any more.
“Does it have graphs?” he asked.
“I think the spreadsheet does, yes.”
“We’re doing graphs,” he said, tapping his homework.
He scratched at the paper with his eraser. How she wished she could erase those past few years of his life, clean the slate! She had the professional tools within her reach to begin the process, but Ben would have to want it.
“If I show you the laptop,” she tested, “will you tell me about Jack and your mother?”
“Like a trade?” he asked. “Are you trying to bribe me?”
“Absolutely,” she confessed. “I don’t know very much about you, Ben. It bothers me. It’s what makes close friends out of people: sharing. You know?”
“Will you tell me about this guy Owen?” he asked, sounding a little jealous.
“How-?” She cut herself off. He had overheard some of her phone conversations. Her crying? He probably knew more about her than she did him. Which one of them was the psychologist? she wondered. “Will you go trick- or-treating with me tonight?” He had not wanted anything to do with Halloween.
He set his pencil down and, facing her with a deadly serious face, asked, “If I agree, does this mean we have a relationship?”
Daphne bit back her grin and, when she felt herself losing it, turned her face away, so he couldn’t see. “Yes,” she said, and smiled widely, all the way over to the laptop.
46
The killer was still out there. Boldt felt certain of it, though as yet he had no conclusive proof.
Bobbie Gaynes had set up her office cubicle as an impromptu task force center. Even though Shoswitz had not allocated her time to Boldt’s resources, she refused to be shut out, pulling what amounted to a double shift and looking the worse for wear. On her wall hung several photographs of the early arsons, evidence photographs of the ladder impressions, and magnified close-ups of the cotton fibers mixed into the mud at the Enwright scene. There were photos of all four victims, including Branslonovich. Below these portraits hung a bad photocopy of Garman’s wife, eerily similar to the three dead mothers. Gaynes hung up the phone and told him, “Lofgrin has confirmed that the silver fibers are a silver fabric paint; the underlying blue is the actual color of the fabric. Second, commercially available Seahawk jerseys are not a sixty/forty blend-they’re twenty/eighty, polyester to cotton, so we can rule them out, which is good because they sell everywhere.”
“And that leaves?” Boldt asked.
“Silk-screen printers who handle towels or terry cloth,” she answered. “The lab is adamant about these being a spiral-twisted cotton-blend fiber typically seen in a towel or a terry-cloth robe. That works in our favor. We tried the jerseys even though they aren’t a twisted fiber-they seemed obvious because of the colors-but now we’re down to determining what companies produce this particular color in this particular blend and, alternately, which silk- screen companies have purchased that fabric.”
“I like it,” Boldt said.
“The larger textile mills are in the South and Northeast. I’m on that. The bad news is that there are more printers than you can shake a stick at-you can’t believe how many. And though you might think that if it’s sold here in Seattle it would also be silk-screened here, it ain’t necessarily so. If it’s cheaper in Spokane or Portland or Boise, that’s where it happens. And most of these silk-screen places are mom-and-pop shops, little independents that crank out sports uniforms, corporate golf shirts, you name it.”
“How many?” Boldt asked, dread replacing his flirtation with optimism.
She avoided a direct answer. “Both US West and Pac Bell have their Yellow Pages on CD ROM, which is handy.” She laid a hand on her personal computer. Only a few cops had gone to the expense of providing their own hardware.
“How many?” Boldt repeated. He sensed her reluctance to tell him, and that drove his curiosity.
“That’s the trouble. Six hundred ninety-seven printers in the Seattle area alone.”
Boldt felt the number across his face like a hand slap. When the entire seven-man squad had to make thirty or forty calls, they were stretched to the limit.
She spoke quickly and excitedly. Gaynes was part cheerleader. “We can rule out a whole bunch. The fast- copy places with twenty-five franchises don’t do silk-screening or fabric, and that cuts the list literally in half.”
It left them making over three hundred calls. Impossible, Boldt thought.
“Needless to say, we’re short a little manpower.”
Boldt was overwhelmed. He felt choked, as if his collar were too tight. With those numbers, pursuing the fibers was an exercise in futility. “We’re stewed,” he said.
“Have a little faith, Sergeant. Five years ago we would have needed a couple hundred volunteers to make the calls for us. You’ve used the university kids a couple of times”-she didn’t allow him to interrupt-“but that was
Who else but LaMoia? Boldt wondered, keeping quiet.
“-a woman friend who manages a telephone telemarketing service. You know, those awful prerecorded messages dialed directly into your home, selling aluminum siding. He’s checking her out in person, due back here any minute. Thinks he might be able to wangle a few hours of service out of her-her
“Same,” Boldt said.
“So, see? Maybe we reach them all. Maybe one of them hears the message and actually does something about it. The beauty is, if she lets us lease her 800 number, we can do the same for Spokane, Boise, Portland.” She lowered her voice to a soft whisper. “We pry a little informant money loose and divert it to this thing-the ultimate informer-and maybe we get lucky.”
She had clearly thought this through.
“It makes sense,” Boldt agreed, equally quietly. “Maybe that’s the direction we go. But let’s brainstorm it a minute and see where we get.”
He could sense her disappointment as she took up a pen and paper, prepared to jot down each thought. They took alternate turns, Gaynes first. “Cotton fibers,” she said.
“Silver paint, blue fabric.”
“Seahawk colors.”
“Silk-screen paint.”
“Sixty/forty blend.”
“The textile mills feed the wholesalers, the wholesalers the printers.”
“Contract work.”
“What’s that?” Boldt said.
“Contract work,” she repeated.
He nodded slowly.
“Similar fibers were found on your windows and in the mud by the ladder at Enwright’s.”
“Window washing,” he said.
“A rag maybe, a torn towel.”
“Windows,” Boldt repeated. It stuck in his thoughts. Why?
