No Witnesses

As if hearing him, she met eyes with him and said, “This guy came out of nowhere. I hit his cart-really hit it, you know? And this look he gave me-right through me, you know? Like he knew everything, and I’m in his way. Like he’s a lifter, too, or else a security guy. And I’m thinking I’m busted, but all he wants is me out of the way. And like I’m gone. But I look back, you know, and what’s he do? He drops a couple cans out of his coat into his cart, walks a few feet, and puts them on the shelf! So like I’m thinking, Oh, shit, there is a security guy nearby. He’s dumping his stash. And if he’s dumping his stash then I’m sure as hell dumping mine.” She winced, taking them all in, clearly fearing she had gone too far.

“It’s all right, Holly,” Boldt assuaged her. “You’re doing fine.”

“Doing real well,” Striker echoed.

Daphne asked, “Do you remember anything at all about this man?” Start general; work specific. It had been several weeks-how much could they expect?

“You mean like what he looked like?” she asked nervously. “No way.”

“His clothes,” LaMoia suggested. “You say he dumped his stash out of a coat?” The streetwise LaMoia used her language, making it sound as if it were his own.

“A raincoat. It’s summer,” she reminded them. “You only lift when it’s raining, ’cause like where are you going to stash it when it’s hot out?”

LaMoia said, “A raincoat.”

She nodded. Boldt wrote it down. It’s a start.

“What kind of raincoat? Hip? Conservative? Khaki? Black?” the detective asked.

“Green maybe. Long. Like those guys in westerns. You know?”

Young kids made some of the best witnesses. The girls recalled clothing down to the buttons-male and female. The boys remembered a girl’s face and her body shape.

“A green greatcoat,” LaMoia repeated.

“A greatcoat, yeah. I didn’t see his face.”

“A hat?” LaMoia asked. There had been a glimpse of this individual in the video, though it blurred in freeze- frame.

“Yeah. Baseball cap, I think. Kinda like mine.”

“How ’bout his shoes?” LaMoia tried.

“Boots,” she spurted out. “Not shoes.”

The way it flew out of her, Boldt trusted this. “Boots,” he repeated, making note of it.

“Cowboy boots,” she said. “And blue jeans!” she announced proudly, somewhat surprised with herself.

“Like mine?” LaMoia asked, showing off his Tony Lamas and his pressed blue jeans.

“No. They were worn jeans,” she said. “Like frayed at the bottom, you know? And brown cowboy boots. Muddy maybe. I’m pretty sure they were brown. Maybe they were work boots. Hiking boots. I don’t remember.”

Mud, Boldt thought, recalling how thick the mud was at Longview Farms. He caught Daphne looking at him, her eyes flashing with a heightened energy-she believed the witness; she thought they had a live one.

LaMoia asked, “Jewelry? Tattoos? Scars? A limp? Anything distinguishing?”

“The boots,” she repeated proudly. “I sort of remember the boots.”

“Did he say anything to you? Did he speak to you?”

“No way. But that look he gave me was heavy. Like he was going to kill me for running into his cart.”

“Did you see him again, anytime after that?” Daphne asked.

Holly MacNamara shook her head.

“Take your time,” LaMoia encouraged.

“In line, maybe,” she said to the detective. “The checkout line. He was buying something.” She said definitively, “You always buy something.”

“Do you remember what he was buying?” Boldt asked.

“I’m sure!” she said sarcastically. “I don’t even remember if I saw him in line,” she admitted. “I was in a hurry. I just wanted the hell out of there.”

Boldt leaned to Daphne and whispered, “Get her started on the employee photos-Adler, Foodland, Shop- Alert. Then mug shots.” Data processing had compiled DMV photographs of the Foodland employees. The other companies had their own, for security reasons.

The video, Boldt thought. Was one of the Shop-Alert security cameras aimed down the line of cash registers?

What was that guy’s name? Don? Dave? Ron?

Gus at Shop-Alert, the Redmond-based security company that handled Foodland, greeted Boldt as if he were an old friend. He escorted him quickly to the back room and the plethora of electronic equipment. “The minute I got your call, I started running the data looking for the guy you described. Been at it for the better part of an hour. He’s good, Lieutenant. Very good.” He triggered a key, and a screen-saving pattern left the monitor, replaced by the shadowy black-and-white flickering image of a tall man wearing a Mariners baseball cap and a greatcoat. “This is about all we have of him. And if you watch him closely,” he said, allowing the image to advance in a broken, mechanical movement, “you see he’s using the person at the register in front of him as a shield from the camera. See? He moves right along with this heavy woman-so the camera doesn’t catch much sight of him. He knows what he’s doing. Like I said: He’s very good.”

Two aisles behind the suspect, Boldt caught sight of Holly MacNamara, though she too was screening herself from the camera.

“What about his face?”

“We never see it. I’ve tried some enhancement. I tried some of the other time sequences, but we hardly ever see him. He knows this system well. Too well.”

“An employee?” Boldt let slip, his mind whirring.

“Or a regular,” Gus hypothesized. “Or a guy who’s studied the hell out of it. Done his homework.”

Boldt wrote down the exact time that was electronically stamped into the lower corner of the screen. “Register six,” he noticed.

“Six, seven, and eight are Foodland’s express lanes,” Gus confirmed. “Shoplifters like express lanes.”

Using this time stamp, Boldt hoped it might be possible to cross-check the register tapes and identify the exact items made during this particular purchase.

When he returned to the Public Safety Building, he assigned Bobbie Gaynes the task, and two hours later she entered his office cubicle announcing that with the help of Lee Hyundai, she had found the cash register receipt in question. She handed him an enlarged photocopy grainy from the enlargement, the computerized lettering angular and spotty but still legible. It listed four items purchased at Foodland’s register 6.

Of the four items, listed as CANDY and ICECRM, three were preceded by a four-letter producer code that Boldt had long since come to recognize: ADFD-Adler Foods.

“Adler candy bars,” he whispered under his breath.

“Maybe he intended to eat them, Sergeant,” Gaynes said optimistically. “We don’t know for certain what he has in mind for them.”

“Yes, we do,” Boldt replied ominously. “I’m afraid we do.”

TWENTY-ONE

At five o’clock Thursday, July 12, Bernie Lofgrin poked his head into Daphne’s office waving a plastic bag containing the State Health document. “You win the Kewpie doll, Matthews. This report is one legal-size piece of bullshit.” He looked more closely at her, “What did you do to yourself?”

“A box fell off my closet shelf and got me.”