Middle of Nowhere (5 page)

“F
eeling a touch of the Flu coming on, I hope?”

Mac Krishevski asked. Boldt shoved the man back into the living room, kicked the Krishevski front door closed and removed his gun from his own holster, setting the piece down by a bowling trophy alongside a faux-marble lamp made out of formed plastic. The gesture made it clear to Krishevski that no weapons were to be involved. Beyond that, there were no promises made.

“Lieutenant?” a cocky but concerned Krishevski queried.

Harold “Mac” Krishevski reminded Boldt more of the man’s Irish mother than his Polish father, though he’d never met either. The capillaries in his cheeks had exploded into a frenzied maze of red spider webs. His nose, with its sticky, moonlike surface, fixed to his face like a dried autumnal gourd. His rusty hair, awkwardly combed forward to hide the acreage of baldness, failed miserably in this purpose, so that in strong overhead light, the shadows that were cast down onto his scalp looked like cat scratches. His teeth belonged to a heavy smoker, his plentiful chins to an overeater or beer drinker. A man in his early fifties, he wore his Permanent Press shirt unbuttoned at the collar, a threadbare undershirt attempting to contain escaping chest hair.

“You want an appointment,” Krishevski suggested, attempting to sound in control but clearly under the effect of Boldt’s fixed stare, “you gotta call ahead.”

“My wife dove onto this, thinking it was a bomb.” Boldt tossed the blue brick into the center of the room. “She cut her arms on the broken glass. We just got back from having her sewn up.”

Boldt believed that, as president of the Police Officers Guild, Krishevski bore the responsibility not only for the walkout but also for the blue brick.

“Teenage vandalism,” Krishevski said. “It’s amazing how the kids go wild when there are fewer officers on the beat.”

Boldt took issue with Krishevski’s confident grin and steely-eyed glint. The man looked like a trained watchdog. The room smelled of stale tobacco, garlic, and booze, and the combination turned Boldt’s stomach. Krishevski had taken unwarranted pot shots at Boldt and his department’s handling of evidence in the runup to guild elections two years earlier, all in a blatant attempt to portray Homicide as an ivory-tower department in need of an overhaul, an attempt to keep Boldt from receiving the lateral transfer back to his old squad. Krishevski’s complaints had fallen short of outright accusation, but had crossed acceptable lines. In point of fact, their troubled history went back twenty years, to a time when Boldt had been selected for advancement and Krishevski had not. The sores from those wounds remained. Boldt had little doubt that the blue brick had been ordered by this man, little doubt that his own selection as target had been as much personal vendetta as union strategy.

The Police Officers Guild had been organized in the late fifties to represent officers in contract negotiation, and to provide legal representation for any officer who required it. The guild represented all personnel below the rank of lieutenant, accounting for the majority of SPD’s twelve hundred officers. The administrative ranks of lieutenant, captain, and above— less than one hundred in number—were represented by a separate management team, effectively separating uniforms from the white-collar jobs. Membership in the guild was theoretically voluntary, but nearly every uniformed officer belonged, as well as most of the detectives. Its elected officials came out of its own ranks of active officers.

As the elected president of the guild, Mac Krishevski, senior sergeant in SPD’s Property room, was guild spokesman—its public voice and point man. Boldt, among others, not only blamed Krishevski for allowing, if not encouraging, the first illegal strike in the department’s history—despite the man’s claims otherwise— but also for permanently tarnishing the badge and the public’s view of law enforcement.

“You being president of the Chapter,” Boldt said, “I’m holding you responsible for what happened to my wife tonight.”

“Now wait a second!” Krishevski complained.

Boldt boiled. “If you don’t control your fellow striking officers, if you don’t bring those responsible forward for discipline—to set a proper example—then in effect you’re condoning what happened tonight. If that’s the case, then I’d prepare myself for certain consequences.”

“Are you threatening me, Lieutenant?”

Boldt calmed outwardly, though internally he continued to churn. He said clinically, “I’m asking for your assistance in querying guild members for any knowledge of my wife’s assault. I’m asking you to make this right, no matter what the history between us.”

“I’m not responsible for this . . . absenteeism, Lieutenant. I’m simply a dog on a runner: back and forth between the blue and the brass.”

“Right,” Boldt said sarcastically. He’d heard it all before.

“The move to restrict overtime and prohibit off-duty employment opportunities for our officers was viewed by certain individuals within the department as intrusive and destructive and is apparently the driving force behind this current situation.”

“This absenteeism,” Boldt said, “that the papers and courts are calling a strike.”

“I’m in constant contact with both the chief’s and the mayor’s office, as I’m sure you’re aware. As Chapter president, I’m forced to put my own personal feelings aside and to represent the majority opinion of my constituency. I do not condone tossing a brick through a window, and I’m sorry for your wife’s injuries and any upset this may have caused you and your family. But the brick could just have easily been from an angry neighbor. Am I right? Someone pissed off over the Flu— improperly associating you with the sickout. The public understands
so little
of our inner workings.”

It was true, though Boldt was loath to admit it. His neighbor’s acquisition of an attack dog was proof enough of the public’s current perception of safety. “All I’m saying is—if you start a war, you had better be prepared to fight it.”

Krishevski’s eyes hardened. “I seriously doubt that the current absenteeism had anything to do with your wife’s incident.”

