The Angel Maker - 2 (29 page)

Getting started was not easy. Knowledge was one thing, execution another. For hours now, while Felix stared at her, she had been staring at the chain link, daring herself to willingly reach out and touch it. It required a morbid perversity-a masochism-that she found impossible to summon.

Nothing, she reminded herself, is impossible. She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the power of that shock, reached out and took hold of the fence. The collar sounded its warning-an electronic buzz-and then delivered its full voltage. The kick snapped her spine straight, lifted her chin, and filled her with a savage heat. it felt as if her neck were burning. She released the fence and tumbled heavily to the cement, at first unable to catch her breath-numb, her joints welded, her muscles locked tight in an impossible, unforgiving cramp. She only realized it had temporarily blinded her when her vision returned and she saw Felix up on all fours, his stub wagging, his eyes locked onto her.

She sat up, prepared herself, and took hold again. She held on a few milliseconds longer this time, endured the seizure, the spasms, the white-hot fire at her neck, finally surrendering and letting go. Again, she collapsed to the cement. Again, her vision failed her briefly. Again, she was met by the hungry eyes of her sentry watching from the other side of the wire wall.

Escape was all that mattered. Since this pain was a means to freedom, she would gladly repeat this routine a dozen times, a hundred. He would shock her, she would act the part, and she would be free. Perhaps, given enough times, she might drain the collar's battery and render it useless. She repeatedly reminded herself that there was no easy way out of here, that sacrifice was the only means to this end.

Her mouth was dry. She felt as if her insides were shaking involuntarily. She denied her fears. She combated the pain with desire.

She reached out and took hold of the fence again, it sang through her like music. it made her dizzy and light-headed. It challenged her to let go. But she fought it, refusing. "Noooo!"

she screamed into the gag that rubbed her mouth raw. "Nooo!" as she gripped her fingers more tightly.

Felix looked on with the white-rimmed eyes of disbelief. Awe.

He was her audience. Respectful. He sat back on his haunches and cocked his head in question.

And then she realized she could see! Her vision had overcome the shock from the collar. No more blind moments. A small victory, but for Sharon a milestone.

Encouraged, she grabbed the fence again and again, her collar sounding its warning buzz each time before the voltage surged through her.

One step at a time, she told herself. One step at a time.

With Daphne looking on, Bolt struggled at the coffee machine, trying to turn it on so he could make hot water for some tea.

Lamoia entered the office, bumped Boldt out of the way, flipped the on-off switch twice rapidly, tapped the machine on the side and proclaimed, "No problemo." Sure enough, the light came on, and a moment later the water started dripping.

Lamoia bought himself a Coke. The three of them took seats around Boldt's table.

Boldt asked Lamoia, "We get Anything from Watson? Anything in that database?"

"He's on his way. What I have is Maybeck."

"I'm more interested in the database." I know that," Lamoia said. "We all are," Daphne added. /'Go ahead," Boldt instructed, attempting to contain his impatience. "Donald Monroe Maybeck has no priors, no outstanding warrants, and only a couple of delinquent parking citations. As far as we're concerned, he's clean."

"Shit," Boldt hissed. He opened a file folder just to occupy his hands, to keep busy. He had been hoping-praying-that Maybeck's record might tell them something about the man. DMV

records-all J Lamoia had to go onoffered you precious little information. Vii;diill Lamoia continued, "He owns a blue 1981

Ford panel van. Other than that, officially we don't have squat on this guy. I did, however, put in a call to a buddy of mine who is able to pull credit records no questions please," he said to Daphne. "I supplied him with the gasoline credit card number. He's going to poke around for us. No promises." He sipped from the soda can. "You hear about the laptop?" Boldt shook his head. Lamoia was one of those cops who knew anything of importance before anyone else. He prided himself on it.

Lamoia said, "J.C., who's working the first shift of surveillance along with Butch, just called in that Maybeck already deep-sixed the laptop. He got a photo of him tossing it into Lake Union. I suppose we could pick him up for littering."

