Beyond Recognition
Read Beyond Recognition Online
Authors: Ridley Pearson
Praise for
Beyond Recognition
“Patricia Cornwell could take lessons from Sergeant Lou Boldt and police psychologist Daphne Matthews ⦠[Pearson] switches gears each time you think the story's got to be winding down in this exhilarating entertainment.”
âKirkus Reviews
“Save this one for a weekend because you won't put it down until you've reached the heart-pounding conclusion.”
âPlayboy
“A must-read for thriller fans.”
âThe Chicago Tribune
“You have to be a masochist to give in to a Pearson plot, but when you do, it hurts so good.”
âBooklist
“One hell of a writer. He grabs, he twists, he tightens the screws until you're drained by a superior read.”
âClive Cussler
“The best thriller writer alive.”
âBooklist
“A thinking person's Robert Ludlum.”
âEntertainment Weekly
“Tells an irresistible tale.”
âThe Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Excels at writing novels that grip the imagination.”
âPeople
Beyond Recognition
is dedicated to my parents, Betsy and Bob Pearson, for all the great years, past, present, and future, and to my wife, Marcelle, for her love and guidance.
The world, an entity out of everything, was created by neither gods nor men, but was, is, and will be eternally living fire, regularly becoming ignited and regularly becoming extinguished.
âHeraclitus,
The Cosmic Fragments
,
no. 20 (c. 480
B.C
.)
We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
âTennessee Williams,
The Milk Train
Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
(1963)
I
N
M
EMORY OF
:
Susan Carol Hill
Detective Sergeant Portland Police Bureau
Lost on TWA Flight 800
July 17, 1996
Special thanks are due to:
Brian DeFiore, editor
Bob Pearson
Richard Hart
Lynette Westendorf
Karen Oswalt
Barge Levy
Walt Femling
Jerry Femling
Fletcher Brock
Callie Huttar
Steven Garman
Emily Dreyfuss
Ben Dreyfuss
Nexis-Lexis
William Martin
Maida Spaulding
Michael Youngblood
Pete Conrad
Andrew Hamilton
Donald Reay
C.D. and Hap Happle
Norm Prins
Christian Harris
Royal McClure
Donald Cameron
Bill Dietz
Paul Witt
Chris Wrede
Robert Gilson
Mary K. Peterson
Nancy Luff
Albert Zuckerman
The fire began at sunset.
It filled the house like a hot putrid breath, alive. It ran like a liquid through the place, stopping at nothing, feeding on everything in its path, irreverent and unforgiving. It raced like a phantom, room to room, eating the drapes, the rugs, the towels, sheets, and linens, the clothes, the shoes, and blankets in the closets, removing any and all evidence of things human. It invaded the various rooms like an unchecked virus raiding neighboring cells, contaminating, infecting, consuming. It devoured the wood of the doorjambs, swarmed the walls, fed off the paint, and blistered the ceiling. Lightbulbs vaporized, sounding like a string of Black Cat firecrackers. This was no simple fire.
It vaporized the small furniture, chairs, tables, dressers, all dissolving in its wake. It refinished and then devoured the desk she had bought at a weekend flea market, a desk she had stripped of its ugly green paint and lovingly resurfaced with a trans parent plastic coating guaranteed by the manufacturer to last thirty years.
Longer than she lasted.
For Dorothy Enwright, it was more like a camera's flash popping in the dark. It began long before any clothes or rooms were claimed. It began as a strange growling sound deep within the walls. At first she imagined an earthquake. This was dispelled by the quick and surprisingly chilling spark on the far side of her eyelids. To her it began not as heat but as a flash of bone-numbing cold.
It burned off her hair, the skin on her faceâand she went over backward, her throat seared, unable to scream. In a series of popping sounds, her bones exploded, brittle and fast, like pine needles dumped on a fire.
The toilets and sinks melted, a sudden flow of bubbling porcelain, running like lava.
Dorothy Enwright was dead within the first twenty seconds of the burn. But before she died she visited hell, a place that Dorothy Enwright did not belong. She had no business there, this woman. No business, given that a member of the fire department had received a threat eleven hours earlier, and the person receiving that threat had failed to act upon it.
By the time the fire hoses were through, little existed for Seattle's Marshal Five fire inspector to discover or collect as evidence. Little existed of the truth. The truth, like the home of Dorothy Enwright and Dorothy herself, had gone up in smoke, destroyed beyond recognition.
The Boldts' home phone rang at six-forty in the evening, September tenth, a Tuesday. Elizabeth, who would be forty in March, passed her husband the receiver and released a huge sigh to make a point of her disgust at the way his police work interfered with their lives.
Boldt croaked out a hello. He felt bone tired. He didn't want Liz thrown into a mood.
They had seen their precious Sarah to sleep only moments before and had stretched out on their bed to take a fifteen-minute break. Miles was occupied by a set of blocks in the corner.
The bedding smelled of Liz, and he wished that the phone hadn't rung because he hated to see her angry. She had every right to be angry because she'd been complaining about the phone being on her side of the bed for the past four
years
, and Boldt had never done a thing about it. He didn't understand exactly
why
he hadn't done anything about it; she mentioned it all the time, and replacing the phone cord with something longer wasn't the most technically challenging job in the world. He reached over to touch her shoulder in apology, but caught himself and returned his hand to his side. No sense in making things worse.
Cupping the phone, he explained to her: “A fire.” Boldt was homicide, so it had to be a serious fire.
She sighed again, which meant she didn't care much about the content of the phone call, only its duration.
“Keep your voice down,” Liz cautioned wisely. Sarah was a light sleeper, and the crib was only a few feet away, against the bedroom wall where Boldt's dresser had once been.
The baby's crying began immediately, as if on Liz's cue. Boldt thought it was her mother's voice that triggered it, not his, but he wasn't about to argue the point.
Boldt took down the address and hung up.
Liz walked over to the crib and Boldt admired her. She kept herself trim and fit. The second time around, that had been a challenge. She looked ten years younger than other mothers the same age. As the cradled baby came eagerly to her mother's breast, Lou Boldt felt his throat tighten with loving envy. There were unexpected moments in his life that would remain with him forever, seared into his consciousness like photographs, and this was one of them. He nearly forgot about the phone call.