“A blue brick? The reports of slashed tires? Coincidence?” Boldt asked.

“An angry public,” Krishevski repeated.

Boldt did not appreciate the man’s slight grin. “You brought my family into this. For that, you’ll be sorry.”

“Another threat!”

“You know what I think, Krishevski? I think you enjoy all the attention, the cameras, the headlines. Seeing your name in print. But the sad truth is you’re misusing the trust of your fellow officers—this entire city—for your own personal gain.” Boldt picked up the brick off the carpet and placed it on a small end table. He retrieved his gun and returned it to its holster. “Sticks and stones, Mr. Krishevski.” He intentionally left out the man’s rank. “Be careful what you ask for.”

Krishevski’s tension and anger surfaced in his now menacing voice. “Dangerous ground, Lieutenant.”

“A threat?” Boldt fired back, mimicking the man. “Control the troops, Krishevski. Bring in whoever was responsible. Or you and anyone else connected to this will be facing charges.”

“I’m trembling all over.”

Boldt pulled the front door shut with a bang that carried throughout the peaceful neighborhood. He hurried toward the car, anxious to return home and be with his family. Krishevski was a wild card. Boldt knew there was no telling if the threats would stop with blue bricks.

C
athy Kawamoto ignored the deep, low rumble that had become such a commonplace sound, it could be anything from a passing truck to the garage door opening or closing. She wasn’t alarmed. Kawamoto’s basement home office felt unusually warm, and she was uncomfortable. She’d heard the phone ring just a minute earlier, but as was her habit, she allowed the machine upstairs to pick up rather than interrupt her work. Her thin fingers danced across the computer keyboard, the translation coming effortlessly now. When the screen briefly went dark she saw herself reflected in its “nonreflective” glass: jet black hair, almond eyes with tight folds of skin that instantly labeled her Japanese. Then another page of text appeared and Cathy Kawamoto returned to her work. Sometimes the translations were of textbooks or technical documents, but her favorites were the American and Canadian romance novels that within a few months would populate the Tokyo subways, read intently by commuting women. At times the torrid love stories became so compelling that she found herself carried away.

The low rumble stopped and then started again. Cathy paused in her work this time. The sound seemed suddenly close. Perhaps it wasn’t simply that the basement was warm, perhaps it was nerves. But then again the rental house was always full of strange noises, especially when her sister was home.

A flight attendant for Alaska Air, Kira came and went at all hours, for days at a time on an unpredictable schedule that Cathy could neither understand nor attempt to track.

Footsteps overhead. . . .

At first Cathy simply glanced up toward the floor joists wondering what Kira had forgotten this time—she had left the house only a few minutes earlier, rushing off somewhere, yelling down into the basement that she was borrowing the car if that was all right. She hadn’t waited for an answer. Late again.

Cathy translated another sentence
—Her unbridled passion sought escape
—before another squeak in the overhead floorboards once again attracted her attention.

This time it didn’t sound like her sister. Her sister didn’t move that slowly. Not ever, especially not when she was late, and she was
always
late.

A third careful step overheard. A mixture of curiosity and fear unsettled her. The telephone’s in-use light indicated the phone was busy. Cathy felt relief wash over her. It was her sister, after all. Clearly, she had returned home to make a phone call. Cathy sat back down at the computer. But she couldn’t concentrate. Something just didn’t feel right.

She felt restless with it, a fire smoldering inside her.

Her fingers hesitated above the keys, her eyes drifting over to the telephone’s in-use light. It continued to flash. When the footsteps started up again, left to right, directly overhead, the pit in her stomach became a stone. The kitchen phone was a wall phone, not a wireless walk-around. How could it be in use at the same time someone was walking around?

The stairs signaled both the direction of movement and the fact that the person up there was heavier than either she or her sister. They normally didn’t make noise.

She thought about calling out, just shouting, “Who’s up there?” but she was afraid of giving herself away, letting the intruder know she was at home. She was now allowing herself to think there could be an intruder. The previous night’s late news report began to cloud her thoughts. A policewoman had been attacked in her own home.
A policewoman!

She lifted the phone’s receiver to eavesdrop. She heard no one—only the hissing silence of an open line, ominous and frightful. “Hello?” she tested in a whisper. No one answered. Cathy Kawamoto fought back panic. She quietly climbed the basement stairs. She could hear her unannounced visitor ascend the stairs directly overhead. The footfalls were strangely tentative, cautious, and she could only conclude that someone was trying hard not to be heard.

She climbed and reached the kitchen, first looking to the phone to see if by some chance it was off the hook. It was in place, and her alarm heightened. She could see now that her sister’s purse was not hanging by its strap over the ladder-back kitchen chair, in its usual place. Kira was not at home.

She felt a tightness in her chest. She desperately wanted to announce herself, but this was tempered by her recollection of the policewoman news: She wasn’t going to
volunteer
herself. On the other hand, she had trouble thinking of herself as a victim.
Other people
ended up on the evening news, not her.
Other people’s
lives went to hell in a handbasket. This couldn’t be happening to her.

“Hello?” she finally called out softly, unable to bear it any longer. “Kira?” With her inquiry, the noises upstairs stopped. Cathy moved involuntarily toward the staircase, a decision she would find so difficult to explain later on.