Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

But Boldt knew the truth: The killer remained at large. The one blessing was that the publicity of Hall’s arrest had apparently scared off the arsonist-no fire had followed the most recent poem. Or had it merely delayed him?

He experienced an overwhelming bout of depression and frustration: so close, only to fail. He wanted an hour with a piano. He wanted Liz home. The kids.

The investigation rolled on, regardless of his wants. He took a walk downtown for forty-five minutes, up past the Four Seasons and down 5th Avenue’s fashion stores and office malls. He wanted a shot at what the kid knew. Kids saw a lot more than adults. Maybe a lead to the accomplice. Open him up with a lineup, something to jog his memory, work him into the smaller details. Pick his brain. He bought tea to go at a coffee stand by Nordstrom’s and came back up 4th, stopping to window-shop at Brooks Brothers, where a gray cashmere sweater costing most of a week’s pay teased him. He moved on, weary and worried. Pedestrians avoided him.

He used such walks to try to jog loose a fresh idea. He needed a fresh idea, if another life was to be saved. He mentally reviewed the most recent note:

You cannot look for the answer, you must be the answer .

Daphne had traced it to Rita Mae Brown. The ATF’s Casterstein had told them to let the next fire burn itself out-no water, no overhaul. Boldt understood that the fire could come any night, that another life could be lost. The responsibility he bore for that life was but one of the pressures he endured.

His present worries were twofold: the publicity generated by Hall’s arrest might invite copycat arsons; or it could push the Scholar either into hiding or, worse, into a frenzy of activity-as Daphne predicted-fearing his own arrest imminent.

Boldt’s best ideas came to him at strange times, so it was no real surprise to him that while coveting a gray cashmere sweater in a storefront window he hit upon a realization: With Hall’s arrest, the arsonist’s supply of accelerant would stop.

His cellular phone pressed to his ear, Boldt shouted people out of his way as he sprinted back toward quarters. Panting, he gasped through the phone to Shoswitz that they needed to conduct an immediate inventory of all fuel storage at Chief Joseph Air Force Base. Until that moment, under orders from the Captain of the Criminal Investigations Division, they had been intentionally leaving the Air Force in the dark, fearing a bureaucratic nightmare of jurisdictional infighting. “We blew it, Lieutenant. We had the trap all set, all perfectly baited, and no one was there to watch, to spring it.”

“What trap?” Shoswitz demanded.

“If I’m right, there has been a break-in at the Chief Joseph base within the last forty-eight hours. After the news broke the story of Hall’s arrest.”

When Boldt walked into the office twelve minutes later, Shoswitz was waiting by the elevators. “How in the hell did you know about that break-in?”

Boldt answered, “I’m going to get LaMoia. Tell Bernie to rally some technicians. We treat it as a crime scene. We share it, no matter what kind of heat we take.”

“Yeah, but how the hell did you know?” Shoswitz barked at his sergeant.

Boldt didn’t stop to answer, but he turned and said, “Supply and demand.”

Chief Joseph Air Force Base was right out of a film studio back lot: parklike grounds interspersed with ugly shoe-box barracks and tightly grouped three-bedroom ranch-style brick houses for officers. With nine hundred family units and over one thousand dorm units, it had once employed or played home to 4,800 military personnel, 6,200 dependents, and 2,400 civilians, meaning its average population had once been over thirteen thousand people. It had its own movie theater, bowling alley, golf course, day-care center, beauty shop, bookstore, and PX. Base population was currently two hundred military, one hundred sixty dependents, and seventy-six civilians. A ghost town covering over two thousand acres, including what had once been the third largest airport in the state. The streets were straight and curbed and deserted. Grass grew out of cracks in the pavement. Boldt and LaMoia rode in the front seat, Shoswitz alone in the back. They followed a sheriff’s vehicle that followed an FBI vehicle that followed an ATF vehicle that followed a Military Police Jeep complete with camo green, black, and brown paint.

The base commander was a surprisingly soft-looking man in his fifties. The FBI team, led by a man named Sanders whom Boldt knew well, did most of the talking. The negotiations began to bog down, at which point LaMoia, uninvited to participate by anyone, said, “We’ve got several people dead, sir. We think we know exactly what was stolen-hypergolic fuel, but we need to know in what quantity. I for one would just love to listen to you guys jaw all day, but meantime we know for a fact that this wacko is preparing yet another fish fry. So what say we cut to the chase and you give us some keys to the appropriate buildings while you gentlemen rub the gums?”

Everyone in attendance stared at LaMoia dumbfounded. To which LaMoia, who could never keep his mouth shut, said, “Ah, come on, people! This is bullshit. We haven’t got the time.”

Boldt caught himself holding his breath. The base commander nodded to a uniformed aide standing at his side, and the young kid hurried inside and returned with a ring of keys, which he passed to his superior. The commander clasped his thick hand around the keys and said, “We will certainly cooperate to our fullest with an active homicide investigation, but at the same time it is imperative that we share , gentlemen. Our Ordnance Recovery Division is responsible for returning to base any stolen ordnance. Our Criminal Investigation Division will take the lead and report directly to Special Agent Sanders.”

Shoswitz objected bitterly to military CID attempting to lead the investigation. Boldt grabbed his lieutenant firmly by the elbow and squeezed, expressing an attitude of cooperation-an act for which the hot-headed Shoswitz would later thank him.

The first of the buildings was called Arsenal D and was on the far western side of an enormous airstrip. Arsenal D was, in fact, a former jet aircraft hangar, in all appearances an oversized Quonset hut, ribbed galvanized sheet metal walls and roof, the latter with dull ivory skylights, the former with a minimum of windows. There were nine men involved in the fact-finding expedition, including Lofgrin’s three-member forensic team and a pair of base MPs. In private, LaMoia whispered to Boldt that once CID arrived from McChord the trouble would begin. Special Agent Sanders led the way. A bright shiny padlock came off a bent and rusted door that swung open on complaining hinges.

One of the uniformed MPs explained that during morning rounds on Saturday between 8 and 9 A.M., the door had been discovered pried open. Lofgrin’s team began work on the door itself immediately, photographing and dusting for prints. CID would later complain about this intrusion. Boldt and the others followed Sanders inside.

The sergeant was immediately struck by the effect of perspective. From outside, the hangar had seemed quite large; once inside, its size tripled. At the top of the arch of the curving roof there was perhaps sixty feet of clearance; the far wall felt as if it were a football field away. Between the two walls and perhaps forty feet high in twenty-two rows, each ten barrels wide, were stacked dark blue fifty-five gallon drums looking like spools of sewing thread. There had to be several thousand of them, Boldt realized, perhaps two hundred thousand gallons of fuel or more. Five gallons of that fuel, when mixed with its second element, could level a standard home. The firepower represented by this hangar was so staggering that at first, while the other men followed the MP down an endless aisle formed by the towering stacks of drums, Boldt stood transfixed, absorbing the absurdity of it all. Hall could have dipped into any one of these drums, siphoning off a few gallons here and there; in typical government fashion, the overkill, the embarrassment of riches, would provide the cover needed. An accurate inventory, especially given the small size of the crew on the base, seemed an impossibility-months, perhaps years away.