Boldt And Matthews: No Witnesses Part 5

UNLESS YOU OBEY.

DO NOT CLEAR THE SHELVES,.

AND NO POLICE OR PRESS OR.

HUNDREDS WILL DIE.

BEEN TO PORTLAND LATELY?.

"Portland?" Boldt asked, worried.

"We have calls in to all the hospitals," Fowler explained.

Daphne took the fax and reread it, saying partly to herself, partly to the gathering, "He's getting more wordy. That's a good sign. He's opening up." The others listened. Boldt felt cold. She reread it yet again. "No contractions; he's well educated. And he uses the word obey, not cooperate-that's interesting."

Taplin said, "You see our position?"

"d.a.m.ned if we do, d.a.m.ned if we don't," Fowler said.

"What do you advise?" Adler asked. "We will cooperate however we can. We would like to place another run of soup back out there-but not if we're risking more poisonings."

"Can you keep the chicken soup off the shelves, but stock them with something else?" Boldt inquired.

"It's our highest-velocity product," Taplin complained.

"My take," Daphne offered, "is that we should accede to the specific demands while taking every precaution possible to prevent this from happening again. What about product redesign?"

Boldt explained, "If the blackmailer is working in one of your production facilities, a label or product redesign might tell us so. If he-or she-has access to the new materials then we know it's inside work. He added, "And it doesn't go against any of the demands."

"Way ahead of you," Taplin crowed. "Six to eight working days to print new labels if we already had a new design, which we do not. Two to three weeks for a new design. In terms of container redesign-moving to something tamper-proof-we're looking both domestic and abroad, but best guess is anywhere from two to twenty months to facilitate such an overhaul."

Fowler contributed, "We're aware of the product-tampering cases that have lasted years, Lou, 'kay? But from what I can tell, they seem to always involve extortion. These are strange demands we're getting, and with the time limit already exceeded, it somehow doesn't seem too real that this nut house is going to hang in there for all that long. You follow? Whatever he's got cooking-you'll pardon the pun-I don't think we can wait around a couple months to put the soup in jars or something. 'Kay? So I advised to move forward with the new labels but not to hold our breath or nothing."

"What about changing the glue to water-insoluble," Boldt suggested. "This guy is drilling the cans beneath the label. If we make it impossible to soak off a label, and yet he is still able to contaminate the cans, we narrow the field of where to look inside your company."

Fowler said, "It would have to be someone stealing labels from, or working on, the line."

"Exactly."

"That's very good!" exclaimed Adler, jotting a note onto a legal pad. "And it's a simple change," he said to Taplin, who nodded.

"As few people as possible should know about the glue change," Boldt encouraged.

"We can arrange this with virtually no one involved," Adler said.

"We might p.i.s.s him off," Fowler cautioned.

"He's threatened hundreds if we challenge him," Taplin reminded.

Boldt considered how much to reveal and then informed them, "The lab tests suggest that there is no direct evidence indicating that the label was either soaked or steamed off the can. There's a high probability that the blackmailer is working with fresh labels-new labels."

"And that means the production line, the loading dock, or the printers," Fowler offered.

"Storage?" Boldt asked.

Taplin answered, "We're a just-in-time operation. Printing inventory is kept to a ten-day lead time."

Making a note, Fowler said, "It should be added to the list."

Adler addressed Boldt, "If it's all right with you, Sergeant, I think Kenny should handle all the in-house aspects of this investigation. We operate on a family concept. Police would be noticed, and would be talked about immediately-"

"And given his threats, we certainly don't want that," Daphne agreed.

Fowler said, "We've had some employee-related thefts lately. I can use that as an excuse for asking around."

They all agreed on this: The police would remain involved, but well in the background.

"If we're to meet again," Adler suggested, addressing Boldt and Daphne, "I suggest we arrange it by fax and not telephone, and that we stay with remote locations."

"How soon can you make the glue change?"

"Overnight. A day at the outside," Taplin said, his mood improved.

"Is there anything else that might help us?" Boldt asked. Adler glanced over at Taplin, who glared back at him.

Adler said to Daphne, "Perhaps you could show the sergeant the rest of the yacht. A few minutes is all."

There was an awkward moment of hesitation, after which the two stood.

She led Boldt forward through a deck dining room to a trio of private quarters and Adler's floating study, equipped with both cellular phone and fax machine.

"What's going on in there?" he asked.

"Owen can smooth over any flap. Give him a few minutes."

"Tell me about Taplin."

"Bright, protective, loyal. Longtime friend of Owen. Runs a lot of the day-to-day. Owen credits him with much of their success, but that says as much about Owen as it does about Howard Taplin. It's Owen's baby; always has been."

He noticed a caller-ID box connected into the fax machine line. The device would display the phone number of any incoming fax. "Fowler," Boldt said, pointing it out.

"It's a good idea, isn't it?"

"If he shares the results with us," Boldt said, adding, "which I somehow doubt. Taplin would clearly rather handle this without us. And as you said: Taplin is the one writing Kenny's paychecks."

"Owen will give you anything you want, Lou."

"Is that the inside track?"

She did not like his comment.

"Time," she declared. She guided him back to the meeting, where the others were waiting. Boldt and Daphne sat down.

Adler said, "We had a scare in the mideighties. Not cholera-salmonella. But it was our soup line."

"A scare?" Boldt asked.

"Not an intentional contamination-nothing like that. Some bad poultry in our soup. But four people were hospitalized and there were lawsuits."

Taplin added, "Let me clarify. We were not held liable. It was not us, but one of our suppliers. It was a state health department matter. I see no reason to make any comparison."

Boldt said, "We'll want any files you've got on this."

