Beyond Recognition

From his tree he activates the pressure switch-he could retrofit any remote-control toy to do the trick. Not a big deal. He can deactivate if necessary, should the kids return. And there’s the kicker: Deactivated, the drains don’t work well but the place doesn’t blow. Activated, the first time she flushes a toilet-boom! Running a little sink water probably wouldn’t do it. A toilet, five gallons all at once-boom! A plunger, same thing. If both parts of the hypergolic are in the same stack and we go messing around, we could make one hell of a Roman candle. Know what I mean?”

The next few minutes progressed painstakingly slowly. The woman technician maintained a running description of every wrench turn, every joint loosening. Finally, she announced, “Okay, I see an opening to a riser up ahead. I’m twenty inches to the right.”

“Good. Let’s follow it. But be careful, for God’s sake. That membrane may be transparent.”

“Copy.”

Wincing, Lofgrin began nervously stroking the stubble on his chin, as if rubbing himself clean. The change in behavior made Boldt restless. The lab man pulled off his Coke-bottle glasses and cleaned them on his shirttail. Once the glasses were in place, he took to scratching the top of his head. “She’s in the vent stack … heading up the vent stack…. If she breaks whatever barrier he has in place-” He didn’t complete the sentence; there was no need. Their eyes met-Lofgrin’s the size of golf balls behind the glasses-and Boldt understood that all the confidence in their techniques would not save this woman’s life, did not guarantee this woman’s life, and that Bernie Lofgrin was directly responsible. Lofgrin, dropping his eyes to the walkie-talkie, said in a coarse voice, “She’s a good kid. A damn good kid. Hell of a worker. You hope for her kind. You don’t often get them.” Into the radio, he spoke in a voice suddenly stronger, for he would not allow her to hear any uncertainty. “What’s the scenery like?”

The woman’s voice sounded strained as she reported. “Thirty-one inches. Condensation on the pipe walls has increased noticeably.”

Lofgrin said to Boldt, “We’re close.” Into the walkie-talkie, he said, “Let’s use half-inch increments.”

“Copy.”

Boldt felt overly warm. He could picture the small camera creeping up the inside of the pipe.

Lofgrin said to him, “This is a little like aiming a pin at a balloon but not wanting it to pop.”

“I understand,” Boldt replied.

“Serious condensation,” the woman reported. “It’s fogging the lens. Blurring it.”

“Shit,” Lofgrin hissed, and glanced once at Boldt with wild eyes. The sergeant saw beads of perspiration covering the man’s brow.

“My image is cloudy,” the technician reported. “I’m not liking this.”

Lofgrin directed her, “Let’s retract, clean it off, and try again.” He added, “Make note of your distance.”

“Thirty-three and one half inches,” she reported.

“Copy,” Lofgrin said.

“Retracting.”

Lofgrin nodded, as if she could see him. He wiped his brow. To Boldt he said, “That’s why we use our people instead of bomb squad: She may have been up against the membrane right then. It may have been the membrane blurring the lens, not water, not condensation. She knows that. A different guy, someone who doesn’t know this gear intimately-” He left it hanging there, left Boldt with an image of the walls of his house sucked in and white-hot light flooding from the windows.

“The lens is occluded,” the woman reported. “I’m cleaning it and trying an application of defogger.”

“Condensation,” Lofgrin explained to Boldt. “So she was right. Score one for us.”

A minute or two passed. Boldt glanced at Bahan and Fidler, who had joined them.

“Well?” Boldt asked.

Bahan answered, “The pressure switch makes sense to me. It allows the victim to actually light off the fire.”

Fidler said, “It leaves it a little bit random-a little more exciting.”

“Opinions?” Boldt asked.

Bahan said, “We circulated the artist’s sketch to every firehouse in the city. Maybe we get lucky.”

There was no one standing within fifty yards; a line of uniformed patrol officers was holding back a sea of onlookers, including a group of reporters. Fear is like fire, Boldt thought: It infects randomly, and with great haste.

“All set,” the woman said by radio. “We’ll give it another try.”

She reported when she made the turn into the vertical stack, and again at twenty, and then at thirty inches. She counted off in quarter-inch increments from thirty and one-half. Boldt tensed with each report. Lofgrin inquired about condensation and she answered. “Looking better this time. I’ve got a good image…. Stopping at thirty-three and a half.”

“Image?”

“Going to thirty-three and three-quarters … thirty-four. Okay…. Okay ….” Her voice sounded strained over the radio. “I’m picking up a slightly reflective black image. Okay…. Okay…. This is a foreign object. Repeat”-she was nearly shouting into the radio-“a foreign object obstructing the passage. Black plastic.” Boldt felt heat prickle his scalp. She said, “I’m going a little closer: thirty-four and a half. Copy?”

“Thirty-four and a half,” Lofgrin acknowledged.

“Maybe send a bomb boy in to look at this. I’ve got a rubber O-ring holding it in place. It appears to be a detonator.”

“I fuckin’ knew it!” Lofgrin exclaimed to Boldt. “They don’t pay me the big bucks for nothing.”

The joke was not lost on Boldt; the pay was horrible. “What’s next?” he asked.

“We send in the bomb man to have a look, and then we attempt to neutralize. We’re looking at about eighteen feet of four-inch vent stack packed with hypergolics, Lou. We’re talking Apollo Eleven here. If we fuck this up-” He didn’t finish the sentence. “We should evacuate a few more houses. I did not expect this kind of volume.”

Boldt’s knees felt weak. He whispered, “My family was in there. Liz, the kids!”

Thirty minutes passed incredibly slowly. The bomb man confirmed the existence of a detonator. A wet-vac vacuum canister was sent to the roof. Tension filled the air as the top membrane was intentionally punctured and the vent stack’s contents carefully removed.

One of Lofgrin’s assistants approached him and spoke to him in private, out of earshot from Boldt. Lofgrin returned to Boldt’s side and announced proudly, “Silver and blue cotton.”

“What?”

“We lifted some fibers from the windows we know he washed. You remember those fibers we found alongside the ladder impressions at Enwright? Muddy. We didn’t get a very good look at color, they didn’t wash well, but PLM-Polarized Light Microscopy-told us they were a synth/cotton blend. I ruled out window washing at the time because cotton sucks for windows, it leaves itself all over the glass. Newsprint is good, oddly enough, but not cotton. But this guy was washing windows-Liz saw that. And a synth/cotton blend is better than pure cotton, at least. But a silver and blue washrag or towel? Mean anything to you?”

“Silver and blue. The Seahawks,” Boldt replied. Seattle’s failing football team.

“Bingo,” said Lofgrin. “And to my knowledge we don’t sell Terrible Towels to our fans the way they do in a place like Pittsburgh, right? Do we?”

“I don’t follow the Seahawks,” Boldt confessed, thinking: Charles Mingus, Scott Hamilton, Lionel Hampton, Oscar Peterson, but not the Seahawks.

“What I’m saying is, This is unique evidence, Lou.”

“Silver and blue towels,” Boldt answered, his heart racing a little faster, his eyes trained intently on the operation being conducted on the roof of his house.

“That’s right.” Lofgrin said, “Department stores? A uniform? How the fuck do I know? That’s your job.”

Boldt said nothing, images of his house going up in flames occupying his thoughts. Towels were the farthest things from his mind.

“We have fiber samples now, Sergeant. We can compare these to any evidence you might provide us. Understood?”

“We’ll search Nicholas Hall’s trailer and vehicle again, this time for blue and silver towels or uniforms or T- shirts,” Boldt said, still watching the house.