Middle of Nowhere (32 page)

S
eattle’s reputation as a rain forest was largely undeserved. It was true that during the rinse cycle, November through March, northern Pacific storms tracked through regularly, leaving the city without so much as a glimpse of the sun, sometimes for weeks at a time. True that spring and fall saw their fair share of “partly sunny” days that were actually “partly rainy,” as a thick and dreary mist fell, broken by moments of spectacular sunshine, the warm power of which could almost evaporate the moisture before the next wave of clouds passed over. But for all those stereotyped storms and images of umbrellas and slickers presented by the Weather Channel, the glory days of clear skies, a light breeze and sixty degrees were just as common. The moisture brought lush vegetation, wonderful gardening, and clean streets, the air fresher and purer than perhaps any other city in the country.

Boldt and Gaynes orchestrated their plan to capture Flek as he arrived to pick up his rifle scope. The International District lay under a rich summer sky, the air crisp and clean. Seagulls flew down the city streets, their cries echoing off buildings. The towering snowcapped peak of Mount Rainier loomed impossibly close, as if part of a Hollywood backdrop. It was a day when Liz would tell Boldt to “pinch yourself.” That good.

“You with me, L.T?” Gaynes asked from the shotgun seat.

“What’s that?”

With their unmarked van parked a block from the street entrance to Manny Wong’s electronic repairs shop, Boldt and Gaynes had an unrestricted view of the surveillance target. Asians peopled the sidewalks and occupied the vehicles in proportions that made Caucasians stand out. For this reason, Boldt and Gaynes stayed put behind the van’s tinted windows. And although the department’s demographics prior to the Flu had included dozens of Asian patrol officers and detectives, the suspensions and firings imposed by the chief had drastically reduced their numbers to where Boldt’s field team consisted of Detective Tom “Dooley” Kwan— currently inside the shop—and three relatively green patrol recruits out on the street in plainclothes: a twenty-something African American, Danny Lincoln, playing the role of a bike messenger who, on one knee, was busy with what looked like a blown bike chain; a middle-aged Vietnamese woman, Jilly Hu, outside the shop looking left and right as she acted out anxiously awaiting a ride, her hands occupied with the ubiquitous cellular phone; and a third man, Russ Lee, a Chinese American, in a wheelchair with a blanket over his lap concealing a loaded assault rifle, keeping speed with the first rule of engagement: Never be outgunned. Hu and Lee were partnered; Lincoln and Dooley were solo—on their own.

Four patrol cars, two uniforms each, maintained a three-block perimeter, in case backup was needed.

Gaynes explained, “I was saying that it’s kind of eerie without all the normal radio chatter.”

Boldt reminded her that the bicyclist, Danny Lincoln, was wearing a radio headset—as so many messengers did. It happened that Lincoln’s headset connected to SPD dispatch. They had Jilly Hu on the cell phone. Dooley wore a wire—a concealed transmitter and receiver. They weren’t exactly in the dark.

The police coverage of the rifle sight pick-up had been hastily thrown together. As the impending moment drew nearer, Boldt feared that if it went wrong they might not only lose a suspect, but someone might get hurt. He had LaMoia to remind him of that.

“What’s your take?” Boldt asked Gaynes. She had a nose for such things.

“Not great.”

“Same here.”

“Our people look good. It’s not that,” she said. “And I think it’s smart that we have Dooley working in the back of the store, not out front at the counter. That’s way more natural than if Dooley is just loitering out front and making Flek nervous. And maybe it’s just all the goddamned Asians milling around these streets, but something feels wrong about it, you know? Like it’s going to go south.”

“Yes, I know,” Boldt conceded.

“Doesn’t mean it has to.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed.

“Maybe it’s just everyone warning us what a crazy son of a bitch Flek is—the hair-trigger temper, the violent nature. I hate that shit. Maybe it’s thinking about Sanchez and John, and how this guy doesn’t seem to give a shit about us wearing badges. You know? What’s that about?”

“Downright disrespectful, I’d say,” Boldt said.

She grinned into her slight reflection off the glass. “Downright right you are.”

“I think you can take Sanchez off his list, though we won’t know until we collar him. He did LaMoia. He’ll pay for that.” He told her about Sanchez’s inability to ID Flek, and of her earlier uncertainty concerning who was responsible.

A large Ben and Jerry’s truck momentarily blocked their view of the gun dealer’s storefront. After the truck passed, Boldt saw that Lee, Hu and Lincoln had all adjusted their locations, signaling a development.

The cell phone in Hu’s hand carried an open line to Gaynes’s right ear. Gaynes wore a small headset attached to her cell phone to keep her hands free. She mumbled into the headset and then informed Boldt, “A Caucasian, female, just entered the store.”

Boldt turned up the volume on the dash-mounted police radio receiver. Being in the back room, Dooley Kwan and his RF microphone provided no insight into the goings-on in the front of the store. Boldt desperately wanted to know what was going on.

The slightest movement on Kwan’s part resulted in a scratching through the receiver’s small speaker.

“You turn that up any louder,” Gaynes commented, “and we’re going to hear him sweating.”

“Description?” Boldt requested.

Gaynes repeated the request into her headset. Poking the earpiece firmly into her ear to hear Kwan’s reply she reported, “Female. Late teens, early twenties. Caucasian. Five-six, five-seven. Platinum—”

“Courtney Samway,” Boldt said. “Flek sent her to pick up the scope for him.” He had an undercover team in place following Samway—later that day he would have heard about this visit in the team’s daily report, albeit too late. He used the radio to notify her surveillance team to leave the area. He didn’t need any additional confusion.

