Beyond Recognition

details of the fire were discussed. A burn pattern on wood known as “alligatoring” had steered the inspectors toward the center of the structure, where destruction was so severe there was literally no evidence to be gathered. The area of origin-an essential starting point for any arson investigation-was therefore impossible to pinpoint.

The longer the meeting went, the more anxious Boldt became. Reading between the spoken words, he experienced a sinking feeling that the fire’s intense heat had destroyed any and all indication of its origin. Worse, all six experts seemed both intimidated and surprised by the severity of the heat.

With everyone still present, Neil Bahan summed up the discussion for the sake of Boldt and his detectives. “It goes like this, Sergeant. We have the initial plume reported as a flash. Not an explosion. That’s worrisome, because it excludes a hell of a lot of known accelerants. Add to that the eyewitness reports of the height of the plume, and the flame itself being a distinct purple in color, and we figure we’re looking at liquid accelerants. We could make some guesses, but we’re not going to. The prudent thing to do is send our samples off to the state crime lab and test for hydrocarbons. That will point us to the specific fuel used, which in turn may give John and Bobbie a retail or wholesale source to check out.” LaMoia and Gaynes nodded. Gaynes scribbled down a note. “As it is, we’ll put it out to every snitch we got. This guy brags about it-as they love to do-and we nip him. Meanwhile, we go about trying to make sense of the rest of the evidence.”

“Which is?” Boldt questioned.

Bahan eye-checked his buddies and said, “I would rather wait and see what the lab tells us, but the deal is this: We’ve got some popcorn in the foundation’s concrete, some spalling. Fire suppression washed a lot of this evidence away and may have affected the rest of it, but what we don’t have is slag or heavy metals-both of which we would expect to see with liquid accelerants. But added to that we have some blue concrete right beneath the center of the house-quite possibly the area of origin. That’s bad shit, blue concrete. That’s something we don’t want to find, because it means this thing went off somewhere above two thousand degrees. If that’s right, it lops off another whole shitload of known accelerants and, quite frankly, gets out of our area of expertise.”

“ATF, maybe,” another of the fire inspectors suggested.

Bahan agreed. “Yeah, maybe we bring in the Feds or send some of the stuff down to Chestnut Grove, their Sacramento lab. See what they have to say.”

“So what you’re saying,” Boldt suggested, “is that the origin of the fire is unusual.”

Two of the Marshal Fives laughed aloud.

Bahan said, “You could say that, yes.”

“And you’re suggesting that we stick by the ruling of suspicious origin.”

“Most definitely. This sucker was torched, Sergeant.”

“We’re checking out her ex-husband, any boyfriends, employer, insurance policies, neighbors,” Boldt informed the visitors. “We’ll turn up a suspect, and when we do, maybe we send one of you guys into his garage to have a look-see at his workbench?”

“No shortage of volunteers for that assignment,” Bahan answered for the others. “This guy is good,” he explained. The others nodded.

Boldt bristled at the idea of an arsonist being considered talented. “She was a mom. Did you know? Seven- year-old boy.”

“He was in the fire?” one of the fire inspectors gasped, his face draining of color. It wasn’t difficult to spot the parents in this group.

“No. Home with his father, thank God,” Boldt answered. He imagined his own son Miles in a fire like that. “Thank God,” he muttered again.

Bahan said, “We turn it over to the lab and we see what we see. It’s really too early to make a decent appraisal. For the time being, it’s in the hands of the chemists.”

“We’ll continue the questioning,” Boldt told them. “Maybe something shakes out.”

The members of the Arson Task Force nodded, but Boldt’s own detective, John LaMoia, did not looked impressed. “John?” Boldt asked, wondering if he wanted to contribute.

“Nothing,” LaMoia replied.

It wasn’t nothing, and Boldt knew it. A feeling of impending dread accompanied him on his return to his office, where a blanket of telephone messages had collected like the falling leaves outside.

“Lieutenant Boldt?” a deep male voice asked at the door, misquoting his rank.

“Enough with the jokes,” Boldt complained, assuming LaMoia had put another rookie to work.

It wasn’t another rookie he faced. It was one of the four Marshal Fives from the meeting. He didn’t remember the name. He was a tall, handsome man with wide shoulders and dark brown eyes. He wore a full beard. He had big teeth. Scandinavian, Boldt decided. The sergeant came out of his chair and corrected his rank. The two shook hands. The other’s right hand was hard and callused. He wore his visitor’s badge crooked, clipped on hastily. A pager hung at his belt, and his boots were heavy leather. His hair was cut short, his sleeves rolled up. He reintroduced himself as Steven Garman.

“What district are you with?” Boldt asked.

Garman answered, “Battalion Four: Ballard, Greenwood.”

“I thought the meeting went well,” Boldt said.

“Yeah, I suppose,” Garman replied anxiously.

“Not for you?” Boldt attempted to clarify.

“Listen, Sergeant,” the other man said, leaning on the word, “we’re overworked and underpaid. Sound familiar? Sometimes we connect the dots, sometimes we don’t.”

Boldt wasn’t enjoying this. He wanted Garman to go away. “Paint by numbers,” Boldt said. “Those kind of dots.”

“Exactly.”

“So we don’t see the right picture.”

“I knew you’d understand. We see a picture but not the right one.” Garman was a huge man. Boldt was uncomfortable with him standing.

The sergeant borrowed a rolling chair from a nearby cubicle and pulled it up to his desk. He offered it to Garman, who viewed it suspiciously and said, “Maybe someplace a little quieter, a little more private.”

Boldt allowed, “If this is an attempt to put me at ease, it isn’t working.”

He had wanted to break the ice, but his visitor wasn’t amused. Garman looked around, searching for privacy.

“Come on,” Boldt said. He led him into B, a small interrogation room next to A, the Box, the interrogation room of choice. Boldt closed the acoustically insulated door. They took seats at a bare Formica table rimmed with short brown cigarette burns. “Let’s talk about those dots,” Boldt said.

“Everyone says you’re the go-to guy around here,” Garman said.

Boldt countered modestly. “I’m the old man around here, if that’s what you mean.”

“I’m told you’re willing to play hunches now and then.”

“My own hunches, yeah,” Boldt agreed. Boldt was currently in the doghouse with his lieutenant for playing a hunch. He didn’t need another. He had taken on an investigation that lay outside his department’s jurisdiction- defined by the incorporated city’s boundaries. A thirty-five-year-old man had been found dead and decomposing in the middle of the national forest not far from Renton. That in itself might not have been too unusual, except that this particular man was clad in SCUBA gear, head to toe, flippers to mask. The nearest lake was seven miles away.

Boldt had taken the job based on its unusual nature-though he was quick to point out to Lieutenant Shoswitz that he had not used one hour of SPD time on the investigation. Shoswitz’s argument was that by accepting the case Boldt had set a precedent. SPD was allowed to advise outside its jurisdiction, but Boldt had taken the case, assuming the position of lead detective, and this violated regulations.

“I’m pretty careful about playing hunches,” Boldt said.

That Boldt had solved the case in five phone calls was never discussed. Nor that, had Shoswitz added up the sergeant’s time-off-duty time-spent on the case, it would have amounted to less than one work day. Regulations were regulations.