Beyond Recognition

LaMoia was a mystery to his senior in rank, a man whose job it was to solve mysteries, but women flocked to him, even if one discounted his reported conquests by half, which was only sensible given LaMoia’s tendency toward exaggeration.

Maybe, Boldt thought, it was that walk-confident and tall, with a certain swagger to the hips. Maybe it was the large brown eyes, or the way he used them so unflinchingly on his targets. Or maybe it was simply his self- centered, cocky attitude, a quality that clearly endeared him to the uniforms as well as the brass. Whatever the case, LaMoia led, he didn’t follow. He’d have his own squad someday if he wanted it. He’d have a wife and five kids, or a woman in every part of town, or both. One liked the man from a distance, trusted him up close, and could rely on him, unequivocally, in any situation. Boldt tried to disguise his admiration but not his fondness. He didn’t need a loose cannon-and LaMoia trod dangerously close most of the time.

LaMoia began as he so often did, without any greeting. He simply rolled an office chair into Boldt’s cubicle and straddled it backward, leaning his frame on the chair’s hinged back. “Needless to say, you have no idea where any of this came from.” The detective had enviable connections to the private sector: credit unions, insurance companies, banks. Some believed it was past or current women who supplied him with such broad access. Shoswitz said it had to do with LaMoia’s military service, though Boldt thought it was nothing more than the man’s undeniable charm and his incredible ability to network. If you met him, you liked him; if he asked a favor, one was offered. If he received a favor, valuable or not, he reciprocated. He knew people: how they thought, what they wanted. He knew the streets. He could probably supply anything to anyone, though Boldt turned a blind eye to this possibility. He had the knack. He was envied by most, hated by few, and always at the heart of controversy.

LaMoia placed a folder in front of Boldt. He explained the contents. “Enwright and Heifitz-their financials: credit cards, banking. Nothing there to connect one to the other-in terms of buying patterns, restaurants, health clubs. Nothing that I could see. But there it is for you.”

“Too much cologne,” Boldt said.

“It wears off. It’ll be all right in another hour.”

“We could suffocate by then.”

“You like the shirt? It was a gift.”

Boldt said, “You’re saying there’s nothing at all to connect them to each other? It doesn’t have to jump out at you; I’d take something peeking around the corner. A department store they both shopped? A gas station?”

“The wheels.”

“What?” Boldt asked.

“Has anyone worked the wheels?”

“Cars?”

“The houses were torched, right? Toast. So what was left behind?” LaMoia asked rhetorically.

“Their cars!” Boldt said, his voice rising. Investigations took several sets of eyes-that’s all there was to it. Boldt had not given the victims’ cars a second thought.

LaMoia shrugged. “Not that it means shit, mind you. How would I know? But I’m not seeing a hell of a lot of physical evidence to chase. The wheels kinda jumped out at me-or maybe they just peeked around the corner,” he teased.

“Check them out,” Boldt offered.

“Moi? And here I was thinking you’d be more interested in the ladders.” LaMoia studied his sergeant’s expression.

Caught by surprise, Boldt asked, “The ladders?”

The grin was contrived, full of arrogance. “Are you feeling lucky?”

“I could use some luck.”

“Werner ladders are sold through a single distributor here, which is good for us, but they do one hell of a lot of business, and the chances of our tracing sales back to a particular buyer would typically be zilch. But we got lucky for once. The model with this particular tread pattern had a manufacturing problem with the shoes-the little things bolted to the bottom of the ladder-and the production run lasted a total of six weeks. They issued a recall, which meant this particular model only stayed in stores for a little over two weeks. The distributor can account for all but a hundred of his initial inventory.”

Boldt understood the significance of such a number. There were several hundred thousand people living in King County. LaMoia had just narrowed the field to one hundred.

The detective continued proudly. “With the one distributor it’s a piece of cake to track down his retail customers: hardware stores, building supply, a couple rental shops. Count ’em! Seventeen in western Washington, but only four in King County. It’s a high-end ladder-pun intended-the BMW of ladders, which is nice for us because they restrict the number of retailers allowed to carry them. Another thing: They’re spendy things, meaning that when some Joe buys one he pays by check or credit card. Check it out: Not one of these ladders went out the door for cash. We’ve gotten that far already.”

“You’ve already talked to the retailers?” Boldt felt a surge of optimism; LaMoia had a way of making even the smallest crack of light seem blinding.

“You bet. And this no-cash thing plays well for us,” LaMoia continued. “Because all these places use computerized cash-register inventory systems, we’ve asked for itemized sales records. Some have been able to supply those directly to us. Others provided their cash register tapes for the couple of weeks in question.”

Boldt felt all the air go out of him. “We’re supposed to go through a bunch of cash-register tapes item by item, pulling ladder sales?” he complained. He considered this a moment. “I’d say forget it, John. Too big a long shot. Abort. Too time-consuming.”

“Wait a second!” the detective objected, still wearing his trademark cocky expression. “Do you want to know who bought those ladders or not?”

“Not if it requires that kind of manpower. In the past, I might have handed off a job like that to one of the college criminology courses, let them do our dirty work, but-”

“Wait!” LaMoia repeated, interrupting. “You’re not listening.”

There were few if any other detectives who could talk to Boldt that way. He crossed his arms tightly and withheld comment. LaMoia was careful about how he played his cards; he would not have been so abrasive without something to back it up.

“We’ve got scanners,” LaMoia said. “Handheld jobs you run over a newsprint article, or an ad, or a map you want on your desktop machine. We’ve got OCR-optical character recognition-software that converts printed text from a scanned graphic image to data that word processors and database programs can manipulate. We’re in the fucking computer age here, Sarge. Leaves Neanderthals like you in the dust.”

“I understand scanning technology,” Boldt countered. “Not real well,” he conceded, “but the fundamentals.”

“So what we’re in the process of doing is scanning those cash register tapes. Doesn’t take long at all. When that’s done, we run OCR on them, and then we can search for anything we like: Werner, the word ladder, the product code, the price point. Guaran-fuckin’-teed to give us a hit for every ladder sold. Every sale is accompanied by method of payment, check or credit card. The account number is right there on the tape. By this afternoon … tomorrow … day after, we’ll have every sale of every ladder accounted for. We’ll have a checking account or credit card number we can trace-right back to the individual buyer.” He said proudly, “I’m telling you, Sarge, we’ve got this guy.”

It was good work, and Boldt told him so. What he didn’t bring up was that a hundred names might not get them any closer to the arsonist. They still needed the method of selection, the method of entry into the victims’ homes. There were too many unanswered questions, too many loose ends. He didn’t want to deflate LaMoia. They needed a decent break-perhaps the ladder was one of them, as LaMoia believed. The job of lead detective was to cast a dozen nets into the water and hope for fish in a few.

“Mind you,” LaMoia interjected, “the ladder was probably ripped off. Ten to one, that’s what we find out. But from what neighborhood, when? We might get something out of it yet, Sarge. You want me to chase down the wheels, I got no problem with that. But don’t drop this ladder thing. I’m telling you: I can smell it. The ladder is a good thing. It’s worth going after.”

“It’s good work,” Boldt repeated, though with discouragement sneaking through. “Honestly.”

“This computer stuff helps.” For the first time, LaMoia sounded tentative. “Something’s gonna break, Sarge. We’ve got six dicks on this thing working damn near around the clock. That ups our odds significantly.”