Boldt And Matthews: No Witnesses Part 31

"But you didn't tell Fowler that."

"He didn't ask."

LaMoia said, "You had to get rid of him, so you gave him the name of another company."

"No. Nothing like that. I got rid of him. That's all."

Boldt said, "Are Pacer's colors red, yellow, and blue?"

"No," the man answered. "Black and green, I think."

Boldt tried again. "One of your customers, then. A food product company uses red, yellow, and blue in their labels."

"You remember first grade, Sergeant Blot? The primary colors are in every other color," he instructed.

"Just those colors. Only the primary colors. Red. Yellow. Blue. One of your food accounts uses just those colors."

"Food companies are our specialty-our niche. All right? You know how many there are in this state? You know how many customers we have?" Fione asked rhetorically, answering, "Maybe sixty or seventy. You know how often those customers change their designs, their colors, their look? You expect me to identify one of our customers by their colors? Do you know anything about this business?"

"Heavy metals," Boldt stated.

"My son listens to that s.h.i.t," Fione said.

LaMoia stepped closer, "Not the music, a.s.shole. Ink."

The man looked ready to fight. "Heavy metals? Those aren't in your primary colors-those are your silvers and golds, your foils."

Boldt said, "So okay. How about a customer of yours that uses red, blue, yellow, and a foil? Does that clarify matters for you?"

Fione warned, "If you're going to treat me like some ignorant a.s.shole, you can go suck wind, far as I'm concerned, Sergeant. The door is right behind you. You got it?"

He turned back to his computer and started typing.

LaMoia checked with Boldt, who nodded, then the detective stepped forward and spun the man around in his chair. He leaned in close and said with intentional dramatics, "We're with Homicide, a.s.shole. There's some guy killing people, and your labels are part of it, and that could drag you in deep. We need some f.u.c.king answers here. Right now! You got it?"

The man's face went scarlet. He met eyes with Boldt, and looked back at LaMoia. "I'll pull the artwork for you."

Back in the garish car, LaMoia asked, "Where to?"

"Let's say you're Caulfield. You're out on parole, and you're determined to make Adler pay. First place you apply for a job-"

"Is Adler Foods."

"But you're turned down-let's say because of your record. Next?" Boldt asked, while at the same time seeing the fallacy of keeping Caulfield's name away from Fowler and Taplin, and regretting that decision.

"You go to the source: Grambling Printers."

"But they turn you down, too. No one wants you."

"You find out who trucks the labels. You try to go to work for them, or maybe you steal a couple of boxes out of the back when the driver's in making another delivery."

"Exactly. And you put the boxes under your work-bench," Boldt said. "And you go to work."

"Pacer Trucking?" LaMoia asked.

"I'll call for the address."

LaMoia and Bobbie Gaynes kept the south entrance of Pacer Trucking under surveillance while the back entrance was covered by Freddie Guccianno, back from vacation, and Don Chun, on loan to Shoswitz from Major Crimes.

Boldt and Daphne waited for Jerry Pacer in a booth at a Denny's restaurant. Daphne ordered an English m.u.f.fin with cream cheese. Boldt ordered a hot dog with everything, fries, and a side of cottage cheese. Pacer arrived and took coffee with cream and sugar and made them switch to a smoking table. He had ba.s.set hound eyes and a double chin, and his hair seemed to be two different colors, indicating a rug. He was the kind of man who would be bored in the middle of an earthquake.

He handed Boldt an employment form for Harold Caulfield. Boldt recognized the residential address as a rooming house by the community college. Only a matter of blocks from the Broadway Foodland, it was within the designated area where Dr. Richard Clements had stated the killer would be found.

Pacer took one quick glance at the mug shot and pointed to it. "He's younger, but that's him." His voice sounded like a cement mixer slowed down. "Are we done now? I got trucks to move."

Boldt felt both the surge of excitement and the wash of relief. He felt a knot in his throat. He felt like laughing.

Daphne said, "You don't seem too surprised."

"In this business, lady? What do you think, I deal with college grads? I probably know more cops than you do." He added: "We done?"

"Is he on the schedule today?" Boldt asked hopefully.

"Wouldn't matter he is or he isn't. Not working for me, this kid. No calls, no nothing. Just stood me up. Happens all the time, but it still p.i.s.ses me off. You figure they're in trouble when they don't even pick up the back pay. His is sitting in on my desk. So I wasn't exactly shocked and stunned to get your call. That's what I mean. I really can't help you. Is that all? Can I get back now? Please?" he added sarcastically.

"Stay," Boldt said firmly, waving the hot dog at the seat. Some mustard dripped onto the table.

Pacer sighed heavily and glared at him indignantly. Boldt realized the man had indeed spent a lot of time with police when he began answering questions without being asked. "This kid was okay. All right? So why do the cops care?"

"Did he socialize with the other drivers?" she asked.

"No. A loner. So what? I ain't much for beveraging, either."

"What kind of cat do you have?" Boldt asked. He liked throwing questions that broke a person's train of thought. Pacer had cat hairs all over the sleeves of his shirt.

The man's face twisted, and only part of his hair moved. Definitely a rug, Boldt realized. "Just a street cat is all. What's it matter?"

"What's its name?" Boldt asked between bites. He was starving.

The man shrugged. "Trix. Trixie. What the h.e.l.l's my cat got to do with this?" He asked this of Daphne, who returned his shrug.

