Ridley Pearson - Beyond Recognition

Boldt had left a message on her voice mail, explaining Shoswitz’s imposed curbs and asking if she would help LaMoia with the Lakewood surveillance. It was unlike her to leave John in the lurch, especially since she had instigated the operation. Boldt mumbled, “We don’t know if she found the kid or not. That’s probably what’s going on.”

“She’s touchy about this kid, you know? Have you picked up on that? A little close for my taste.”

“She’s responsible for him, John. The kid blew us off. Walked right out of the unit.” She had her reputation to defend, he thought, suddenly more worried. It had not been a good day for her.

Daphne Matthews did not take failure well.

To call her was only to force her to admit she had still not found their witness. Boldt wanted none of that. He would give her another hour before inviting that wrath upon himself.

He left Gaynes to watch the rooming house without him and headed downtown to get a better look at the video.

He was halfway back to the Public Safety Building when a nearly hysterical Bernie Lofgrin called him with the latest on the ink used in the notes.

The boulder that was the investigation was suddenly rolling downhill again, and this time, Boldt thought, Jonny Garman was directly in its path.

The man with the dead face rode fast. Ben was in his highest gear, riding as hard as he could and losing ground. It was like trying to chase a phantom.

The police artist had called it a hockey mask, but that was no mask. It wasn’t skin either. Ben wasn’t sure what it was, but it was ugly. A monster was more like it. Way worse than a glass eye. A person could hardly feel sorry for himself after seeing something like that.

They rode Yesler under the highway and turned into the International District. The guy knew how to time the lights. If he hit a red, he went with the pedestrian lights, the white marching man in the box on the lamppost. If Ben could have ridden faster he might have hung back intentionally, but as it was, the distance between them only increased, and rather than worry about being seen, Ben’s concern was keeping up. The Face, as Ben thought of him, shot across Dearborn, connected up with Airport Way, and started pumping like he was in some kind of race, growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

Ben felt all hope ride away with the guy.

And then he heard the truck coming up fast from behind.

It was a stunt he had wanted to do a hundred times but had never had the belly to try. And suddenly there was no question in his mind as to if he would try but whether or not he could pull it off.

He pedaled hard, rising up off his seat, glancing once over his left shoulder, a slight smirk as he twisted his head fully around so his right eye could see back there. A good-sized truck, bigger than a pickup but smaller than a dump truck. Picking up speed after the last light. Gaining on Ben.

His legs pushed hard; he needed to match that speed.

Gaining … gaining …

Another look, a huge swivel of the head: Only a few yards back, the engine louder than a locomotive, the gears singing. Ben inched the bike to his left, swerving, the truck looming closer.

Closer still. Legs flailing then to match the speed. It had to be exact. He knew. He had heard stories. If you timed it wrong, the truck pulled you right off the seat or, worse, folded the bike underneath the twin rubber tires, bearing down like a steamroller.

He had never tried because it took nerves and timing and depth perception. And like so many things-catching a ball, swinging a bat, even pattycake as a little kid-Ben had given up before he had tried, because others had told him he couldn’t.

He reached out and took hold of the truck.

The feeling was like the only time he’d been in a sailboat, when a gust of wind had caught them and tipped them so hard that everyone slid inside the boat. One minute Ben was riding. The next, he was launched down the road, a passenger in a sidecar.

The truck picked up speed. Ben held on for dear life. Up ahead, the tiny image of the Face on the bike grew larger as the truck closed the distance. He felt the wind in his smiling face and wanted to cheer, to shout, to show everybody what he’d done. The poor little boy with one eye. The kid doing thirty-five, one-handed, on a bicycle. He felt as if he were riding a rocket, as if it were strapped right onto his bike.

The Face was in plain sight again and, if Ben had it right, was slowing down. They had come a mile, maybe two. Green lights the whole way. He felt empowered. He felt like a grown-up. A hero.

They closed fast on the other bike, and suddenly Ben lacked the nerve to let go and release the truck. The idea terrified him. He had grabbed on okay, but he wasn’t so sure about letting go. Those wheels were right there , grabbing the pavement, bumping, bouncing. Ben could just see himself squashed under them.

Let go! a voice inside him announced. But his hand wouldn’t do it. It just couldn’t do it.

Worse, the Face was getting closer by the second, by the yard. He had slowed down to nothing.

At once, without a hand signal, the Face turned right and the bike pulled to a stop and the guy jumped off. The truck, and Ben along with it, went whizzing right by-Ben looking back quickly to mark the location.

U-STOR-IT-SELF-STORAGE UNITS AVAILABLE

He looked ahead then, the road conditions worsening, potholes everywhere. Just like that! One minute smooth asphalt; the next, land mines. He swung the wheel left and right, dodging the holes, slaloming between them.

The light up ahead was green.

“Turn red,” Ben begged, repeating it like a mantra. “Red,” he pleaded.

The light changed to yellow. The gears ground as the driver downshifted; the truck slowed noticeably. Ben dodged one last pothole, pulling the bike too far to the right and breaking his grip. Without intending to, he let go.

He snapped his other hand onto the handlebars and hung on tight as he squeezed the back brake, the front wheel vibrating and dancing with a life of its own. He pulled, but the front wheel would hardly move. The truck lumbered on up ahead. Ben lost control, hit the curb, and was launched through the air onto a patch of grass and a pile of dog shit that smeared all the way down his back. He came to a stop sitting up, facing backward, dizzy and unable to focus. He sat there for a long time waiting for his vision to return, his head to stop swimming.

The bike looked okay. He felt his arms and legs. Nothing broken, he decided, for the second time in the same night. He glanced around at his surroundings: Spiro Aviation, Glyde Avionics and Engineering. Not a pay phone in sight.

U-Stor-It was only a half mile behind him.

Daphne found herself sitting in the Santori home doing nothing, wondering why she was there. Fifteen minutes had passed since she had heard one of the neighborhood boys scream out from the woods. Kids! She had actually allowed herself to believe it had been Ben. How paranoid can a psychologist get? she wondered.

Her biggest mistake was leaving her cellular phone in her car, plugged into the cigarette lighter. She had debated walking the one block to get it but worried that it might attract Jonny Garman’s attention to her red Honda; Martinelli had been driving an Explorer. This car difference was what had kept her grounded in the house. If Garman was watching the place-and she believed he could be-and she returned to the wrong car or he got a good look at her, the game was up. They were back to square one.

For the last quarter hour she had been attempting to develop the nerve to call Boldt and tell him her latest theory-that Garman had lifted the wrong address off the backpack. But Boldt had been cut back to one or two detectives, and she didn’t want to be the one to screw things up again, to pull LaMoia off Martinelli just in time for Garman to fry the woman.