Ridley Pearson - The Body of David Hayes

“Yo!” Boldt heard in his ear after answering his mobile phone. LaMoia informed him that Liz had received a call just after the start of intermission. A synthesized voice again, short and to the point. Foreman , Boldt thought, finally beginning to sort out the various roles being played. Assuring Boldt that he and Liz had slipped away successfully, LaMoia concluded by saying, “We’re happening.” Translation: They were about to cross the street to the WestCorp Bank Center.

Call-waiting chirped in the phone and Boldt signed off with LaMoia, accepting a call that turned out to be from Heiman at the On-Sat navigation offices. Foreman’s Escalade was on the move, heading downtown.

“Interesting timing,” Boldt muttered. This too fit into an expected pattern.

He called Gaynes into action. Posing as a waitress, she would now join the reception, a stopgap and final line of defense known only to him. Hayes was to be guarded by Milner, one of LaMoia’s trustworthy soldiers. Boldt ended the call, expecting to see his wife at any moment, wondering if his plan could get her into the bank without her being seen or detected and identified by the elaborate electronic surveillance already in place.

He counted on David Hayes to help him, if indirectly. In fact, Liz’s survival now depended on him.

In the midst of a light drizzle and traces of ground fog that swirled between the high-rises like smoke from a fire, a darkened figure stalked through the rain toward the west pedestrian entrance to the WestCorp Bank Center shopping complex, a lower-level mall that sat below the bank.

Police radios, quiet for the past several minutes, drew attention to this visitor. The mall stores had all closed at 6 P.M., though access to parking and the tower elevators remained open. Not one pedestrian had entered the shopping complex in the past half hour, raising suspicions as this figure approached.

The “B” unit commander, Dennis Cretchkie, jockeyed his team, directing an undercover wheelchaired officer to enter the facility behind this visitor. Cretchkie called for reports. Off Fifth on University, the Town Car set jammed the Olympic Hotel’s U-shaped driveway, the hotel doorman blowing his whistle for taxis stacked along the curb. A small group of white seagulls flashed in the black sky and shrieked noisily overhead. A homeless woman pushed a supermarket cart laden with soggy blankets and aluminum cans uphill, leaning into her effort. A street-cleaning machine lumbered slowly up University, brushes spinning, eliciting the complaint of car horns as it hindered traffic.

The undercover officer in the wheelchair reported that the unidentified pedestrian was a woman carrying an umbrella that obscured her face. As this unidentified subject-“unsub”-approached the west entrance of the underground mall, the cop in the wheelchair worked furiously to intercept her, hoping she might hold the door for him and thereby give him a good look at her face. His effort failed.

Monitoring surveillance activities over the police radio, Boldt sat forward in the front seat of the Crown Vic, the steering wheel pressing into his chest. Every action, every move by Special Ops was crucial to the success or failure of his plan. Boldt was parked with a view of the north side of the block-square complex, with no view of the unidentified woman who had just entered WestCorp Center. With the announcement of her entering the mall, Pahwan Riz, one block east, with a view of the 5th Avenue Theatre, pressured his detectives and operatives in the audience for the exact location of “the mark.” Liz .

“I want a positive ID,” Riz said, “and I want it now.”

Damn him , Boldt thought. Riz had always been one of the smarter ones. Boldt phoned Daphne Matthews to warn her that Riz’s team was inspecting the patrons more closely in order to obtain a positive ID.

A moment later Matthews said, “I see them. It’s Brandy and Klinderhoff, each coming down an aisle.” Judging by her suddenly muffled voice, he pictured that she’d bent forward, head to the theater floor. “But it’s crazy in here.”

“I need at least ten to twenty minutes, Daffy.”

He heard a loud cheer and music in the background.

“The purse!” Boldt shouted. “Make sure they see the purse.” He knew how a cop’s mind worked. The purse would convince either Brandy Schaeffer or Howie Klinderhoff as easily as if either saw Liz’s face.

Daphne disconnected the call, and Boldt was left with indelible melodies swimming in his head. He saw a WSDOT Metro bus pull to its stop on Fifth Avenue. The arrival of the bus won the attention of Cretchkie and his “B” unit because it briefly and effectively blocked Cretchkie’s view of the complex. An undercover officer was dispatched, though too late. Cretchkie shouted across the radio, “Get the fucking buses off Fourth and Fifth Avenues. All eyes on anyone and everyone coming off that bus!”

Riz cut in, demanding once again that Liz be identified in the film audience.

The umbrella woman entered an elevator and rode it one floor to ground level, where she had to switch elevators in order to continue into the office tower. The wheelchair officer followed on the next elevator car, reporting every few minutes.

The bus pulled away, scattering pedestrians, most of whom stayed on the WestCorp block, requiring Cretchkie to account for them.

In all of the commotion, little if any attention was paid to the homeless woman’s abandoned supermarket shopping cart, now canted into the wall just outside the entrance to the bank’s underground parking garage.

Boldt fixed upon that shopping cart. A smile crept slowly across his face.

Liz was inside.

Liz struggled to clear her head. During the walk with LaMoia at intermission he directed her across the street and down into a sunken courtyard plaza that fronted a Japanese restaurant. There, she jettisoned Maria’s frock, covering her little black dress with a street urchin’s Salvation Army wardrobe.

LaMoia indicated a street person’s shopping cart packed with aluminum cans and some other junk. It had been secreted into some bushes in the courtyard.

He then smeared her face with some brown base, making her look street dirty. “There’s a damp towel in the cart. Use it to clean this off.” Lou had planned all this carefully in advance. She found it difficult to hold up under the pressure.

David Hayes had put her here, and the level of her resentment briefly stole all thought and clarity. Despite her usual Christian thinking, she vowed to have some kind of revenge against him. Ultimately, recovering the money would be the revenge, and she steeled herself to make it through the next hour of her life and to put things straight.

When the bus pulled up, at the very minute LaMoia had told her it would, she pushed the junk-laden supermarket cart against the concrete wall and slipped into the shadows of the underground garage, already planning her metamorphosis. She kept only the damp rag. Fatigue took a physical toll on her, leaving her feeling spent-despite the clamor of her heart in her chest.

She headed directly to the glassed-in area that contained the elevators and stairs. It was from this garage that she had first sneaked away to a rendezvous with David Hayes, from this garage that she had left on maternity leave.

As she heard the distant hiss of the bus brakes releasing, she reached into the waiting elevator and tripped the button for the ground floor, then jumped back out of the car. As she pulled open the heavy door to the fire stairs, immediately adjacent to the elevators, she heard the elevator doors slide shut behind her. She stepped inside the stairs and began to undress immediately. She cleaned her face in the reflection of a fire extinguisher box.