Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

LaMoia didn’t answer directly. His voice cracking with emotion, he said, “Just so you know, Sarge. If anything should happen to you, I will personally whack this guy. This is a promise that I swear on. So help me God, I’ll kill him dead.”

Boldt had no words. He reached out and briefly took the other’s hand in his own. LaMoia had tears in his eyes. It was the first time Boldt had seen him cry.

Boldt had not stopped thinking about the runaway boy who had called in the homicide. He had been distracted, first by Bear’s discovery of the Monopoly piece, then by the arsonist’s targeting of his home, but each time he climbed into his car and drove the streets, he thought of the boy.

He was reminded of him again when Dixie’s preliminary report on the crime scene arrived on Boldt’s desk. A body discovered in a crawl space was not an everyday occurrence. The papers had run the story; a radio show had somehow gotten hold of the boy’s 911 call and played it. There was an outcry from a domestic abuse group that too many women disappeared and too few of the disappearances were investigated thoroughly. The group, jumping to conclusions ahead of the medical examiner’s report, pointed to the fact that the woman victim had been found in the crawl space of her own home.

The lead detective was typically present at an autopsy, but Dixie requested that Boldt attend as well since the investigation was being conducted by his squad. A press conference was anticipated; Dixie wanted a senior cop present.

When Tina Zyslanski showed up at the door to Homicide requesting Boldt, he agreed to an impromptu meeting despite his schedule, not because Zyslanski was a Community Service Officer but because the woman she was with, Susan Prescott, worked for Human Services and wanted to discuss the “crawl space murder,” as Zyslanski put it. The boy! Boldt thought.

He walked them down to the conference room, Zyslanski making small talk along the way. She was an anorexic-looking woman with thin, lifeless hair and a nervous disposition. She hadn’t seen the sun in too long; her skin was jaundiced and onionskin thin. Susan Prescott was a cream-color black, broad-shouldered and slight-chested, hourglass waist and legs to the ceiling. She wore large gold hoop earrings that nearly touched her shoulders and walked like a woman who had worked the fashion ramps. She held her chin high, her neck stretched. She carried an air of indifference and alarming self-confidence. Boldt kept his eye on her. He held a chair for her as she sat.

She thanked him and said, “It’s my job to do everything I can to find this boy, the one who called in the nine-eleven. It’s your job to sort out the evidence. My hope is that maybe that evidence will point to where we might find the boy. I understand that he’s a possible homicide witness and that’s fine. I want him because he’s likely to be traumatized, alone and scared. Every day he is outside of adult supervision is another chance he’ll be swallowed by this city. The homeless. The child pornography rings. Drugs.” She leaned on the word. “We would like to avoid that at all costs.”

“I have a son, Ms. Prescott. I’m as anxious about this as you are.”

“Then perhaps you will allow me into the home,” she said, in a tone that sounded like a complaint.

Zyslanski explained. “The home is sealed with police tape and warnings. Human Services is requesting access to your crime scene.”

“You are aware, are you not,” asked Prescott, “that your primary suspect required outpatient hospital attention prior to his detention?”

Boldt had not studied the case carefully. He had left the case to the lead detective, focusing his own concerns on the kid’s whereabouts. He didn’t dare explain that. It wouldn’t come out right.

When he failed to answer quickly, Prescott said, “From what I’ve been told of the injuries, from what I was able to see through the windows of that house, your suspect was certainly not beat up by a child. That implies the presence of a third party, and we at HS are concerned about the child’s safety.”

“The possibility of an abduction,” Zyslanski explained.

“I have no problem with you entering that house. The lead detective on the case will want to join you, I would think, just to-”

“Keep an eye on me,” Prescott answered, interrupting. “That’s fine.” She sounded dissatisfied.

“To protect the chain of custody,” Boldt clarified. “It’s a technicality, is all.”

“It’s the drug connection that has us most concerned. They use everything from five- and six-year-olds up to seventeen-year-olds to run their drugs. I don’t need to tell you that.”

“Drug running is certainly pervasive, yes. But I would hope-”

Prescott cut him off sharply. “It’s not a word I can live with. One loses hope quite quickly in my job. One substitutes hard work, believing that in the occasional case it will make a difference. It doesn’t very often, just for your information. But maybe this time, right? That’s how you start every case.”

“Maybe this time,” Boldt agreed. He didn’t need this woman soapboxing to him.

She inquired, “You are aware of the earlier nine-eleven call, Sergeant, aren’t you?”

“I don’t believe I am,” Boldt admitted.

“I thought something was wrong here,” Prescott said to her escort, Zyslanski. To an even more angry Boldt she said, “There was an earlier nine-eleven call, placed October fifth of this year. The Communications Center identified the number making the call and the address from which it was made. The report was made by a young boy who remained anonymous. It was believed a hoax but was passed on to us, as is required. The address of that first call is the same address where the body was found. The boy is the same boy,” she explained. “But that earlier call is especially troubling to us, given the horrible condition your suspect was found in. Pretty tough stuff going on in that house. We assume it was a drug deal gone bad.”

“A drug deal?”

“That first call?” she asked rhetorically. “It wasn’t a hoax, as the dispatcher thought. The boy was trying to report a drug deal he had witnessed at the airport.”

“Airport?” Alarms sounded inside Boldt’s head. In a rare inability to control his emotions, he came out of his chair and he shouted, driving Prescott back from the table, “The airport? A drug deal at the airport? ” Daphne’s write-up of her second interview with the psychic had reported a drug deal at Sea-Tac involving the man with the burned hand. There were no coincidences in Boldt’s world; everything could be explained.

“Ms. Prescott,” Boldt said more calmly, regaining control, “I think you may have just found your runaway.”

There were many times in the course of a day that Daphne wondered what she was doing with her life. Engaged to a man she was finding hard to love; loving an unavailable man; pressed between uniforms and suits, one of a handful of women above the rank of patrol; volunteering a few nights a week at a homeless shelter for kids who had seen too much and lived too little; a scientist longing for the spiritual; a loner longing for a partner.

Her car was parked in front of and across from the purple house with the neon sign and the giant globe in the front lawn. At exactly 3:07 P.M. a small boy came walking down the sidewalk and turned into the driveway. He walked around to the back of the house and was not seen again, presumably having gone inside.

Daphne glanced over at Susan Prescott sitting alongside her and said, “Are you ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” answered the woman.

Daphne climbed out of the car. It was colder than earlier. She shoved her hands into her pockets, still searching for alternatives. She hated the idea of separating the boy from Emily, only to put him in the custody of a public agency. She had paid plenty of visits to the King County Youth Detention Facility on Spruce. What if he somehow ended up there? Who was to blame then? It was all about pressure. It was about bringing Boldt a witness. It was about forcing Emily Richland to deliver.