blue jeans and ostrich cowboy boots. LaMoia came and went from that house, greeting other undercover cops who arrived on schedule to view the house, all of whom kept one eye on the purple house next door and a flesh-colored earpiece embedded in their right ears. In the back room of this house, two members of the bomb squad and two ERT officers awaited orders.
Two other members of the bomb squad ran the tow truck that was busy-albeit slowly-hoisting an illegally parked car up onto the flatbed. Their location, immediately outside of the driveway to the purple house, allowed them quick access to the light blue truck and white camper shell that was expected any minute.
Boldt, Bobbie Gaynes, and Daphne occupied fuzzy padded seats that faced a large Mylar-covered picture window in a cream brown customized recreational van parked across the street from the open house. Gaynes had the body of a gymnast and the bright blue eyes of a child on Christmas morning. She wore a quilted white thermal undershirt and blue jeans and leather Redwing work boots with waffle soles. Boldt had his cellular phone in hand, the line open to a phone set that connected directly to the headset of the operations van dispatcher. At his feet were two portable radio systems, one that allowed them to communicate with, and to hear, the secured channel of radio traffic; the second, a live feed from the transmitter inside the purple house. A cellular phone in the seat next to Gaynes was wired to a battery-operated portable fax machine. On the floor lay two shotguns, a nightstick, a TASER, and two boxes of shotgun shells. Next to these were two flak vests marked POLICE in bright yellow letters. Boldt looked around, realizing they seemed equipped for a small war.
On the second floor of the open house, in a storage room left dark, a police photographer operated a pair of 35-mm Nikons, each with a different speed film. Every movement would be recorded, every word.
A bicyclist, a motorcycle rider, and two unmarked cars were spread between the surrounding streets, ready to follow the truck when it left the area. The drivers of these vehicles also were keeping an eye out for the camper’s arrival.
At 4:57 P.M. the motorcycle rider’s voice came clearly over the radio.
RIDER:
DISPATCH:
“Right on time,” Boldt said, checking his watch.
Daphne, wearing her game face, was prepared to deliver a real-time psychological evaluation of the suspect.
DISPATCH:
“Here he comes,” said Gaynes, from where she had her eye to a crack left between a pair of brown curtains that kept the van’s two forward seats separate from the passenger area. Seeing the truck approaching, Boldt felt a stirring of vengeful anger. He recalled Branslonovich twirling in flames in the circle of trees, like an effigy burning. One man responsible for the death of so many.
Daphne said, “Is he Air Force? Can we confirm that?”
Boldt repeated this question into his phone. Dispatch replied that a “full query” was under way. He reported this to Daphne. She nodded, her sober face revealing no emotion.
Not thirty seconds had passed before Boldt, holding the phone loosely to his ear, pressed it closer and relayed to Daphne, “He was Air Force for eight of the last eleven years, a civilian employee at Chief Joseph for the last three.”
“The discharge-his employment change-coincides with the hand injury. Bet on it.”
“Is he our guy?” Gaynes asked from the front, where she watched the slow approach of the truck.
Boldt shrugged. He glanced out the window. LaMoia was on the porch of the open house, shaking hands and saying goodbye to Brimsley and Meyers, a pair of Narcotics detectives. Brimsley and Meyers were among the best shots on the force with handguns. Boldt had wanted them outside, on the playing field, at the time of the suspect’s arrival. If the surveillance went bad, he reasoned, case histories showed it would happen in the first two minutes. He wanted his best people out there. He knew Brimsley and Meyers well enough to judge them oversized; they were wearing police vests, he beneath his sport coat, she beneath a blue rain slicker. The two cops stopped on the path, turned, and waved goodbye, Brimsley shouting his thanks to the real estate agent, both officers facing the purple house slightly, ready for weapons fire.
Nicholas Hall left his truck and followed the path past the huge globe, his face reflecting the colors in the neon sign. He pushed the button. The doorbell was heard over the surveillance radio.
Boldt, tight as a knot, muttered, “Get him inside.”
The suspect took notice of Brimsley and Meyers next door. He then glanced around cautiously, suspiciously. He looked right at the police van. “Freeze,” Boldt said. “No one breathes.” Hall’s attention on his surroundings continued even after Emily answered the door. His attention focused on the two men struggling to hoist the car up onto the tow truck. The bomb squad crew was not particularly adept at car towing.
The fax machine began to whine. Boldt glanced hotly toward it as a poor copy of a black-and-white photograph of the suspect slowly wound out, an enlargement of a driver’s license photo. Nicholas Hall looked average in every way.
Into his phone, Boldt whispered, “Find out about that right hand.”
The hand. Even from a distance it was noticeable. Boldt snagged a pair of binoculars, glad to have the porch light. The hand. A single piece of red flesh with three fingernails growing out of the end. It looked as though the man had put his real hand into a pink ballerina slipper or a costume glove. But this glove would not come off. A moment of panic surged through Boldt at first sight of that hand: Could such a person climb and descend trees? Could he carve biblical references into a tree trunk? Boldt snatched up his phone and told the dispatcher to reach him on the radio if necessary. He ended the call on the cellular and dialed Lofgrin’s office, hoping the man had stayed late, as he often did.
Gaynes handed Boldt the fax of Hall’s face. Boldt accepted the fax but put it quickly aside.
At the front door, Hall continued to watch the two at the tow truck.
“Welcome,” the three in the van faintly heard Emily say as she greeted Hall. The microphone was some fifteen feet and a room behind her, yet it still grabbed some sound. “Come in,” she encouraged.
“You seen ’em tow cars around here before?” he asked her. “That something they do here up in the city?”
“All the time,” she lied.
“Ticket them, sure. But tow them?”
“They make more money towing them. What do you think it’s about, parking spaces?” she asked cynically. “Besides, what do you care?” she asked. “You’re okay in my drive.”
“One cool woman,” Daphne said under her breath.
“I’ll say,” Gaynes agreed.
One of Lofgrin’s assistants answered Boldt’s call. The boss had gone home. Boldt asked for his home phone. The assistant gave him the number for a car phone, adding, “He just left a few minutes ago.”
Boldt reached Lofgrin, who was in slow traffic on the floating bridge. The sergeant asked him, “Those tree carvings?”
“Yeah?”
“The guy was right-handed or left-handed?”
“I don’t believe we checked for that.”
Surveillance operations were conducted on a need-to-know basis. Lofgrin had no idea that Boldt was in a department-owned repossessed luxury van with his eyes on a possible suspect.
“We shot some macros, with the digital. My people can enlarge them. You want me to look at it, I can have them faxed right here to the car. Otherwise, they should be able to handle it for you.” Boldt had seen the inside of Lofgrin’s department-issued vehicle. Equipped with a Motorola Communication terminal, printer, cellular phone, and fax machine, it served as the Identification Division’s field office at crime scenes.
“I need it ASAP. I’m on a surveillance, Bernie.”
“Give me a number.”
Knowing his might be tied up, Boldt checked if Daphne was carrying her phone. She was. Boldt gave Lofgrin that number.
Lofgrin said, “Traffic sucks. That’s in our favor. I can get some work done. Right back to you.”
