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 2
16 DAYS MISSING
CHAPTER 61
arly 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 escape. ‘‘As you can imagine, John and I are a little busy this morning, Dixie.’’
‘‘No, not leaks like that . . .’’ Dixon corrected, losing his anger to a smile. ‘‘Leeks!’’ he said. ‘‘The kind you eat.’’
‘‘Leeks,’’ LaMoia repeated.
‘‘Exactly,’’ said the medical examiner.
‘‘Exactly what?’’ Boldt asked.
‘‘Jill Doe,’’ Dixon answered. ‘‘It’s always the first victim,’’ he ruminated. ‘‘The mistakes, the haste.’’
‘‘What mistakes?’’ Boldt answered.
Pointing to Boldt, Dixon said to LaMoia, ‘‘Take lessons from him. He’s the best there is. Knows when to interrupt and what to ask. Knows when to keep his mouth shut and let a man talk.’’ He looked at Boldt. ‘‘So let me talk.’’ He moved to behind the security of his large gunmetal gray desk. ‘‘They froze her, same as Jane. But they had more time. They froze her hard . . . solid, and I’m guessing they forgot to take that chain off ahead of time, so that by the time they realized, if they realized, it was still attached, they had little choice but to leave it there. They then buried her over ten feet deep in relatively cool soil, a week, maybe even two or three ahead of Jane Doe. You see where I’m going with this?’’
‘‘She stayed frozen,’’ Boldt guessed.
‘‘Gold star. For a while. Yes. And that helped not only preserve her, but severely retard her decomposition.’’
‘‘She stayed frozen down there?’’ LaMoia asked.
‘‘Are you listening? No, she didn’t. But she was in forty-degree soil. Her extremities thawed first, followed by
