wrong? “One hour at the Lux-Wash,” she repeated dryly.
“I can make it sooner if you want. But no later,” he cautioned.
“An hour is fine. Plenty of time.”
“An hour then. Park to the east out on Eightieth. I’ll pull past. I won’t honk or anything; you’ll have to be watching. You’ll come in behind me and we pull into the line that way: me directly ahead of you. Decline the interior cleaning. That means you can stay in your car and won’t go into the waiting room. You’ll need a full tank. Maybe a snack. Animal Crackers,” he blurted out, as if picking her snack.
“Miles,” she said, suddenly understanding. She had been around the boy enough to make that connection.
His eyes flashed angrily. “Maybe an apple. Granny Smiths.”
“Got it.” It
Genuinely concerned, he asked her, “You’re sure you don’t mind?” He glanced once again toward the cash register as if expecting someone else.
“One hour at the Lux-Wash,” she repeated.
“Do exactly as I’ve told you,” he stated harshly. Then he stood, the chair legs crying against the floor.
“Yes,” she agreed.
“Don’t follow out for several minutes.”
“No.”
“That’s important. Several minutes.”
“I understand.” She didn’t at all.
He walked out of the cafe, filling the light in the doorway, moving into silhouette, which removed all identity. It was raining again. Gray begetting gray. She wanted springtime. She wanted Boldt well again. She kept track of the time on her watch, knowing from experience that minutes took forever to pass when she was rattled. A ferry sounded, its call haunting and lonely. It reminded her of him, vacant and distant and casting no reflection.
She checked her watch again. Three minutes had passed. In fifty-seven more she was due at the car wash.
She waited for him, parked on 80th Street North, her attention trained on the outboard rearview mirror. He was five minutes late, which was not like him. She understood the car wash routine. They had used similar tricks before. Life as a cop was part deception. Of all the cops on the force, she was the most devoted to Boldt.
His Chevy pulled past. No acknowledgment. She couldn’t see into his car through the light drizzle, but she suspected Miles was in there.
She remained attentive as she followed him into the car wash entrance.
The Chevy rounded the back corner, and an attendant, armed with a long vacuum hose, arrived at the driver’s door carrying an umbrella. Boldt waved him off.
Daphne pushed the SEND button on the cell phone at the same time as she rolled down her driver’s window and also declined the interior work. Two in a row was too much for the attendant. He looked at her with a slack jaw and asked, “No?”
“No,” she answered definitely, rolling up the window and hoping Boldt would answer his own cellular.
The Chevy pulled into the foaming shower of soap and spray followed a moment later by her Honda, both cars swallowed by the machinery. The rinse water followed, and immediately behind that, powerful jets of air that drove rivulets of water out across the hood and up the windshield like a silver fan. Within that blur, Boldt emerged from his car carrying a large child seat with his son strapped inside. In his other hand he carried a duffle bag. The exchange happened quickly, and in the bending, distorted light of the car wash, Boldt appeared to jump across the front of her car and, suddenly, was wrenching open her side door and working the car seat into the back and fixing a seat belt across it as he moved to keep pace with the wash conveyor. He handed her a crushed and wrinkled sheet of paper saying something about it being “their address.” He told her not to stop at the end of the wash-he would pay for her. He added, “You’re not to use your cell phone for any reason.” The car door thumped shut. Soaking wet, Boldt hurried and reentered the Chevy just before it emerged from the throat of the machinery.
At a red light she reached down and unfolded the piece of paper he had handed her. Katherine Sawyer. Boldt’s sister. A street address in Wenatchee, Washington. A phone number. A long drive ahead of her.
Where was Sarah? she wondered. A moment later, another, more terrifying thought occurred: Was this the question Boldt did not want asked?
CHAPTER 24
Boldt sequestered himself in his office, phones off, to decide what to do, well aware that whatever his decision, it would determine not only his future but his daughter’s as well.
The weather did not coincide with his mood, the heavy cloud cover having given way to warm sunlight the color of daffodils. He pulled down the office’s slatted blinds to darken the room, but ended up with a striped floor, desk, walls and chair, surrounded appropriately enough in a cage of light. Jailed, just as he felt.
The kidnapper might have asked for money; for all of Boldt’s worldly goods; he might have asked that Liz use her banking authority in some way, a false account, a fake loan; but instead he asked the impossible: that Boldt subvert an investigation.
In the balance hung his daughter’s life. There was not, therefore, any decision to be made-the choice was obvious. And yet Boldt found himself engaged in debate, understanding how the Pied Piper had kept from being caught, had frustrated Flemming and his team, had moved city to city with a license to pluck infant children from their parents’ arms. It was no wonder he hadn’t been caught, that investigators had so few leads; the deck had been stacked in each city.
Once committed, there was no turning back. His powers far-reaching, the lieutenant of Intelligence had only to pick up the phone to initiate interdepartmental wiretapping. If he were to compromise the investigation, then he needed every piece of it, every whisper, every consideration. Information was everything. He had to know it all. He ran the names off to the civilian who ran Tech Services: “Hill, Mulwright, LaMoia, Gaynes, Lofgrin.” He waited for some kind of acknowledgment. When the man on the other end failed to speak, Boldt said, “Do you have that?”
“I’ve got it. Record all of them,” he stated. “Twenty-four hour loops or real time?”
“Real time.” He added, “What happened to live monitoring?”
“This is too many lines, unless you can provide the personnel.”
“No other choices?”
“AI,” the man offered, “artificial intelligence. It’s a new system, prone to bugs, but we’ve used it a couple times to good effect.”
“You lost me.”
“The software monitors the phone lines, listening for key words. You put in ‘coke’ or ‘smack’ and if the words come up, the conversation is flagged. When it works, it works beautifully, but the bugs aren’t out. It crashes from time to time; I gotta be honest with you.”
He ordered the phone lines monitored by AI.
To wiretap lines out of office required warrants, and therefore a visit to a judge. Boldt worked with only one judge, the most liberal in the state-this judge had been passed to him by the former lieutenant of the squad, like a mentor.
After hearing Boldt’s arguments, viewing the numbers requested and understanding their significance, the judge asked only one question of him. “I take it you see no other way to monitor the situation, or you wouldn’t ask.”
“There’s an insider,” Boldt said blankly, knowing full well he was describing himself. “Has to be. Someone compromising the investigation. Steering it off course. We find that person, and the investigation just might have a fighting chance.”
The gray head nodded. The pen came out of the drawer. The signature went down. Boldt had authority to wiretap the FBI.
