Boldt And Matthews: No Witnesses Part 12

Boldt said, "I'll pull the car around. You call KCP and let them know we're heading out to Sasquaw. If they've got somebody in the area, we may want backup."

"Backup?" LaMoia asked curiously.

But Boldt did not answer him. He was already off across the fifth floor at an all-out run.

By the time Boldt found the farm, it was dusk. They had become lost twice, and LaMoia had demanded they drive through a McDonald's. Using the cell phone, Boldt obtained a telephone warrant from deputy prosecuting attorney Michael Striker and district judge Myron Banks, giving him authority to search the premises. His mouth full of hamburger, LaMoia said, "You're starting to worry me, Sarge."

Boldt answered, "I'd double-check my piece if I were you." LaMoia tended to his weapon immediately.

A group of farm buildings spread out below the county road, barely visible in a determined starlight.

LaMoia switched on a flashlight, aimed it directly at Boldt, and said, "You should have eaten something. You look like s.h.i.+t."

"I sent a local sheriff here to nose around," Boldt explained. "He hasn't been seen since."

LaMoia switched off the light. In the silence they could hear the hum of the overhead power line.

The two hung their s.h.i.+elds around their necks on thin black strings, and LaMoia crossed himself, and no one made any jokes. Boldt thought of Miles and that if he never saw him again, there would be no way to explain the reason a cop had kicked in a door in the middle of nowhere; and then he thought of Sheriff Turner Bramm's wife-the fear he had heard in her voice-and he opened his car door and headed toward the farmhouse.

The two men walked in silence, their city shoes juicy in the mud but neither complaining. They walked to the Powder River gate and LaMoia opened it, quietly closing it again behind them. There were no lights on in the house, though it didn't mean anything: The driveway showed signs of recent use. A mercury light filled the distance between the house and outbuildings with a garish glare that seemed brighter than Arizona suns.h.i.+ne. With the shades up, there would be plenty of light inside with which to see. They were sitting ducks out here.

Boldt threw a hand signal at LaMoia indicating the dark side of the house, and the detective squatted and slid off into shadow where only the owls could see him. Deafened by the pulsing in his ears, Boldt slowed his advance, buying LaMoia a few needed seconds and forcing himself to think this through once again. A missing sheriff. A deserted farmhouse. His two-year-old son waiting at home. He withdrew the weapon from his holster, engaged the recoil and the safety, and gripped the stock between both hands. A bead of sweat trickled down his chin. His mouth was dry. So maybe Liz was right about a desk job. So what? There was nothing to do about it now. His police vest was in the trunk; he should have thought to put it on.

He walked faster now, his system charged with adrenaline, cutting quickly across the brilliantly lit farmyard and reaching the door to the farmhouse, a building in total disrepair. The white paint was coming off like sunburned skin, the windows were gray with grime, and the brown-bristle welcome mat had disintegrated at the center, leaving a frayed rope-weave underpinning.

Boldt held his breath to allow him to hear the slightest sound, then knocked loudly, paused, and knocked again. The wind blew high in the cedars and the mercury light hummed, sounding like a huge bug. Boldt peered through the gray gla.s.s at the inside of a cluttered kitchen. Although clearly well used, this was the back door. He circled the house, locating another door and knowing LaMoia would be keeping him in sight.

He knocked. Waited. Nothing.

A wave of the hand brought LaMoia out of the dark. They checked the ground floor thoroughly, and found it tightly locked up. "We could kick it," LaMoia suggested. "Not without a d.a.m.ned good reason," Boldt clarified. "Not outside our jurisdiction." Boldt turned around and faced the five outbuildings. A series of muddy tire ruts led into the compound, some of them made recently.

"Try them first?" LaMoia inquired.

"Yup," Boldt said.

They crossed the farmyard to the first building.

LaMoia pushed open a huge steel door that ran on rollers. Boldt switched on the flashlight and scanned the interior. A long, narrow corridor faced them, hundreds of tiny wire cages stacked floor-to-ceiling on either side of the wide aisle. It smelled dusty. There were white, yellow, and brown feathers everywhere. Boldt experienced a similar nausea familiar to some homicide crime scenes. "You feel it?" he hissed hoa.r.s.ely, his throat dry.

