Beyond Recognition (57 page)

His other problem was time, he thought, as he checked his watch. Eight o'clock and still no fire announced over the police radio. It broke with the Scholar's established pattern—always a bad sign. Worse, it
fit
with what Daphne had been insisting all along: Jonny Garman had taken the bait, Martinelli now next on his list.

“I want to review that tape back downtown,” Boldt told Kotch, who made for the car door. “A bigger monitor. See what we see.”

“Sure thing.”

“You got the time?” Boldt asked.

“No problem.” He stopped, his hand on the door handle. “Listen, I heard Shoswitz is squeezing your stones over manpower, Sergeant. My involvement? No big deal. It never happened.”

“I appreciate that,” Boldt replied. “I was wondering how to approach you.”

“Never happened,” Kotch repeated. “See you downtown.”

Boldt used the cellular to ring LaMoia because he wanted to keep it off the radios. He told them they had located Garman's residence and there was no sign of a lab. “It could be in the basement; it could be ten miles away.” He warned the detective that Marianne Martinelli might be the target after all. He told him, “Heads up. And call me for backup at a moment's notice. No heroics.”

LaMoia mocked him, as the detective was fond of doing. LaMoia would do anything macho, just to get a story out of it. He loved to tell stories, especially those involving himself.

“Is Matthews in position?” Boldt asked.

“Matthews? I haven't heard a peep.”

Boldt had left a message on her voice mail, explaining Shoswitz's imposed curbs and asking if she would help LaMoia with the Lakewood surveillance. It was unlike her to leave John in the lurch, especially since she had instigated the operation. Boldt mumbled, “We don't know if she found the kid or not. That's probably what's going on.”

“She's touchy about this kid, you know? Have you picked up on that? A little close for my taste.”

“She's responsible for him, John. The kid blew us off. Walked right out of the unit.” She had her reputation to defend, he thought, suddenly more worried. It had not been a good day for her.

Daphne Matthews did not take failure well.

To call her was only to force her to admit she had still not found their witness. Boldt wanted none of that. He would give her another hour before inviting that wrath upon himself.

He left Gaynes to watch the rooming house without him and headed downtown to get a better look at the video.

He was halfway back to the Public Safety Building when a nearly hysterical Bernie Lofgrin called him with the latest on the ink used in the notes.

The boulder that was the investigation was suddenly rolling downhill again, and this time, Boldt thought, Jonny Garman was directly in its path.

The man with the dead face rode fast. Ben was in his highest gear, riding as hard as he could and losing ground. It was like trying to chase a phantom.

The police artist had called it a hockey mask, but that was no mask. It wasn't skin either. Ben wasn't sure what it was, but it was ugly. A monster was more like it. Way worse than a glass eye. A person could hardly feel sorry for himself after seeing something like that.

They rode Yesler under the highway and turned into the International District. The guy knew how to time the lights. If he hit a red, he went with the pedestrian lights, the white marching man in the box on the lamppost. If Ben could have ridden faster he might have hung back intentionally, but as it was, the distance between them only increased, and rather than worry about being seen, Ben's concern was keeping up. The Face, as Ben thought of him, shot across Dearborn, connected up with Airport Way, and started pumping like he was in some kind of race, growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

Ben felt all hope ride away with the guy.

And then he heard the truck coming up fast from behind.

It was a stunt he had wanted to do a hundred times but had never had the belly to try. And suddenly there was no question in his mind as to
if
he would try but whether or not he could pull it off.

He pedaled hard, rising up off his seat, glancing once over his left shoulder, a slight smirk as he twisted his head fully around so his right eye could see back there. A good-sized truck, bigger than a pickup but smaller than a dump truck. Picking up speed after the last light. Gaining on Ben.

His legs pushed hard; he needed to match that speed.

Gaining … gaining …

Another look, a huge swivel of the head: Only a few yards back, the engine louder than a locomotive, the gears singing. Ben inched the bike to his left, swerving, the truck looming closer.

Closer still. Legs flailing then to match the speed. It had to be exact. He knew. He had heard stories. If you timed it wrong, the truck pulled you right off the seat or, worse, folded the bike underneath the twin rubber tires, bearing down like a steamroller.

He had never tried because it took nerves and timing and depth perception. And like so many things—catching a ball, swinging a bat, even pattycake as a little kid—Ben had given up before he had tried, because others had told him he couldn't.

He reached out and took hold of the truck.

The feeling was like the only time he'd been in a sailboat, when a gust of wind had caught them and tipped them so hard that everyone slid inside the boat. One minute Ben was riding. The next, he was launched down the road, a passenger in a sidecar.

The truck picked up speed. Ben held on for dear life. Up ahead, the tiny image of the Face on the bike grew larger as the truck closed the distance. He felt the wind in his smiling face and wanted to cheer, to shout, to show everybody what he'd done. The poor little boy with one eye. The kid doing thirty-five, one-handed, on a bicycle. He felt as if he were riding a rocket, as if it were strapped right onto his bike.

The Face was in plain sight again and, if Ben had it right, was slowing down. They had come a mile, maybe two. Green lights the whole way. He felt empowered. He felt like a grown-up. A hero.

They closed fast on the other bike, and suddenly Ben lacked the nerve to let go and release the truck. The idea terrified him. He had grabbed on okay, but he wasn't so sure about letting go. Those wheels were
right there
, grabbing the pavement, bumping, bouncing. Ben could just see himself squashed under them.

Let go!
a voice inside him announced. But his hand wouldn't do it. It just couldn't do it.