"Any inventory ever missing from Caulfield's trucks?" Boldt asked.

"Stuff gets mixed up all the time."

"But Caulfield in particular?"

"h.e.l.l, I don't know."

"Is there a way to check that?"

"We got manifests, we got paperwork up the ying yang, if that's what you're asking."

"So it could be checked," Boldt stated.

"Not by my people, it couldn't," Jerry Pacer said defensively. "Not on my nickel."

"But you would supply us the paperwork," Daphne suggested. "Without a lot of attorneys."

"No problem whatsoever."

"Do you file invoices by driver?" Boldt added.

"No way. We file by customer. Our drivers mix up the routes, because some d.a.m.n insurance study showed that it reduced accidents. I gotta tell you, I think it works, but as far as administration goes, it's a real pain in the a.s.s." He checked his watch. "You gotta understand, the place goes to s.h.i.t without me this time of day. Can we speed this up any?"

Boldt pretended not to hear him. "One of your clients is Grambling Printers."

"Whatever you say."

"And is the Grambling work invoiced by Grambling customer, by specific delivery, or all grouped together?"

"Grouped. We contract out to a lot of outfits. They handle their paperwork, we handle ours."

"We want that paperwork," Boldt reiterated.

Indicating Daphne, Pacer said, "Already taken care of. Come on! Let me out of here."

Daphne tried: "One of the companies you ship for uses a logo or a name-I can't remember-of red, yellow, and blue. The three colors by themselves. Maybe some silver or gold in there."

"h.e.l.l if I know."

"Think!" Boldt said, too impatiently.

The rebuke rattled Pacer. He played with the salt shaker sliding it between his hands like a hockey puck. "I don't know. Sounds more like fruit and vegetable crates to me. Del Monte, you know? Some of the truck farmers. Eyecatching s.h.i.t. Flowers maybe. We don't do no produce."

Boldt and Daphne met eyes, and Boldt started sliding out the booth, reaching for his wallet as he went.

"What?" Pacer asked, tentatively.

Daphne offered him a business card and told him, "We need the Grambling paperwork immediately. Right now. Right away."

"I understand the word immediately. It's my drivers can't read, not me."

"We'll have it?"

"You'll have it."

Pacer stood, uncertain and confused. He swept a hand over his rug, ensuring it was still in place. He nodded and headed out of the restaurant at a fast pace. Boldt flagged the waitress, while stuffing the hot dog down.

"Produce," Daphne declared. "Truck farmers. He could be out there anywhere, selling spinach out of a pickup."

During the summer months, truck farmers proliferated on Washington's back roads, interstate rest areas, and downtown parking lots.

"Buy it, shoot it up with strychnine, and sell it off the back of your truck. He keeps moving, he keeps killing."

"Or deliver it to grocery stores."

"Or restaurants."

His pager sounded. Reluctantly, he reached down and shut it off, not wanting to read its tiny LCD display and whatever information was contained there. Just the sound of the device turned Boldt's stomach; it was actually worse than a telephone ringing.

Boldt read the code on the display. He felt the blood drain from his face, and his hands go cold.

"Lou?"

He stole Daphne's purse, rummaged through it, and removed her cellular phone. He called downtown, and the moment the dispatcher answered, he spoke his name clearly, "Boldt," though to him it sounded like somebody else talking. "Who is it?" He waited to hear the answer, then shut off the phone and handed it back to Daphne, his hand visibly shaking.

She grabbed his pager from him and read the display. "An officer down?" she said, her voice wavering. There was nothing so painful as this for any cop. "Who?"

"Striker just shot Chris Danielson in a hotel room over on Fourth."

THIRTY-TWO.

Boldt had been to over a hundred such crime scenes, but with his friends and coworkers involved, this hotel room looked somehow different. Shoswitz had a.s.signed Sergeant David Pasquini as primary in the officer-involved shooting, and Boldt tried to stay out of the man's way.

According to a uniform by the door, Danielson had gone out on a stretcher, alive but critical; Striker was in handcuffs, ranting and raving about what a lousy shot he was.

There was a good amount of blood on the bed, and two piles of clothes on chairs, with Danielson's weapon still snapped into its holster. Four sh.e.l.ls had been discharged onto the carpet. An ID man was taking photographs of them. The air still smelled of cordite. Boldt crossed the room and glanced out the window. Downstairs on the street, a media circus was brewing.

"Where's that coffee?" Pasquini shouted after cracking open the bathroom door a few inches.

Boldt, back at the room's entrance, grabbed the green Starbucks coffee from the patrolman and delivered it himself, inching the door open with his foot and not allowing Pasquini to get full hold of it.

"Okay," Pasquini said, relenting, and admitting Boldt to the tiny bathroom.

Elaine Striker, wearing a hotel towel wrapped around her middle, sat on the closed toilet. A woman officer was braced in the tub, a notepad in hand.

Boldt pushed the door shut.

Pasquini removed the lid from the coffee and handed it to the woman, who used both hands to steady the cup before taking a sip.

Elaine had mascara on her cheeks, bloodshot eyes, and a mottled chest. Her skin was freckled-a good deal of it showing-and her tousled red hair framed her face in a ring of fire. She looked up at Boldt with hollow, apologetic eyes. "It just happened," she said.