Ridley Pearson - No Witnesses

It was true. The father’s final effort was frozen, mocking his attempt; he was lying on the floor, arm outstretched, the phone’s receiver still in his hand. The dishes were neatly stacked alongside the sink. They had eaten barbecued pork chops, corn, and a green salad.

Lofgrin said, “The news crew has already destroyed any chance of clean evidence, but we’ll go through the motions.”

The similarity to the tree-house killings had reporters asking about a serial killer. Fishing still, but closer to the real story.

He needed to be alone. He passed through the kitchen and into a small sitting room where a color television aimed at a couch and a bookshelf was crowded with hardcovers and paperbacks. The name of the family was Crowley, and the neighborhood, the house, the furnishings, the appointments, put them firmly in the combined six-figure income. This was another house that Liz would have wanted, and he could not help but think of mother and daughter beneath the kitchen table, huddled against the fears and pain of death. And how glad he was that this was not Liz and Miles.

The stairs were maple and climbed quickly to a second story. He heard the whining as he reached the top, and he moved toward it cautiously, not knowing what to expect. It grew sharper and sadder as he approached, and he understood it was a dog before he opened the door. There, lying at the foot of the parents’ bed, pressed into the floor, lonely eyes trained up at Boldt in complete confusion, a shepherd-collie cried plaintively. This dog, Boldt realized, was the only witness to what had happened. This dog had lost her entire family in the course of one evening’s meal.

He bent down and petted it, and fought back a seething anger.

Dr. Richard Clements commandeered Shoswitz’s office. Daphne Matthews was there, as were Boldt and the lieutenant. Clements said to Boldt, “You are focusing on these truck farmers. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“That is not right.”

“We’ve pulled every watermel-”

“Schmater-melon. Blah! He no longer cares about claiming authorship. It is ending. He is leading you astray, Sergeant. You mustn’t be misled. I saw your work in the situation room. Stick with that-the paint, the colors, the evidence . This watermelon is a ruse, intended to mislead the hunt. He is the fox, let us not forget, and you are the hound,” he said to Boldt, “and we must remember that the only way the fox ever wins the chase is not to outrun his pursuers, but to deceive them.”

Shoswitz huffed audibly, losing patience with Clements. His agitation surfaced as small tics to the shoulders and the eyes, so that he looked like a marionette whose strings were tangled. Boldt feared he might say something to offend the doctor, and realizing the value of Clements, quirky or not, Boldt headed off any such confrontation between the two by speaking first.

“He could kill hundreds by poisoning produce.”

“He doesn’t desire to kill hundreds. What did he say on the phone?” he asked Daphne.

“That Owen had killed the ones he loved.”

“He wants to kill Adler. My diagnosis is that his schizophrenia has progressed to a point that whatever voice may once have vied for such a grand scheme has since been overpowered by the drive for vengeance, a far greater motivation. As Caulfield perceives it, Owen Adler owes him several long years of his life. How many have read this?” He waved a group of papers in the air, impossible to see. He explained, “It is his defense of his innocence subsequent to the trial. A thoughtful, powerful, convincing piece of writing. I for one believe him. He claims to have been the victim of a frame-that the drugs were not his. He supported this by an offer of proof that not one blood test administered to him had tested positive for cocaine use. He points to the police lab tests that failed to find any trace evidence whatsoever of the drug in his home or automobile. In his third year of medium detention, he wrote this most extraordinary appeal, but because of the state’s minimum sentencing failed to be granted parole or a retrial. It is my judgment that a schism developed within him, driven perhaps by a valid injustice, as we now understand his situation. His more logical half advised him to follow the system; his disturbed half revolted, rejecting any such alliance with the very forces that had led to his demise. The latter half has gained control now, I am suggesting. But there is a cunning, logical, intelligent mind at work here, and one that has been alerted to the substantial powers and abilities of his adversary. It’s all over the news. He knows the clock is running. He knows what he is up against, and he has little conscious desire to be a martyr and be caught, regardless of the efforts of the subconscious.”

“So he tricks us,” Daphne said, following the reasoning.

“Exactly. He poisons a single melon. Off go the hounds chasing the melons, following the wrong scent, while all the while the fox has doubled back and is raiding the chicken house.”

Shoswitz protested, “But we don’t know it was only the one melon.”

“Sure we do,” Clements countered. “We’ve not had one other report. Correct? Not one other incident. And if he intended to kill hundreds using melons, this would hardly be the case.” He giggled. “Don’t you see how obvious he’s being about this?”

The lieutenant bristled with the giddy pleasure Clements was taking in all of this. Any homicide cop felt the pain and suffering of the victims and their relatives-no matter how callous to the crime scenes he or she became, no matter how quick the one-liners, and how easy it was to move on to another case. The tragedy of the Crowley family had deeply affected everyone on the fifth floor, and in this way Clements was clearly a visitor.

“I’m saying it’s Adler he wants. Do not be fooled by his cleverness. He will deceive you at every opportunity. I warned you of this before: You cannot put yourself in this man’s mind. But I can, gentlemen.” He acknowledged Matthews and smiled. “I can.”

Boldt entered NetLinQ’s “war room” on Sunday night, losing faith that the ATMs might ever be used to trap Caulfield. For too many nights now he had sat in a chair and stared at the electronic map projected onto the huge screen. For too many nights he had gone home with nothing more than a headache.

Special Agent Sheila Locke was about twenty-six years old, with short brown hair, a thin pale face, and enormous eyes. She wore a blue blazer that hid her figure, and a wireless headset that covered her right ear and a foam-covered microphone that hid her generous mouth. Using the newly added FBI communications, Locke and another agent, whom Boldt knew only as Billy, were in constant touch with the nearly seventy-five men and women watching ATMs in King County. Although Boldt’s tiny squad of eleven was keeping tabs on downtown ATMs, the FBI special agents and King County undercover officers had been deployed in the outlying regions, including Kirkland-Bellevue and SEATAC-Renton.

Ted Perch was chatting up Lucille Guillard, who monitored a computer terminal allowing her personal control of all Pac-West ATMs. She would also get a real-time look at the extortionist’s account balance so that if a hit slipped through the screening software again, they would at least see a balance change indicating a hit.

Over seventeen hundred ATMs under NetLinQ’s control were now subject to the time-trap software. In the past forty-eight hours, the system had not crashed once. Publicly, the delay was still being attributed to maintenance.

The electronic wall map was peppered with different-colored dots: Red represented cash machines not under direct surveillance, of which there seemed to be hundreds. Green, considerably fewer, depicted the ATMs under covert surveillance. No ATM had been hit twice, and the amber dots represented the machines previously hit.