Beyond Recognition (9 page)

“It broke her heart when the judge took Kenny away,” the mother said. “I don't think she ever fully recovered.”

“Was she depressed, drinking, anything like that in the days before the fire?”

Claudia cautioned, “She did
not
kill herself, Detective. Not intentionally, not accidentally. She kept her gardening supplies in the back shed. You're out of line.”

“Is that a yes or no to the depression?” Boldt asked, irritated. He kept seeing the cat by the side of the road, then Dorothy Enwright. If there was one thing he had learned early as a homicide investigator, it was how fragile life was, how easily lost. Men stepping out into traffic. Kids playing on the rocks in the hills. Women going home at night to an empty house. One day here, the next day gone. And if the death came with questions attached, it was Lou Boldt's job to answer them, or to help others to answer them for him. All he needed was a few answers. He couldn't picture the woman setting fire to a rental house. People did not use fire as a method toward suicide. But he had other problems with Dorothy Enwright. Of chief concern to him was why she had not run from the house when it caught fire; it had not exploded. She had been seen walking inside the house, presumably of her own volition, moments before the blaze. He thought she must have had an opportunity to escape, given the way the fire had burned from a central core outward. It had not trapped her by sealing the doors. Why then had she not escaped?

Had there been someone else in the building with her?

“Dorothy was having problems,” her mother told him, “but she was surprisingly cheerful, wouldn't you say, dear?”

“Absolutely,” Claudia agreed. “She was a remarkable woman, Detective. She had a great attitude.”

“Who would want to kill her?” the mother blurted out, too loudly for the soft buzz of conversation in the Garden Court. Heads turned. Fortunately, only Boldt saw this.

The two women who sat with him did not see. Their eyes were filled with tears.

October second came and nearly went without Ben's taking any notice of it. Had it not been for Emily, he might have failed to remember its significance. But when he arrived at Emily's late on the afternoon of the third, she sent him by bus all the way up to Steven's Broadway News on the corner of Olive and Broadway, where he used the money she gave him to buy copies of the
Seattle Times
, the
Intelligencer
, the
Tacoma News Tribune
, and the
Everett Herald
.

Back at her purple house, the two of them read headlines and lead paragraphs, back and forth, until Ben asked, “What exactly are we doing?”

“The military man,” she said. “Do you remember him? May thirteenth, 1968.”

“Who?”

“The bad hand.”

Ben remembered the hand.

She said, “He came back for his reading about a week later. You must have been in school. I told him that the stars looked good for a business deal on October second. He was real nervous about it, and I got the feeling his business wasn't exactly legitimate.”

“So we're looking for something he might have did.”

“Might have
done
,” she corrected. “Yes. He'll be back, that one. Very superstitious. I'd like to know what it was he did.”

“And you think we may find something in the papers, something about what he did?”

“If it was criminal, we might.”

“You think he's a criminal!” Ben felt a pang of excitement in his chest. He didn't know any criminals.

Turning a page she said, “He had something going on the second. I tested if it had anything to do with love and got nothing back from him. I tested money and got a definite reaction—lots of body language, discomfort. He's selling something or buying something, and it wasn't anything he wanted to talk about. If I identify it, and he walks back in here and I can tell him about it, I'll have a customer for life. That's the way it works, you know, Ben. You give people what they want, and they're yours forever. He wants me to be able to see his past
and
his future.”

Ben read more carefully. Each article that dealt with any kind of crime he read aloud. Together, they cut the articles out of the paper with scissors and put them in a pile. The papers were full of various crimes. Ben said, “Nothing much good.”

“No. Nothing very good.” She pushed the papers aside and looked at Ben and said, “Tell me what you remember about him, Ben.”

This was a test. She did this every now and then—made him exercise his memory skills. She claimed it would make him smarter. He reeled off all that he could recall about the beat-up pickup truck, the camper shell, the contents of the front seat. He told her how he had been tempted to get a look inside the camper through the skylight. He gave her a detailed description of what he had seen through the peephole: buzz-cut hair, pinpoint eyes, the fingers on his right hand.

“How old did he look?” she asked.

Ben knew exactly how to answer this. It took him a moment to subtract the numbers. “Twenty-eight,” he answered, using the birth date she had already supplied.

She reached over and rubbed the top of his head, messing his hair, which was Emily's way of saying how much she cared about him.

She said, “He wore black military boots. He had a faint red stamp on the back of his left hand that read
COPY
—probably from a bar or nightclub. When he paid me, he pulled out his wallet. He carried a pass to the PX, a discount shopping center on the base, which means he's either active or works there. His driver's license was from Kansas; I couldn't make out the town or city. He had a ticket to the Seahawks in with his money.”

“He wore a big silver buckle,” Ben remembered. “Like a rodeo guy.”

“Very good!” she exclaimed. “Yes. That caught my eye as well. And did you catch it when he turned to leave?”

“Something on his back? I don't remember,” he answered.

“His belt,” she said. “It had a first name stamped into the leather. Nick.”

“The guy's name is Nick?”

“Yes. He's twenty-eight, a long way from home, working on one of the bases, a football fan, hits the bars at night, rode a horse at some point in his life, or had a relative who did. He's got business dealings that worry him to the point he's having his chart read. The deal is worth a lot more than sixty bucks, or he wouldn't be willing to shell out that kind of money.”

“We know a lot about him,” Ben said, impressed.

