“Yes,” she answered softly, wondering if this too were a lie. She thought him so special, and though it occurred to her that there were perhaps dozens, hundreds, just like him, she thought it wrong to lump people together. She refused to see it.
“If you could pick,” he said, “which one would you be?”
Such a simple question, but for her it seemed profound. She studied the inhabitants of the tank. One was long and thin and exceptionally beautiful and she singled it out for him.
“But he’s small,” Ben complained.
“She,” Daphne corrected, not knowing the fish’s sex.
“Not me. I’d go for size. Speed. That guy, maybe. I’d pick the shark, but that kind doesn’t eat other fish, only that stuff-what’s its name? — in the water.”
“Plankton.”
“Yeah, that stuff. So what’s the point of being a shark if you only eat that stuff? Maybe that guy over there,” he said, pointing. It was a big, ugly fish that looked menacing.
“Do you love her?” she asked him, having no idea where the question had come from and wishing immediately that she could withdraw it.
“Emily? Yeah. She’s the best. I know you don’t like her, but she’s really cool.”
“I never said I didn’t like her.”
“No, you didn’t say it, I guess,” he offered in a voice that bordered on complaint. He attempted to quote her: “I think it’s better to take people on their merits.” He crossed over to the opposing tank then, carefully picking the moment so as not to have to look at her. She felt herself slip into his path, obediently following behind. Felt herself reach out and nearly take his shoulders in her hands. But she was tentative in this approach and she never did actually touch him. Instead, she lowered her arms in unison, a drawbridge going down but not quite connecting, and allowed him to slip away from her, like a prayer silently spoken, wondering if the words had found a home.
41
The rock that Boldt and his investigators had started downhill began to run away from them, momentum and gravity prevailing.
The arrest of Nicholas Hall was broken by KOMO television and within minutes was the subject of talk radio. Both papers proclaimed Hall’s arrest in splashy front-page headlines. For Boldt, the public euphoria was subdued by a memo received by him the Monday morning after the arrest.
TO: Sergeant Lou Boldt, Homicide
FROM: Dr. Bernard Lofgrin, SID
RE: Nicholas Hall, # 432-876-5
Lou: FYI, Hall’s weight and
height do not agree with our
assessment of ladder impressions
dated Oct. 4th this year. The suspect
is twenty to thirty pounds heavy and,
by our estimates, three to five inches
tall (based on average weights) for
whoever climbed that ladder.
Furthermore, as so noted per our
recent telephone conversation, the
individual that climbed the tree at the
Branslonovich killing was most
definitely right-handed. Hall’s
disfigured right hand would suggest
he was not a viable suspect for
attendance at that crime scene. I will
write this all up for inclusion in the
file, but wanted to give you a first
look. Any questions, I’m
around.
— Bernie
They had the wrong man. An accomplice perhaps, a co-conspirator possibly-but not the man the papers had dubbed the Scholar. Boldt and Daphne had both sensed this from the start of the sting operation and had felt more certain of it throughout LaMoia’s interrogation, in which Hall detailed the theft, transportation, and sale of the binary rocket fuel. Worse, Hall’s story hung together well. A search of his Parkland mobile home, on the north boundary of the base, revealed no notepaper, no storage of hypergolic fuel, no ladder. Hall had given up most, if not everything, of what he knew about the hypergolic fuel. The man appeared to be a dead end. One positive note of the follow-up investigation was lab man Bernie Lofgrin’s decision to run an analysis of the ballpoint pen ink used in the threats, in hopes of discovering a like pen in Hall’s possession.
But Boldt knew the truth: The killer remained at large. The one blessing was that the publicity of Hall’s arrest had apparently scared off the arsonist-no fire had followed the most recent poem. Or had it merely delayed him?
He experienced an overwhelming bout of depression and frustration: so close, only to fail. He wanted an hour with a piano. He wanted Liz home. The kids.
The investigation rolled on, regardless of his wants. He took a walk downtown for forty-five minutes, up past the Four Seasons and down 5th Avenue’s fashion stores and office malls. He wanted a shot at what the kid knew. Kids saw a lot more than adults. Maybe a lead to the accomplice. Open him up with a lineup, something to jog his memory, work him into the smaller details. Pick his brain. He bought tea to go at a coffee stand by Nordstrom’s and came back up 4th, stopping to window-shop at Brooks Brothers, where a gray cashmere sweater costing most of a week’s pay teased him. He moved on, weary and worried. Pedestrians avoided him.
He used such walks to try to jog loose a fresh idea. He needed a fresh idea, if another life was to be saved. He mentally reviewed the most recent note:
Daphne had traced it to Rita Mae Brown. The ATF’s Casterstein had told them to let the next fire burn itself out-no water, no overhaul. Boldt understood that the fire could come any night, that another life could be lost. The responsibility he bore for that life was but one of the pressures he endured.
His present worries were twofold: the publicity generated by Hall’s arrest might invite copycat arsons; or it could push the Scholar either into hiding or, worse, into a frenzy of activity-as Daphne predicted-fearing his own arrest imminent.
Boldt’s best ideas came to him at strange times, so it was no real surprise to him that while coveting a gray cashmere sweater in a storefront window he hit upon a realization: With Hall’s arrest, the arsonist’s supply of accelerant would stop.
His cellular phone pressed to his ear, Boldt shouted people out of his way as he sprinted back toward quarters. Panting, he gasped through the phone to Shoswitz that they needed to conduct an immediate inventory of all fuel storage at Chief Joseph Air Force Base. Until that moment, under orders from the Captain of the Criminal Investigations Division, they had been intentionally leaving the Air Force in the dark, fearing a bureaucratic nightmare of jurisdictional infighting. “We blew it, Lieutenant. We had the trap all set, all perfectly baited, and no one was there to watch, to spring it.”
“What trap?” Shoswitz demanded.
“If I’m right, there has been a break-in at the Chief Joseph base within the last forty-eight hours.
When Boldt walked into the office twelve minutes later, Shoswitz was waiting by the elevators. “How in the
