the epidermis in general. The heat moved from both ends toward the center like defrosting a leg of lamb. But you know how long that takes: You put a twenty-pound turkey or a six-pound leg of lamb on a seventy-degree kitchen counter and it takes all day—sometimes longer—to defrost. Try putting it inside a forty-degree refrigerator! You pull it out the next day, the thing has barely begun to thaw. Now try it with a hundred-andseventeen pound human being—’’
‘‘Pass,’’ LaMoia said. ‘‘Do we learn anything from all this fascinating detail?’’ he quipped.
Dixon said sadly, ‘‘In other ways, you’re more like him every day.’’
‘‘The Cliff Notes, Dixie,’’ Boldt said.
‘‘Stomach contents relatively intact. Plenty of organic matter to work with.’’
Boldt wondered if he’d wasted his morning.
Dixon continued. ‘‘Did it occur to either of you brilliant investigators that if these people have a hundred women locked up sewing polarfleece pullovers for a dime a day, they still need some way to feed them?’’ He grinned widely. ‘‘Ah, ha! I can see it did not! No, you overlooked the obvious, did you not? So locked, like me, into the dead—the dead evidence, the dead witnesses, the dead ends, that you never extrapolated the situation out to the obvious: These women have to eat. And this woman, Jill Doe, did eat. Not only did she eat, but she ate a tuberous root, an edible bulb, similar to our own leek. She also apparently consumed brown rice. But it’s this leek that interests you, this leek that’s the best evidence you’ve had in this case. Asian, and not sold in your typical Safeway if the few phone calls we’ve made are any indication. We can’t find one for comparison.’’
‘‘Asian groceries,’’ Boldt muttered, stung by this information.
LaMoia followed suit. ‘‘Mama Lu is the Asian grocery queen. What do you want to bet that she has the contract to provide the food for these people? That’s how she knows so much about it and yet isn’t directly involved to where she has to fear us.’’
‘‘A humble businesswoman,’’ Boldt repeated at a whisper. ‘‘She kept flaunting it right under my nose.’’
CHAPTER 62
s. McNeal, it’s Roy,’’ a familiar but unidentifiable voice said over her cellphone. Stevie was more interested in the ice cream she had ordered from room service than the phone call. ‘‘Roy?’’
‘‘Traffic?’’ the man inquired, identifying himself.
Chopper Roy they called him. Drive-time traffic reports for both the morning news and
‘‘Yes, Roy.’’
‘‘Station gave me your cell number. Hope you don’t mind. I thought you’d want to hear this.’’
‘‘Hear what?’’ She sat forward on the couch and pushed the ice cream aside, her heart beginning to beat more strongly in her chest. What was the traffic guy calling about?
‘‘Friend of mine, Sam Haber, works over to the FBO, handles Seven’s SkyCam.’’
Channel Seven, he meant. The competition. She didn’t like this already.
‘‘Their chopper. Yeah. Sam does their maintenance. Also does their outfitting. Calls about canceling a Mariners game we had planned on account Seven has him outfitting their bird with some high-tech infrared shit that has something to do with hunting down a ship. Tonight, we’re talking about. He overhears one of the guys with the gear saying they’re going to scoop us on our story on account the cops have been asking all sorts of questions at Port Authority. Thought you ought to know.’’
‘‘A ship,’’ she repeated, scribbling down notes on a white linen napkin. ‘‘Our own story.’’
‘‘Scooping our own story. Yeah.’’
‘‘Know anything about this gear?’’
‘‘Only that it’s not standard issue. Ultrasensitive infrared. Sam said some professor type from the university was the one installing it. They had to black out the hangar to even pull the lens cap and test the gear—it’s that sensitive. Daylight will fry the thing. Guy blew up at Sam over opening a door because of the light. Pissed Sam off, I’ll tell you what. If he hadn’t, maybe Sam wouldn’t have told me. Sam’s kinda like that: doesn’t like someone shouting at him, you know?’’
‘‘They’re hunting down a container ship,’’ she stated. ‘‘Is there any way we can mess them up on this?’’
‘‘Does the Pope shit in the woods?’’ the helicopter pilot replied.
‘‘Get the bird ready.’’
‘‘She’s being refueled as we speak.’’
As Stevie was about to hang up she was trying to think of some way to lose her various guards and surveillance. ‘‘Roy,’’ she asked, ‘‘are there any downtown buildings where you can land on the roof?’’
‘‘Can you get over to Columbia SeaFirst?’’
‘‘Give me a number where I can reach you,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ll call from there.’’
CHAPTER 63
aMoia was not above circumventing existing law to get what he needed, but he did so only by working with detectives willing to forgo overtime pay and to keep silent about their actions. Chief among these was Bobbie Gaynes, so fiercely loyal to Boldt that she had no problem with the assignment to place a federal agent under round-theclock surveillance despite the fact that any such surveillance required special notification. It was nothing new for LaMoia—coming up through the ranks his nickname had been Stretch, for how he dealt with the law. Everyone wanted what LaMoia could get for them— snitches, bank accounts, tax records— but not one of them wanted to know the details. It was okay with him; it helped perpetuate the myth, and the myth was now what defined him. The Myth. It controlled him as well, dictating his actions, and he knew that couldn’t last forever. He moved through women like a drunk through booze—in part to maintain that image. He drove fast and lived that way, too. But the wax, melting from both ends, shrank ever smaller, and John LaMoia identified with it more clearly every day.
LaMoia had no physical evidence against Brian Coughlie, only a deep-rooted suspicion prompted by a number of unexplained coincidences. Without evidence, he had no case to build. But as a point of law, it was not explicitly illegal for any person to follow or watch any other person, so long as the person being watched did not feel threatened or have his or her expectation of privacy violated. Washington State did have a tough stalker law in place, but it required certain criteria to be met that Gaynes and LaMoia avoided without any effort whatsoever.
Gaynes called from a pay phone in order to avoid the open airwaves of cellular telephones and the lurid intentions of police radio-band scanners. LaMoia and Gaynes maintained a relationship of respect-at-a-distance, his womanizing so legendary that she skillfully avoided him; her investigative abilities and position in Boldt’s inner circle crucial to his squad’s all-important high clearance rate. They rarely played politics with each other and never socialized.
‘‘Go ahead,’’ LaMoia acknowledged, having moved into the passenger seat of the surveillance van still parked with a view of the naval yard. Despite the media blitz earlier in the day, as far as LaMoia and others could determine, the press had yet to cotton on to the actual physical location of the naval yard surveillance.
‘‘I think I lost him.’’
‘‘Lost him?’’
