Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

“My advice,” she said, “is that we get cranking on every damn aspect of this case we can. We pull manpower, whatever it takes.”

“I’ve been putting in sixteen-hour days,” LaMoia complained. “I’ve got a shitload of stuff to go over. I’ve got sap in my hair and pine needles down my pants. Don’t tell me to get cranking. I thought you were going to produce some witness, this kid of yours. What about it?”

“Easy,” Boldt chided. “For two people with such mutual respect, you sure have a weird way of showing it.”

Daphne bristled at the detective. “I’ll get the witness,” she declared harshly. “There were other considerations at stake.”

“I’m sure there were,” LaMoia snapped.

“Children, children,” Boldt soothed.

Daphne slid back her chair and grabbed her paperwork. “I’ll get the witness,” she repeated to LaMoia. She stormed out of the conference and shut the door.

“Proud of yourself?” Boldt asked his detective, who looked smug.

“Damn right,” LaMoia answered. “When she gets pissed off her nipples get hard. You ever noticed that?”

“Cool it, John. That’s enough.” Boldt hated playing schoolteacher. He decided to call LaMoia on his claims. “What’s all this ‘stuff you say you have for me? Anything useful?”

“Sarge, it’s me! Useful? What do you think?”

“I think you’re full of shit half the time,” Boldt said angrily.

“Yeah. True enough. But what about the other half?” He held up his detective’s notebook.

Boldt broke down and grinned. LaMoia had a way with him. “Go on,” the sergeant encouraged, “I’m waiting.”

“First thing is these ladder receipts. We’re actually getting somewhere with this scanner stuff. It’s taken a little time to get the bugs out, but yesterday-before all the shit hit the fan-we finished the scanning and dumped the data into an indexing engine, and we culled over eighty hits: eighty actual transactions of a Werner ladder being bought, complete with credit card or checking account number.”

It felt like old news to Boldt, though he didn’t say so. He had sat in that tree in the very spot the killer had sat, his wife had talked briefly to the man; he didn’t want to hear about tracing back receipts for ladders, and yet he understood the importance of such evidence. They needed names, addresses. If LaMoia produced them, as he claimed he could, Boldt was interested. Until then, he felt like telling his detective to keep it to himself. But he understood well the need to voice one’s accomplishments, no matter how small. Any detective was left defeated more often than not. Any win was worth a little applause. “That’s great,” Boldt said, attempting to sound enthusiastic.

“Tomorrow or the next day I should have the names that belong to those account numbers. We run the list by our military friends, we use the computer to compare it against the fire department’s employee roster, present and past, and maybe we get a break. Stranger things have happened.” He waited for Boldt to say something and, when he didn’t, asked, “You okay, Sarge?”

“Fine.”

“This thing shook you up. I can see it. No problemo . It would anybody. You want to blow this off for the time being?”

Boldt told him to go ahead.

“Yeah, okay. Fine. Cars is next,” he said, changing papers. “I don’t have shit. Nothing worth your time. Some hassles getting access to the vehicles. The Mazda belonging to Heifitz was impounded-based on what, I have no idea. Enwright’s Ford, on the other hand, found its way over to her ex-husband’s place. You ask me, that borders on grand theft auto, but what the fuck. He’s going to let me take a look at the wheels, so what do we care? Stay tuned.”

“That’s it?”

“Best for last,” LaMoia explained. “This possible Air Force connection-Matthews and her snitch saying this guy was Air Force. I greased an ATF guy with a pair of Sonics tickets. Preseason. No great loss. Decent guy at that. Says this isn’t the first time they’ve investigated rocket fuel.”

“Texas,” Boldt said.

“Yeah, right, that video. Sure. But an arson in St. Louis as well. Another in the Raleigh-Durham area. One in Miami. Turns out a person can cook up some rocket fuel with a little bit of knowledge and a lot of balls. But the thing is, the homemade shit leaves crap behind-metals, shit like that. They can see it’s homemade. What’s bugging Casterstein, my friend says, is that if it’s rocket fuel, it’s clean stuff, and if it’s clean then it’s military quality. Well, you can be fucking sure that if it’s military, it’s Air Force, so I started kinda nibbling around at the edges, you understand, trying to get a fix on how a person scores Air Force quality rocket fuel. And the ATF guy is as baffled as I am. And I believe him, Sarge. I mention McChord,” he said, referring to a base south of Tacoma, “and I don’t get much of a rise out of him. But he says to me that if it’s rocket fuel it’s ICBM stuff, because the space shuttle fuel is produced privately in Utah, and their lab has the book on that shit. They can recognize it post facto.” He lowered his voice intentionally. “But McChord is a major airlift center, Sarge. Shit coming and going constantly. And I get to thinking, What if some of what they’re shipping is rocket fuel? I don’t know to whom, I don’t know why, but it’s possible, isn’t it? The Japs have a space program; maybe they’re buying our shit to lift their rockets. Maybe it’s bound for Korea for defense. Something hush-hush. But shit, it’s worth looking into, don’t you think? You know those military ordnance guys. They’ll freak out if they think someone has lifted some of their hooch. All we gotta do is tickle them a little bit.”

“Do it,” Boldt said, thinking back to Daphne’s comment and the need to pursue absolutely every speck of evidence, every lead.

LaMoia had a devilish look. He said, “Or I can cut to the chase without involving the fruit salad boys. I kiss a few butts and see what I can get for us. Press some flesh. You’d be surprised what a bottle of Stoli and a night of lap-dancing can get you. Most of these MPs guarding the bases are just kids in uniforms. I flash my badge, they think I’m straight off the tube. You get these kids lip-walking drunk with some topless nineteen-year-old coed doing the Watusi in nothing but a thong, about an inch over their woodies, and they don’t remember nothing about confidential.” He said sarcastically, “I hate this work, Sergeant, you know that. But as long as I’m helping out, I’m there for the betterment of this investigation.”

“Just exploratory,” Boldt suggested. “A factfinding mission.”

“If the facts play out,” LaMoia said, “then we obtain the necessary paperwork and we go through the front gate, nice and proper.” Similar techniques were used in every investigation. It saved the investigator from the paperwork of pursuing any dead leads.

LaMoia sat uncharacteristically quiet for a moment.

“What?” Boldt asked.

The detective said, “Sarge, if you need it, you can hang in my crib for a while. I can make myself scarce over to a friend’s.”

“Who said anything about that?”

“Just if you need it,” LaMoia offered.

Boldt saw that LaMoia meant it. A rare moment of outward compassion from the king of one-liners. Boldt thanked him and asked what they had on the movements of Enwright and Heifitz on the days of their murders.

LaMoia informed him they had credit card records and bank statements. He would check them out as well.

Boldt studied the detective. He looked exhausted and haggard. Boldt returned the concern: “What about you, John. Are you holding up?”