Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

He inspected the grass bib alongside the narrow apron of foundation planting that surrounded the house. He could picture Liz in summer shorts and a scoop-necked T-shirt, toiling over the flower beds. Flooded by such memories, he felt a stopwatch running inside his head. He imagined flames, concave walls sucking the life out of everything within …

The light illuminated two parallel rectangles pressed down into the grass. The evidence-sensitive cop in Boldt prevented him from stepping forward and contaminating the area. He looked carefully for any boot or shoe impressions, cigarette butts, matches, any possible evidence, while his heart was tugging at him to step closer and check those ladder impressions for the telltale chevron pattern left at the two arsons. The two homicides, he reminded himself grimly.

Any grass lawn collected and concealed evidence. As empty as it appeared under the glare of this light, the area of grass surrounding the ladder impressions was a potential gold mine to evidence technicians. Technically, he should have waited, but instead he stepped forward and trained the light down into the first of the impressions. Recognizing the chevron pattern, he cursed and ran toward the back of the house, Liz staring coldly at him through the freshly cleaned glass of the kitchen window.

“Get the kids!” Boldt ordered frantically, once inside. His imagination created an inescapable inferno at the center of the house, oxygen starved and impatient. He hurried toward their bedroom, where Sarah would be in her crib. “You get Miles,” he shouted. He reached inside the bedroom door for the light switch, but his mind’s eye suddenly enlarged the action to where he saw only a fingertip and the toggle of the switch, and as the two connected and Boldt was about to throw the switch, he caught himself. A trigger!

“Don’t touch anything! ” he shouted as a panicked Liz sprinted past him. “Just get him and wait for me.”

He suddenly saw everything as a potential detonation device. Sarah, startled by her father’s voice, began to cry.

Liz stopped at the doorway to their room, held by the sound of her daughter’s crying. “Be gentle,” she said. Boldt turned around in time to see Liz reaching for the light switch.

“No!” he hollered, stopping her. “Touch nothing . Watch for wires. Anything that doesn’t look right.”

“A bomb?” she gasped, suddenly catching on.

“Get Miles, Liz. Quickly. We’ll go out the back door, not the front. We’ve both used the back door, right? So it’s okay. Just hurry.”

When residents panicked, they fled out their front doors regardless of their clothing or appearance-any cop, any ambulance driver, any fireman had experienced the half-naked family standing out on the front lawn, toward the psychological safety net of the neighborhood. But to Boldt, the front door could be the trigger.

Liz scooped up Miles. Boldt snagged his daughter, drawing her into his arms and pressing her warmth and her sweetly perfumed baby skin close to him. He was drenched in a nervous sweat. “Good girl,” he said, as she calmed in his embrace.

The parents met at the door leading into the kitchen, each bearing a child. Liz was fraught with raw nerves-eyes wide, jaw dropped, breathing heavily, panting from fear. “Let’s get out,” she said hoarsely.

“We’re going,” Boldt answered, his voice cracking, his eyes scanning the kitchen floor for anything unusual. His paranoia ran rampant. He pictured everything a potential trigger. He suddenly froze, fearing the trigger immediately before them. Miles struggled restlessly in his mother’s arms. Sarah wiggled to be free of Boldt, reaching for Liz, who pleaded, “If we’re going, then we’re going. Please.”

“We’re going,” Boldt announced dryly. He cut a straight line across the kitchen, out the door, down the steps. “No,” he called out, stopping Liz as she headed for her car. He stepped closer to her and kissed her on her damp cheek. “We’re out for a walk with the kids. Leisurely. Easy does it. Okay?”

Tears ran down her cheeks. She nodded, glancing around.

“No,” he cautioned. “It’s just us. The two of us with our kids, out for a walk. Nothing to it.”

She nodded again.

They walked west on 55th up to Greenwood and a corner convenience store run by a pair of Koreans whom Boldt knew by name from so many trips for eggs or milk.

He dialed 911 into the pay phone mounted outside the store, with Liz and Miles at his side and Sarah in his arms. Graffiti was scrawled around the phone, foul jokes, and a message: Zippy was here .

“You can go in,” Boldt told his wife.

“No,” was all she said. She stayed close, to where her elbow pressed against him, and he felt her warmth with the contact. That simple touch was enough to tighten his throat as he spoke into the phone. In his twenty-plus years on the force, he had never dialed the emergency number. He asked to be put through to Homicide and was informed that it couldn’t be done. He asked, sternly, for the on-call identification technician and received the same curt reply. He hung up and, lacking a quarter, borrowed the use of the phone behind the counter.

He called his lieutenant, Phil Shoswitz, at home rather than the department. He explained his suspicions, requesting the bomb squad, a backup fire truck, and evidence technicians. He suggested the adjacent homes be evacuated, but Shoswitz refused this last request, wanting more proof before attracting “that kind of attention.”

The comment reminded Boldt of a conversation with Daphne that the majority of convicted arsonists admitted to watching the burn. Witnessing the burn was itself a major if not primary motive for committing the crime. Boldt debated returning to the house to get Liz’s car, but decided instead to ask a friend to come pick them up at the convenience store. A plan was forming in his head. He was a cop again, the father’s panic subsiding.

The ladder, and whoever had scaled it, had been in their side yard that same afternoon. The arsonist, if the house had been rigged, could be watching the house at that very moment. Depending on what vantage point he took, what distance he chose, he might or might not have seen the family leave. It seemed possible he was still in the neighborhood. Boldt suggested this to Shoswitz. Listening in, Liz went noticeably pale.

After a short argument, in which Boldt found himself on the side of sacrificing his home if necessary, it was agreed that the various squads-lab, fire, bomb-would be placed on call but would not arrive at the residence until a police net had been put in place in an area extending from Woodland Park to 5th Avenue, Northwest. The net would be tightened, in hopes of squeezing the arsonist into its center. Shoswitz, typically tight with the budget, responded admirably. Faced with a possible crime against a police officer acting in the line of duty, he made not one comment about money. No crimes drew more internal support.

If and when the bomb or accelerants were found, their existence proved, then whoever had perpetrated this act had, in the process, crossed a sacred boundary, a boundary Boldt and his colleagues took seriously, one that was intolerable and unforgivable, the reaction to which would be the unvoiced but unwavering goal of revenge and punishment.

Twenty minutes later, Liz and the kids were headed to Willie and Susan Affholder’s house for the night. If possible, Boldt would join them later. He and Liz kissed through the open window of Susan’s Explorer, a heartfelt, loving kiss that meant the world to him. As they drove away, as the red taillights receded, Boldt knew in his heart that even if there had been an affair, it was over now. His wife and his family were whole again. They were reunited by this incident.