Boldt And Matthews: No Witnesses Part 6

Liz wiped her son's chin.

"And?" Boldt asked.

"And what?"

"When are you going to the doctor?"

"I'm going to buy one of those in-home kits first."

"When are you going to do the test?" He had unknowingly stepped closer to her. They stood only inches apart, their voices gentle. He took her by the waist. The world seemed a miraculous place to him. A place where one child lost was so quickly replaced by another.

"When would you like me to?" she asked.

"Will you wait?"

"Of course I will."

"I'll bring Chinese." Her favorite. "And beer," he added.

"Better make it nonalcoholic."

"I can't believe this."

"I'm thirty-eight, love. It's a long road between here and there. It may be nothing, don't forget."

"I love you," he said.

"Those are nice words to hear."

He squeezed her waist. "I miss you, too."

"You don't look very good," she said honestly. She meant that he was old for this. She meant that he belonged behind a desk with regular hours, or maybe she was suggesting that he might have to quit the department-again-if a child came.

"Never felt better," he lied.

"Go on," she said, amused, shoving him gently toward the door.

"Chinese," he reminded her. "Seven o'clock. I'll call."

"Like last night?" She obviously couldn't resist saying this, and he couldn't blame her-but he did.

"I'll call. I promise."

Her eyes apologized to him. And there seemed in this expression of hers an appreciation of him-of their shared feelings, of their mutual efforts to define and maintain some semblance of a life together, and perhaps even for his part in creating the child that might be within her at this very moment.

"Seven," she confirmed.

"And if it's a boy," Boldt added, "I have a name for him."

Following the eight o'clock shift change, when Boldt's skeleton crew, weekend squad replaced Pasquini's, inheriting a gang shooting and an a.s.sault-with-intent in a bar-fight-turned-knifing, Boldt was officially detailed to the Tin Man. His duties as squad leader were to be pa.s.sed to Chris Danielson, his squad's newcomer. Boldt needed LaMoia and Gaynes for his own purposes; Frank Herbert was available to Danielson. Guccianno was on vacation leave for another ten days.

They called Danielson "Hollywood" because of his Vuarnet sungla.s.ses and ostrich boots. He was a handsome black man who carried a chip on his shoulder the size of Rhode Island because he owned the highest individual clearance rate ever recorded in the books. Danielson kept to himself, rarely socializing in any of the cop bars or at functions. He was ambitious, maybe too ambitious for his peers. The complaints were that he avoided the phone, avoided the Book, allowing others in the squad to pick up his slack. Pasquini had pa.s.sed him off to Boldt's squad for this very reason, but Boldt was glad to have him. Danielson liked black holes. He thrived on attempting to clear those cases where others had failed-and he was good at it, which also accounted for his unpopularity: a newcomer beating the veterans at their own game.

"I'd rather be a.s.signed to whatever it is you're on, Sarge," he complained.

"I'm giving you the entire squad," Boldt said.

"Don't want it."

"You got it," Boldt informed him sternly.

"You could use me on this," Danielson attempted.

Danielson had no way of knowing what case Boldt was being detailed to, other than by rumor, and this attempt to milk the sergeant for information fell on deaf ears.

"You're a problem solver, Chris. We all are, but you especially. Some guys come by it naturally. Women, too: Gaynes is a natural. You pick up the black holes other people drop-some of them you even clear. Well, now you get all the black holes you want, and a lot you don't. You run a squad and every case is yours. You problem solve on a magnitude, on a level that I think is important for you to see."

"What's more important, solving this case of yours or shuffling a lot of paper? You need me, Sarge. This is my kind of case, this one you're on."

Danielson had a nose for it, that was all. He understood the look in Boldt's eye and he knew from the hours that Boldt was keeping, from the long meetings with Shoswitz behind closed doors, and most of all from the lack of any entry in the Book that this was one of the ones that came around once in ten years, this was a career maker. Boldt could tell all this by just looking at him. "It's a ball-buster, Chris," he advised him. "This is one of those that if you don't clear it, it breaks you. You put a month, six months, a year, six years into it, and it never goes down. Guys eat barrels over cases like this. Believe me: I've had them before."

