Middle of Nowhere (4 page)

Daphne nodded solemnly. Boldt swung open the door. “It’s your case,” he reminded. “Your lead.”

As she passed him, she whispered, “I know that.”

A fogged plastic tube, inserted through a surgical hole at the base of her throat, supplied Maria Sanchez’s oxygen. Her torso was held fast by a white plastic brace that was itself connected to the bed frame, preventing movement of any kind. Too many tubes to count. A modern Medusa. Blinking lights and flashing green numbers in black boxes on rolling stands of stainless steel. A bag of intravenous fluids. Drip, drip, drip. A blue plastic clip over her index finger ticking out her pulse and measuring her blood oxygen. The glare of tube lighting. The hum of machinery and the disturbingly symmetrical rhythm of her computer-controlled breaths.

Boldt’s throat constricted. His chest seized in a cramp. This wasn’t just a woman lying there; she was also a police officer. A friend. Family. Liz had once lain in just such a bed. He knew the things they could do to a person in here. He had seen Liz’s roommate being wheeled out, and she had never been wheeled back in. The thought of Liz returned him to his concern over the threatening phone calls. He didn’t trust where this Flu was headed. He wanted out of that room.

Maria Sanchez’s bloodshot eyes showed through small slits, and Boldt could detect slight movement in them as she tracked their entry into the room. Boldt recalled her on the couch with his two kids. Sitting up. Laughing.
Goodnight Moon
in her lap. He could envision her hugging his children with two arms that worked. But it was that laugh of hers he remembered. Her time with his kids had helped in her recovery from grief— she had learned to laugh again in his house. To live. And now this.

“Officer Maria Sanchez,” Daphne said, seeing Boldt struggle, “I’m Daphne Matthews, the department psychologist. You know Lieutenant Boldt—Homicide.”

“Matthews is lead on your assault,” Boldt managed to say. “I’m playing Watson.” He had wanted to inject humor. He’d failed. Again he realized he had spent too many hours in hospital rooms of late.
There should be quotas,
he thought. He foresaw pain and hardship in that bed. Time. Waiting. For eighteen months of cancer treatment his family had suffered. Now they still waited, hoping Liz’s remission held. The waiting hurt most of all. Sanchez would feel the full force of it.

His voice broke as he said, “I’m sorry for your situation, Maria.”

Daphne offered, “We don’t pretend to know what you’re going through, but we are going to put away whoever’s responsible.” She added, “We’re told the doctors plan some experimental surgery and that the prognosis is good. Be strong, Maria. We’re pulling for you.”

“The whole department,” Boldt said. Adding, “What’s left of it.”

The patient blinked once. At first it appeared to be a reflex, nothing more. But it drew their attention.

Boldt carefully chose his words. “We’ve been over to the scene just now . . . your house, Maria. Looks a lot like you interrupted a burglary. Stereo gear and at least one TV appear to be missing.”

“We’ll need for you to confirm as much of this as possible—as soon as you’re able,” Daphne added.

“The report is sketchy at best,” Boldt said. “When you’re better, we’ll work on this one together, okay?” His attempt at positive thinking sounded hollow and fell flat. Boldt didn’t know quite how to act, so he decided to just stick to business. “We’re pursuing this as a first-degree burglary. I guess we just wanted to say it goes without saying that we’re not sitting on this one, that the Flu isn’t going to delay this in any way. Matthews got the call—the lead—and that’s a good thing. We’re going to chase down this offender and lock him up. Guaranteed.”

“We
need
you, Maria,” Daphne encouraged her. “You’re going to pull out of this.”

Another blink. A tear slithered from her eye, down her pale cheek and cascaded to the pillowcase. When her eyelids opened again fully, Sanchez’s dark pupils were lodged to the left of her eye sockets.

“Maria?” Boldt inquired, the eye movement obvious. He checked with Daphne.

“We’re watching your eyes,” Daphne stated firmly to the woman. “Are you trying to signal us, Maria?” she asked. For Boldt, the air in the room suddenly seemed absolutely still. The sounds of the machinery seemed louder. He felt cold, chilled to the bone.

