Ridley Pearson - No Witnesses

How the FBI personnel managed this live video was beyond him. But he did not question it. Tech Services in every department was famous for performing miracles.

“Transaction complete,” Guillard announced.

The video followed this woman as she left the ATM and rounded the corner heading toward her car. Once a good distance away, she pulled off the helmet and shook out her hair.

DISPATCH: Tech operative. Suspect on her way. Do you copy?

There was no response from the operative, whose feet could be seen on the screen sticking out from under the suspect’s car.

Billy calmly reported to Boldt, “He’s not responding. Must be radio interference.”

The suspect was now less than a half-block away and closing quickly. “Get him out of there!” Boldt ordered.

DISPATCH: Tech Services? Request an interrupt. Repeat: Physical interrupt requested on the car kill.

TECH SERVICES: Roger, Dispatch.

On the screen, a woman dressed casually in blue jeans and a T-shirt hurried out of the van, moving quickly down the street toward the car. She made no effort to look in the direction of the suspect, now but a few yards away and coming up the sidewalk.

As the Tech Services woman came alongside the suspect’s vehicle, she flung her purse to the pavement, intentionally spilling its contents.

Boldt watched the overhead screen, hearing only the hum of the computers, Billy’s soft mumble, and the endless tapping of the computer keyboards. The woman field agent threw her head under the vehicle and said something as the suspect rounded the final corner, now only two cars away. The Tech Services man scrambled out, came to his knees, and immediately began helping her to clean up the contents of her spilled purse.

Cornelia Uli approached the driver’s door and encountered them both. The field agent laughed and shook her head at Uli as if embarrassed to have spilled her purse. She said something, as did the Tech Services man. The last of the purse contents were collected as Uli unlocked the Datsun’s trunk and set the helmet inside. She acted as casually about possessing a motorcycle helmet while driving a car as the two field agents did about collecting the items from the spilled purse. Their job completed, the field agents made no sudden moves, no panic. Together they headed down the sidewalk in the opposite direction from the van and the camera that recorded them.

The Datsun pulled away from the curb and drove off.

“Stay with her,” Boldt ordered Billy. He was thinking: These next few minutes are critical.

There were two ways that Boldt could play this woman whom he considered Caulfield’s accomplice, and he had already made the choice. The first, and most conservative, was to keep his distance and sit on her. Obtain the necessary warrants and tap her phone, perhaps even install video surveillance in her residence, record her every move, her every spoken word, and hope for the contact with Caulfield. The second-and the method he had elected to follow-was the more aggressive: to force a problem onto her and hope that in her moment of panic, she turned to Caulfield for help, either identifying his location, or luring him to her.

He felt powerless not being in the field with the others, and he sensed that by staying behind and coordinating the effort, he had crossed the imaginary line to desk jockey-and did not care for it one bit. Following the radio traffic in the headphones, he pictured the cars swapping responsibility for surveillance of the Datsun. He rejoiced with the others as the stream of leaking oil was spotted behind the vehicle, and he alerted Locke to open a line to U.S. West; they were going to need a listing of all pay-phone locations.

Three minutes later the Datsun pulled over, stopped dead in the middle of a strip of fast-food, quick lube, and car lots. One surveillance car pulled past and into the parking lot of a burger joint. Two others stopped fifty yards short, and divided to either side of the road.

“Billy, what’s the address?” Boldt asked hurriedly.

The dispatcher checked with the field agents and reported back.

Boldt signaled Locke like a conductor, and she repeated the address to the Ma Bell supervisor she had on the line. Within seconds, her pen was moving rapidly. She tore off the piece of paper and handed it to Boldt, who scanned it quickly and passed it to Billy, asking him to put them up on the screen. A minute later, six pink stars with a T in the middle appeared on the electronic map.

Over the course of the next few minutes, reports streamed in that the suspect was repeatedly attempting to start her car. During this time, Sheila Locke determined the physical locations of the pay phones according to their addresses: Two were behind the suspect in a McDonald’s and a Burger King, respectively; one was across and up the street in a strip mall; one each in a pair of competing gas stations nearly half a mile in front of her, near the interstate; and one in a booth adjacent to a bus stop not a hundred yards ahead.

Boldt instructed the trailing Tech Services van to set up with a view of both the Datsun and this bus-stop pay phone. Three minutes later, NetLinQ’s center screen showed a grainy black-and-white telephoto image of the sad-looking Datsun pulled awkwardly onto the shoulder of soft grass.

“Suspect is moving,” announced a male voice in the headset.

Boldt and Billy met eyes. Billy’s earlier doubt that had been present when Boldt elected to follow rather than apprehend was now gone, replaced instead by a confidence that bordered on admiration.

On the screen, the woman climbed out of the car, clearly disgusted. She looked both ways, trying to decide where to find a phone. Boldt silently urged her to head back toward the fast-food chains; he did not want her seeing the bus stop. But as if hearing him and going against his wishes, she elected to walk in the direction her car was headed.

Trying to consider every possibility, Boldt advised Locke, “Get in touch with the local bus service and find out their schedule. Any bus due at that stop in the next ten minutes we want detoured. Tell them we’ll want an empty bus on standby ten blocks back. And get the chopper back here. I may want a lift.” She scribbled all of this down. “And let’s see how many taxi companies cover that area. We’ll want our people in as the cabbies. And no patrol cars ,” he emphasized. “I don’t want to see a patrol within ten blocks of that area.”

For the next several minutes, Locke and Billy occupied themselves with Boldt’s requests. Field agents were deployed to two area cab companies and the bus company. The regularly scheduled bus was diverted, the driver telling her passengers that an accident blocked the road ahead and thereby required a detour.

The camera followed Cornelia Uli, who was by no means a fast walker. Nervous, or perhaps just worried about her car, she continually checked over her shoulder, island-hopping from one parking lot to the next in search of a pay phone.

Overhead, Boldt heard the mechanical thunder of the helicopter.

“It’s going to be the bus stop,” Boldt predicted.

“Chopper’s down,” Locke announced.

Boldt said to her, “Tell the phone company which phone we think it’s going to be and that we need a realtime report on whatever numbers she calls.”

“Got it.”

To Billy he said, “I want seven passengers and a driver on our bus. Mix it up. More of our people on the stops along the route, with everyone keeping a strict eye out for Caulfield. We’re going to have to allow civilians onto the bus, in case Caulfield sends a go-between, so I want to make it real clear: No cowboy theatrics. We consider her armed, but any civilians are our first priority. If she calls for a stop near her place on Airport Way, that’s our cue to take her. I don’t want her getting inside her place before we do. Got it?” He added, “And give me someone at the bus stop now. Right away. I want to hear what’s said, if at all possible.”