"Cross killer," Danielson said. He knew all of Boldt's cases. Knew them so well it bothered Boldt, it embarra.s.sed him.

"Sometimes you get lucky."

"You could have made captain in two years after that case," Danielson observed, reminding Boldt of Liz's arguments.

"But instead I took a leave of absence. That should tell you something."

"You took two years. That's hardly a leave."

"My point exactly. The squad is yours. The s.h.i.t-eating clearance rate is yours. Do with it what you will."

"I don't want it!" he complained, knowing there were others who would kill for it.

"Maybe that's why it's yours." Danielson's eyes registered disgust and contempt. "Someday you'll thank me," Boldt said.

Danielson hesitated and cautioned ominously, "Someday I'll outrank you."

"But may I remind you that you don't today, Detective." Boldt handed him an enormous stack of files and said, "Careful of your back. They're heavy."

Boldt spent the rest of his Sat.u.r.day trying to shake the memories of Slater Lowry's death and to organize the manpower and paperwork necessary to compare the Adler employee lists to the various other lists he had requested.

At 7:05 that evening, with the smell of egg rolls and ginger sweetening the air, Liz came out of the bathroom sobbing and carrying a long plastic tab with what looked like blue litmus paper glowing on its tip. That strip of plastic seemed strangely removed from the real world. It existed someplace that Boldt did not.

"I'm sorry," he offered, gathering her in his arms. He swallowed away the lump in his throat and tried to think of something positive to say. Anything. But his voice remained silent. She pressed her face tightly into the crook of his neck, and he felt her shake. Her face was warm. Her breath blew hotly against his neck.

"I'm pregnant!" she informed him, sobbing, as it turned out, for joy. She waved the plastic strip like a flag announcing her motherhood. Boldt kissed her fingers. He kissed her forehead, her nose, and found her lips. She walked him awkwardly to the bedroom and nudged the door shut with her toe. Miles was lost in a set of wooden blocks.

"Maybe we should practice once, just to make sure," Boldt suggested.

She said something into his ear but he didn't understand it over the roar of his own heartbeat.

By the time they got to the egg rolls, they were cold and the fake beer was warming, but there were smiles all around. For these brief few minutes, Boldt forgot the Tin Man.

But not for long. He was working through his third report by the time he realized Liz had gone to bed. Interrupted by her crying, he saw the bedroom lights were out, and it quickly registered that these were clearly not tears of joy. As Boldt went in to comfort her, he wondered at the obsessed man he had become, and if he would ever be any different. "I'm here," he whispered, sitting down beside her, laying a hand upon her back.

"I don't think so," she answered, her face aimed away from him. "But you were for a while."

"I was for a while," he agreed, though it pained him to do so. "It's a start," he tried, but they both knew it was not. They had been here before. They had never left.

"I'm scared."

"Me too." But for different reasons, he thought.

She fell asleep with silver tears still clinging to her reddened cheeks. And Boldt slept beside her that night, still dressed in his street clothes, snuggled in tight where the warmth of her filled him with an all-encompa.s.sing peace.

NINE.

"This is the last time," Owen Adler whispered in the dark, the bed and the houseboat shifting imperceptibly. On Sunday mornings, Lake Union was active early. Seaplanes and outboard engines competed noisily in the distance. "It really is. It has to be." His voice was sad.

"I know." Daphne rolled over, pressing her bare chest against his and curling onto him like a snake onto a branch, and kissed Owen wetly on the mouth. "I hate it," she confessed. She knew that this time it was for real-with her being police, they could not risk violating the demands. Maybe, she told herself, it helped explain why the s.e.x had been lifeless. Maybe it offered her a way for her to win access to his files.

She told him. "I would like to take a look at your files. The New Leaf contamination you told us about."

"Tap will help you with that."

She did not want to involve Howard Taplin, or any other Adler employee; she did not want any filters between her and the information. And besides, she thought, such involvement presented too great a risk. "The thing is," she explained, "within your company Howard Taplin is as high-profile as you are. If he goes requesting a bunch of files, and the blackmailer is an insider, we take too big a risk that he or she might cotton on to police involvement. And I imagine that if Taplin gets a file himself rather than asking his secretary for it, that would raise as much suspicion."