"Well," Boldt said, trying to see the positive, no matter how small the victory, "if we ever get as far as trial, his tossing a perfectly good computer in the drink may help reinforce the possible criminal nature of the data he had in there. We can assume he erased the data, so chances are that he also knew that the laptop was hot-maybe he even stole it himself. He's protecting himself. It's not much, but it's something."

"There's a down side to that," Lamoia reminded. "If he's trashing evidence, there has to be a reason." Daphne said,

"He's already onto us?" Boldt felt an added pang of urgency.

Bile stung the back of his throat. His stomach had turned on him. Welcome back, he could hear it saying. If Maybeck and the harvester knew about the investigation, then the laptop wouldn't be the only evidence being destroyed. They would have to move quickly now. Every day, every hour gave the harvester more opportunity to distance himself from his work.

He scanned his current checklist. Addressing Daphne, who was still glowing with their success at the pawn shop an hour earlier, he asked, "Do we have the count on the number of vets in King County?" He had asked her for this the night before on the way to the gravesite. It felt like a week ago. "Not officially, but we have a bare minimum." She hesitated.

Boldt knew that disappointed look of hers, knew that he didn't want to hear her answer.

She told him, "Three hundred and seventy." The, number hit Boldt like a truck. "That's a joke, right?"

"That's only the veterinarians who advertise in the US WEST

Yellow Pages. There's probably a third again as many who don't elect to advertise."

Seriously?" A number that size seemed impossible. It was impossible in terms of the investigation. Boldt instructed,

"We've got to narrow that down. Fast. That's way too big a list to even begin Y I thinking about." There were background checks to make, bank records to scrutinize, interviews to be conducted. A number like that would take a team of twenty investigators over six months to whittle down.

She added, "Some of those are clinics. A clinic can have one or as many as ten or more vets. We're going to need an army if we're going to go after these guys one by one," she suggested, having come to the same conclusion as Boldt.

Boldt fought to maintain some optimism. Given his fatigue, it wasn't easy. "I'll hit Shoswitz up for the army-for task force status. You try to narrow that list down to surgeons. Or maybe tighter-internal surgeons? Transplant surgeons? I don't know.

See what's possible. We've got to cut that list in half at the very least. Half of that, if we're lucky."

I'll do this during all my free time, right?" she asked sarcastically. He wasn't the only one showing fatigue. "Listen, I know it's hard-"

"It's impossible," Lamoia interrupted, supporting Daphne. "I'm not laying this on you, Sarge, but we gotta have a bigger team.

I've been pulling office hours and surveillance duty. Not only is the lieutenant gonna shit when he sees my overtime, but I'm a walking zombie. A guy makes mistakes when he gets this tired.

Even me. We could be overlooking something here-something major-and we wouldn't even fuckin' know it."

"Any suggestions?" Boldt asked. He'd been up all night with Dixie at the bone dig.

He could hardly keep a thought straight in his head.

Lamoia said, "Like you said, a task force would sure help. We could pull guys from County Police; the FBI boys would be able to help out maybe. We've got to have more manpower."

"And womanpower," Daphne corrected. "I said I'll try," Boldt snapped irritably. "Sorry," he apologized.

Lamoia drained half the Coke. Daphne wrote herself a note.

She said, "I'll do what I can to narrow down the vet list.

Maybe Maria can help me out."

Lamoia offered tentatively, "I'm overseeing the Maybeck surveillance, but J.C.'s got it pretty well handled. I'll still be putting in a lot of office time. I'm available."

It was times like this, when,everyone reached deep and suddenly rallied around each other in the crunch, that Boldt remembered what it was like to be a team, what he had missed about this job. just yesterday he had wondered why he had come back; now he wondered why he had ever left. God, was he tired.

He consulted his list again and said to Lamoia, "There's more."

"Always is."

"Now that we've located these bones, I want a follow-up.

Granted, anybody and their brother with a four-wheel-drive has access to that area of the Tolt River, but I want to search county records for any landowners out there. Forestry anything we can think of. We cross-check anything we get both with the AMA's list of surgeons and with the list of vets that you put'

together," he said to Daphne. "Sometimes people bury bodies a million miles from home-just as often, in their own backyard.

