Beyond Recognition (59 page)

“Sure do.” He read her the address.

“Airport Way?” she asked, writing the address onto the table with the only thing available to her: red lipstick. “Is that a business of some sort?”

“We only show physical locations,” he informed her. He repeated the address for a second time.

She scribbled the name Victor on the table as well.

She went out of the Santori home at a full run, not caring who might be watching. The car started effortlessly and her cellular phone engaged. The tires cried out as she shoved the accelerator to the floor. She dialed the number she knew by heart. She wouldn't request backup from a patrol car, wouldn't put the boy at risk until she knew what was going on. She needed to talk to
him
.

For once she was going to do something right.

The more Boldt looked at the possibilities, the more adrenaline filled him, the more convinced he was that Garman could very well be at the U-Stor-It. He increased his pace, removed his weapon from its holster, checked its load, and returned it to the leather.

It was that inspection of the gun that rattled him. With Liz's illness, the importance of his own health, for the sake of their children, suddenly loomed large. He understood clearly, for the first time, why Liz was urging him to drop the field work. How long had she known about the cancer? How long had she sensed it? Given that his children were home in bed, what was he doing on a deserted stretch of industrial roadway, alone, sneaking up on a storage facility that could be the laboratory of a serial arsonist? Seen in this light, his present situation seemed an act of foolishness. Shoswitz be damned, he thought. Regulations called for backup and Boldt wanted it.

He pulled into shadow, flipped open his phone, and turned it on. It was the graveyard shift; there was certain to be a number of detectives bored at their desks, counting the minutes. He wanted two pair of plainclothes backup in unmarked cars. He wanted them now—right this minute.

If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right.

He closed the phone, feeling better about his decision.

At that moment, a red Honda blurred past, slowed, and pulled to a stop a quarter mile past the U-Stor-It. Daphne had a red Honda, but for once he uncomfortably had to acknowledge the role of coincidence.

When a female form hurried from the car, Boldt, recognizing that particular female form even from a hundred yards away, realized his plans had changed again.

Backup be damned. What the hell was she up to?

Boldt began to run toward her.

Ben had cowered in his hiding place while the Face walked over to the fence, grabbed hold, and shook it. It rattled loudly, at which point he glanced around the facility, surveying it. He seemed to know.

He patrolled the place then like a soldier, walking along the first row of storage units, occasionally leaning an ear against one of the doors, passing not twenty feet from Ben, who held his breath, his one good eye fixed on the man in full concentration. The man with the strange face walked on by, his attention seemingly attached to the storage units. A few minutes later he rounded the far corner, and Ben guessed he was going to check each and every row of units—there had to be ten or fifteen of them total.

He didn't dare make his break for the fence with the Face out patrolling. It wasn't until several minutes later, when he heard the same sound of a garage door opening and shutting, that he decided the man had gone back inside his unit. Ben waited another several minutes, every pore of his skin alert for the slightest activity. Nothing. But then a feeling of dread came over him. What if the garage door opening and shutting for the second time was a trick? What if the man had done it to fool Ben into
thinking
it was safe to make for the fence? What if that was exactly what he wanted?

The possibility froze Ben where he was, about dead center between the two fences, both feeling miles away.

It was only as Daphne's red Honda pulled past out front—missed the place!—that Ben realized it was time to do something. He ran toward the fence, but only about fifteen feet before stopping, hiding once again in shadow.

Where was the army of cop cars like in the movies? he wondered. The helicopters? One car? Daphne, alone? Had 911 screwed up the message?

And what if the man with the Face was in fact in hiding, waiting for whoever had climbed the fence? What if he saw
her?
What then?

There was only one thing to do, Ben decided: He had to make his move right away, before the whole thing came apart.

He couldn't see her car, but he cut to his right, away from the gate, as far away from his last sighting of the man as possible, around the office, past an unmarked building, around that corner—and straight into a pair of arms that gripped him like a vise. Daphne! he thought. But then his brain quickly adjusted to the strength of those arms, and he looked up into the white, shiny skin and hollow eyes of that face and his world began to spin. A deep blue haze crept in from the edges of his vision, like the end of a cartoon where the screen collapses to a center speck of light. For Ben, the end of that light, the beginning of total darkness, came as a dry wind issued from the throat of the man who held him. “You?” the voice gasped, as if he too had seen a ghost.

When Boldt crept up on Daphne, he scared her half to death. She lifted off the ground from a squatting position ten yards away from the southeast corner of the storage lot where she hid behind a beat-up U-Haul trailer with two flat tires.

It took her a full fifteen seconds to recover. She hissed at him angrily, “I might have shot you.”

Boldt disregarded the comment, his attention fixed on the facility. “I didn't use the radio,” he said, “so you didn't pick it up there.”

“It was Ben,” she explained, solving the puzzle for him. She told him about the call from Emergency Services.

“He's
in
there?” Boldt asked incredulously. The kid seemed to have a knack for trouble, especially where Jonny Garman was concerned.

She pointed off into the darkness. It took Boldt a moment to spot the bicycle on its side, tucked under another decrepit trailer. He had seen that same bicycle in the shed behind Santori's. “The metal on the wheels is still warm,” she said, reminding him that she had a lot of cop in her to go along with the psychologist. “He claimed in his message that he had followed Garman here,” she whispered angrily. She seemed ready to cry. Boldt knew that feeling.

“In there?”

“Nine-one-one ID'd the call location as a pay phone at this address.” After a long silence, she said, “Tell me he didn't do this, Lou. Why would he do this?”

