Our other vacuum samples could give us a hell of a lot more to work with. Stay tuned.' He slapped Boldt on the arm and returned to his crew.
Boldt looked around at an anxious Daphne, who had just returned from interviewing the neighbors in the apartment houses. He waved her over. 'Nothing,' she said. 'Fourteen families of people and no one saw a thing!' He asked her to call the city's 911 dispatch, Sharon's doctor, ambulance services, and the two closest area hospitals, inquiring whether on the previous day Sharon had sought medical attention. 'What's UP?'
'The Professor has uncovered some evidence that points to either a drug deal or a doctor.'
'Not drugs, Lou. Not Sharon. I know her past says otherwise, but I know the woman.'
'Would I have you calling hospitals if I suspected a drug deal?'
She eased noticeably. 'But if she didn't call an ambulance, then a drug deal is easier to believe.'
'Not for me it isn't.'
'Daffy, somehow two people convinced a streetwise woman to open her door for them. How? It also now appears that somehow she was further convinced to roll up her sleeve for them. You know Bob Proctor's reputation. It's going to be our job to disprove any street-drug connection. The state lab will have a lot to say about that. But if we found her admitted to an area hospital, we'd all feel a hell of a lot better.'
'That's not the way Agnes reports it. She says she was kidnapped.'
'I know that, Daffy.'
'Lou?' The Professor, Bernie Lofgrin, called out, kneeling by one of the chairs. Boldt joined him there. 'You're the quintessential king of no coincidences,' Lofgrin said. 'Am I right?'
'So?'
'So we did the lab work-up on the Cynthia Chapman clothing-Matthews' runaway. 'Kay?'
'Okay.' Boldt felt his pulse quicken. Why would the Professor bring up Cindy Chapman now?
Lofgrin, who was wearing a pair of jeweler's loupes clipped to his already thick glasses, found a magnifying glass in a bag and handed it to Boldt. 'Get a load of this,' he said.
He pointed. Boldt focused the glass onto the spot indicated. A clump of animal hairs clung to the fabric of the chair. Under the glass they looked like pick-up-sticks. 'What do you see?' Lofgrin asked confidently. 'Animal hairs,' Boldt replied. 'A pile of them.'
'Notice the extremely long white ones? See how much longer they are than the others? They're unusually long. We lifted similar hairs off Chapman's clothes.' He made a face at Boldt. A lab guy like Lofgrin would never use the word identical. In the scientific world, identical rarely existed. 'What we've got here is a visual cross- match.'
Lofgrin's magnified eyes looked like two ventilated beach balls.
Boldt studied the hairs once again, blood thumping in his ears.
Cindy Chapman and Sharon Shaffer connected? Abducted by the same man? Both runaways, one present, one past. Overlaps. Mounting coincidences he couldn't buy. He asked, 'Any way to prove such a connection?' Evidence as ubiquitous as animal hairs was unlikely to hold up in court, but Boldt temporarily ignored this.
Lofgrin smiled; the Professor loved a challenge. 'We'll sure as hell try.' Daphne kept a close eye on Boldt as he hurried her off the telephone, took it from her, and started dialing.
She protested, 'Hey, it was you who wanted me to make these calls.'
'Priorities,' he replied.
He avoided looking at her because she was the kind of person to sense something was wrong. He didn't know the number, so he called information. 'Seattle,' he said. Coincidences, he was thinking. 'Bloodlines,' hoping he had spoken quietly enough not to be overheard, but as he turned around, there she was, only inches from him, wearing a puzzled, frightened expression.
The woman who answered connected him to a man named Henderson, because Verna Dundee, the managing supervisor, didn't come in on Sundays. Boldt reintroduced himself and presented his case, Daphne listening in. He cupped the receiver and protested to Daphne, 'Can't a guy get some privacy around here?'
'No,' she replied, fear and irritation flashing from her eyes.
Boldt spelled Sharon Shaffer's name for the man. 'I doubt it's a recent file. I'll wait,' he said in anticipation. As he assumed, he was placed on hold. He would have to check central processing using another-line. 'Lou?' Daphne asked, eyes squinting, lips pale.
