Ridley Pearson - The Angel Maker

"You know," he said. "My sex life?" she asked bluntly. "Am I getting enough? Something like that?"

He felt himself blush. "Sorry." He wasn't asking about her sex life, but her happiness, though he felt helpless to explain. "I'm on hold at the moment," she answered. "There was someone for a while, but I handled it all wrong. I wanted too much too soon. It wasn't even that I wanted it, I expected it. The truth is I don't know what I want, and that doesn't work in a relationship."

They stopped at a light, but Boldt didn't look at her. She sounded so damaged. "You seem happy," he said optimistically. "I'm in therapy. It's fantastic! That's what I mean about being on hold. I'm working a little too much. Surprise! But it fills the hours. You know? And the therapy is helping a lot. It's nice to have some control again."

A single evening they had spent together. A dinner that had run out of control. Boundaries crossed. Honesties voiced. And now, strangely, as if it never had happened. "Well, you look great," he told her, feeling stupid to have said it. "Thanks." She hesitated. "No regrets. You?"

"None." He felt her look at him, and he warmed all over. "I'm glad," she said.

Sharon Shaffer's housemate, Agnes Rutherford, was five feet tall with silver-blue hair that gleamed like silk and perfectly brilliant ice-blue eyes that belied their inability to function. Agnes Rutherford was blind. She wore a cardigan sweater littered with dandruff and a skirt that was losing its hem. Leather slippers worn shiny on the sides from sliding her feet along, like a person wearing boots on ice.

When Boldt and Daphne were only a few feet inside the door, Agnes Rutherford asked him, "How old is your child, Mr. Boldt? Or am I supposed to call you by your rank?"

Boldt looked over at Daphne in astonishment. She touched her nose in pantomime. "He's six months," Boldt replied. "Still a baby."

"And do you smoke, even with a child in the house?"

"Smoke? No. Not me. I'm a musician. On the side," he added, though he wasn't sure which side anymore. "A night club." He sniffed at his coat. "It's probably my coat that smells like cigarettes."

Agnes Rutherford grinned, proud of herself. Her teeth were too perfect to be hers.

Daphne repeated what she and the woman had discussed a day earlier. "Hasn't been home, either," the blind woman said in a troubled voice.

Boldt asked, "Why is it you think something happened to Sharon?"

"Oh, something happened all right. Why else would that man have lied to me?"

"Which man?"

"You can hear it in a person's voice when they're lying. Did you know that? He was a very tense man. What a voice he had-like fingernails on a blackboard. Nervous. Not just because I surprised him which I did, mind you but out of fear. Strange as it may seem, he was afraid of me. Me!"

Daphne suggested calmly. "Why don't you start at the beginning, Agnes."

"I heard voices through the wall. Two men talking to Sharon. And Sharon was scared. Plenty scared. I couldn't hear the words, you understand, but I A didn't have to. She was good and scared."

"Voices … " Daphne repeated. "Yes, so I came in through the kitchen. We share the kitchen. My rooms are just off the back side there. Came in to make sure she was all right. That's why I say the man lied-he told me Sharon had gone out for a minute and that he and his associate were also leaving. But the other one-the one with the halitosis-I think he dragged Sharon out. I heard something dragging on the carpet. She had been sitting in that chair, right over there. That chair squeaks. I heard it. I heard her voice, too, though not her words, not what she said. Not exactly."

"Do you remember what was said?" Boldt asked.

Agnes Rutherford nodded. "Thereabouts. As I rounded the corner the one with the hard voice asked the other. "Who the hell is that? "Those exact words?"

"Yes. He didn't expect me. And then there was a long silence. Then the other dragged her out, I think. At the time, of course, I didn't know what was happening, but that's what I think was going on."

"And you didn't call the police?" Boldt asked, dumbfounded. "I was-I am-afraid of you. I spent a good many years of my life avoiding you. Hiding. On the streets, you understand. Would anyone have believed an old, blind, bag lady, Mr. Boldt? Would they have? You don't believe me now. I can hear it in your voice. You can't believe an old blind lady can survive the streets but I did! Daphne believes me, I bet, but only because she knows me." She added, "I didn't call the police, I called The Shelter. I called Daphne."

Daphne glared at Boldt then. He was trying to see this through the eyes of the law-Phil Shoswitz, or prosecuting attorney Bob Proctor-and he didn't like what he saw: There was no proof of a crime. No matter what,Agnes Rutherford believed she witnessed, she had not seen it. Police work was as much practicality as it was instinct. Sharon Shaffer's history was that of a runaway.

This would not be an easy sell, despite the cooperative relationship between the police and The Shelter. The prosecuting attorney's office was another realm entirely.

Boldt examined the room. He remembered the Stevie Wonder line: Her clothes are old, but never are they dirty. That was how this room looked: pieced together from yard sales but clean to the corners. Vacuumed recently. He asked Agnes Rutherford, "Is this room still pretty much as it was?"

The woman answered, "Oh, yes. Exactly. I haven't touched a thing. My rooms are back there. I don't fool with Sharon's things."

Boldt walked slowly and carefully over to the table and chairs.

The cop in him understood the significance of what, to untrained eyes, might have looked like nothing more than dust on the table. It wasn't dust. Tiny particles of shredded paper perhaps. He studied the table top and then, using his handkerchief so he wouldn't leave fingerprints, applied pressure to the back of the chair. It squeaked. "That's the one," Agnes said.

Boldt told her, "The house had just been cleaned." He made it a statement. "She had vacuumed the carpet that morning."

"Now just exactly how did you know that?" Agnes Rutherford asked.

Daphne asked Boldt, "Lou?" Boldt didn't need any more convincing, he was standing amid a pile of evidence. There were drops of blood on the arm of the chair. "Call the lab," he said. "And tell them to bring a lot of lights."

"Lights?" Daphne asked. "For the carpet," Boldt explained. Variations in the nap of the carpet allowed him to see a pair of scuff lines and the perfectly formed impressions of shoe prints.

Boldt enjoyed watching the ID Unit — the Scientific Identification Department-at work. Educated as scientists, they didn't think like other cops. They worked as a team, speaking in half-sentences, using techie jargon unintelligible to the layman. With their nerd packs and a language all their own, these men and women remained on the social fringe of the police fraternity but played an increasingly important role in any investigation. The star witnesses in an investigation were no longer the boyfriend or the observant neighbor but these ID Unit technicians. Convictions relied on a foundation of incriminating scientific evidence. A jury, even a judge, preferred believe a computer-generated enlargement of work from an electron microscope rather than a woman like Agnes who had heard voices through a wall. You didn't bother Bob Proctor and his band of PA's unless you had,a file full of stats to support your case.

The only thing about ID that really irritated Boldt was how slowly they went about their jobs. If Sharon Shaffer had been abducted, which he now believed, he could only imagine how terrified she must be at this moment-providing she was still alive. No ransom call, no notification whatsoever. Impatience nagged at him.