential hostages available to him. Like a wild horse, he was better observed than handled. If a lasso was to be thrown, then timing was everything. Mixed in with this rational thought was a burning desire to speak with him before he knew who she was. Before contact with police. Before his arrest. Rarely did such opportunities present themselves.