hell did you know about that break-in?”
Boldt answered, “I’m going to get LaMoia. Tell Bernie to rally some technicians. We treat it as a crime scene. We
“Yeah, but how the hell did you know?” Shoswitz barked at his sergeant.
Boldt didn’t stop to answer, but he turned and said, “Supply and demand.”
Chief Joseph Air Force Base was right out of a film studio back lot: parklike grounds interspersed with ugly shoe-box barracks and tightly grouped three-bedroom ranch-style brick houses for officers. With nine hundred family units and over one thousand dorm units, it had once employed or played home to 4,800 military personnel, 6,200 dependents, and 2,400 civilians, meaning its average population had once been over thirteen thousand people. It had its own movie theater, bowling alley, golf course, day-care center, beauty shop, bookstore, and PX. Base population was currently two hundred military, one hundred sixty dependents, and seventy-six civilians. A ghost town covering over two thousand acres, including what had once been the third largest airport in the state. The streets were straight and curbed and deserted. Grass grew out of cracks in the pavement. Boldt and LaMoia rode in the front seat, Shoswitz alone in the back. They followed a sheriff’s vehicle that followed an FBI vehicle that followed an ATF vehicle that followed a Military Police Jeep complete with camo green, black, and brown paint.
The base commander was a surprisingly soft-looking man in his fifties. The FBI team, led by a man named Sanders whom Boldt knew well, did most of the talking. The negotiations began to bog down, at which point LaMoia, uninvited to participate by anyone, said, “We’ve got several people dead, sir. We think we know exactly what was stolen-hypergolic fuel, but we need to know in what quantity. I for one would just love to listen to you guys jaw all day, but meantime we know for a fact that this wacko is preparing yet another fish fry. So what say we cut to the chase and you give us some keys to the appropriate buildings while you gentlemen rub the gums?”
Everyone in attendance stared at LaMoia dumbfounded. To which LaMoia, who could never keep his mouth shut, said, “Ah, come on, people! This is bullshit. We haven’t got the time.”
Boldt caught himself holding his breath. The base commander nodded to a uniformed aide standing at his side, and the young kid hurried inside and returned with a ring of keys, which he passed to his superior. The commander clasped his thick hand around the keys and said, “We will certainly cooperate to our fullest with an active homicide investigation, but at the same time it is imperative that we
Shoswitz objected bitterly to military CID attempting to lead the investigation. Boldt grabbed his lieutenant firmly by the elbow and squeezed, expressing an attitude of cooperation-an act for which the hot-headed Shoswitz would later thank him.
The first of the buildings was called Arsenal D and was on the far western side of an enormous airstrip. Arsenal D was, in fact, a former jet aircraft hangar, in all appearances an oversized Quonset hut, ribbed galvanized sheet metal walls and roof, the latter with dull ivory skylights, the former with a minimum of windows. There were nine men involved in the fact-finding expedition, including Lofgrin’s three-member forensic team and a pair of base MPs. In private, LaMoia whispered to Boldt that once CID arrived from McChord the trouble would begin. Special Agent Sanders led the way. A bright shiny padlock came off a bent and rusted door that swung open on complaining hinges.
One of the uniformed MPs explained that during morning rounds on Saturday between 8 and 9 A.M., the door had been discovered pried open. Lofgrin’s team began work on the door itself immediately, photographing and dusting for prints. CID would later complain about this intrusion. Boldt and the others followed Sanders inside.
The sergeant was immediately struck by the effect of perspective. From outside, the hangar had seemed quite large; once inside, its size tripled. At the top of the arch of the curving roof there was perhaps sixty feet of clearance; the far wall felt as if it were a football field away. Between the two walls and perhaps forty feet high in twenty-two rows, each ten barrels wide, were stacked dark blue fifty-five gallon drums looking like spools of sewing thread. There had to be several thousand of them, Boldt realized, perhaps two hundred thousand gallons of fuel or more. Five gallons of that fuel, when mixed with its second element, could level a standard home. The firepower represented by this hangar was so staggering that at first, while the other men followed the MP down an endless aisle formed by the towering stacks of drums, Boldt stood transfixed, absorbing the absurdity of it all. Hall could have dipped into any one of these drums, siphoning off a few gallons here and there; in typical government fashion, the overkill, the embarrassment of riches, would provide the cover needed. An accurate inventory, especially given the small size of the crew on the base, seemed an impossibility-months, perhaps years away.
Boldt had not realized that LaMoia had remained with him, standing only a few feet behind his sergeant, respectfully awaiting orders. There were times, Boldt thought, when LaMoia actually resembled a cop.
Eyeing the thousands of drums, Boldt said, “He could have enough fuel to burn a dozen Dorothy Enwrights, a hundred! We’ll never know.”
Shaking his head, John LaMoia said, “God bless America.”
42
Ben missed Emily. Daphne wouldn’t answer any of his questions about her, pretending she didn’t exist. He was shuttled back and forth, between talks with Susan, school classes with juveniles in detention, and evenings with Daphne. He used to think he had it bad living with Jack Santori, putting up with the parade of drunken women and the awful groaning downstairs late at night. But isolation was worse. The only thing keeping him from running away was Daphne’s threat to put Emily out of business. Ben wouldn’t do that for anything, not even his own happiness.
When Daphne showed up in the middle of classes, Ben knew it meant trouble. Anything out of the ordinary routine meant trouble. She briefly consulted with the teacher and Ben was excused, to the heckling of others. He met up with Daphne in the hallway, his heart beating fast with concern.
She was wearing black jeans, a sweater, and a leather jacket. She carried a large purse by a thick strap over her shoulder.
“We need to ask a favor of you, Ben.”
“Who, you and Susan?”
“Boldt and I. The sergeant.”
“I don’t like him.”
“You should,” she said, a little stunned by his remark. “It’s good to have him on your side.”
He was loath to admit it, but he liked Daphne. He even felt sorry for her in a way, because all she seemed to do was work and talk on the phone. She said she liked to go on a run in the evenings, but she’d only managed one run since he’d been staying with her. “What kind of favor?”
“Sergeant Boldt wants to ask you some questions. Show you some pictures. You know what a lineup is?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe do a lineup.”
He didn’t want to show her how he felt about any of this. “What if I don’t want to?” he asked sarcastically.
“Then I talk you into it,” she answered honestly.
“And how are you going to do that?”
“Bribery, probably.”
“Like what?”
She answered with a question. “How about seeing Emily?”
He felt like shouting a resounding “Yes!” but tried instead to hide his feelings, not give her too much leverage.
“It can’t be at her place,” Daphne said. “Maybe at the library, somewhere like that. I can work on it.”
