“Do it,” Boldt said. In the next minute or two he hoped to throw both SPD and Flemming off Crowley’s scent. He sat back and watched, reduced to spectator, frustrated, tired and angry.
Mounted to the dashboard of the steam-cleaning van was a small gray box that might have been mistaken for a radar detector. All fire trucks, ambulances and certain police vehicles-including all command vans-carried such boxes, the function of which was to transmit radio signals to upcoming traffic lights, switching and holding the lights to green. Aimed as Boldt had directed, Lofgrin engaged the box and stopped traffic on 99, including Crowley and Boldt directly behind her, a half mile and closing.
The moment the traffic stopped, a good-looking black man stepped into the street and approached the stopped traffic carrying a spray bottle in hand and several more hooked in his waist. The light rain continued to fall. Raymond sprayed a part of the windshield of the first car and wiped it quickly. He hurried around the front of the car and clearly delivered a sales pitch into the driver’s window, holding up the bottle for the driver to see. The driver motioned him away.
Ten seconds had passed since the light had turned red, no cross-traffic in the intersection. Boldt willed Raymond on. Seattle drivers were notorious for running red lights.
Before Raymond raised his rag, the second driver waved him off. The street person worked the windshield to the third car and the driver passed him some money. Boldt had been approached this same way, also during a light rain-the fluid Raymond was selling repelled water off the glass windshield, making it far easier to see. The stuff actually worked.
Thirty seconds …
“Hurry up,” Boldt mumbled.
Crowley waved, refusing the service, but Raymond went at her windshield anyway. Her window came open and he gave up, shouting, “No charge! No charge!” He crossed in front of her, walked along the curb, and patted her car on the rear fender to let her know he was there. In a sleight of hand worthy of a magic show, Raymond stuck a piece of chewing gum over the drilled hole in the taillight.
At this same moment, across the intersection, the hood of a car stuck its nose out onto 99.
Lofgrin allowed the light to go green, and the first cars surged forward.
“Go ahead,” Boldt told Griswold, “but allow this car up here-you see it? — to cut in ahead of us.”
“I got it.”
A car horn sounded impatiently from behind. The Country Squire rolled but allowed Crowley to gain a car’s length that was quickly filled by the car pulling out. It was a dark car, a Nissan, its shape similar to a Taurus. They nearly rear-ended the car.
Griswold honked before Boldt could stop him. “Turn your fucking lights on!” Griswold roared.
As if hearing him, the car in front did just that, and as the taillights flashed red a white pinprick hole appeared.
Griswold understood the switch then and said to Boldt, “You sneaky bastard.” He added, “He got us close like that so we’d block him-”
“Screen him,” Boldt supplied.
“So like the others don’t see the lights come on.” The driver grinned. “They just see the hole in the same taillight.” He added, “What’s all this about, anyway?”
“It’s about a little girl,” Boldt said. He held his breath awaiting radio traffic to confirm the ruse.
“Anything?” he heard over the radio.
“Nothing yet … check that … Affirmative, I’ve got the target up ahead.”
Boldt heaved a sigh of relief: Surveillance had bought the switch.
As instructed, LaMoia waited a mile before turning off, making a right onto Royal Brougham and immediately speeding up. At 4th he would make a left and then would join the long on-ramp to 90, with each turn going faster, making sure to keep enough distance to use the darkness to hide the make of the car.
Crowley, and Boldt with her, climbed the viaduct, the traffic thickening. Behind them, three vehicles turned right in pursuit of the drilled taillight.
Griz, checking the rearview mirror, said, “I don’t get it. Aren’t those
“In a matter of speaking,” Boldt replied.
“I suppose that’s the part I don’t get,” he said.
Boldt gloated at his success. Through the rain, the skyscrapers shimmered to his right. Viaduct traffic was clocking sixty. It was fast for wet highway, fast for Boldt, but there were no more drilled taillights to follow. They had to stay close to the Taurus.
“She sure is checking her mirror a lot,” Griz reported.
“Back off,” Boldt ordered.
“We could lose her.”
“Back off!” Boldt saw the nervous head movement in silhouette.
“She’s changing lanes-”
“Get over!”
Griswold dropped back further and slipped in behind a limousine. “Can’t see her.”
“Shut up!” Boldt barked nervously, his stomach a knot.
“Tunnel,” Griswold said, as the limousine slowed for the short tunnel further separating them.
“This is not good,” Boldt said, “
Boldt caught a faint glimpse of taillights.
“Exit!” Boldt shouted at the driver.
Griswold jerked the wheel and negotiated a sharp right immediately at the tunnel’s end. He slammed on the brakes. Every street, every intersection, was jammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Griswold said, “I told you we should’a listened to the Sonics game. At least we would’a known when it was getting out. Who needs this shit?”
“She does,” Boldt answered. “She knows exactly what she’s doing.”
CHAPTER 78
Boldt took off on foot through the drizzle, slamming the car door while telling Griswold to park somewhere within a few blocks and pointing to a corner where he wanted Griswold to wait for him.
Boldt now believed that the Crowleys had timed Lisa’s flight for an arrival to coincide with the end of the basketball game and the guaranteed mass confusion that always resulted around the Seattle Center. Slip a car into any one of dozens of emptying parking garages, and it would not be spotted for hours, perhaps days. Grab a bus, or go on foot with the thousands of people crowding the sidewalks; it was a place and time of night to get lost.
Crowley had been less than a hundred yards in front of the Country Squire when it had entered the tunnel. Boldt knew that if he had any chance of locating her, it was now-immediately-while she, like them, was still crushed and hemmed in by the traffic. With traffic barely moving, she couldn’t have made it far-on one of three or four streets, or inside one of the two parking garages that were in plain sight.
The rain fell as a cold mist, a gray swirling curtain that seemed to go unnoticed by all but a few of the hundreds of pedestrians.
Boldt cut across the moving traffic, horns firing off at him in volleys of protest. He wished like hell that they had never plugged up that drilled taillight; it would have stuck out like a searchlight. He looked left, right: endless lines of cars. Every possible direction. But with eastbound traffic the worst-the traffic moving toward I-5-and with westbound traffic aimed directly at the Seattle Center, into the lion’s mouth, Boldt chose straight ahead.
The sidewalks were more packed with pedestrians than the streets with cars. He threaded his way through and around groups, couples, families, all gabbing about the game and a great shot at the buzzer that had won it for the Sonics. The mood of the crowd was festive, even carnival-like. Although he was polite at first, Boldt’s patience wore thin quickly, and he began to bump and claw his way through the melee, his efforts unappreciated. He craned
