economy. Rodriguez pulled the flatbed down to a dock area where a pair of towering cranes pointed up toward the night sky. It was those cranes that caught everyone’s attention.
Fifteen minutes later, as LaMoia and two other detectives made their move to get a better vantage point, Rodriguez was spotted crossing through the navy yard’s side gates on foot. A moment later he dragged a motorcycle out of the weeds and took off without lights, catching the surveillance team by surprise and LaMoia in the midst of cutting a chained gate accessing a dark spit of land that looked directly across a small thumb of water at the navy yard. Detectives pursued in unmarked cars, but Rodriguez took the cycle off-road and disappeared.
‘‘Eluded?’’ Boldt roared into the phone.
‘‘We screwed up, Sarge.’’
‘‘And then some,’’ Boldt said.
‘‘Didn’t expect the bike.’’
‘‘Don’t try for sympathy from me. You lost our prime suspect.’’
‘‘We still have the flatbed,’’ LaMoia reminded, attempting to salvage something from his loss, ‘‘and the two cranes. Gaynes is still on Coughlie. He paid a visit to KSTV. He took a brief ride on a city bus. You got that, Sarge? A city bus!’’ He added cautiously, ‘‘This navy yard has got to be the place. It’s perfect. The cranes, for Christ’s sake! I’m gonna issue a Be on Lookout for Rodriguez. We’ll set up out here. If we’re right about this drop, Sarge, we had better be prepared for an all-out war. I’m thinking Mulwright and Special Ops.’’
‘‘I’ve got to report it to Hill, John.’’
‘‘I understand.’’
‘‘Hang in there.’’
‘‘Right.’’
As the sun crawled into a slate gray sky looking like a bug light held behind a curtain, three men pushed a step van out onto their surveillance point to avoid having to run the van’s motor and risk its being overheard. LaMoia and two technicians climbed into the back of that van, dog-tired, hungry and humiliated. They took turns with twenty-minute catnaps, but nothing helped LaMoia. Failure was the worst kind of fatigue.
The barren spit of land with its rough gravel and broken glass was littered with the skeletons of commercial fishing equipment: buoys, engine parts, booms, cranks, winches and miles of coiled and damaged fishing net wound onto enormous spools. Water slapped against a sea wall of boulders, chunks of former roadway and the rusting carcasses of dead automobiles and railroad boxcars. The seawater, a murky green, moved like mercury. A light but steady breeze colored the air with a salty ocean spray.
At 6:00 A.M. that Wednesday morning, LaMoia received word over the radio that they had trouble at the gate. He slipped out the back of the van wondering when the trouble would stop. Every time he turned around there was a screwup or a problem.
The problem this time was a rent-a-cop with a company called Collier Security. He wore a gray-blue uniform with a can of pepper spray where on a cop the gun would have been. The Collier logo on the arm patch tried too hard to look like SPD’s. The name badge pinned over the right pocket read Stilwill.
‘‘Mr. Stilwill, what’s the problem?’’ an exhausted and agitated LaMoia inquired.
‘‘What I’m telling the officer here is that I got me a job to do, Lieutenant.’’
‘‘Sergeant,’’ LaMoia corrected.
‘‘Cops or not, you can’t be here on this property without the owners knowing about it.’’
‘‘We will handle notification,’’ LaMoia assured him. ‘‘For the time being it would be whole lot better for everyone if you just continued your rounds. Forget about us. We aren’t here. That would save us all a trip downtown and a lot of lawyering.’’
‘‘Yeah, but like, you can’t be in here. See? It’s private property. And the equipment on it is private property. You got a warrant?’’
‘‘I’ve got probable cause. This is an active investigation,’’ LaMoia said dryly, his patience running thin. ‘‘You have a clear choice here, Stilwill. It’s your call to make, right or wrong.’’
Detective Heiman crossed the road from an unmarked car and hurried over to LaMoia. Out of breath, he spoke a little too loudly for the situation. ‘‘Port Authority has six freighters scheduled for arrival over the next twenty-four hours. Three of them listing Hong Kong last port of call.’’
‘‘Give me a minute here, Detective,’’ LaMoia said, well aware the security man had overheard.
Stilwill looked out over the water and clearly took note of the cranes. ‘‘That container thing?’’ he asked. ‘‘You’re on that container thing?’’
‘‘It’s an undercover surveillance operation, Mr. Stilwill,’’ LaMoia explained, avoiding a direct answer. ‘‘You want me to say good things about you, you’ll just pick up and move on. ’Cause otherwise I’m gonna rain down shit on your parade so deep you’ll drown in it.’’
Stilwill glanced around nervously, outnumbered.
‘‘What you need to do,’’ LaMoia repeated, ‘‘is move on and forget about this. Are you listening, Mr. Stilwill?’’
‘‘I hear ya,’’ he said, his attention remaining on the view of the naval yard. ‘‘That over there has been deserted for years. Ain’t never seen nothing over there. Where’d that flatbed come from anyway?’’
‘‘You need to think about our little situation here.’’
‘‘What situation?’’ Stilwill asked, intentionally naive, offering LaMoia a shit-eating grin.
‘‘That’s better,’’ LaMoia said, but inside he didn’t trust the man.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 216 DAYS MISSING
CHAPTER 61
Early Wednesday morning,
The report infuriated everyone from Sheila Hill, upset over the apparent leak, to Jimmy Corwin, annoyed that KSTV had been scooped by the competition. Adam Talmadge complained vehemently through legal channels that the INS had not been informed of, nor included in, any such surveillance.
By 8:30 that morning, the trailing network affiliate identified security guard Clarence Stilwill as the source of the information. On the ‘‘advice of attorneys’’ Stilwill was in hiding, and unavailable for comment.
KVOW, public radio, reported not only that a possible suspect had been lost during the surveillance but that the King County medical examiner’s preliminary autopsy report on the most recent Hilltop Cemetery cadaver, ‘‘Jill Doe,’’ was due out that same day and was said to contain additional information pertaining to the illegals investigation.
Political shock waves ran through the system as denial upon denial was issued, no-comment upon no- comment echoed through the media and filtered down to coffee shops and the office copy room. Melissa Chow’s disappearance and possible abduction had become an emotionally charged issue stumped by would-be politicians running for office in November, and as word spread that police were possibly closing in on the people behind it, the radio talk shows buzzed with various leaks.
Boldt and LaMoia felt this pressure on both professional and personal levels. They were told to stop the leaks and solve the case. Sheila Hill summed it up for them both, ‘‘Get us something in time for the six o’clock news that will make both the mayor and the PA look good, something to feed the beast and satiate it. If you can’t come up with something, I’m going to feed them your reassignments, gentlemen, so don’t take this lightly.’’
Their pagers sounding, Boldt and LaMoia left Hill’s office and headed directly to the ME’s basement offices in the Harborview Medical Clinic. The bear of a man led them with huge, hurried strides into his office and closed the doors.
‘‘I don’t know where that leak came from,’’ he apologized, ‘‘but if Ifind out, that person will never work again. Not ever! Not anywhere!’’ Not a man to lose his temper, this particular Ronald Dixon was a rare sight.
‘‘I thought you said it was the leaks you wanted to talk to us about,’’ Boldt complained. Although LaMoia was scheduled to return to the naval yard surveillance, there had been no activity at the location since Rodriguez’s
