out and had a reputation for being a womanizer. Everyone liked LaMoia-from the meter readers to Captain Rankin. He brought humor and sparkle with him, and he effortlessly crossed the line between the uniforms and the detectives.
“Sarge?” LaMoia was one of the more observant detectives.
“He never came home last night,” Boldt mumbled.
“Who’s that?”
Boldt said, “I’ll pull the car around. You call KCP and let them know we’re heading out to Sasquaw. If they’ve got somebody in the area, we may want backup.”
“Backup?” LaMoia asked curiously.
But Boldt did not answer him. He was already off across the fifth floor at an all-out run.
By the time Boldt found the farm, it was dusk. They had become lost twice, and LaMoia had demanded they drive through a McDonald’s. Using the cell phone, Boldt obtained a telephone warrant from deputy prosecuting attorney Michael Striker and district judge Myron Banks, giving him authority to search the premises. His mouth full of hamburger, LaMoia said, “You’re starting to worry me, Sarge.”
Boldt answered, “I’d double-check my piece if I were you.” LaMoia tended to his weapon immediately.
A group of farm buildings spread out below the county road, barely visible in a determined starlight.
LaMoia switched on a flashlight, aimed it directly at Boldt, and said, “You should have eaten something. You look like shit.”
“I sent a local sheriff here to nose around,” Boldt explained. “He hasn’t been seen since.”
LaMoia switched off the light. In the silence they could hear the hum of the overhead power line.
The two hung their shields around their necks on thin black strings, and LaMoia crossed himself, and no one made any jokes. Boldt thought of Miles and that if he never saw him again, there would be no way to explain the reason a cop had kicked in a door in the middle of nowhere; and then he thought of Sheriff Turner Bramm’s wife-the fear he had heard in her voice-and he opened his car door and headed toward the farmhouse.
The two men walked in silence, their city shoes juicy in the mud but neither complaining. They walked to the Powder River gate and LaMoia opened it, quietly closing it again behind them. There were no lights on in the house, though it didn’t mean anything: The driveway showed signs of recent use. A mercury light filled the distance between the house and outbuildings with a garish glare that seemed brighter than Arizona sunshine. With the shades up, there would be plenty of light inside with which to see. They were sitting ducks out here.
Boldt threw a hand signal at LaMoia indicating the dark side of the house, and the detective squatted and slid off into shadow where only the owls could see him. Deafened by the pulsing in his ears, Boldt slowed his advance, buying LaMoia a few needed seconds and forcing himself to think this through once again. A missing sheriff. A deserted farmhouse. His two-year-old son waiting at home. He withdrew the weapon from his holster, engaged the recoil and the safety, and gripped the stock between both hands. A bead of sweat trickled down his chin. His mouth was dry. So maybe Liz was right about a desk job. So what? There was nothing to do about it now. His police vest was in the trunk; he should have thought to put it on.
He walked faster now, his system charged with adrenaline, cutting quickly across the brilliantly lit farmyard and reaching the door to the farmhouse, a building in total disrepair. The white paint was coming off like sunburned skin, the windows were gray with grime, and the brown-bristle welcome mat had disintegrated at the center, leaving a frayed rope-weave underpinning.
Boldt held his breath to allow him to hear the slightest sound, then knocked loudly, paused, and knocked again. The wind blew high in the cedars and the mercury light hummed, sounding like a huge bug. Boldt peered through the gray glass at the inside of a cluttered kitchen. Although clearly well used, this was the back door. He circled the house, locating another door and knowing LaMoia would be keeping him in sight.
He knocked. Waited. Nothing.
A wave of the hand brought LaMoia out of the dark. They checked the ground floor thoroughly, and found it tightly locked up. “We could kick it,” LaMoia suggested. “Not without a damned good reason,” Boldt clarified. “Not outside our jurisdiction.” Boldt turned around and faced the five outbuildings. A series of muddy tire ruts led into the compound, some of them made recently.
“Try them first?” LaMoia inquired.
“Yup,” Boldt said.
They crossed the farmyard to the first building.
LaMoia pushed open a huge steel door that ran on rollers. Boldt switched on the flashlight and scanned the interior. A long, narrow corridor faced them, hundreds of tiny wire cages stacked floor-to-ceiling on either side of the wide aisle. It smelled dusty. There were white, yellow, and brown feathers everywhere. Boldt experienced a similar nausea familiar to some homicide crime scenes. “You feel it?” he hissed hoarsely, his throat dry.
LaMoia nodded gravely. He pulled the door shut again. “Maybe we should call in that backup.”
But they did not. They walked side by side silently through a patch of weeds that invaded Boldt’s socks, prickling him. The air smelled sour and then suddenly sweet. They stopped in front of the second building, a modified Quonset hut.
“You okay?” LaMoia asked.
“No.”
“Open it?”
“Go ahead.”
The door squeaked on its hinges. Boldt painted the inside with the harsh beam of the flashlight. More of the same: hundreds of poultry cages; several rows of high-intensity lights hung from the ceiling.
Studying the coop, LaMoia said, “This must be the laying coop. They use the lights to trick the birds into producing more.”
“Feels kind of like a ghost town,” Boldt said.
“I know what you mean.” They moved on.
By its outward appearance, the third structure suggested a different use-a tool shed or equipment barn. As they neared its double-door entrance, Boldt stuck out his arm and blocked LaMoia before he stepped on the disturbance in the mud: activity, boot prints, and a series of tire tracks.
“Pretty recent,” Boldt said, observing their clarity. The summer rains of the past week would have softened the impressions.
They avoided the disturbed area, cutting around the side of the structure, Boldt leading them with the light. He was already thinking ahead to lab crews and photographers, plaster casts of the boot and tire impressions.
There was no entrance on the side, but at the far end they found a locked door and a reinforced glass window that had been spray-painted from the inside. They teamed up, Boldt training the flashlight under the crack in the door and LaMoia searching out irregularities in the hasty paint job, his face pressed to the glass. “To the right. More …,” he directed. “There!” he said. It took several blows with a length of scrap iron to punch a hole in the reinforced glass.
As they stepped inside, Boldt asked, “Do you know that smell?”
“A nose like yours, you oughta be in perfume.”
“Smell it?”
“I do know that smell,” LaMoia admitted. “That’s paint.”
“That’s right.”
The building was hot and stuffy. It had a cement slab floor with large drains and an overhead conveyor mechanism with metal hooks.
LaMoia said knowingly, “This is where they butchered them.”
“Yup.” Boldt walked a bit faster, approaching the sheriff’s car.
“Gloves,” he said. They both snapped on pairs of latex gloves. The flashlight caught the windshield and mirrors and bounced light around the cavernous structure in sparks and flashes. The words