Let's check that out." "I'm on it," Lamoia said, writing it down, trying his best to mask his discouragement. "I know that it's a long shot and a hell of a lot of work," Boldt admitted.

He also knew that Lamoia didn't like this kind of paper research; he preferred street work. "But these bones are part of this thing. Dixie proved that with the tool markings. We can't let this slide." He encouraged, "If we go to task force status, we may be able to wrestle loose a chopper to do an aerial search of the Tolt region. Maybe that would speed it up."

Daphne suggested, "U.S. Geological might have satellite maps of the area. We could look for structures, identify locations, and check county records. Kind of work it backwards. Our friends at the Army Corps might be able to help us with the maps." "I'll call them," Boldt said, making a note. "What else?"

Watson entered and took a seat in a chair over by Daphne. His glasses were filthy. He needed new blades in his electric razor his face looked like an old weed patch. He adjusted his glasses and said, "I won't bore you with the details."

"Good," Lamoia said, intimidating the man.

Watson looked a nervous wreck. His domain was wires and cathoderay tubes. He didn't take to a meeting like this.

Daphne advised him, "Don't worry about John. He has a testosterone problem."

"To every problem, a solution," Lamoia chimed in, trying to stare her down. "Not in your wildest fantasies." She stared back. "Watson?" Boldt asked. When people came under too much stress, it found strange ways of manifesting itself. "That's not my name, you know," he complained. "With a name like Clarence, you should be grateful, " Lamoia advised him. "The database?" Boldt reminded. "The laptop. Did you print up the database for us?"

He handed Boldt a sheet of paper. The database looked like a spreadsheet, a grid of rows and columns. There were seven columns and had they been titled across the top, which they were not, Boldt guessed they might have been labeled, DATE, NAME, FILE NUMBER, ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER, BLOODTYPE, (?). The rows were created by the -names of the donors, listed alphabetically.

"The minute we had this list, we faxed it down to Bloodlines for comparison. According to them, what distinguishes ours from theirs-in terms of layout-is the addition of a new column-the last column over-which contains as yet unexplained four-digit numbers. This column is unique to this laptop database; that is, there is no such column in the Bloodlines database. The other distinguishing feature is that the date column-far left has also been modified so that only a small percentage of the records now contain a date. They should all be dated. "It is sorted alphabetically by the donor's name," he continued.

"What's interesting is that if a name has a date, it also has an entry in this new column. There are twenty-eight such dated fields."

"Twenty-eight?" Boldt asked, flipping forward. "It's the donor list," Daphne speculated. A silence hung over the room. Daphne broke it. "Is Sharon on there?"

"Twenty-eight donors," Boldt repeated, looking ahead on the list. How many dead? How many victims of electroshock? He spotted the name. "She's on here," he confirmed.

Daphne went a sickly pale and excused herself from the room.

Boldt fought his stomach. Lamoia killed the Coke. Watson toyed with his glasses nervously. Boldt waited for Daphne's return.

She didn't look much better.

He ran down the column of names, calling out: "Blumenthal, Chapman, Shaffer, Sherman, Walker: They're all here." He felt it as both a nauseating moment of reality and a major moment of triumph the extra care they had taken with Maybeck had proved worth it.

He noticed for the first time that the date alongside Sharon Shaffer's name was not a date in the past, but was for two days from now: Friday, February 10. "Lou?" Did it show that easily?

Or was it her? She always seemed to know his thoughts.

in less than forty-eight hours, Sharon Shaffer would be cut open, According to Dr. Light Horse, it was likely to be a major organ.

There would be no time to organize a task force, no time to sort through a list of three-hundred-seventy veterinarians.

They would have to force every lead they had. Every suspect.

Sharon Shaffer's life had a burning fuse attached to it now.

Look for the good, he reminded himself-they were too tired to take a setback like this. "Accentuate the Positive"-it was one of those songs occasionally requested in a piano bar. He missed The Big joke; he wondered how Bear was doing with the IRS.

"She's alive," he said. "Sharon Shaffer's alive."

"Lou?" she asked again, sensing something wrong. He slid the printout over to her, pointing to the date. He watched as her eyes glassed up.