Ridley Pearson - No Witnesses

Billy had to work quickly, though his motions conserved energy and his voice never indicated the slightest degree of excitement.

Sheila Locke turned and told the sergeant that the phone company was all set.

On the screen Boldt saw the suspect cross one final parking lot and quicken her step as she spotted a pay phone. In the distance of the same frame, a young woman approached the bus stop. Boldt asked, “Is she ours?”

Billy nodded.

Boldt thought to himself, These people are amazing .

He asked Locke, “Do we have an open line to the phone company?” She nodded confirmation.

The suspect stepped up to the phone and seconds later was dialing.

Boldt sat half off his chair, his attention split between the giant television projection on the wall and the back of Sheila Locke’s head.

For these few seconds, the room went absolutely silent save for the hum of the equipment, everyone hanging on this phone call.

The agent on foot arrived at the bus stop late. The suspect dialed, waited, and hung up. There was no way to tell from the camera’s angle and distance if she ever spoke.

“What the hell?” Boldt let slip. Both Billy’s and Boldt’s attention focused on Sheila Locke, who thanked someone, asked this person to “stand by, please,” and turned to tell Boldt, “It’s a business number. They’re searching.” Boldt wished there were a way to effect a line interrupt and to listen in on whatever conversation took place, well aware of the technological ease with which such an interrupt could be accomplished. But he was equally aware that any such interrupt required warrants and legal red tape that, where pay phones were concerned, took a minimum of several hours to accomplish. The same system established to protect a person’s rights limited Boldt’s ability to carry out his job.

Locke touched her finger to her earphone, listened, and then told Boldt, “It’s a paging service. She would have keyed in a personal identification code, but the phone company’s software doesn’t trap any numbers dialed following line connection.”

Boldt felt crushed by this news. Over his headphones, a woman’s voice spoke incredibly softly: “The phone’s ringing. Whoever she paged is calling her back.” He could hear the ringing of the phone. It was the field agent at the bus stop, a few short yards from the suspect.

“Sergeant?” It was Billy. He directed Boldt’s attention to the screen.

Cornelia Uli answered the phone.

Boldt said to Locke, “Get in touch with the-”

“Paging company,” Locke interrupted. “Already on it.”

Billy said, “Turn up your headphones, Sergeant. We’re going to try something here.”

Boldt adjusted the knob. He heard a raspy, steady breathing loudly in the headphones, and then in the background he picked up a woman’s voice bitching about the “stupid car.” In a pause, Billy explained quickly, “That background noise is the agent’s breathing. We have a thirty-DB boost on her condenser.” The suspect mentioned the bus stop. She paused. She said “okay” twice, and left the phone dangling as she approached the bus stop. There was a tremendously loud click in the phones, prompting Boldt to jettison his headset. It tumbled into his lap. Grinning, Billy said, “That was the agent turning off her mike.” He added, “But we should thank her. If she had spoken she might have made us deaf.”

“I’m going out there,” Boldt announced. “Can you communicate with the chopper?”

Billy said in that unnaturally calm voice of his, “Sergeant, Tech Services can do anything .”

The chopper ride was brief, and a little terrifying at night. They stayed low, and the buildings swept beneath them with ridiculous speed, toylike in appearance. Boldt was left off in a school soccer field, seven blocks from the waiting bus, so that there would be no sound of a chopper anywhere near the suspect. He was met there by a field agent by the name of Nathan Jones, whom he recognized as King County Police. “We’re all ready for you,” the agent announced, showing Boldt into the car and racing down the streets, oblivious to any of the traffic signs.

As they approached the bus, it looked ominous to Boldt. It was parked alongside the road, its interior lights shining yellow. As he stepped aboard, there were seven people sitting in the various seats. He introduced himself, studied them briefly, and asked two to exchange seats and two to sit together. If she looked closely, Cornelia Uli might notice a similarity in age and appearance among several of them. Only one of them looked over fifty: another KCP detective Boldt knew casually, though he could not remember his name. “We’re going to give her a lot of room,” he announced. “If she signals early, then you”-he pointed to one of the three women-“will get off at the same stop. Don’t follow too closely, but keep us advised. Remember,” he said, addressing all of them, “we’ll have support all around us, in every direction. My information is that she’ll have to switch lines to head toward town. I think we can safely afford for four of us-me, and you three-to make that switch with her. We are going to make every attempt to have that be a dummy bus as well. Our people will be coming onto the bus at various stops. You two will disembark at the third and fifth stop, respectively. If we go the distance. If she holds off and stays on until the five-hundred block of Airport Way, when she stands, we take her. We do it fast and without fanfare, and she does not get off this bus. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Roll,” he said, grabbing for a handhold as the bus door closed and the vehicle started off down the road.

They rounded a corner. Two of the agents were reading papers, another a paperback. Two stared blankly out the window. Boldt tried to settle himself. He leaned against the window and relaxed, feigning an exhausted man taking a nap-at any other time, something that would have required very little acting.

He had abandoned his radio earpiece, stuffing it down inside his collar. The bus and all its occupants, except for the driver, were now isolated from Billy the dispatcher, Sheila Locke, Phil Shoswitz back at the department, and all the support vehicles in place and ready to assist them. They passed the disabled Datsun, the heads of several of the passengers craning to see it, and the bus slowed as it approached the stop.

The door hissed open.

Boldt recognized the agent from the live surveillance video. She boarded first, and took several seconds to come up with the right amount of money. Then Cornelia Uli stepped up and called out, “Excuse me!” to the woman agent. Boldt’s heart pounded heavily. He wanted that door closed, and Uli trapped inside the bus. The agent turned. “Do you have change?” Uli asked. She waved a crisp twenty-dollar bill, and Boldt realized this had come from the cash machine. The woman agent seemed paralyzed.

Boldt silently urged the driver to shut the door.

The younger man sitting ahead of Boldt jumped up and said, “I do,” fishing his wallet from his back pocket. He gave her an assortment of bills, accepting the twenty from her, and Uli fed one of the ones into the driver’s pay machine. Uli asked the driver, a KCP man, about the route. Fortunately, someone had thought ahead to have a local in the driver’s seat, and the man informed her about the line change that Boldt had just mentioned at the outset.

Everyone took separate seats.

The door hissed closed.

Boldt’s sense of tension increased with every mile. His stomach grumbled noisily. He glanced up just once to look at her. No staring . She wore tight-fitting jeans and that black leather jacket. She had brown eyes, no makeup, and full, pouty lips. She scratched the back of her neck, and when she did this, Boldt’s first reaction was that he had seen this woman before, somewhere other than in the surveillance video, and this continued to trouble him as the bus drove on.