Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

“Gravediggers?” one of the shovelers asked.

The three other workers stared this man down.

“Sorry,” he said.

When Garman’s vehicle crossed an imaginary line one mile from the U-Stor-It facility, two members of the SPD bomb squad moved into place, accompanied by Tech Service Officer Danny Kotch and psychologist Daphne Matthews.

Kotch worked flawlessly with the fiber-optic camera, Daphne immediately alongside. The thin black wire was fed under the gap in the garage door and the first images of the unit’s contents were revealed.

Daphne leaned onto Danny Kotch in order to get a good look at the tiny screen. She gasped aloud and began to cry as she saw Ben tucked into a ball in the corner, a single piece of rope binding him. There was no gag in place, and she wondered why he hadn’t called out. The screen was too small to show his eyes.

Let him be alive! she prayed.

The space was empty except for some black PVC pipe, a pair of beach chairs, and some cardboard boxes from Radio Shack.

Attempting to sound professional, Daphne sniffed back her tears and said to the bomb squad team. “He’s inside. We want him out as quickly as possible.”

“With a torch like this, we’re going to move slowly,” the man wearing the thick vest informed her.

She had been warned of this already, but she found the thought of even a minute longer too long.

“Ben, can you hear me?” she shouted.

The little head rocked up, and a single eye angled to look for her. She felt herself burst into tears. Through a blur she told the others, “Shit, hurry it up, would you? I want him out of there.”

A plainclothes detective ran toward them, a radio held in his hand. He shouted, “Matthews, Garman is a half mile and closing. They need you for the count.” He met up with her and passed her the radio.

The decision of when to light the house was hers and hers alone. Boldt had insisted that, of all those involved, she understood the dynamics of the psychology best of all and the call should be hers. This had offended Bahan and others, especially several of the Marshal Fives.

She grabbed the radio, repeating what she had told Boldt several times. “Is the suspect within full visual range of the structure?” she inquired.

“A half mile and closing,” a deep male voice informed her.

“But can he see the building?” she repeated, amazed how so simple a question could become so complicated an issue.

“No. He wouldn’t have a visual at this time.”

Speak English, she wanted to shout.

“When he’s got the building fully in sight,” she informed the dispatcher, “torch it. But he has to see it ignite if he’s to get off on it. He has to participate in it. If he sees it go off, he’ll stay to see them fight it. Do you copy?”

“Another hundred yards,” the dispatcher told her. “I’m told he’ll have full visual in another hundred yards.”

“Let’s go with full visual, shall we?” she said sarcastically.

Releasing the radio’s button, she told the bomb team, “Hurry it up. I want the boy out of there. And I want it now.”

“We’re thirty seconds to ignition,” Boldt heard in his earpiece. “Suspect is a quarter mile off and closing.” With each detour, each intersection, Garman’s position had been carefully reported, and it was deeper and deeper in Inferno’s hastily crafted web.

“Thirty seconds,” Boldt told the others.

“We been here before, Sarge,” LaMoia reminded. “It’s a grounder.”

Boldt glared at his detective. It was no grounder.

The four cars in front of Garman’s truck were all being driven by members of the operation, exactly as planned. The same had been intended for the traffic following the suspect’s vehicle, but the first glitch in the operation occurred when a Chevrolet four door, driven by a white male in his late thirties, ran a red light and cut into the line immediately behind the pickup.

The ensuing radio traffic was heated.

CAR 1: Dispatch, we have a visitor. Some asshole just cut into our line .

SHOSWITZ: We need him out of there. Now .

DISPATCH: All vehicles maintain position .

Let us jaw on this a moment .

Less than twenty seconds later, the dispatcher came back on line.

DISPATCH: Okay. It’s a bump-and-run by you, One. Copy that?

CAR 1: Bump-and-run .

DISPATCH: Make it a good collision, one he has to stop for. Williamson, we want you to assist at the moment of impact. Get the civilian to safe cover. Copy?

All parties copied correctly.

This man’s safety was now the joint assignment of the driver immediately behind him and the detective in the work crew to Boldt’s right. His existence was a sticking point of the operation. They could not knowingly place a civilian at such close risk. The decision was for a synchronized, coordinated effort. The plainclothes undercover officer driving behind the Chevy was to ram the car at the moment of the fire’s ignition. He would then rush this driver, apologizing over the accident, as one of the workmen went over as a “witness” to the fender bender. Exactly how it would play out was anybody’s guess. Shoswitz had clearly made the decision not to abort the operation over this one civilian. They would do their best.

“Twenty seconds,” the dispatcher announced.

Boldt relayed the timing. He glanced up. The white pickup was advancing slowly in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. Into his radio, Boldt announced visual contact.

LaMoia, not turning around to look, not stopping his shoveling, repeated, “It’s a grounder, Sarge. If he moves back toward the truck, we’re gonna drop him. And as far as him getting out of that truck? My money’s on Matthews any day. Ain’t a head she can’t shrink.”

“Ten seconds,” Boldt echoed. He set down the pickax. “Five …”

Three miles south of Garman’s pickup truck, a bolt cutter on the end of a remote-controlled robot that looked like a lawnmower severed the padlock under the direction of the bomb squad experts. The remote claw removed the lock, dropped it to the side, and exerted an upward pressure on the garage door.

Despite the reassurances that the unit was not wired, a collective breath was held as the robot lifted the door.

It came open without an explosion.

A fully padded man rolled under the door’s opening and inside the storage unit. Against all rules, Daphne Matthews broke under the restraining tape and ran at full sprint toward the unit, a chorus of protest arising behind her. She rolled under the partially open door right behind the bomb man.

At the first sound of a series of dull explosions to the north, she pulled Ben into her arms and cradled him. She tasted his tears on her lips and spilled her own into his hair as the rope came off and the two were forcibly encouraged toward the opening of daylight by the man in the padded suit.

“Paramedics!” Daphne shouted, knowing an ambulance was waiting to the south.

The boy’s lips were glued shut, and in all the excitement he seemed on the verge of passing out.

The charges went off in a string of five, sounding to Boldt like a burial salute. Six, counting the crunch of metal and glass as the Chevy was struck from behind.

The flames were instantaneous: huge blue and orange and black tongues licking up toward the sky. Whoever had set it knew his stuff, reminding Boldt how close a fireman was to an arsonist. If Jonny Garman had not been behind the wheel of that pickup truck, Boldt wouldn’t have been able to take his eyes off the inferno. Everyone’s attention was glued to the spectacle. It was as if, for a moment, the world blinked. The traffic braked and came to a stop in unison, any and all conversation ceased, and a giant plume of heat rose dramatically into the sky, a pillar of subterfuge.