Another blink. Reflex or intentional? Her pupils faced right.

“Oh my God,” he mumbled, letting it slip. He glanced toward the door and the freedom it offered.

“Right is ‘yes’; left is ‘no.’ Is that correct?” Daphne inquired.

The woman closed her fluttering lids with great difficulty. When her eyes reopened, her pupils remained locked to the right.

Daphne met eyes with Boldt, her excitement obvious.

“We’re going to ask you some questions,” Daphne suggested tentatively. “Okay?”

The eyelids sank shut. As they reopened a crack, the pupils faced left, her answer a solid no. Her eyes fluttered shut and remained so. Boldt felt a wave of relief.

“She’s too tired,” Boldt said, indicating to Daphne they should leave the room.

Daphne nodded, but wouldn’t let it go. “You go ahead and rest, Maria. We’ll be back when you’re up to it.” She followed Boldt into the hall. He assisted the room’s oversized door to shut as quietly as possible.

“Medicated,” Daphne said. “Fatigue plays into it too, but chances are it’s as much her unwillingness to confront and relive the assault and the associated trauma as anything else.”

“She’s terrified,” Boldt said, relieved to be out of the room. “And she has every right to be.” He added, “You see that, don’t you?”

“You didn’t have to be in such a hurry to leave.”

“Yes, I did,” he argued.

“She can answer questions, Lou. We can build a list of questions and she can answer them! We can interview the victim. You realize that?”

Boldt complained, “You don’t have to sound so excited about it, you know?”

“What’s wrong with you?” Daphne asked. She crossed her arms indignantly against the artificial chill of the hallway.

“It’s
all
wrong with me,” Boldt answered, feeling a chill himself that had nothing to do with thermostats. “Her. This place.” Motioning back toward the room he said, “A pair of eyes, Daffy. It’s all that’s left of her.”

“I
t’s a difficult situation,” Boldt said.

“So talk me through it. Is it the strike, or this case?” his wife, Liz, asked.

“Both,” he answered. The Sanchez assault was nearly twenty-four hours old. No arrests. No suspects. He feared a black hole.

The Boldt kitchen confirmed the laws of chaos, a study in the science of randomly placed objects: dinner food, dishes, pots and pans, plastic toys scattered as an obstacle course, a high chair, a booster seat, stained dish rags. Something sticky had been spilled by the pantry door. A path of mud and pebbles led from the back porch, despite the door mat. Boldt stood at the sink, elbow deep in dishwater.

By nine o’clock they typically would have had the kitchen cleaned up—with or without each other’s help—but their daughter Sarah’s upset stomach had kept them busy these past several hours. With both kids finally asleep, husband and wife tackled the cleanup.

“Wish that dog would stop. Does it ever shut up?”

“Maybe they wouldn’t have bought an attack dog if you guys hadn’t gone on strike,” Liz teased.

Boldt groaned. She was trying to make light of it, but it struck a nerve. “It’s not a strike, it’s a sickout,” he corrected her.

Liz policed the countertops and the kitchen table, which looked as if a food fight had taken place. Boldt watched her in the reflection of the window above the sink. In his opinion, she still needed about twenty pounds. The cancer had won that as well as her hair. Most of her hair had returned, but not the weight. And the hair looked wrong, because she had always worn it longer than that. Boldt wrestled with the carrots burned onto the bottom of the saucepan. That dog just wouldn’t stop. If Boldt hadn’t been a cop, he might have called one.

Liz brushed against him as she shook crumbs out of a rag. He enjoyed the contact, any contact at all, anything to remind him of her presence.

“So what’s bugging you?” she asked, adding quickly, “besides our neighbor’s dog?

“The Flu. I realize it’s complicated.” A new sports stadium had gone over budget. The mayor instituted cost-saving measures. The new police chief cut overtime pay for detectives and, at the same time, restricted off-duty work for uniforms because one off-duty cop had embarrassed the department. “But it has messed up everything,” he said.