"Probably right."

"And now that this person has proved what he's capable of, I have no desire to test his threat of killing hundreds. We can't afford any hint of our involvement in the investigation." She allowed this to sink in and suggested, "I was thinking I could go in after hours. Nice and quiet. All alone, when no employees are around. Get what I need, make copies, and get out."

"Whatever you want." He held her tightly, and she could feel his fear in the embrace.

"I want it over," she said.

A long time pa.s.sed before he said, "You don't expect something like this. And when it comes you wonder why you ever bothered with any of it. A month ago you and I were so close, and now I feel a distance in you-I feel your professionalism. Not that I'm complaining. You can't believe what a relief it is to have you working on this, to have the police finally involved-despite the threats. I waited too long. I made mistakes-and I do not want to hear you blame yourself again-that's not what I mean. Belief in my own instincts is what built this company. When those instincts fail you, it rattles the foundations."

"Self-doubt is destructive. You can't dwell on it."

"You can't help but dwell on it," he said.

Wind whistled through the houseboat. Sometimes that noise sounded peaceful to her, but today it sounded ominous. She heard a light chop striking the pier, and in the distance the hum of traffic on the interstate. "Do you think it's an employee?" she asked.

"I'm afraid it's one. There's a difference." He added, "And it frosts me, because as cliched as it sounds, we're a family, and this kind of betrayal is the worst kind imaginable. But the evidence certainly seems to point that way."

"I think it's connected to New Leaf-to these salmonella poisonings," she told him. "That's the psychologist speaking," she said.

"I'd like to run away with you," he confessed. "Leave it all. Wake up on some island and make love and drink beer."

"You'd last about two days. When was the last time you took time off?"

"That's what I mean."

"You don't know how to take time off."

"You could teach me."

She wormed her way fully atop him, and slid slowly against him until he was aroused. "We could teach each other," she said.

"I'm a quick learner." He kissed her, and she felt herself responding to him. There were times he made her body feel seventeen again, the way it reacted. Her desire had little to do with penetration or friction-she wanted inside his skin, she wanted some kind of union with his soul. It was a feeling she did not fully understand, and that somehow made it all the more attractive to her. Too often she understood too much.

She said, "Quickness is not something that could be stuck on you. You are anything but quick."

"Do you honestly think I would choose work over you?"

"I'm not sure it's your choice. A person's behavior can change-but I'm not sure the person ever does."

He took the lobe of her ear in his lips and nibbled there. "I'll send you flowers every day," he promised. "And every day I'll wish I were here. And as soon as this is over, I'll leave Corky with Mrs. Crutch and we'll hole up in a hotel somewhere and make up for lost time."

"That's quite an incentive program."

They made love after that-a quiet, peaceful union that made up for their earlier frenetic effort. There was nothing frantic about it, but instead it felt to her that they briefly found one another-purely-the way she hoped for.

Her dreams were peaceful for the first time in weeks, and when she awakened he was gone, having left behind a heart drawn in lipstick on the bathroom mirror, and the scrawled words, "Miss you already." There had been a time, in her early twenties, that such sugary sentiments would have provoked an uncomfortable reaction in her, but on this day, both older and wiser, she relished them: There was nothing quite like the feeling of being wanted and needed.

She decided not to clean the mirror until this investigation was over-her own childish reaction. This would serve as her reminder, her purpose.

In the kitchen she found his master key and his note to her explaining the Mansion's security system, including the code needed for the keypad. She picked up the key and it felt cool in her hand.

As it warmed, she felt convinced of its importance.

TEN.

Boldt's attempts at sleep proved restless and unforgiving. His appet.i.te abandoned him and he found himself back on a routine of antacids and warm milk. On the fifth floor he was the recipient of cautious looks and deliberate avoidance maneuvers. He thought of the child on the way to the grave. He thought of the child inside his wife-and none of it made any sense to him. Where he strived for order and understanding, none was to be found.