It was Gaynes who had put him onto this over the phone; she had followed the Taurus from the Park and Ride to Sea-Tac, where the driver, a male, had parked it on the sky bridge level and then lost her. Boldt took the male to be Roger Crowley, the car having been left for his wife. Boldt had ordered Gaynes to drill the Taurus’s taillight.
Drilling taillights was something Boldt had learned from an ATF agent named Reisnick twelve years earlier. Vehicular surveillance, even with a team of three or four tails, had less than a thirty percent success rate, contrary to its representation in film and on television. Improved technology, namely Global Positioning, had permanently changed things, but that required the surveillance team to place a transmitter on the suspect vehicle-SPD’s planned course of action. In the right hands, a drilled taillight was nearly as good as GPS. The tiny hole in the taillight emitted an unexpectedly brilliant spike of white light, laserlike in its quality, that could be seen clearly at a distance of several blocks, or from a helicopter. It singled out a vehicle from all others. Though less effective, the technique even worked in daylight hours as the brakes were applied; at nighttime it was foolproof.
Boldt’s challenge was to double-cross SPD’s attempts to follow Lisa Crowley and to get the suspect safely out of the airport, while still keeping her under surveillance himself.
To accomplish this, Gaynes had drilled the taillight. He and LaMoia had assembled a motley crew that included a variety of snitches hungry for a hundred-dollar hit and waiting for orders.
The question remained: Would it work?
CHAPTER 76
The Taurus backed out of its parking space just as Boldt reached Gus Griswold on his cellular. Griswold had been an SPD informer for seven years. He worked part-time as a butcher for one of the supermarket chains. He lived out of the back of a Ford Country Squire, which he referred to as his mobile home.
“You on top of this?” Boldt asked the man.
“You want me on top of her? I thought you just wanted me to follow.” All snitches were wise-asses. The headlights from the Taurus threw long shadows across the concrete. Boldt spotted the drilled taillight without any problem. Gus Griswold’s rusted Ford pulled out of a parking space right behind that tiny white light.
“You see that taillight?” Boldt asked.
“Later,” Griswold said. The line went dead. The two cars disappeared into the guts of the parking garage, their engine noise fading.
While Special Ops’ identification of Crowley played out in his right ear, Boldt cut through a tangle of parked vehicles in the darkened garage. He caught a last glimpse of Griswold’s taillights as the snitch followed Crowley down the spiral exit ramp. Boldt broke into a run heading for the fire stairs, aware that Special Ops had closed two of the three exit lanes and had placed an SPD undercover cop behind the garage’s only open cash register window. The SPD plan was to fix a GPS transmitter to whatever vehicle the suspect drove out of the garage, rental or not. The cashier was to intentionally drop the rental contract or the parking receipt as it was being passed to the driver. The cashier would then quickly leave the booth as if to retrieve it and, in the process, slip the magnetized GPS transmitter onto the undercarriage of the car. From then on, Special Ops would be able to track the vehicle’s movement and location electronically, either from the command van or the Public Safety Building, as long as the transmitter remained within the cellular telephone network.
Special Ops-“Zulu”-also had four surveillance vehicles in place. These vehicles, called trailers, were to rotate line-of-sight surveillance, keeping the suspect in view at all times. A dozen SPD patrol cars were established along the more commonly used routes awaiting instructions.
It was the reliance on the GPS technology that Boldt intended to exploit. A few years earlier, a similar surveillance operation might have used six or more trailers, but trailers were cops being paid overtime in city-owned vehicles burning fuel and requiring maintenance. A GPS, once installed, required one technician sitting at a computer terminal studying a moving map and directing dispatch.
Boldt raced down the cement stairs to ground level and cracked open the steel door, gaining a view of the exit booths, their red-and-white striped barrier arms blocking lanes. With several flights having arrived within minutes of one another, and only one booth open, seven cars were lined up awaiting the cashier. The third car back was a brown Taurus, followed immediately by Griswold’s Country Squire.
The first car paid and left, then the second. The Taurus pulled up to the booth. An exchange of radio traffic confirmed this. Boldt understood the level of tension inside that command van. SPD’s success relied entirely on their ability to place the GPS. He understood this well, because the success of his operation relied on preventing it.
Boldt looked on anxiously as the cashier reached out for the parking stub, intentionally lost hold of it and then shoved his head out the booth announcing to Crowley, “I’ll get it!”
But Gus Griswold beat him to it. Having left his vehicle, ostensibly to fix a wiper, he lunged for the fallen parking stub like a good Samaritan, blocking the cashier from exiting the booth.
“Back in your car,” the undercover cashier ordered somewhat desperately. “I’ve got it.”
“No sweat,” the snitch answered, passing the stub to the cashier and making eyes at Crowley. The GPS transmitter remained inside the booth. The red-and-white arm lifted and the Taurus motored ahead.
Boldt hurried past the booths, the cashier’s back to him, and out into the dark and the drizzle. The Country Squire passed a moment later, and Boldt climbed inside.
“How’d you like that shit?” Griswold asked.
“You’re a natural,” Boldt said, strapping in, the Taurus’s drilled taillight shining as brightly as an evening star, calling him, tugging at his heart, leading him toward his child and her abductor.
“The bird is not in place,” Boldt heard in his right ear. “Repeat: The bird is not in place.”
The dispatcher’s professional calm never ceased to amaze him. Command ordered Zulu’s mobile surveillance units to be on the lookout for the brown Taurus.
Boldt winced at mention of the Taurus. Without realizing the mistake, Command had more than likely just handed Flemming everything he needed to know.
CHAPTER 77
Lisa Crowley’s Taurus followed signs to Seattle via 509 North; Griswold and Boldt were fifty yards back and following. Her one stunt had been to drive around the block in an effort to spot any surveillance, but Boldt picked up the ruse before her second turn, instructing Griswold to drive past, take two lefts and wait at the intersection. Moments later the Taurus sped past, silencing Griswold who was, at the time, exercising his right of free speech. They reentered traffic and followed, allowing several cars to come between, Boldt monitoring the steady flow of radio traffic as SPD attempted to keep watch on Lisa Crowley.
“They’re two cars back,” Boldt informed the Griz.
“Cops?”
“Yes.”
“So we’re fucked.”
“We’re challenged,” Boldt corrected.
“It’s that taillight. Can see the fucking thing for miles, I’m telling ya. I never knew how bright.”
“That’s the idea,” Boldt said. And as he did so, another idea took its place. “You just earned yourself a bonus, Griz.”
“No shit?” Griswold sat up a little higher in the seat. Squared his shoulders. “This cop shit’s okay,” he said. Regarding his filthy dash, littered with candy wrappers, he added, “Wish like hell this thing had a siren.”
Bernie Lofgrin had used his considerable clout as director of the Scientific Identification Division to trick the motor pool into giving him another of SPD’s surveillance vans, a steam-cleaning van confiscated in a drug bust and presently outfitted with surveillance hardware.
Acting as the Gang of Five dispatcher, Lofgrin monitored SPD’s progress at Sea-Tac from an I-5 Park and Ride