“Listen, I hate to see you like this.” She offered, “Maybe it’s worth thinking about how much you, personally, can do about any of it.”

“But that’s the point! It gets worse every day. Now Phil and the other captains are effecting a slowdown. Doing just enough work to get by, which isn’t enough, of course. It’s their way of supporting the sickout.”

“But if you’re working as hard as always, what more can you ask of yourself?”

“Thanks,” he said sincerely.

“Is there
anything
positive to focus on?” Forever Liz. Spiritually determined.

He answered, “Homicide’s bathroom stays cleaner than I’ve ever seen it. The coffee lounge no longer stinks of burned grounds. Precious little.”

“All you can do is—”

“Pray?” he interrupted. He didn’t need to hear this right now.

She grimaced. “Not what I was going to say,” she said.

He apologized, but she walked away and went about the cleanup.

He didn’t mention that the eerie emptiness of the fifth floor, the vacant halls and office cubicles, reminded him more of a school in the midst of a fire drill than a homicide squad. The hallways and offices of Crimes Against Persons required bodies to occupy them—like suits in a storefront window.

Boldt caught sight of himself in the window’s glass, and was troubled by the growing exhaustion that hung beneath his eyes. The extra caseload brought on by the sickout meant fourteen- hour work days. Investigators in any department accepted whatever case was handed them. Vice, narcotics, burglary, it didn’t matter.

He glanced up again. The window, fogged by steam, offered only a blurred image, but he could still see his face. He could still pass for late thirties. Mid-thirties in low light. In truth, forty had come and gone a few years ago.

These days he was making an effort. No more neckties bearing catsup stains, no more permanent wrinkles in his khakis. A single comment from Liz about how “the run-down-professor look adds ten years” had cleaned up his act. Since then, he’d looked like a new man.

The burn came out of the bottom of the pan, but his elbow ached.

“You know I’ll be supportive,” Liz said, now tossing the wet wash rag into the sink. “But, Lou, please, try to see that it stays outside the family. I’m afraid for you, for us—” She didn’t need to complete the sentence. Those threatening phone calls of the past few nights were on both their minds.

As if on cue, the phone rang. Liz looked over at her husband. They had talked about just letting it ring, to allow the machine to pick up, but Liz instinctively lifted the receiver from its cradle and held it out to him.

Boldt dried his hands and accepted the phone. Liz pushed through the swinging door and into the family room.

“Hello?” Boldt said into the phone.

For a moment he believed whoever had called might have hung up. But life these days just wasn’t ever that simple. “Hello?” he repeated.

He heard music, not a voice. His stomach turned: another threat? Pop music—a woman’s plaintive voice. “Hello?” he repeated a third time. At first, he took it as wallpaper—background music—and waited for a voice. But then he listened more clearly. It was Shawn Colvin, a recording artist he admired, whose lyrics now gripped his chest. “Get on out of this house,” the anguished voice cried out in song.

Boldt understood, though too late: it wasn’t a threat, but a warning.

The best explanation for why he ripped the phone from the kitchen wall was that he’d forgotten to let go of the receiver as he ran into the family room to alert Liz, failed to let go until he heard the explosion of breaking glass from the other side of the swinging door. At that instant, both the cop and the husband and the father in him warred over his having locked up his handgun in a closet safe in the bedroom—family policy whenever he crossed the threshold into their home.

He burst through the swinging door, his wife’s screams ringing in his ears. He heard a car racing away at high speed. Liz lay on the floor in a sea of broken glass. She wasn’t moving.

“No!” he hollered, lunging across the room toward his fallen wife. He heard one of the kids wake up crying. Liz had a strange mixture of fear and confusion in her eyes. He would not soon forget that look . . . it seemed to contain an element of blame.

He reached out to her and rolled her onto her back. Her forearms bled. Her face was scratched, though not cut badly. She mumbled incoherently at first.

“Shhh,” he whispered back at her. “I thought it was a bomb,” she mumbled. Underneath her lay a brick. It had been painted policeman’s blue.