No Witnesses

“He’s spending too much time at day care. I’ll drop him,” she frowned. “But I’ll pick him up early. So forget it, in case you were thinking about it.” She looked at him. “You weren’t thinking about it.”

“I can hardly think at all.”

“Sleep deprivation has that effect.” She hesitated in the doorway, reluctant to leave.

“What?” he asked.

She asked tentatively, “How beautiful? And which hotel?”

He smirked.

The phone rang, and they both hesitated. “Do we have to?” she asked. Boldt answered it.

Shoswitz’s voice named an address on Lakewood.

Boldt hung up.

“Honey?” she asked.

“It has happened again,” Boldt mumbled.

By the time Boldt arrived at quarter to eight, the crime scene had turned into a circus. Scores of the morbidly curious, plus television and radio vans including the three nationals with satellite links, every variety of police and- never explained-two fire trucks, crowded the area so badly that Boldt was forced to park on Sierra and cut through someone’s backyard. Much to his chagrin, the crime scene had been held for one man: Lou Boldt, and his arrival sparked a kind of instant celebrity that proved one of the most distasteful experiences of his career. Reporters shoved microphones at him, but he shielded his face and avoided both cameras and questions. When he finally made it inside the home, he discovered a video-cam crew from a tabloid television news show in the process of recording every aspect of the deceased-three bodies, total. The crew had set up in the living room and were waiting for him, complete with a portable light that was blindingly bright. The crime scene was contaminated, yes, but the violation of this family’s privacy was what triggered Lou Boldt’s explosive rage. He had the entire crew arrested for trespassing and breaking and entering.

By the time the area was finally cleared, both Dixie and his crew, and Bernie Lofgrin and his, were on hand. The three men closed the kitchen door, shutting out the chaos outside, and studied the dead.

The husband had made it to the phone, though he had apparently never dialed. Dixie attributed these extra few seconds to his body weight “and a great deal of courage.” The middle-aged suburban woman appeared to have lunged for her eight-year-old girl, perhaps knocking over her chair in the process. Mother and daughter were curled tightly in each other’s arms, now dead beneath the kitchen table, the mother’s face locked in an expression of pure horror.

The source of the poison-Dixie guessed the cause of death as such within minutes of his preliminary examination-appeared to be a watermelon. Lividity, the settling of blood in the body, indicated a time of death of between eight and sixteen hours earlier; additional tests would further narrow this. There were three slices of the melon on three plates, the seeds carefully removed, the slices cut up into cubes. No one had ingested more than six cubes of melon. Dixie declared, “We’ve both attended a lot of deaths, Lou, but I’ve never witnessed anything quite like this.”

It was true. The father’s final effort was frozen, mocking his attempt; he was lying on the floor, arm outstretched, the phone’s receiver still in his hand. The dishes were neatly stacked alongside the sink. They had eaten barbecued pork chops, corn, and a green salad.

Lofgrin said, “The news crew has already destroyed any chance of clean evidence, but we’ll go through the motions.”

The similarity to the tree-house killings had reporters asking about a serial killer. Fishing still, but closer to the real story.

He needed to be alone. He passed through the kitchen and into a small sitting room where a color television aimed at a couch and a bookshelf was crowded with hardcovers and paperbacks. The name of the family was Crowley, and the neighborhood, the house, the furnishings, the appointments, put them firmly in the combined six- figure income. This was another house that Liz would have wanted, and he could not help but think of mother and daughter beneath the kitchen table, huddled against the fears and pain of death. And how glad he was that this was not Liz and Miles.

The stairs were maple and climbed quickly to a second story. He heard the whining as he reached the top, and he moved toward it cautiously, not knowing what to expect. It grew sharper and sadder as he approached, and he understood it was a dog before he opened the door. There, lying at the foot of the parents’ bed, pressed into the floor, lonely eyes trained up at Boldt in complete confusion, a shepherd-collie cried plaintively. This dog, Boldt realized, was the only witness to what had happened. This dog had lost her entire family in the course of one evening’s meal.

He bent down and petted it, and fought back a seething anger.

Dr. Richard Clements commandeered Shoswitz’s office. Daphne Matthews was there, as were Boldt and the lieutenant. Clements said to Boldt, “You are focusing on these truck farmers. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“That is not right.”

“We’ve pulled every watermel-”

“Schmater-melon. Blah! He no longer cares about claiming authorship. It is ending. He is leading you astray, Sergeant. You mustn’t be misled. I saw your work in the situation room. Stick with that-the paint, the colors, the evidence. This watermelon is a ruse, intended to mislead the hunt. He is the fox, let us not forget, and you are the hound,” he said to Boldt, “and we must remember that the only way the fox ever wins the chase is not to outrun his pursuers, but to deceive them.”

Shoswitz huffed audibly, losing patience with Clements. His agitation surfaced as small tics to the shoulders and the eyes, so that he looked like a marionette whose strings were tangled. Boldt feared he might say something to offend the doctor, and realizing the value of Clements, quirky or not, Boldt headed off any such confrontation between the two by speaking first.

“He could kill hundreds by poisoning produce.”

“He doesn’t desire to kill hundreds. What did he say on the phone?” he asked Daphne.

“That Owen had killed the ones he loved.”

“He wants to kill Adler. My diagnosis is that his schizophrenia has progressed to a point that whatever voice may once have vied for such a grand scheme has since been overpowered by the drive for vengeance, a far greater motivation. As Caulfield perceives it, Owen Adler owes him several long years of his life. How many have read this?” He waved a group of papers in the air, impossible to see. He explained, “It is his defense of his innocence subsequent to the trial. A thoughtful, powerful, convincing piece of writing. I for one believe him. He claims to have been the victim of a frame-that the drugs were not his. He supported this by an offer of proof that not one blood test administered to him had tested positive for cocaine use. He points to the police lab tests that failed to find any trace evidence whatsoever of the drug in his home or automobile. In his third year of medium detention, he wrote this most extraordinary appeal, but because of the state’s minimum sentencing failed to be granted parole or a retrial. It is my judgment that a schism developed within him, driven perhaps by a valid injustice, as we now understand his situation. His more logical half advised him to follow the system; his disturbed half revolted, rejecting any such alliance with the very forces that had led to his demise. The latter half has gained control now, I am suggesting. But there is a cunning, logical, intelligent mind at work here, and one that has been alerted to the substantial powers and abilities of his adversary. It’s all over the news. He knows the clock is running. He knows what he is up against, and he has little conscious desire to be a martyr and be caught, regardless of the efforts of the subconscious.”

“So he tricks us,” Daphne said, following the reasoning.

“Exactly. He poisons a single melon. Off go the hounds chasing the melons, following the wrong scent, while all the while the fox has doubled back and is raiding the chicken house.”

Shoswitz protested, “But we don’t know it was only the one melon.”

“Sure we do,” Clements countered. “We’ve not had one other report. Correct? Not one other incident. And if he intended to kill hundreds using melons, this would hardly be the case.” He giggled. “Don’t you see how obvious he’s being about this?”

The lieutenant bristled with the giddy pleasure Clements was taking in all of this. Any homicide cop felt the