Boldt looked up from this second note. “It’s a car wash,” he said.
The building momentum that captured Boldt’s investigation had exercised its influence on Bernie Lofgrin’s identification technicians. In the same afternoon, the lab techs determined that the blue and silver cotton fiber evidence collected from the insides of the windshields on the cars of two of the arson victims matched, not only one to the other but to the fibers found on Boldt’s kitchen window and those collected at the base of the ladder at the Enwright fire. It was just such evidence that gave a lock on a case, and as Lofgrin was pursuing Boldt to give him the good news, his assistants were tracing the sale of that particular silver ink to a total of only five silk-screen printers in the Northwest.
The fifth printer contacted, Local Color, in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, recognized the order by its color combination: hand towels ordered by Lux-Wash and Detailing, Inc., Seattle, Washington, printed in silver and green ink on a blue background-Seahawk colors. The towels carried the Lux-Wash logo and the addresses of the chain’s three locations. On the reverse side was printed, GO SEAHAWKS! Local Color was on their third printing, of fifteen hundred towels.
Back in the conference room, which was churning with activity at a deafening roar, Boldt sat down heavily into a chair. He said to Detective Bobbie Gaynes, “So it could be any one of fifteen hundred Lux-Wash customers.”
“One thousand,” the detective corrected. “The last five hundred haven’t been shipped yet. And no, I don’t think it’s a customer. This is a yuppie scrub. Eleven bucks a wash, if you can believe it. Customer gets out and goes inside and drinks espresso while the wheels go down the line. Total vacuum, full wash and optional wax, and windows
“Three locations,” Gaynes said.
“Two in the city, one in Bellingham,” LaMoia informed him, reading a briefing note.
There was so much talk, so much urgent excitement in the room that Boldt felt tempted to stand up and call for a time-out. But better judgment intervened, for he could see the same desire on Shoswitz’s face, and he learned from seeing that expression. The team had worked long, hard, unthankful hours, both as individual detectives and combined as a squad. To mute that enthusiasm was to rob them of energy; they were running on vapors as it was. Boldt assessed the situation and contained his impatience, grabbing as much as he could from the words hurled at him.
“We’re pulling employment tax records,” Gaynes announced.
“He may not be on the payroll,” advised Daphne. “He’ll work part time, possibly for cash.”
Lieutenant Shoswitz, listening in, cautioned, “We run everything we have. There’s no jumping to conclusions. Acquire and assess. Collect and evaluate. Don’t assume anything.”
A uniform agreed with Daphne. “If he’s drying windshields, he’s working for cash and tips. That’s the bottom of the food chain at a car wash. Those guys aren’t on payroll because they don’t last long enough.”
LaMoia added his opinion. “Our boy Jonathan has been at this awhile.”
Daphne said, “He may have worked part-time at several car washes. The car wash is his trolling phase.”
Considering this important, Boldt asked, “Do we have a list of all full-service car washes?”
“We do,” called out a uniformed patrol officer. She waved a piece of paper in the air. A hand snatched it away, and it came down a series of passes to reach Boldt. She said, “Seven that we’ve identified within our jurisdiction, including the two belonging to Lux-Wash.”
“He moves around?” Shoswitz asked.
Daphne spoke up. “Not by choice.” She met Boldt’s eyes. “He carries that face around with him. He’s not comfortable meeting new people, establishing himself in a scene. He moved around a lot as a child. It’s not his way to move around as an adult.” She added, “If it were, he would be gone by now. He’s a loner, a man who does what he pleases. He’s been getting his way a good long time now. That works for and against us. He was feeling quite confident until we got Hall. That upset him. On the other hand, his father’s confession has probably angered him. It’s hard for him to punish his father if we’ve beaten him to it.”
Boldt found the way she seemed so familiar with the suspect unsettling. It was as if she had interrogated Jonathan Garman. Boldt told the gathering, “The plastic mask our young witness thought he saw was this guy’s skin. No known photos, but the reconstruction was crude. He’s believed to be badly disfigured.”
“We initiate surveillance of the three Lux-Washes immediately,” Shoswitz stated, as if this were an original idea. A couple of the detectives suppressed their smirks.
Boldt said to the gathering, “Special Ops will establish clandestine video surveillance on the two Lux-Wash operations within our turf.” He pointed to the young uniform. “You have the addresses,” he stated, passing along the sheet containing the information. “Run this down to Special Ops, fill them in. We need a minimum of two teams. I want audio and video, real time and taped. If this guy so much as clears his throat, I want to know about it. Have them contact me when they’re ready.”
The kid took off at a run. Boldt remembered having that kind of enthusiasm for the job. To LaMoia he said, “Contact Bellingham and ask if we can post this car wash. If not, they cover it for us. But we want that thing under a microscope as soon as possible. Today, not tomorrow, not day after tomorrow.”
“Got it,” LaMoia answered. He spun in his chair, scooted across the small space, and grabbed for a phone. He wasn’t going to leave the room, wasn’t going to take a chance he might miss something. Boldt knew then that the man would make a hell of a squad sergeant. He experienced a sense of relief, and this both surprised him and told him something about himself.
The phones in the room rang regularly. Each time one purred, Boldt hoped it was Elizabeth but then realized he had not forwarded his calls to the briefing room. He ordered one of the uniforms to take care of this for him. The guy seemed thrilled to be given a job.
“Meanwhile,” he said loudly, in order to win the attention of those at the table and beyond, “just to cover our bases, we need employment records for the other five luxury car washes.”
“He’s at one of the Lux-Washes,” Daphne interrupted, contradicting him.
Boldt overrode her. “All five. The name of every owner, every employee, from the present back six months. No tears,” he added, meaning he would take no excuses for failure.
The deputy prosecuting attorney spoke up for the first time. Samantha Richert was in her early fifties, pale, grayish-blond hair thinning, a not unattractive face on a not unattractive body, but the kind of appearance that got lost quickly in a crowd. She wore black leggings under a gray suit. Richert was herself gray in every way; she had succumbed to the skies a decade or two earlier. She had spent fifteen years as a public defender but had switched sides seven years ago after an inmate beat her up badly in a failed attempt to rape her. She had gray eyes and wore a white gold wedding band that she had taken to wearing some months earlier, though to Boldt’s knowledge she was unmarried and wasn’t even dating.
Richert said, “What evidence do we have against this man?” She looked at Shoswitz, Boldt, and then across the room at Daphne. “I smell a lynching party here. Not these towels, I hope. By your own admission,” she said, looking at Gaynes, “over a thousand of these towels have been given away for free.”
“He’s a suspect is all,” Boldt explained. “All we have to do is justify surveillance.”
“Agreed, and you’re fine there, but we’re going to need some positive linkage. If we’re going to walk this guy all the way to death row, we’re going to need some serious evidence along the way.”
“We’ll get it,” Boldt answered.
Shoswitz watched the events transpiring as would a spectator at a tennis match, his eyes darting left, right, left. Boldt could feel the man’s eagerness to enter the debate and knew that, typical of Shoswitz, he would not wade into the water but jump, causing something of a splash. The lieutenant, like everyone else in that room, was clearly feeling the pressure.
“You need him to lead you to this stolen fuel-something like that,” Richert suggested. She wasn’t being antagonistic, but her questions were probing to the point that Boldt felt uncomfortable.
Daphne drew everyone’s attention as she spoke. “A woman is going to die tonight if we don’t do something- and I’m
