that?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. Slap, slap, went the wipers. “For what it’s worth, with him it was never ‘making love.’ It was sex. An escape. Nothing more.”
“That’s not worth anything. Not to me,” Lou said, “though I’m certainly glad you made that important distinction.”
Mile markers slipped past, the distance between them growing.
“I miss them already,” she said.
“Yeah. Me too.”
TWELVE
BOLDT’S DASHBOARD CLOCK REGISTERED 7:04, the colon between the numbers flashing as it counted off the seconds in the evening darkness that enveloped the car’s interior. Less than twenty-four hours earlier he and Liz had dropped off the kids, and now the events of this day occupied him as he navigated around the streets clogged with traffic, inventing a route that might speed his arrival to what he had been told was a bloodied cabin and possible crime scene.
He had not slept well, if at all that prior night, laboring under the strain of their discussion in the car, wondering about their future, feeling betrayed by their past. The early morning, derailed without the routine of the kids, had presented them with too much time together, too much opportunity to speak, and nothing to discuss. They settled on a truce of silence, each reading a different section of the morning paper, or in Boldt’s case, pretending to read.
Work that day had been paint-by-numbers: one of the only times he welcomed a lieutenant’s paperwork, the administrative meetings, the indulgence of actually reading the group e-mails. Anything to occupy him without discussion, without human contact. He had swum around the fifth floor like a fish in the wrong school.
Now a call from Danny Foreman summoned him to a cabin in the woods, a cabin that Foreman claimed to know about because Liz herself had provided its location. Boldt’s head spun with possibilities.
Earlier, he’d been thrown into turmoil over a call he’d received from Dr. Bernie Lofgrin, the civilian director of the police department’s crime lab.
“You got a minute?” Lofgrin had asked.
“I’m signing off on overtime vouchers and desperate for distraction,” Boldt said. Not that he would have ever put off a call from Bernie, who was both a close friend, a fellow jazz enthusiast, and the sole source of all things evidentiary. Among several dozen active cases, the lab was currently working both the Foreman crime scene evidence and Liz’s videotape for Boldt, and the call could have concerned either or both. Boldt had been eager to learn about one, extremely reluctant to hear about the other.
“The tape’s a second-generation copy.”
“Dubbed from the original,” Boldt clarified.
“Correct. And not to worry about content. For viewing I digitally obscured a central panel allowing only a half inch border to show. I sampled the first thirty seconds of sound for bandwidth and signal. Also supports the determination of it being second generation. Those half-inch borders don’t reveal any live action, only the setting, a darkly paneled or log room, and a time-and-date stamp. I suspect the location is a bedroom, and I’m not asking questions. I’m the only one who handled the tape and it remains in my possession. No case number has been assigned, which means you owe the taxpayers for about an hour of my time.”
Boldt thanked him, knowing when Bernie needed to hear it. The man had taken several key steps to protecting the tape.
“I developed four good latent prints and six partials off the videocassette itself. Ran them through ALPS,” he said, meaning the computerized comparison, automated latent print system, “and struck out with known felons, convicted or otherwise. No hits.”
The bubble of Boldt’s building optimism burst. He’d hoped against hope that some of the prints would come back for David Hayes, a registered felon and ex-con. The letdown was severe. “Well, I don’t mind saying that’s a disappointment.”
“So I ran it through WSW,” the Washington State Workers database that included all day care instructors, public school teachers, most health care personnel, all firemen, policemen, politicians, their spouses, and in some cases their children’s prints as well, “and I nailed down two. Then on to the State INS database,” Immigration and Naturalization Service, “and a hit for one of the partials, but I’ve got to caution you, it would never hold in court in case that’s a consideration. You got a pencil?”
Boldt assured him he was already taking notes-something Bernie always wanted to hear.
“The partial comes back one Malina Alekseevich-that’s a male name, by the way: Malina. I double-checked. But as I’ve said, we ain’t gonna prove it’s him anyway.” Like many in the department, Bernie slipped into street speak whenever a situation called for it.
“Did INS happen-”
Bernie cut him off, interrupting. “Employment is listed as a driver for S &G Imports.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Your department, not mine, I’m happy to say.”
“And the two positives from WSW?” Boldt asked. He assumed one of these two identities would prove to be Liz, although in reconstructing events Boldt knew she claimed to have never handled the tape. If her prints were on it, that would need explaining-yet another uncomfortable discussion between husband and wife. The deeper he involved himself, the worse it got.
“Daniel Foreman and Paul Geiser.”
Lost in thought, recalling the conversation now, Boldt nearly drove off the road.
His cell phone emitted a single beep, indicating a text message. One eye on the road, one eye on the phone, Boldt read the message as it scrolled across the phone’s tiny screen:
It didn’t surprise him that Bernie was working late; the man kept all hours depending on the lab’s workload. He assumed Bernie had become excited by the discovery of Foreman’s prints on the video and then went back and pushed his crew to work the Foreman crime scene. Nor did it surprise him that Bernie had not telephoned him. His friend would assume Boldt was home with the family, and would not have wanted to disturb him. Sending a text message allowed Boldt to make the choice to read it or not, think about it or not. Boldt was certain he’d find a carbon copy on his office e-mail in the morning, hopefully along with the “more to come” information. The point that Bernie seemed eager to make, and one that required Boldt to read between the lines, was the connection between a Russian with temporary immigration papers identified by a partial fingerprint left on the videocassette, and a Russian brand of cigarette found in the form of ash at the Foreman torture. As the pieces both began to take shape and to fit into place, Boldt found himself excited, his senses heightened. The Russian seemed a promising lead to follow, someone to interview and look at closely, no matter that the evidence remained circumstantial. But it was Foreman’s role, as victim, as another person found to have handled that video, as the man who had called Boldt out on a misty, dark evening, that currently intrigued him. Suspicion worked its web. Boldt had to weigh how much to give Foreman and how much to withhold, how much to explore and how much to place aside. Pieces fitting was one thing. The picture those pieces were a part of, the story they told, quite another.
Boldt drove into the dense woods that led to the cabin. He pulled the car forward and parked alongside Danny Foreman’s sparkling new Escalade, wondering why anyone would dump so much money into a luxury vehicle. He could see there was someone inside the cabin, and he assumed it to be Foreman, but despite the presence of the man’s car, he wasn’t taking any chances. There were too many fingernails lying on the ground in this case for him to be careless. Too many questions now surrounding both Foreman and Geiser.
