“I
Daphne could hear the woman’s voice falter, and the tears begin. She struggled with her own emotions to keep from giving in to the other’s. Tricks! she reminded herself. Emily Richland was a professional liar, nothing more.
“He was dead. On the ground, his eyes open.” Emily broke down crying-sobbing-into the phone. If it was an act, it was a damn good one. “Ben,” she muttered, “lying there on the ground. Oh, God…. And then, just now-right before you called-a second image. All dark and a fence, and Ben’s face pressed up against it. He’s in trouble, I know he is! I know this. I’ve seen it! And I don’t know what to do about it!”
Daphne did not want to reveal the terror she was experiencing. The images of the boy were fixed in her head. To give the woman some encouragement seemed the best route. “Anything else you can tell me? Anything at all?” As a psychologist she simply could not allow herself to believe in paranormal activity; as a woman who loved this boy herself, she believed every word.
“A fence … darkness … chain link, you know? Looking through it. Boxes. Blue boxes.”
“Train cars?”
“I don’t know.”
“Containers. Ship containers?”
“I can’t see it clearly. Blue boxes…. fence … darkness.”
“I’ll call,” Daphne said. “If we find out anything, I’ll call.”
Emily Richland was still crying as Daphne hung up the phone.
One hell of an act indeed, if that’s what it was.
She needed no more courage than that call. She lifted the receiver and dialed Boldt’s cellular.
65
“Check it out,” Lofgrin said proudly, hoisting a pair of graphs up for Boldt to compare. “The one on the left was downloaded from the FBI database I told you about, every goddamn kind of ink manufactured. The one on the right is the chromatograph of the ink used on the Scholar’s threats.” The match, though not perfect, was unmistakable.
Boldt said, in a voice that sounded more like a prayer, “Tell me that two hundred thousand people in Seattle don’t own this same pen.”
“They don’t, not by a long shot. Maybe it helps us locate him. It’s from a company in St. Louis that specializes in cheap custom pens: giveaways. The kind that advertises in the back of magazines:
“No,
“We’re a long way from St. Louis, Lou. It’s not like a company like this would be flooded with Seattle orders.”
“How many Seattle clients?”
“How many? How should I know? That’s
“The shape, you mean?”
“Shape, size, color. All that would narrow the field.”
“
“And what the fuck are you going to do?” the man called out indignantly. “I am
Without looking back, Boldt broke into a jog and shouted into the hallway, “I’m going to get a description of the pen for you. I’m going to get you the model.”
Kotch was already at work at the video monitor when Boldt entered the smoke-filled room. The big man waved the air. “Hasn’t anybody here heard that this building has been no smoking for about seven years?”
The offending cigarette dangled from Kotch’s pinched lips. “So arrest me.” He exhaled.
On the large monitor, Boldt saw a portion of the grainy video shot inside Garman’s rooming house. “Fast- forward,” Boldt ordered.
“I was just-”
Boldt interrupted, repeating the order. He steered him to the section of tape where the contents of the desktop were revealed. First the envelopes, then the cards. In the background, Boldt saw the tin can filled with pens and pencils. He directed the man to freeze-frame.
“Can you enlarge this?” Boldt asked.
“We’ve got some cool toys, Sergeant. We can enlarge anything, though we’ll lose resolution pretty fast on a tape this small.”
“Give me the pens and pencils,” Boldt said, pointing to the screen. Static sparked off the tip of his finger, and Boldt jumped back with the spark.
“A little tense, are we?” Kotch inquired.
The can of pens and pencils grew ever larger on the screen. What writing may have been on the pens was lost immediately, but it became quickly apparent that of the few items in the can, three of the pens were the same-button-operated ball points, short and thick. Cheap pens. Just what Lofgrin needed.
“Can you print that?”
“It’s not a very clear image. I can doctor it up some.”
“No time. Print it. It’s gorgeous. It’s exactly what we need.”
“The pens?” Kotch questioned earnestly. “You’re interested in a bunch of junk pens?”
“Interested? With those pens, the Scholar just signed his own death warrant.”
The printer began to sing.
Boldt smiled for the first time in days.
66
Ben pressed his face closer to the chain link fence outside the automated gate to the U-Stor-It facility, his fingers laced through the metal webbing. The Face had evidently used the keypad to open the gate, which was now closed. And although Ben was curious to find out where the guy had gone to, once inside, his eye was not on the endless rows of storage units but on the pay phone outside the door marked OFFICE.
That pay phone called to him. Up and over the fence, a quick run across the open pavement (that to Ben seemed a mile wide), and over to that phone. Call Daphne. Tell her the Face was here at the U-Stor-It on Airport Way. A hero. Back over the fence. Ride like hell. A plan. Pretty simple at that. Hardest part would be the climb over, and again on the way back, but he could climb sixty-foot trees so why not a ten-foot-high chain link fence?
He looked around for some options. Airport Way seemed about a thousand miles long in both directions, and with virtually no traffic. The industrial businesses that lined the street were closed, every one of them. He remembered passing an old rundown hotel way back there, but it looked a lot scarier than that telephone only twenty yards away.
The thing that tore at him was he knew it was wrong. He could feel it clear down in his stomach. Climbing the fence was no different from climbing into that blue pickup truck. He wondered where to draw the line between
