Beyond Recognition

“You think I don’t know about you?” she asked.

He squinted back at her, like Jack when he was drunk and trying to concentrate.

“You’re a military man,” she informed him. He looked shocked. Ben swelled with pride. “Air Force. You live by yourself. You’re considerate of others, the type of man to help someone out who needs a hand. Money is a little tight right now, but things are looking up. There’s a deal on the horizon ….”

His eyes were the size of saucers, though he tried to contain his shock. He rubbed his hands together briskly, although the flipper stayed out of it, as if the knuckles didn’t bend. He glanced up at Emily and said, “Okay, so I’m impressed. So what?” He waited briefly and asked, “How could you know any of that?”

“It’s my gift,” she said.

Pride surged through Ben, warming him. He’d done a good job out at the truck. Emily needed him. They were a team.

7

Homicides were about victims. The way a victim had lived often told more about his or her death than the way a victim died.

Boldt was scheduled to meet with Dorothy Enwright’s mother and sister. It was an interview that he would have rather pawned off onto a detective, but he did not. He wanted to know what kind of life the dead woman had lived, her friends, her enemies. Something, somewhere in Dorothy Enwright’s past, had ensured her untimely death. She had most likely been robbed, caught in some act, or loved the wrong person. It was Boldt’s job-his duty-to identify that individual and bring him or her to the courts with enough incriminating evidence to win a conviction. A deputy prosecuting attorney would accept nothing less.

Lou Boldt would accept nothing less. From the moment that Dixie had confirmed the existence of a bone in the rubble-a body-Boldt’s central focus was to see a person or persons brought to justice, to force Enwright’s murderer to capitulate and repay society for the victim’s undeserved and unwarranted death.

Arson investigator Sidney Fidler showed up at Boldt’s office cubicle just in time to delay the sergeant’s departure for the interview with Enwright’s relatives. Boldt felt like thanking him.

Fidler was anxiously thin and prematurely bald. He wore clothes that didn’t match, and he always looked half asleep, though he had one of the finest minds of anyone Boldt had worked with in years. It was too bad that Fidler was a fireman on rotation to SPD rather than a permanent member of Boldt’s homicide squad. In terms of ability, there weren’t many Sidney Fidlers out there. Single and a loner, he looked and acted about sixty. He was somewhere in his early thirties.

“I thought I might interpret this lab report for you, Sergeant.” Despite his diminutive size, he had a deep, rich voice. He looked Boldt directly in the eye. “And to bring you up to date on some of the particulars.” He didn’t wait for Boldt’s reply but continued on, confidently, passing Boldt the report. “It’s a preliminary report in the form of a memo, to give us an idea of what we’ll receive.” Boldt adjusted himself in his seat. Such memos were courtesy of the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab, typically offered only on cases where the information was so hot as to ensure it would leak. The memos gave investigating officers a head start on the findings and were themselves rarely leaked to the press. But the existence of a memo told Boldt that the lab findings were significant enough to expect a leak. Not good news.

“Sure thing,” Boldt said.

“Bahan and I had a parley with a couple of the task force boys-”

“Was Garman there?” Boldt interrupted.

“As a matter of fact, he was. You know him?”

“Not well,” Boldt answered. “Go on.”

“These Marshal Five guys are older by a few years, but they’re wiser too. There’s five thousand firefighters in this city, assigned to forty-two stationhouses. There are only seven Marshal Fives, okay? Between them they’ve got maybe two hundred years’ experience on the line. I say this for your own education, Sergeant. Forgive me if I’m telling you something you already know.”

“No, no,” Boldt corrected. “I appreciate it. Go on,” he repeated. He felt anxious about these findings. Fidler’s setup had left him guessing.

“A fire inspector, a Marshal Five, follows a burn to its area of origin, hoping to lift samples of the accelerant for the chemists. As you know, the Enwright fire was a bastard because the area of origin was nearly entirely destroyed. Maybe that explains it, and maybe not, but the guys on the task force think not. The thing of it is, Sergeant, the lab report is going to come back negative for hydrocarbons. That’s about the gist of it. I imagine in your area of expertise it would be like finding a drowned body with no water in the lungs. Quite frankly, it’s baffling.”

“What’s it mean?” Boldt asked.

“Honestly? Not much. But it won’t look good. Our best defense to the press is that we didn’t locate a good pour, so the analysis came back negative. It also happens to be the truth. But we did locate the spalling and the blue concrete, and that sure as hell should test positive for accelerant, and that’s the baffling part, if you ask me. Why no hydrocarbons, no petroleum products whatsoever? This is not the end of the story, not by any means. The collective wisdom of the Marshal Five boys is that we repackage some new samples and send them off to Chestnut Grove, the ATF lab. They’re good guys, great chemists. And Chestnut Grove specializes in arson and bombs. We ask for a rush, maybe we hear back in a couple of weeks. Most likely they pick up what we missed.”

Fidler paused, training his rich brown eyes on the sergeant, allowing a moment for his words to be absorbed. He then said, “You asked what it means. There had to be one hell of an accelerant in that fire. You don’t go to eleven hundred feet and turn concrete blue with only a match set to the two-by-fours. We could have missed it for any number of reasons. Best bet is to send it to the Feds and try again. They’ll scare up something.”

“Hydrocarbons,” Boldt provided for him. “They’ll find hydrocarbons.”

“It would certainly surprise me if they didn’t.”

“And if they don’t?” Boldt inquired.

“Let’s take it one square at a time.”

Boldt didn’t like the sound of that. “Maybe you should brief me, just in case.”

“Clutter your mind with worthless facts? What kind of person does that?”

“Ignorance is bliss?” Boldt asked. He suddenly felt uncomfortable with Fidler. Was he trying to hide something?

“If you want to take a master’s in pyrotechnic chemistry, that’s your business, Sergeant. Me? I like waiting for the lab reports and learning what it is I need to know for that particular burn. How were you in organic chemistry?”

“Next question,” said Boldt. He didn’t want to admit that as a junior in high school he had taken the senior chemistry course and earned one of two A’s given out for the year. It would mark him as a nerd. His comment caused Fidler to grin; the man needed some dentistry. Boldt said, “Blue cement and negative lab reports. Is that about the sum of it?” He paused. “Tell me, Sid, what do you think of the stuff that Garman received? Related or not?”

“The timing’s good. Weird note. Don’t know about the plastic.”

“I sent it all downstairs for analysis.”

“What’s your opinion?” Fidler asked.

“We would give it weight in a straight homicide, especially if the victim had received it.”

“But if you had received it?”

Boldt answered, “Yeah, I suppose if I’d received it I might give it weight too.”

“So it’s Garman getting it that bugs you.”

“He’s on the arson task force, I understand that. But Enwright’s home isn’t in his district.”

“His battalion,” Fidler corrected.

“Whatever. So if it’s legitimate, why did the torch send it to a different Marshal Five? I mean, if he knows so much about the internal structure of fire investigations, why send it to the wrong guy?”