Boldt felt impossibly hot. The seconds grew into minutes. He thought: I should hang up right now. I should leave this for others. I should stick to my family and my piano playing, because if it turns out … It was Henderson telling him what he didn't want to hear. He wouldn't need the results of the Professor's tests. Not now that he had this. He felt sick to his stomach.
Daphne had desperate eyes. She had already guessed. 'Lou?'
How did you put something like this to Daphne? Why, as a cop, were you always the bearer of bad news? 'Sharon Shaffer is in the Bloodlines database. Three years ago she was a regular donor.'
Daphne gasped. 'I think the harvester's struck again.' He looked over at Agnes Rutherford, her blind eyes steady and untracking. 'And she's our only witness.'
Sharon Shaffer looked on as the black man in the kennel next to hers came awake for the first time. She remembered the terror of that moment and could do nothing to warn him of the horror he was about to experience, nothing to lessen its effect. The dogs started barking; she knew he would awaken-it had been the same for her. She couldn't remember exactly when. Had it been just yesterday? It seemed more like forever.
He looked around. Surprise. Astonishment. Terror. He clearly noticed then the chain-link cages; and a moment later, his own nakedness. She knew that his head ached miserably from the drugs just as hers had.
He spotted her then. She tried her best to communicate with her eyes, for her jaw was now held in a modified dog muzzle made of nylon webbing, one strap of which ran across her mouth, keeping a gauze rag stuffed into place to prevent her from crying out, as she had to this man. She felt responsible for his being here. She was responsible. His jaw was secured in a similar muzzle, although the gag had been omitted, probably because the doctor feared he might vomit on coming awake, which he did, repeatedly. She had to wonder: Was it the effects of the sedation or from looking at her? She could only guess at what she must look like. A bandage glowing a lurid pink at the edges. She had pale skin the color of cigarette ash. Her hair was matted flat. Or perhaps that expression of his arose from the dogs and their horrid smell. The deafening barking at the slightest instigation. It would take him a while to adjust to their situation, but she needed him to adjust-to settle down.
To help her escape. She was going to get out of here, with or without him.
She thought that if only she could stop him from what he would do next, she could spare him some pain. But the muzzle and gag prevented her from speaking; she could only grunt and gesticulate. And that, only quite weakly. She had little strength, drugged as she was by whatever was in the IN. It felt like a combination Valium-Demerol to her. She was experienced enough to know. When she thought about it, it brought on resentment and anger, rage and indignation. She had spent the last three years of her life learning to live sober. Now, forced on her, she found herself drugged up again-enjoying the feeling, wanting more. She looked up at the precious drip, drip, drip of the IN. Worst of all, she couldn't bring herself to disconnect the tube. If anything, she wished it would flow faster. She could take more.
She had always been able to take more … Despite her efforts to warn him, her neighbor reached out and touched the chain-link door of the 4, cage. He actually laced his fingers into it and shook it with his considerable strength. He must have heard the collar sound its electronic warning-the buzz-but like her on her first time, he didn't associate this sound with the pain that would follow. And like her, he would learn soon enough.
She watched as his fingers met the cage, as a blinding pulse of electricity stung his neck, and literally knocked his knees out from under him. She heard his head thump against the cement as he wilted. His bowels loosened and he fouled himself. He lay there staring up at her, flat on his back, the pain, fear and terror so great in his eyes that she felt herself break into tears. A maddening frustration stole through her, and briefly she found enough strength to sit up, to sit forward and be as close to him as possible.
As his strength returned, he reached for the shock collar, and despite her shaking her head in discouragement, he tried, in vain, to rid himself of it.
How clearly she remembered those first few minutes; they seemed so distant now. He would deny his situation at first. She knew. He would think: This can't be. This is impossible. Then, as reality sank in, as his muscle strength returned, as he began to assess, to realize the hopelessness, he would recoil. A minute later he sat in the center of the cage, wrapped in the fetal position, sobbing and mumbling incoherently. 'Impossible What did I do?