Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

Daphne said, “Is he Air Force? Can we confirm that?”

Boldt repeated this question into his phone. Dispatch replied that a “full query” was under way. He reported this to Daphne. She nodded, her sober face revealing no emotion.

Not thirty seconds had passed before Boldt, holding the phone loosely to his ear, pressed it closer and relayed to Daphne, “He was Air Force for eight of the last eleven years, a civilian employee at Chief Joseph for the last three.”

“The discharge-his employment change-coincides with the hand injury. Bet on it.”

“Is he our guy?” Gaynes asked from the front, where she watched the slow approach of the truck.

Boldt shrugged. He glanced out the window. LaMoia was on the porch of the open house, shaking hands and saying goodbye to Brimsley and Meyers, a pair of Narcotics detectives. Brimsley and Meyers were among the best shots on the force with handguns. Boldt had wanted them outside, on the playing field, at the time of the suspect’s arrival. If the surveillance went bad, he reasoned, case histories showed it would happen in the first two minutes. He wanted his best people out there. He knew Brimsley and Meyers well enough to judge them oversized; they were wearing police vests, he beneath his sport coat, she beneath a blue rain slicker. The two cops stopped on the path, turned, and waved goodbye, Brimsley shouting his thanks to the real estate agent, both officers facing the purple house slightly, ready for weapons fire.

Nicholas Hall left his truck and followed the path past the huge globe, his face reflecting the colors in the neon sign. He pushed the button. The doorbell was heard over the surveillance radio.

Boldt, tight as a knot, muttered, “Get him inside.”

The suspect took notice of Brimsley and Meyers next door. He then glanced around cautiously, suspiciously. He looked right at the police van. “Freeze,” Boldt said. “No one breathes.” Hall’s attention on his surroundings continued even after Emily answered the door. His attention focused on the two men struggling to hoist the car up onto the tow truck. The bomb squad crew was not particularly adept at car towing.

The fax machine began to whine. Boldt glanced hotly toward it as a poor copy of a black-and-white photograph of the suspect slowly wound out, an enlargement of a driver’s license photo. Nicholas Hall looked average in every way.

Into his phone, Boldt whispered, “Find out about that right hand.”

The hand. Even from a distance it was noticeable. Boldt snagged a pair of binoculars, glad to have the porch light. The hand. A single piece of red flesh with three fingernails growing out of the end. It looked as though the man had put his real hand into a pink ballerina slipper or a costume glove. But this glove would not come off. A moment of panic surged through Boldt at first sight of that hand: Could such a person climb and descend trees? Could he carve biblical references into a tree trunk? Boldt snatched up his phone and told the dispatcher to reach him on the radio if necessary. He ended the call on the cellular and dialed Lofgrin’s office, hoping the man had stayed late, as he often did.

Gaynes handed Boldt the fax of Hall’s face. Boldt accepted the fax but put it quickly aside.

At the front door, Hall continued to watch the two at the tow truck.

“Welcome,” the three in the van faintly heard Emily say as she greeted Hall. The microphone was some fifteen feet and a room behind her, yet it still grabbed some sound. “Come in,” she encouraged.

“You seen ’em tow cars around here before?” he asked her. “That something they do here up in the city?”

“All the time,” she lied.

“Ticket them, sure. But tow them?”

“They make more money towing them. What do you think it’s about, parking spaces?” she asked cynically. “Besides, what do you care?” she asked. “You’re okay in my drive.”

“One cool woman,” Daphne said under her breath.

“I’ll say,” Gaynes agreed.

One of Lofgrin’s assistants answered Boldt’s call. The boss had gone home. Boldt asked for his home phone. The assistant gave him the number for a car phone, adding, “He just left a few minutes ago.”

Boldt reached Lofgrin, who was in slow traffic on the floating bridge. The sergeant asked him, “Those tree carvings?”

“Yeah?”

“The guy was right-handed or left-handed?”

“I don’t believe we checked for that.”

Surveillance operations were conducted on a need-to-know basis. Lofgrin had no idea that Boldt was in a department-owned repossessed luxury van with his eyes on a possible suspect.

“We shot some macros, with the digital. My people can enlarge them. You want me to look at it, I can have them faxed right here to the car. Otherwise, they should be able to handle it for you.” Boldt had seen the inside of Lofgrin’s department-issued vehicle. Equipped with a Motorola Communication terminal, printer, cellular phone, and fax machine, it served as the Identification Division’s field office at crime scenes.

“I need it ASAP. I’m on a surveillance, Bernie.”

“Give me a number.”

Knowing his might be tied up, Boldt checked if Daphne was carrying her phone. She was. Boldt gave Lofgrin that number.

Lofgrin said, “Traffic sucks. That’s in our favor. I can get some work done. Right back to you.”

Boldt thanked him and disconnected the line. He redialed and was once again connected with the steam-clean van.

Nicholas Hall stepped through the front door, which closed behind him. Emily’s voice grew louder as she led him into the room and toward the microphone.

Daphne sat with her eyes shut, concentrating. She sensed Boldt looking and said softly, “He didn’t like the tow truck.” She added, “I suggest we lose it.”

Without hesitation, Boldt passed this along to dispatch. Less than a minute later the towed vehicle was secure on the flatbed, and the truck pulled away and down the street.

For the next minute, the only radio traffic was between operations dispatch and a pair of ERT officers concealed behind a hedgerow immediately to the north of Emily’s purple house.

One of these ERT officers, identified only by the number seven, checked several times to determine beyond a doubt that the suspect was known to be inside the structure. Then, in what appeared to be nothing more than a shadow moving across the grass, Boldt witnessed this same agent roll out of the bushes and under Hall’s truck. Less than five seconds later, he rolled back out from under the truck and vanished into the darkness beneath a large cedar tree.

“GPS is in place,” this man announced over the radio. Dispatch acknowledged, repeating the statement. A sophisticated location device had been attached to Hall’s truck, enabling police to track its movement and identify its whereabouts. This accomplished, mobile surveillance could then follow blocks behind the suspect’s vehicle, well out of sight. It was a major accomplishment, and one that helped Boldt feel at ease and in control.

“Good move,” Daphne said, eyes still closed. She added, “I’d tell LaMoia to keep the frat party atmosphere to a minimum. Might be wise, in fact, if he packed it up, made the house dark, and left behind whoever needs to be there. Mr. Hall is a control freak,” she announced in a cold, authoritative voice.

Boldt felt a chill down his spine.

She continued, “He’s used to the military way: everything in its place. Everything explainable. He doesn’t like variations on a theme. He listens to country music. He’s macho. He’ll take her as a hostage if he’s pushed.” This came out as a warning. Allowing Emily to conduct her fortune-telling had been a huge risk for Boldt to take. He had trusted Daphne’s assessment of the woman-that they could work with her. Putting a civilian at risk was absolutely forbidden within the department; nonetheless, it was done on rare occasions-with all sorts of legal waivers in place-and this evening was just such an exception.