“Yes, we do,” she answered. “But not what he's up to.” She went through the small pile of articles they had clipped. “And I have a feeling that's his biggest secret of all.”

When Liz voluntarily took the kids with her to the cabin for the weekend, Boldt knew he had trouble. Typically, she found the cabin too remote, too far from a doctor should the kids need one, and was bothered by being too far from the city and all its weekend treasures. Her more common complaint about the cabin was how cold it was, and in early October it was likely to deliver on that front. She had not called him at work, but instead had left him a note he couldn't possibly receive until she and the kids were well on their way, the decision beyond discussion. That struck him as odd, completely unlike her—until he reached the part in the note where she suggested he “come up if you can get free.” Then he realized it was a test, a conspiracy, and it made all the sense in the world. He had a choice: his family or his job.

Liz knew that when he sank his teeth into something like this arson case there was no letting go. These cases only came around once every two years or so, but she resented them more than when he had six domestic battery investigations running simultaneously, taking him away from home fifteen hours a day. It was almost as if she were jealous of these larger investigations, as if it stole something personal from her when he dove in like this.

What really hurt was that he was going to fail the test. There was no way he could get up to the cabin for the weekend. Sunday night was going to be pins and needles on the home front. She would be angry, but with a smile pasted onto her face. He would feel guilty, but act casual and confident. He couldn't wait.

On the plus side, he had the house to himself. It didn't happen that often, and when it did he felt as if she had handed him the greatest gift of all. The thought bubbled up then that perhaps she had gone to the cabin in sacrifice, knowing perfectly well how he valued quiet time during a difficult investigation. This made him feel all the worse because his first thoughts had been so negative. He reread her note one more time, hoping to find clarity there, but to no avail. Marriage was many things; easy was not one of them.

He switched off the front porch light and put on an Oscar Peterson album. He sat down at the piano and played for the first time in several months, wondering why the great things in life were always the first to be sacrificed. He played roughly through the opening, reset the tone arm, and tried again.

After twenty minutes with Oscar, Boldt went through his investigation notes, reading every line carefully.

Boldt had good ears. A car pulled past his drive, slowed, and stopped. He went to the curtain and peered out: Daphne's red sports car. She climbed out carrying her briefcase, not a good sign.

He raced around, trying to pick up. A moment later he heard her footsteps on the back porch and opened the door for her.

“You not answering your phone?”

“Liz turns the ringers off—Sarah's a light sleeper. Sorry.”

“Your pager? Your cellphone?”

“In the bedroom, along with my piece. I've had the music kinda loud,” he apologized. “Nothing intentional. Come on in.”

“Liz?” She seemed hesitant to enter.

“Took the kids to the cabin. It's all right.” He motioned her inside.

“It's
not
all right,” she corrected, stepping inside, already down to business. “Today's press conference was a disaster. Shoswitz talks too much! And then there's
this
.” She reached into her briefcase and handed him a photocopy. “The original's with the lab,” she informed him.

Minutes later she was sitting across from him at the kitchen table, sipping from a glass of red wine. Boldt had a glass of juice. He reread the note silently another time before finally speaking. “
Suddenly a flash of understanding, a spark that leaps across to the soul
.” Several minutes had passed. “Sent to Garman?”

She nodded gravely. “It's Plato. Our boy is something of a scholar.”

“Just now you're on your way home?” he asked, dodging the issue a moment while he considered the consequences of the note. “It's late for you.”

“Garman delivered it unopened,” she informed him. “He knew what it was. He said he wanted to protect it as evidence.” She let him digest this a moment before saying, “I offered to bring it over.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Boldt said. He added, “I hate this, you know? I really hate it.”

“Yes.”

In her eyes he saw a deep-seated sympathy. They both understood perfectly well what this meant, but Boldt had no desire to voice it, as if by doing so might give it more weight. Nonetheless, his imagination fixed on the thought of another Dorothy Enwright out there, at home, minding her own business, about to come face to face with the gates of Hell. They had recovered only a single bone of her body. It seemed all but impossible.

“Why?” Boldt asked Daphne, still withholding any mention of what this second note represented—another fire, another victim.

“The fire or the note?” she asked.

“Is there a difference?”

“You bet there is.” She sipped the wine, though she didn't seem to enjoy its taste. She looked a little less pretty all of a sudden, tired and under the same relentless pressure that Boldt found himself. Investigating a violent crime was one thing; anticipating and stopping such a crime, another thing entirely. With the arrival of the second note, their charge was to prevent a death. It was an undeserved burden—unwarranted in many ways—but inescapable. They had been here before, the two of them, and this went unmentioned as well, for lives had been lost; other lives changed forever, not the least of them their own.

She continued, “The first note, as we discussed, could have been anything from a cry for help to a poorly timed coincidence. This note changes all that. Remember,” she cautioned, “this is only an opinion, an educated guess.”

“I'm with you.”

“These quotations are warnings, Lou.” Boldt felt a chill. “Forget the cry for help. He's going to strike for a second time. By mailing them, he dated both poems, don't forget. If I'm right, that means the fire is today or tonight. It's immediate. He's not giving Garman any time to figure this out. He warns; he strikes—which means that by the time the card arrives, he has already targeted his victim, perhaps even rigged the house to burn.”

“Jesus!” Boldt expelled his breath. “With only one victim, we hardly have what could be considered a pattern.”