Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

“I don’t know his name,” he declared solemnly. “I don’t know what he looks like.” He squinted and placed his pink paddle onto the table instead of hiding it below the lip as he had been. “A buck twenty a month. That’s the disability pay our fine country sees fit to give me for this: a hundred and twenty a month. And what kind of job am I supposed to get? Tell me that. A typist?” He twisted his wet lips into a grin that caused her to shiver and made him feel dangerous. Was he looking to vent his rage? she wondered. She sat straight up and met his eyes, and silently told him not to try anything with her.

“It wasn’t drugs,” he repeated.

“Something available on the base,” she replied.

He nodded. His mandible muscle locked up as big and firm as a chestnut. His eyes went wide. He was terrified. Of the military or the man with whom he had dealt? she wondered.

“What was it you sold, secrets?”

“Hell, no, I ain’t no traitor!”

“What then?”

He answered, “I had access that he didn’t have. Let’s just leave it at that.”

Her voice rose to a shout. “Leave it? I don’t think so. Have you been listening, Nick? We’re trying to build a credible story here. I don’t know what you were selling, but it’s not going to bring you death row. The murder charge will!”

His eyes hardened. His mandible muscle knotted again. “I want me a lawyer.”

“We’ll arrange one, of course, if you insist, but I should warn you that you’ll regret it. You like me,” she said. “We understand each other, you and I. But Boldt and the prosecutor? You think they care?”

“I’m not answering any more questions.”

“Then I won’t ask any more questions,” she informed him. “Just tell me what was going on in that parking garage at Sea-Tac. Try the truth, in a way I can believe, and you may walk out that door with the charges dropped.”

“Bullshit.”

She stood. “You don’t want the murder charges dropped? What am I doing trying to help you? You think I have time for this?” she complained. “You think I have nothing better to do than sit in this stinky little room listening to you bitch and whine? You want Boldt, you got him. You want the soapies, you got ’em. You want death row, it’s all yours.”

Her second false exit was less successful. She was mad at herself for trying it too soon. His chains rattled, but he did not speak up. No matter how many times she heard that sound, it gave her chills.

She could not be seen to give in. The temptation was to turn around and give him another chance, rather than let Boldt have him for a while, but there were no second chances to be given. The finality of his position was all-important. And besides, she thought, it was embarrassing to have the mark settle on a request for an attorney during her turn at bat. Hall had the look of terror. Better to give him a few minutes and let Boldt go at him for a while. But she gave him up reluctantly, like a pitcher coming off the mound in the early innings.

“Okay, here’s the shit,” John LaMoia said, approaching Boldt, who stood on the other side of the one-way glass watching Daphne debate her exit.

Boldt didn’t like being interrupted, not even by LaMoia, to whom he granted an unfair amount of liberties. “I’m busy here, Detective,” he said sternly.

“The … rocket … fuel,” LaMoia said slowly, reminding Boldt of the way he talked to Miles when he wanted to get a point across. “The … suspect. That … suspect,” the detective continued, pointing through the glass.

Boldt’s mind wandered from fatigue. He spoke to Liz each night and some mornings. Though grateful at first for his efforts to protect his family, she was increasingly angry at him for her isolation at the cabin. She had spent nine days up there, and he had forbidden her to tell any friends or bank associates where she was, even though a close friend could guess immediately. The Sheriff’s Department had two men assigned to her twenty-four hours a day, one guarding the road, one watching the cabin. She was feeling captive. He told her little of the investigation, just as she said nothing of the bank, with whom he knew she was in touch.

They ended up discussing social engagements, as if it were any other week in their lives. She sought the comfort of familiarity. He allowed it. There was a dinner party being thrown by one of her vice-presidents that she felt they were obligated to attend. Boldt hated these bank dinners, having little in common with the country club set. She then pressed him about the upcoming Fireman’s Ball, a downtown gala fund-raiser they attended each year, again, Boldt reluctantly.

He softened and agreed to both, at which point she dropped the real bombshell. “I have to be back in the city on Tuesday. No questions asked, I have to be.” Jealousy welled up within him and he nearly confronted her, but whereas confronting a suspect was easy for him, confronting his wife had never been simple. It was far easier for him to attempt a noncommittal statement such as, “We’ll see,” but he knew it wouldn’t carry the day. He wanted to corner her into explaining the urgency, and yet he didn’t want to know. He ended up procrastinating-putting off agreeing with her until another call.

LaMoia’s voice brought him back. “What I’ve found out is this: The Air Force, in all its wisdom, decommissioned the Titan missile program in phases. The rocket fuel back then was either two liquids, or a liquid and a solid, that when combined self-ignited. No need for an igniter. Part A meets part B and kablaam! — fire, controlled burn. The chemical reaction produced its own oxygen, making it perfect for burns that continued up into space. The term is hypergolic : binary self-igniting rocket fuel. There’s a whole family of them. But the point is, it takes the two parts to tango. They moved the two parts to separate locations, keeping them as far from each other as possible. The Minute Man program took its place. There was evidently talk of disposing of the two parts, but some fucking genius decided we might be able to sell the stuff abroad and make back some of the taxpayers’ investment. It probably cost more money to ship it and store it than it did to make it,” he snapped sarcastically. “So they didn’t destroy it. They stored it. Part A went to Idaho, part B to California. Part A went to Texas; part B to Nevada. Keep brother and sister far apart. And then the base closures began. Base inventories were moved around like chess pieces. Some of that goes here, some of that goes there. Things get a little fuzzy at this point, but it would appear that either by just plain old government stupidity, or-if you accept the rumors-because a potential buyer came on the scene, parts A and B were moved onto nearby bases here in Washington. But if that’s true, the buyer must have fallen through, because parts A and B ended up here to stay, at which point, of course, we entered the second round of base closures, the second round of moving inventories like chess pieces, and-lo and behold! — parts A and B end up in separate storage facilities but both on the same base: Chief Joseph Air Force Base.”

Boldt said, “Which was closed down in round three.”

“But round three was not full closure for a lot of the bases. They reduced them to something called maintenance status. They maintained inventory but shut down barracks-it was a pork-barrel scheme to maintain the bases in an election year; no one had to say the bases were being closed, just scaled down. Fluff. The result was, a few administrators stayed on at each of these bases, a few MPs to watch the place, guard the gates. But for all purposes there was no one left. And the security details are less than twenty-five percent of what they were at full operation.”