Boldt, staying focused, tried to follow the logic. “If he had come back out, he'd have taken his bike, which means he's in there somewhere. And if Garman is in there too, who knows what we've got going?”

“I'm going in.”

“Ridiculous,” Boldt snapped. The look she gave him could have stopped traffic. “Come on! This is textbook. We don't make the pick on his turf. We wait him out, put up a net, take him on neutral ground.”

“Who cares about
him?
” Daphne asked. “I'm talking about Ben. Are we going to wait for Ben too? Is that in the textbook? He's in there—either playing hero or afraid to come back out. Either way, for his safety, we have to get him out of there. And right now! Anything less than that and we invite a hostage situation. Anything less than that and Phil Shoswitz will
never
glue this back together.”

“This isn't about Shoswitz.”

“With the mind-set of a Jonny Garman, we do not want a hostage situation, believe me.” She added spitefully, “And I will not have Ben at the mercy of an ERT rescue attempt.”

The battle lines had long since been drawn between the department's psychologist, who believed in talking through an incident, and ERT, which believed in quick, efficient strikes. There were marks on both sides of the scoreboard; each solution had its place. But Daphne Matthews was outspoken and one-sided on the issue. Boldt was not about to debate it with her.

She worked his paternal emotions, like a potter with clay. “If that were Miles in there, what would you do?”

“I've called for backup,” he informed her, dodging the question.

“How many?” she asked, panic seizing her.

Boldt told her. “Two pair. Unmarked. No ERT.”

That seemed to both relieve her and disgust her at the same time. He saw her in a different light. Was she too far invested in Ben to remain even partially objective? He feared she was, which left him alone in his decision making. As if to confirm this, she admitted, “I don't know that I can make it over that fence.” She paused, studying it. “But I'm going to try.”

He grabbed her by the arm; she looked down at his handhold with disdain. “If it were Miles, I'd go in,” he answered honestly. “I wouldn't let ERT within a mile of the place.”

A faint smile found her eyes.

“But I'd do it smart,” he continued. “And I'd have as much information available as possible.”

“Yes, you would,” she agreed, knowing him well.

“We don't know for a fact that the boy is in there. We certainly cannot confirm that Garman is. What Ben reported seeing and what actually is the case are two different animals. He doesn't know Garman.”

“He saw him at the airport,” Daphne corrected. “He
does
know him. Of all of us, he's the only one who does.”

Boldt felt the wind knocked out of him. He had forgotten that connection, and the reminder of it blanked his mind momentarily. He tried to regain his thoughts. Either you stayed ahead of Daphne Matthews, or you played catch-up from then on.

“If you're suggesting reconnaissance,” she encouraged, “I'm in.”

“He's under the name Babcock at a rooming house over on Washington,” he informed her, stunning her with the news. “If he used the same name here, it would be in the files in the office. We'd know which unit is his.”

“Forget him,” she repeated. “We get Ben out, then we worry about him.”

“No way,” he said.

“You know I'm sorry to do this,” she said, turning her head slowly to face him. Their eyes met. And then, all at once, she shoved him—struck him with open palms, sending him off-balance from where he crouched and skidding back through the loose stone and gravel.

She took several long strides with that athletic body of hers and leapt up onto the chain link like a cat, vaulting it as if it were a regular exercise. Both legs cleared the top and she was on the other side and down with a minimum of effort. She did not look back, did not give him a chance to wield power over her.

She stole into the dark and was gone.

“I never had me a little brother,” Garman said to Ben, as the boy came awake from unconsciousness. “I'm Jonny.”

Ben found himself on the storage unit's cement floor, sitting in a corner away from the large garage door. His wrists were stuck together, as were his sneakers, sole to sole. He tried to speak, but his lips wouldn't open.

“Super Glue,” Jonny explained. “I only had a little tape left, and I needed it. Now don't go fighting it,” he said, as Ben struggled with his wrists. “At best you'll only tear your skin open, and I'll have to reglue you. You'll make a mess and it'll hurt. Just sit still.”

The sweatshirt hood was off his head and hanging down his back. The skin on his face looked strange, like smooth white clay, but his ear looked like a big scab, yellow and rust colored, like pus and dried blood. It took Ben a few minutes to adjust to not breathing out of his mouth. Every time he became too scared, he got dizzy. Things would go soft and fuzzy, but when he awakened everything was clear again. He realized it all had to with his breathing. If he kept himself from getting scared, he'd stay awake.

Jonny was soldering something, using what to Ben looked like an oversized butane lighter. There was a Coleman lantern going, making a loud hissing sound and throwing off a tremendous amount of bright light.

“I ain't going to hurt you,” Jonny said, reading Ben's thoughts accurately. “You shouldn'ta followed me here, you know that.”

Ben nodded, as terrified as he'd ever been. It looked like the guy was making some kind of bomb, all those wires coming out of a piece of plastic tubing.

“But what's done is done.” He raised a finger to Ben. “You fucked with my head back there at the tree. I thought you was dead.”

He didn't sound like other grown-ups to Ben. Besides having a voice that was like a cat's hiss, he seemed more like a kid than an adult—someone who hadn't aged, like a movie where the kid is trapped in an older guy's body.

“Why the hell did you follow me?” he asked the boy who couldn't answer. “My face?”

Ben shook his head violently no. He dared to look into those eyes and felt light-headed again. He was going to pass out. He heard the words “You can admit it” but only faintly. “And now, 'cause of you, I gotta pack up and leave. Leave you here. Never killed no kid.” Ben's world went woozy—he hyperventilated—and he lost several minutes to the blue darkness.