Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

“Booby traps, condition of the interior, anything stored you see. Labels if possible.”

“But it’s our torch, right? The Scholar? What we’re thinking is fire, correct?”

“Correct.”

“How many minutes?” he asked. “I can go twenty, twenty-two feet inside. A goddamned nickel tour, Sergeant. How much do you want?”

“If he’s in there, you’re gone. If not, then three to five minutes. Short and sweet. Can it record?”

“You bet. Camera goes direct to a camcorder with an LCD display. Camera is black-and-white, but it’s good quality.”

“If his lab isn’t in there, and I don’t think it is, I’d take any clues you happen upon.”

The pizza man tried a second time, apparently having checked his delivery list in the car or used a car phone to call the store. They couldn’t see him at the door, but they heard him pounding. He walked around back carrying the pie, gave up, and drove away a few minutes later.

“That’s my cue,” Kotch said, slipping out of the car.

Boldt wondered what kind of trouble he was in for using the man. Perhaps a case of beer or a bottle of Scotch would buy Kotch’s silence. Perhaps Shoswitz would find out and a shouting match would ensue. But he had no choice. For his own safety, for the safety of others in the rooming house, Kotch and the fiber-optic camera were essential.

Boldt looked on as Kotch walked casually across the street, a small backpack slung over one shoulder. In running shoes and jeans, he looked no different from thousands of other Seattlites. There was not a hint of cop about him. This was another area in which they differed. Boldt, with his substantial size and close-cropped hair, couldn’t help but reflect his twenty-four years of public service.

Kotch reached the back of the building and hurried up the only fire stairs to the second-story landing that provided egress for each of the rooms. He dropped to one knee, rummaged through the backpack, and in a matter of only seconds was feeding the thin wire attached to the miniature camera under the small gap in the door.

Specialists like Kotch were unique not only in their formidable technical knowledge and expertise but for their ability to appear casual under the most stressful circumstances. From the street, Kotch appeared to be searching out a pair of misplaced keys in his backpack, while in fact he continued to feed additional camera footage into the rented room.

Boldt had been involved in other special ops that had used fiber-optic cameras. In the right hands, the devices could be maneuvered along the floor, room to room, giving a clear fish-eye look at inhabitants and contents. Given the fact that Kotch continued his work, Boldt assumed that not only was the apartment empty but that no booby traps or detonation devices had been spotted. Not seeing them did not mean they did not exist, however. As eager as Boldt was to sneak a look inside that apartment-warrant or not-he had no desire to die the way Dorothy Enwright had. The Scholar had proved himself a skilled technician. Boldt had no desire to test his abilities.

Kotch packed up, descended the stairs, and walked entirely around the block before joining Boldt again in the car.

He rewound the tape and narrated as it played. The two men huddled around the small three-inch-square screen that was part of the camcorder. The fish-eye image was framed in a large circle, fuzzy at its edges. Seen through this distorted monocular vision, the apartment took on a foreboding, dangerous look. “It’s one room. I spend a minute examining the door and frame for triggers or trip wires-nothing there. Bathroom is to our right here. I come back to it. Up here is the bed with a dark blanket, chest of drawers to the left, see? Looks like a coil-element hot plate up on top. Okay. I check the front door-again, no visible triggers or trips.” As he narrated, the lone eye snaked around the interior at floor level. Then all of a sudden the screen’s image was too jerky to discern. “I retract here and reset the snake to show us waist height. It’s a little harder to keep steady when the camera’s in the air like that.” When the image became clear again, the perspective was from waist height. “Into the bathroom, up on the counter: Crest, Schick, no shaving cream in sight. Back out to the room and that card table-here we go. Oops. Coming up…. As you can see, the place is pretty depressing. No TV. No radio. It’s kept neat. Your boy is fastidious. It’s tricky getting to see the top of the card table. Took me a few tries. You’ll notice: No sign whatsoever of any lab gear. No closet. There’s a hanging rod in the corner by the bathroom-one raincoat, is all. Not a lot of places to hide shit. I’d say if he’s mixing cocktails, it’s somewhere else.”

“Receipts? Calendars? Matchbooks? Anything pointing to another location?”

“None of that. Oh, here it is. The card table. Seven white envelopes. Eighteen pieces of blank card stock. A tin can full of pens and pencils. A roll of postage stamps-American flag.”

“That matches!” Boldt exclaimed. American flag stamps had been affixed to all the Scholar’s notes. It was the stamps that sold Boldt; he knew they had the right place.

“Two books total: a worn Bible on the floor by the bed, and another called Cruden’s Complete Concordance .”

“A biblical concordance.” Boldt spit it out quickly. “The Bible citations in the trees. It’s definitely him-we’ve got him!”

The fish-eye view did not hold on the table’s contents for long. Kotch lost the precarious balance he had and the camera fell to the floor. It snaked back out of the room, the show over.

Boldt understood immediately that what he had just viewed was convincing enough to warrant a legal look inside the room. The video tape would never be admissible evidence, but it had showed him enough. He thought he might be able to secure a search warrant by telephone using the fibers as evidence. He and Gaynes would await Garman’s return and sit on him, probably clear through work the following day. Two or three days if necessary, with LaMoia and Matthews in rotation. Boldt felt convinced that eventually Garman would lead them to some evidence. His big problem was maintaining the patience required to wait the man out.

His other problem was time, he thought, as he checked his watch. Eight o’clock and still no fire announced over the police radio. It broke with the Scholar’s established pattern-always a bad sign. Worse, it fit with what Daphne had been insisting all along: Jonny Garman had taken the bait, Martinelli now next on his list.

“I want to review that tape back downtown,” Boldt told Kotch, who made for the car door. “A bigger monitor. See what we see.”

“Sure thing.”

“You got the time?” Boldt asked.

“No problem.” He stopped, his hand on the door handle. “Listen, I heard Shoswitz is squeezing your stones over manpower, Sergeant. My involvement? No big deal. It never happened.”

“I appreciate that,” Boldt replied. “I was wondering how to approach you.”

“Never happened,” Kotch repeated. “See you downtown.”

Boldt used the cellular to ring LaMoia because he wanted to keep it off the radios. He told them they had located Garman’s residence and there was no sign of a lab. “It could be in the basement; it could be ten miles away.” He warned the detective that Marianne Martinelli might be the target after all. He told him, “Heads up. And call me for backup at a moment’s notice. No heroics.”

LaMoia mocked him, as the detective was fond of doing. LaMoia would do anything macho, just to get a story out of it. He loved to tell stories, especially those involving himself.

“Is Matthews in position?” Boldt asked.

“Matthews? I haven’t heard a peep.”