LaMoia nodded gravely. He pulled the door shut again. "Maybe we should call in that backup."

But they did not. They walked side by side silently through a patch of weeds that invaded Boldt's socks, p.r.i.c.kling him. The air smelled sour and then suddenly sweet. They stopped in front of the second building, a modified Quonset hut.

"You okay?" LaMoia asked.

"No."

"Open it?"

"Go ahead."

The door squeaked on its hinges. Boldt painted the inside with the harsh beam of the flashlight. More of the same: hundreds of poultry cages; several rows of high-intensity lights hung from the ceiling.

Studying the coop, LaMoia said, "This must be the laying coop. They use the lights to trick the birds into producing more."

"Feels kind of like a ghost town," Boldt said.

"I know what you mean." They moved on.

By its outward appearance, the third structure suggested a different use-a tool shed or equipment barn. As they neared its double-door entrance, Boldt stuck out his arm and blocked LaMoia before he stepped on the disturbance in the mud: activity, boot prints, and a series of tire tracks.

"Pretty recent," Boldt said, observing their clarity. The summer rains of the past week would have softened the impressions.

They avoided the disturbed area, cutting around the side of the structure, Boldt leading them with the light. He was already thinking ahead to lab crews and photographers, plaster casts of the boot and tire impressions. Go with your instincts, he had told the students in the lecture hall. His own told him that Daphne was right about a connection between Longview Farms and the Adler threats. He had nothing more than a sour spot in his gut and a few unexplained tire tracks upon which to make this bet. But if challenged, he was prepared to bet it all.

There was no entrance on the side, but at the far end they found a locked door and a reinforced gla.s.s window that had been spray-painted from the inside. They teamed up, Boldt training the flashlight under the crack in the door and LaMoia searching out irregularities in the hasty paint job, his face pressed to the gla.s.s. "To the right. More ...," he directed. "There!" he said. It took several blows with a length of sc.r.a.p iron to punch a hole in the reinforced gla.s.s.

As they stepped inside, Boldt asked, "Do you know that smell?"

"A nose like yours, you oughta be in perfume."

"Smell it?"

"I do know that smell," LaMoia admitted. "That's paint."

"That's right."

The building was hot and stuffy. It had a cement slab floor with large drains and an overhead conveyor mechanism with metal hooks.

LaMoia said knowingly, "This is where they butchered them."

"Yup." Boldt walked a bit faster, approaching the sheriff's car.

"Gloves," he said. They both snapped on pairs of latex gloves. The flashlight caught the winds.h.i.+eld and mirrors and bounced light around the cavernous structure in sparks and flashes. The words Sasquaw Sheriff's Department wrapped around a gold logo of Just.i.tia-Lady Justice-on the driver's door. The vehicle was locked. Boldt s.h.i.+ned the light into the backseat: no body. "Force the trunk," he instructed. LaMoia searched out his sc.r.a.p-metal pry bar while Boldt fully circled the vehicle, ending up at the trunk.

Boldt said, "Clean. Too clean for all this mud. He wiped it down." His heart pounded painfully in his chest. Dead. He had sent Sheriff Turner Bramm here, had berated him until he accepted the job. He felt that he, and he alone, was responsible for whatever had happened here.

"Maybe he just parked it here so it wouldn't be seen," LaMoia said, reading his thoughts, working the pry bar. "The sheriff, I'm talking about. Maybe he and some farm girl are shacked up in the house, doing the business."

"Is that all you ever think of?" Boldt said a little too harshly.

LaMoia did not answer. He caught the lip well, put his weight behind the effort, and popped the trunk.

"No body," LaMoia said, relieved.

"No vest, either. And there's a shotgun clip on the dash. Empty. And no police radio," he said. "Torn right out from under the dash."

"We gonna kick it now?" LaMoia asked of the farmhouse.

