Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

That one simple movement set off a flood of thought and emotion. With it, Boldt confirmed to his own satisfaction that the arsonist had been up in the tree. Branslonovich had appeared on the ground below him, and he had bombed her. The bottom limbs of both tall trees were black with soot. Boldt studied both trees carefully. The branches of the one nearer him began lower to the ground and were clustered in a way that seemed the easier climb of the two. Boldt chose that tree and began to climb. The limbs offered a natural ladder. He struggled with his balance and his big frame, realizing that even climbing a tree was a physical effort for him. With each branch, as he pulled himself higher, the view improved. His hands and clothes were black with the soot of the fire. Ten feet … twelve feet … fifteen feet…. He could not yet see the second story of his house. He pulled himself up yet another notch, and another-flirting with acrophobia, light-headed, slightly nauseated. Higher and higher he climbed, his attention on the view, not the ground. There. Nearly a quarter mile away, he spotted the roof of his own house. The sighting charged him with energy. He shifted focus, looking for the next limb to climb, and came face-to-face with letters and numbers freshly carved into the bark.

d A n 3: 27

He held tight, staring at it for several minutes, his heart racing in his chest. From that higher perspective Boldt’s house was entirely in view. A surge of adrenaline coursed through him. The arsonist had sat right here, in this very spot.

By the time he reached the bottom of the tree, Boldt already had his cellular phone in hand. He called LaMoia and said without introduction, “Meet me at Enwright’s and bring some running shoes.”

“Running shoes?” the vain detective protested.

“Yeah,” Boldt answered dryly. “You can’t climb trees in ostrich cowboy boots.”

“Three different biblical quotations,” Daphne said from the end of the fifth-floor conference table. Reading from a copy of the Bible, she said, “Daniel three, twenty-seven, carved in a tree with a good view of the Boldt home:

And the princes, governors, and captains, and the King’s counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them.”

She continued, “This is clearly aimed at us-police, firemen, governors and captains -and is much different from the others, both of which are aimed at retribution. At Dorothy Enwright’s it was Ezekiel twenty-four, twelve:

She hath wearied herself with lies, and her great scum went not forth out of her; her scum shall be in the fire.”

“This guy has fried his circuits,” LaMoia said, annoying her.

“The anger is directed at a woman. That helps us.”

“You, maybe,” LaMoia said. “Doesn’t help me any.”

Boldt and LaMoia both had pine sap smeared on their clothing, their hands, and their faces. Locating the carved quotations had been time consuming, but easier than Boldt had expected; they had isolated the highest ground near the two victims’ homes and had looked for the tallest trees and, of those, the easiest to climb. Between them, they had climbed a total of eight trees, two with a view of Enwright’s and six with a view of Heifitz’s. LaMoia had found both quotes.

“What’s of interest to me-to us-is not only the quotes but the confirmation that this individual watched his fires or, at the very least, had a view of them. He’s a fire lover. That’s consistent with what we’d expect.”

“Or he triggered them from up there,” LaMoia suggested. “Quarter of a mile with some altitude,” he reminded. “Even a bunch of the shitty hobby-type radio control devices would work at that distance.”

“And he was carrying some kind of explosive accelerant on his person,” Boldt contributed. “To be used just the way he used it on Branslonovich, I assume.”

“Or as a distraction,” LaMoia suggested. “A diversion, if necessary.”

“So he’s a planner,” Daphne said, “which we already knew. He’s voyeuristic, which works with what we know of arsonists. But what comes as a surprise are these biblical references. The earlier use of poetry suggested an intellectual, college educated, well read; the use of biblical references is typical of a different psychology, a more pathologically disturbed individual.”

“The God squad,” LaMoia said, well aware of Daphne’s aversion to such terms. “A fruitcake. A nuthatch. I knew it all along. I said so all along, didn’t I, Sarge?” He smiled thinly at the psychologist, mocking her. Despite their friendship, LaMoia and Daphne continually butted heads on matters of the criminal’s psychology.

“Where’s it leave us?” Boldt asked, ignoring LaMoia’s outburst and hoping the pair of them would leave it alone. The discovery of the quotations, the physical carving of the bark, had humanized the killer for Boldt. Along with the ladder impressions, he had Liz’s image of a thin man dressed in jeans and a dark sweatshirt. With the killer increasingly defined, so was the urgency within Boldt.

“The third poem, the one received yesterday,” Daphne said, “was Nietzsche. This one was accompanied not by melted plastic but melted metal.” To Boldt, she said, carefully and tactfully, “If you hadn’t made your discovery last night, perhaps we wouldn’t know the significance of the substitution of metal for plastic. And if Bernie Lofgrin’s identification crew wasn’t so consumed with working up evidence, they might have time to check the metal for us, but I know what they’ll find anyway, so it really doesn’t matter. Remember as a kid,” she asked them both, “the pieces you moved on a Monopoly board? The hat-”

“The car!” LaMoia exclaimed.

“Metal,” Daphne answered. “Aluminum? Pewter? Doesn’t matter. The message is simple: The metal pieces were the players.” To Boldt she said, “You’re a player in the investigation. The arsonist sought a means to differentiate between one of his victims in a house and a player -namely, you,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Shoswitz spread your name all over every press conference.”

“Damn!” LaMoia gasped.

She had warned Boldt that he might be targeted, but neither of them brought it up.

She said, “What’s of significance here is not only that he had the wherewithal to target the man running the investigation but the determination to see it through to fruition. Your family was in your house,” she reminded him. “Would he have gone through with it if he’d had the chance?” She loved such theory. “He torched the two women only after they were alone, without their children, which is also why we assume he watches the houses prior to detonation. He doesn’t want to kill any kids. That’s significant. That’s something I can run with. He has a conscience, Lou, which, quite frankly, makes him all the more dangerous. No nuthatch.” She said this derisively to LaMoia. “Worse, the decision to take out the lead investigator indicates to me a man with a bigger plan, someone who needs more time, is willing to take a chance to buy himself more time. Why?” she asked rhetorically. “To complete some larger goal? Kill more women? Burn more houses? Who knows? But more. Something more.”

Boldt felt restless. He got up and paced the room. A monster, he thought, no matter what she called him.

“You get like this,” LaMoia said to her, “and you give me the weebees. You freak me right-the-fuck out. You’re guessing, right? Because it doesn’t come off like that. It’s weird, the way you get.”

“Educated guessing,” Boldt clarified for her. He didn’t want to tell her that he too felt an added urgency. Was it that the cornered animal strikes out? He wasn’t sure. But it bubbled down inside him like something bad he’d eaten.