They transmitted Samway’s identity to “Dooley” Kwan and informed the others to follow the suspect if and when she left. Jilly Hu on foot. Danny Lincoln by bike.

The radio picked up Dooley as he responded to Wong. Boldt and Gaynes listened intently. The exchange was brisk. Dooley delivered Flek’s scope to the front of the store, at which point his concealed microphone picked up the conversation in the room.

Wong told Samway, “Tell your friend all sales are final. The modifications he requested have been made, and that next time I won’t deal with a go-between. It’s not how I do business.”

“Whatever,” the woman said. “He just asked me to pick the thing up for him. I don’t know what he wants with some microphone anyway.”

“It’s her,” Boldt said to Gaynes, recognizing the voice. “It must be in a microphone box.”

Gaynes nodded. “Yup. The girlfriend. I overheard her in the Box,” Gaynes said. “You think it’s conceivable she doesn’t know what it is?”

“I think he does her thinking for her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Over the radio, Wong said, “A hundred and fifty for the modifications.”

“He only gave me a hun,” Courtney Samway complained. She was fifty dollars short.

Boldt checked that the cassette hubs were spinning. He said, “That connects her pick-up to a man, and we already have her connected to Flek. That’ll help Delgato in terms of arrest warrants.”

She complained, “Does us no good without the collar.”

“Notify the street team the mark is good,” Boldt ordered. “And remind them that Flek may have simply dropped her off. He could be in the area.”

Boldt then radioed SPD dispatch and dictated instructions for the uniforms in the patrol cars. For security’s sake, the messages to the patrol cars would be sent over the vehicle’s onboard mobile data terminal— MDT. These digitized text messages were impossible to intercept.

He wanted his team alert. If Flek was in the area, he probably had the assault rifle in his possession. Scope or no scope, it represented lethal firepower.

Wong and Samway argued money over the radio worn by Dooley.

Samway’s voice said faintly, “Hang on. Let me make sure he only gave me the hun.”

Boldt didn’t want Wong to refuse her the scope. He needed that scope to lead him to Flek.

“What do you know?” Samway said. “I had it all along.”

“Next time no go-betweens,” Wong complained, heard over the radio. “I no do business with go-betweens.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the young woman scoffed. A doorbell rang softly, signaling her departure.

Courtney Samway appeared on the sidewalk in front of Wong’s store.

“Doesn’t look like a stripper from here,” Gaynes said.

Boldt watched and listened as his crew kicked into gear. Jilly Hu followed on foot.

Danny Lincoln fixed the chain, mounted the bike and pedaled out into traffic. Samway walked west. Boldt’s team followed. He and Gaynes carefully monitored the radio.

Lincoln informed dispatch that Samway had boarded a bus.

Gaynes asked, “Eastbound or westbound?”

“Damn!” Boldt shouted, traffic blocked by a double-parked bread truck.

“Wonder Bread,” Gaynes said, reading the back of the delivery truck. “Wouldn’t you just know it?”

As the eastbound bus pulled away from the curb, Sam-way aboard, Boldt’s team scrambled to follow—al-though to look at them, one would not detect the slightest bit of anxiety; this, in case Flek was himself watching.

Boldt drove the van with Gaynes as shotgun; Lee drove a Ford with Hu as his passenger; Danny Lincoln pedaled furiously on the bike.

Predictably, in tortoise-versus-the-hare fashion, the bike out-paced the slower vehicular traffic and kept up with the bus, Lincoln reporting its location block by block.

Dispatch reported that Phil Shoswitz had arrived to act as the surveillance team’s coordinator. Shoswitz knew his way around mobile surveillance.

The bicyclist kept up with the eastbound city bus without much trouble due to the vehicle’s frequent stops. Shoswitz deployed the Ford, the van and four cruisers around an extended perimeter as a safety net. The chess match had begun. Boldt’s team had to prepare for Samway’s departure at any bus stop; at the same time they had to be prepared to follow a moving bus.

The strategy paid off. Courtney Samway disembarked the 7 line and gathered with others awaiting the 60, unaware that just fifteen feet away, a plainclothes policeman monitored her every movement. Samway placed a quick call from a corner pay phone, a call that was not monitored, but would be the cause of much legal wrangling immediately following. Deputy prosecuting attorney Lacey Delgato would battle with the courts to be given access to the pay telephone’s call sheet, a situation that had legal precedent on her side, but a liberal court’s policy toward expectation of privacy working against her. Boldt believed absolutely that the call had been placed to Flek, in all probability to a cell phone—across the street, across town, across country, he couldn’t be sure until that call sheet was made available.

“What does it matter?” Gaynes asked. “It’s bound to be a cloned phone. It’s not like we’ll lift a physical address.”

“Triangulation,” Boldt answered. “It’s got to be a cell phone. That works in our favor.” Cellular service providers possessed software to locate an individual cellular phone using radio triangulation methodology developed for the military in World War II. Currently the technology was used to locate 911 emergency calls placed from cellular phones. Law enforcement had been quick to take advantage of the existing technology, tracking down drug dealers and gang members. The technology was currently slow however, and Boldt was caught unprepared to deploy it.

“What do you want to bet,” Gaynes replied, “she’ll lead us to him anyway?” Then she added, “Oh, yeah. I forgot. You don’t bet.”

Boldt said, “I think he’ll park her for a while—an hour, an afternoon, a day. Keep an eye on her himself. Maybe just let her stew. The guy knows us. Knows the way we think. He’s been in and out of the system his whole life. His brother’s dead. He’s wanted and on the run.”