"You bet we are," Boldt replied. The flashlight strayed to the cement floor and caught a blend of yellow, blue, and red spray paint, edged by a hard line where a drop cloth had been. LaMoia went down on one knee. He sniffed the paint closely. "There's the source of the smell."

Boldt followed the paint with the light. It formed a large empty rectangle on the cement floor.

"Spray-painted a car," LaMoia said.

"A truck," Boldt corrected. "With these three colors."

LaMoia put his shoulder into it for a third time, and the kitchen door came open.

The air smelled of food gone bad and windows left shut. The kitchen was small and tidy, dishes drying in a rack and dry, fresh fruit in a bowl-slightly withered. A door immediately in front of them, perhaps leading to the bas.e.m.e.nt, was padlocked shut with new hardware. Using hand signals, Boldt indicated for LaMoia to search the first floor. He, Boldt, would take the upstairs.

The sergeant pa.s.sed through a musty-smelling living room and climbed a flight of creaky stairs.

"Police," he warned. "We have a warrant to search these premises."

He continued his ascent, flashlight in his left hand, his right hand hovering cautiously near the stock of his weapon. Below him something moved. LaMoia slinked silently past, disappearing into a different room. The unusually white light of the farmyard mercury lamp played against the downstairs walls. Boldt ascended, unknowingly holding his breath.

The staircase led up the center of the house, leaving rooms ahead of him and to either side. "Police," he called out again, though with less authority. He pa.s.sed through a pocket of foul odor and stopped dead still, his neck and arms alive with goose b.u.mps. He knew that odor, and he identified its source as the room to his right.

His senses warned him again that this was indeed the home of the Tin Man. The closer he drew to that door, the greater his apprehension. "Police," he repeated, his weapon already in hand. "I'm coming in." Not wanting to make a target of himself, he shut off the flashlight and pocketed it.

He gently rotated the bedroom doork.n.o.b and toed the door open cautiously, greeted by a darkened room.

"Police," he repeated yet again, reaching for the light switch.

An empty room.

The room had been recently lived in. He smelled dirty laundry mixed with that same odor of spray paint. Once again he was struck by the incredible neatness of the room. That neatness troubled him: an ordered mind, compulsively neat. He was afraid, despite his training. He wanted out of here.

A noise, like a tiny bell. He knew that sound: hangers banging together. Ding! they rang again. The closet was on the far side of the bureau. Someone was inside that closet. A sudden scratching on the ceiling caused him to jerk his weapon overhead, and he almost fired. Rats or bats, he realized.

As he turned to call for LaMoia, a rustling sound came from the closet, preempting him.

He leapt forward and yanked the closet door open.

The hangers rang again. A cat leapt off the shelf and onto Boldt's shoulder, so quickly that Boldt went down with the contact.

Empty. The closet, the other rooms-by the last of which LaMoia had joined him.

"Nothing," the detective said.

"There's that smell in the hall," Boldt said, leading LaMoia back to the top of the stairs. Any homicide cop knew that smell.

They both spotted the laundry chute at the same time. "That would be the bas.e.m.e.nt," LaMoia said.

"The padlock," Boldt reminded him, and the look they shared silenced them as they hurried back down the stairs and into the kitchen.

Using a b.u.t.ter knife that he broke twice in the process, LaMoia removed the hinge pins to the bas.e.m.e.nt door before Boldt had thought how to deal with the padlock. The door came open backward, and LaMoia tore away the lock, doorjamb and all, and deposited it in a crash to the floor. It was dark inside, and it smelled of death.

LaMoia reached for the light switch. Boldt caught his arm, shook his head no, electing the flashlight instead, wanting control over the environment.

Darkness closed in around them as they descended the steep stairs. Boldt's flashlight beam directed his attention. A washer and dryer. A soapstone sink. A laundry line. A pottery kiln. Otherwise, it was black down here-the windows boarded up and painted shut.