Worse, the Face was getting closer by the second, by the yard. He had slowed down to nothing.

At once, without a hand signal, the Face turned right and the bike pulled to a stop and the guy jumped off. The truck, and Ben along with it, went whizzing right by—Ben looking back quickly to mark the location.

U-STOR-IT
—
SELF-STORAGE UNITS AVAILABLE

He looked ahead then, the road conditions worsening, potholes everywhere. Just like that! One minute smooth asphalt; the next, land mines. He swung the wheel left and right, dodging the holes, slaloming between them.

The light up ahead was green.

“Turn red,” Ben begged, repeating it like a mantra. “Red,” he pleaded.

The light changed to yellow. The gears ground as the driver downshifted; the truck slowed noticeably. Ben dodged one last pothole, pulling the bike too far to the right and breaking his grip. Without intending to, he let go.

He snapped his other hand onto the handlebars and hung on tight as he squeezed the back brake, the front wheel vibrating and dancing with a life of its own. He pulled, but the front wheel would hardly move. The truck lumbered on up ahead. Ben lost control, hit the curb, and was launched through the air onto a patch of grass and a pile of dog shit that smeared all the way down his back. He came to a stop sitting up, facing backward, dizzy and unable to focus. He sat there for a long time waiting for his vision to return, his head to stop swimming.

The bike looked okay. He felt his arms and legs. Nothing broken, he decided, for the second time in the same night. He glanced around at his surroundings: Spiro Aviation, Glyde Avionics and Engineering. Not a pay phone in sight.

U-Stor-It was only a half mile behind him.

Daphne found herself sitting in the Santori home doing nothing, wondering why she was there. Fifteen minutes had passed since she had heard one of the neighborhood boys scream out from the woods. Kids! She had actually allowed herself to believe it had been Ben. How paranoid can a psychologist get? she wondered.

Her biggest mistake was leaving her cellular phone in her car, plugged into the cigarette lighter. She had debated walking the one block to get it but worried that it might attract Jonny Garman's attention to her red Honda; Martinelli had been driving an Explorer. This car difference was what had kept her grounded in the house. If Garman was watching the place—and she believed he could be—and she returned to the wrong car or he got a good look at her, the game was up. They were back to square one.

For the last quarter hour she had been attempting to develop the nerve to call Boldt and tell him her latest theory—that Garman had lifted the wrong address off the backpack. But Boldt had been cut back to one or two detectives, and she didn't want to be the one to screw things up again, to pull LaMoia off Martinelli just in time for Garman to fry the woman.

But she had to check in. Officially off-duty, she knew Boldt was nonetheless counting on her. She called her voice mail, to check messages, with one eye on her car, wondering how she had been so stupid as to park directly under a streetlight. When things went wrong, she decided, they went wrong in a big way.

There were six messages: one from Owen, two from Susan, two from Boldt, and one from Emily Richland. Of all the calls, it was Emily Richland's she returned; the woman had sounded half out of her mind.

“Daphne Matthews,” she announced when the woman said hello.

“He was here,” Emily Richland confessed immediately, without introduction or small talk. “When you came looking for him, he was here. I hid him. I lied, and I know now that was stupid.”

Daphne felt her heart racing away from her. She tried to calm herself, but the woman's agitation was contagious.

Emily continued, “He ran away. Left the house while we were talking, I imagine. But of course I expected him back, and he never returned. He hasn't returned. A long time now, and he hasn't returned.”

“Probably doesn't trust either of us,” Daphne allowed, trying to calm the other.

“No, it's not that,” said Emily nervously.

“Then what?”

“Listen. I don't expect you to believe this.... I know you
don't
believe this. Maybe it's impossible for you to. But I beg you to believe just this one time. At least hear what it is I have to say.”

“Go on.” Daphne fought against her own desire to shout, to scold the woman. Get on with it! she wanted to say.

“I
do
have visions. I really do. You must believe me. And I've had one tonight. Several times. The first time …”

Daphne could hear the woman's voice falter, and the tears begin. She struggled with her own emotions to keep from giving in to the other's. Tricks! she reminded herself. Emily Richland was a professional liar, nothing more.

“He was dead. On the ground, his eyes open.” Emily broke down crying—sobbing—into the phone. If it was an act, it was a damn good one. “Ben,” she muttered, “lying there on the ground. Oh, God.... And then, just now—right before you called—a second image. All dark and a fence, and Ben's face pressed up against it. He's in trouble, I know he is! I know this. I've seen it! And I don't know what to do about it!”

Daphne did not want to reveal the terror she was experiencing. The images of the boy were fixed in her head. To give the woman some encouragement seemed the best route. “Anything else you can tell me? Anything at all?” As a psychologist she simply could not allow herself to believe in paranormal activity; as a woman who loved this boy herself, she believed every word.

“A fence … darkness … chain link, you know? Looking through it. Boxes. Blue boxes.”

“Train cars?”

“I don't know.”

“Containers. Ship containers?”

“I can't see it clearly. Blue boxes.... fence … darkness.”

“I'll call,” Daphne said. “If we find out anything, I'll call.”

Emily Richland was still crying as Daphne hung up the phone.

One hell of an act indeed, if that's what it was.

She needed no more courage than that call. She lifted the receiver and dialed Boldt's cellular.

“Check it out,” Lofgrin said proudly, hoisting a pair of graphs up for Boldt to compare. “The one on the left was downloaded from the FBI database I told you about, every goddamn kind of ink manufactured. The one on the right is the chromatograph of the ink used on the Scholar's threats.” The match, though not perfect, was unmistakable.