Ridley Pearson - No Witnesses

“This is what he does in his free time when he’s not watching other people.” Her angry tone of voice worried him. “Buy a little piece of ass for a midnight snack. A Hostess Twinkie.” In a Betty Boop voice, she said, “What? Can’t sleep tonight? Dial: One-eight hundred-I-DO-FUCK.”

“I’m right here,” he offered.

Staring out the window, she asked, “Have you ever watched other people screw? Not movies-I mean for real. It was disgusting. It was my first time. It’s really a disgusting dirty little act in many ways-especially like that, at the table like that. All the bumping and grabbing. A couple minutes is all, like alley cats. They never even kissed. Can you imagine? He just took her like a piece of meat. Like he had ordered a pizza or something. I don’t think she liked it,” she repeated.

“Let’s get out of here,” Boldt suggested.

“I’ll bet you anything he watched me and Owen.” She snapped her head toward him then, but looked away immediately. She said, “He didn’t learn anything, judging by his own performance.”

“We could get some eggs,” Boldt suggested, wanting her out of here.

“She’s leaving now. She’s smart.” Boldt saw that the woman was in fact leaving. “Two hours on the nose. Well, not exactly the nose. No matter what he paid her, it wasn’t enough. Not with a man like that. I wonder what two hours cost. Is it by the hour, or what?”

“What does this accomplish, Daffy?”

“If I’m watching him, then I know he’s not watching me. You want to fault that logic?” She added, “I want to bring charges, Lou.”

“Daffy, do whatever you have to do.”

“If you’re going to say something, just say it.”

“We were cutting him out, Daffy. He knew it. He even said as much. You were nosing around some old skeletons, and he wanted to know what you had.”

“No pun intended,” she sniped sarcastically. “I’m quite certain that by now he knows what I have .”

“You want to blame someone, try Taplin. You think Fowler dreamed this up? He takes orders, Daffy. He’s Taplin’s go-and-fetch-it.”

“They probably had pizza parties and watched me take showers.”

“They’re in business. They’re not running peep shows. If you really want to hurt them, then forget filing charges. We wait and we use this against them somehow.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think I can go back there and pretend I don’t know?”

He waited her out.

“You’re saying they’ve already seen all there is to see, so why not?” she questioned.

“I’m not really suggesting that. No. We make an excuse. A friend needs you. Adler asks you to move in with him.”

“We had to stop that because of my badge.”

“We’ll think of something. I’d just rather not blow the whistle yet.”

Fowler’s light went off. It was over.

“You’re staying here tonight?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Are you going to be all right?”

Another nod. “I’m a big girl.” She smirked. “Just ask him.”

“I can stay.”

“Go home to your family.” She glanced over at him. “I’m sorry for the way I behaved. I lost it, that’s all.”

“Yeah. You lost it,” Boldt said. And she grinned for the first time.

He kissed her. She flinched. And he left.

“Where were you until four in the morning?”

“You’re not supposed to ask that at six-thirty.”

“The question stands.”

“If I told you I was in an ocean-view suite in a fancy hotel with a beautiful woman, what would you think?”

“That you’re full of you-know-what.”

“Good. The answer stands.”

“You’re hopeless.” She walked around the room, and in and out of the bathroom, naked, getting herself ready. Boldt thought back to someone watching Daphne, and how she had reacted, and he thought he understood her better now that he saw his own wife being so casual with herself. And he, too, was angry, and perhaps more determined to do something about this anger.

“Wake up.”

He had drifted back to sleep. “You said I shouldn’t let you sleep.” Adding, “It’s not fair to ask of me such things.” She was dressed now, but not for work.

“What day is it?”

“Suzie and I are going over to Elaine’s. Michael is still locked up in that room with rubber walls.”

Boldt realized that losing the prosecuting attorney would set back the investigation, but he pushed this thought aside. “You should be sainted.”

“Taken to dinner would do.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Yes you had,” she told him.

“I had,” he admitted. “But now I remember. I owe you a champagne dinner.”

“And you owe your son about two weeks off.”

“So noted.”

“He’s spending too much time at day care. I’ll drop him,” she frowned. “But I’ll pick him up early. So forget it, in case you were thinking about it.” She looked at him. “You weren’t thinking about it.”

“I can hardly think at all.”

“Sleep deprivation has that effect.” She hesitated in the doorway, reluctant to leave.

“What?” he asked.

She asked tentatively, “How beautiful? And which hotel?”

He smirked.

The phone rang, and they both hesitated. “Do we have to?” she asked. Boldt answered it.

Shoswitz’s voice named an address on Lakewood.

Boldt hung up.

“Honey?” she asked.

“It has happened again,” Boldt mumbled.

By the time Boldt arrived at quarter to eight, the crime scene had turned into a circus. Scores of the morbidly curious, plus television and radio vans including the three nationals with satellite links, every variety of police and-never explained-two fire trucks, crowded the area so badly that Boldt was forced to park on Sierra and cut through someone’s backyard. Much to his chagrin, the crime scene had been held for one man: Lou Boldt, and his arrival sparked a kind of instant celebrity that proved one of the most distasteful experiences of his career. Reporters shoved microphones at him, but he shielded his face and avoided both cameras and questions. When he finally made it inside the home, he discovered a video-cam crew from a tabloid television news show in the process of recording every aspect of the deceased-three bodies, total. The crew had set up in the living room and were waiting for him, complete with a portable light that was blindingly bright. The crime scene was contaminated, yes, but the violation of this family’s privacy was what triggered Lou Boldt’s explosive rage. He had the entire crew arrested for trespassing and breaking and entering.

By the time the area was finally cleared, both Dixie and his crew, and Bernie Lofgrin and his, were on hand. The three men closed the kitchen door, shutting out the chaos outside, and studied the dead.

The husband had made it to the phone, though he had apparently never dialed. Dixie attributed these extra few seconds to his body weight “and a great deal of courage.” The middle-aged suburban woman appeared to have lunged for her eight-year-old girl, perhaps knocking over her chair in the process. Mother and daughter were curled tightly in each other’s arms, now dead beneath the kitchen table, the mother’s face locked in an expression of pure horror.

The source of the poison-Dixie guessed the cause of death as such within minutes of his preliminary examination-appeared to be a watermelon. Lividity , the settling of blood in the body, indicated a time of death of between eight and sixteen hours earlier; additional tests would further narrow this. There were three slices of the melon on three plates, the seeds carefully removed, the slices cut up into cubes. No one had ingested more than six cubes of melon. Dixie declared, “We’ve both attended a lot of deaths, Lou, but I’ve never witnessed anything quite like this.”