They moved slowly through the laundry room and into another musty-smelling room formed of concrete-and-rock walls, a room stacked high with secondhand furniture and rusted gardening equipment. Rocking chairs, baby's toys, pine dressers, clothes inside clear vinyl hanging bags, mattresses, and headboards. It smelled faintly of mothb.a.l.l.s and cat urine. A hard box of white light framed the edges of a crude door leading into another room. The closer they drew to this door, the more pungent the feculent odors.

Boldt drew a box with his finger. He and LaMoia carefully searched the door frame with their gloved hands. LaMoia said, "Got it," and pointed to a delicate stretch of monofilament that crossed the gap in the door frame just above the rusted hinge. The trip wire was not entirely taut. LaMoia peered inside. "Ceiling balloons," he announced. "It's rigged for arson."

"We back out slowly, John. Now! And we keep our eyes open. There may be others."

Meo-ow ...

It came from behind them, drawn by the fetid odors of early decomposition. It came hungry, and it wanted through that door. Both cops understood the threat it represented without a word between them. Boldt stooped and said, "Here, kitty," as LaMoia groaned, "Oh, s.h.i.+t!" maneuvering to box it between them. "Good kitty," Boldt tried.

It stopped and stared up at them-a mangy cat with a curiously distant look in its eye. It meowed yet again and LaMoia, creeping up on it, said to Boldt, "Blind it." It s.h.i.+ed away from both, and Boldt could feel the tension set into its hind legs as it hunkered down prepared to spring.

"Ready?" Boldt asked, the flashlight held tightly in his sweaty hand.

"Ready," LaMoia echoed.

"Go!" Boldt aimed the beam of the light as he would the bead on a barrel, directly into its eyes. It froze. LaMoia took one long stride, hands outstretched, and the cat sprang through them like a bar of wet soap.

Fast little silent footsteps. Before either man could react, the wooden door creaked open as the kitty nosed and nudged it. LaMoia dove and snagged the cat, but his shoulder brushed the door and threw it fully open.

Sheriff Turner Bramm hung suspended by his wrists from an overhead pipe. His uniform seemed moth-eaten with holes where his captor had burned him with cigarettes. His shoes were off and his ankles wired to his thighs so that the full weight of him fell to the wire wrapped like bleeding bracelets around his wrists. His death mask was one of pure horror, frozen in a wretched spasm of agony.

There was a workbench, its surface clean and neat. Boxes stood beneath it.

A string of as many as twenty balloons-all sagging, filled with gasoline-was suspended in rows from the ceiling. As the detonator took, in an extreme slow motion, bright orange-and-blue flames chased through the string of balloons, running like water down a hill.

LaMoia was already up, clutching the cat, sprinting for the storm cellar door only feet behind Boldt. LaMoia shouted something, but it seemed slowed down to Boldt and he didn't understand.

Boldt felt the strong wind in his face as he followed LaMoia up the concrete steps on hands and knees, wildly racing for survival. The igniting of the balloons drew air from every crack and crevice, creating a choir of singing voices.

The force of the subsequent explosion propelled Boldt out of the storm cellar as if he had been shot from a cannon, followed a fraction of a second later by a tunnel of yellow flame that curled to the sky like a crooked finger.

Boldt scrambled to safety, unaware his jacket was afire until LaMoia tackled him and threw him upside-down into the mud.

The house went up like kindling, a bonfire of epic proportions.

The volunteer fire department arrived in time to declare it a complete loss and to take several pictures. For the time being, Boldt and LaMoia identified themselves only as pa.s.sersby, keeping their occupations silent. There was no mention of a body in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and the fire remained far too hot for its discovery. The sergeant and detective lingered nearby, protective of their crime scene. Fire marshals were due on the scene early morning. At 1 A.M., Boldt telephoned Bernie Lofgrin of the police lab, awakening him at home. By the time the fire cooled, sometime around sunrise, Boldt wanted an ID crew available to sift the ashes. Lofgrin complained about jurisdiction and that he was still owed the jazz tapes Boldt had promised. Boldt said he would take care of both, and even though Lofgrin knew there was little or nothing Boldt could do about the jurisdictional conflict, he agreed to have a crew available.

SEVENTEEN.