Adler said, "Of course." But Taplin stiffened. He opened his mouth to object and Adler interrupted him, saying to Boldt, "Whatever you need."

EIGHT.

Dressed in a dull green surgical smock and wearing a white paper mask over his mouth and nose, Boldt took up a vigil at Slater Lowry's hospital bedside, his presence approved by both the medical staff and the boy's mother, whose mask was damp with tears below the eyes.

The boy's father had collapsed an hour earlier when Slater's condition had been downgraded from serious to critical, and was presently under sedation in a room down the hall. The woman's green surgical smock was wrinkled from where her husband had clutched it for hours.

Slater Lowry was dying of organ failure.

It seemed impossible to Boldt that with the boy having been admitted to the hospital, with his having been diagnosed and treated, that his condition could degenerate so quickly. Gunshot wounds, knife wounds, strangulations, and burns-Boldt had learned to live with all of these over his twenty-plus years of police service. But he did not accept what was happening to this boy.

He felt hypnotized by the steady drip of the IV, by the peaks and valleys of the green lines crawling across the monitors. Slater's skin was a pasty white, and a light sheen of perspiration made it glisten. His mother dabbed him dry, but it did not last long. Slater Lowry was burning up with fever despite the fluids and antibiotics. Slater Lowry was leaving.

"If we could only trade places," the woman had mumbled to Boldt an hour earlier. He knew that she meant her son and her, though Boldt thought she might have wished that he could switch places with her-that this would be his son, Miles, lying there, and she the visitor. Since that comment not a word had pa.s.sed between them. The glances they shared needed no explanations. She blamed Boldt for this, without meaning to. And without meaning to, Lou Boldt accepted it.

As the hours pa.s.sed, as Friday slipped into Sat.u.r.day, as the doctors and nurses came and went, Boldt imagined this boy a young man, the young man an adult. He envisioned the successes and failures, the joys and heartbreaks that compromised his own life, and he loaned these to Slater Lowry believing that a borrowed dream was better than none at all.

At two in the morning the father returned to the room, dulled and incoherent in his few attempts to share. Boldt rose to leave them, but the woman said, "Stay if you want," and Boldt sat back down. He was not certain what drew him to this boy or this woman or this room, and he knew firsthand the trials of taking a personal interest in the victims-a detective needed a certain degree of distance-but he kept his seat and stayed. For some reason he found it impossible to leave.

At two-forty, several of the electronic monitors sounded alarms at once, and Boldt's pulse quickened as Slater Lowry's faded. A team of nurses and physicians swarmed the boy's bedside. Their work silence the alarms, and twenty minutes later, with the boy stabilized, the doctor held a private conference with the parents. After that, Boldt remained outside the room, viewing the boy through the gla.s.s window that communicated with the nurses' station, where the monitor signals were repeated on small television screens tucked beneath the counter. Inside the room there was only enough s.p.a.ce for three chairs, and Boldt's was now occupied by a woman minister who prayed quietly, her chair pulled close alongside the bed, the boy's limp hand clutched between her own, her lips moving in silent prayer. Boldt realized there were to be no more beaches for Slater Lowry, no more late-summer nights, no more smiles or complaints or singing or trading football cards-no more birthdays.

The nurses offered Boldt a seat and offered him coffee. When a third woman reminded him the cafeteria was open twenty-four hours, he turned and snapped, "It's him that needs you, not me!" And there was no time to apologize to her, for the monitor alarms called out for a second time, ringing in Boldt's ears like church bells.

The moment of death, recorded as 3:11 A.M. Sat.u.r.day, June 30, played out before Boldt in an eerie and hollow silence. The monitors cried out the truth, though Boldt clung to hope. He encouraged the boy to recovery, a spectator rooting from the sidelines. The nurses and doctors once again rushed to revive the boy, but for all their efforts, all the technology, there were no miracles left.

The parents hugged tightly in terror; the minister stepped out of the way and closed her eyes.

In the midst of a silent scream, Betty Lowry glanced over her shoulder and met eyes with Boldt through the window, and though only a fraction of a second, he saw that her pain and hope had given way to the disbelief of acceptance.

The boy's final heartbeat was followed by a series of straight green lines in a race across the screens-chasing the next patient.

The doctor turned and offered apologetic eyes filled with sympathy and compa.s.sion.

Boldt imagined this boy huddled over his model of the s.p.a.ce Shuttle, eyes curious and sparked with challenge. He imagined the excited expressions in his own son's eyes, and hoped never to lose him, never to count him among the statistics.

"No more," Boldt whispered aloud, his promise fogging the gla.s.s, his right hand gripped in a fist. A promise made from the most sincere, the most private place in his heart.

A promise soon to be broken.

Boldt arrived home sometime after four. His entrance awakened Miles. Liz rolled over in bed and admonished, "You caused it. You handle it." She gathered the sheets around her like a coc.o.o.n and her head sank back into the pillow, and he felt a desperate urge to make love with her. To erase the death of that young boy.

For forty-five minutes Miles would have nothing of going back to sleep. He finally did so, clutched in the warm arms of his father, who subsequently fell asleep sitting up on the living room couch. At six-thirty Boldt was once again awakened, this time by his son struggling to be free. Late, he rose quickly from the couch and crashed to the floor when his legs and back failed him. Miles ran into their bedroom. Liz appeared in her underwear and said in a groggy voice, "If you're alive, please move your right hand." She pulled off his shoes, rubbed his feet, and helped him to stand.

He made coffee and toast for her and poured himself a bowl of granola, waiting for his pot of tea to steep. Miles was a.s.sisted by his father in smearing part of a banana and some instant oatmeal over most of his face. Liz appeared at twenty to eight wearing jeans and a T-s.h.i.+rt-weekend clothes. Boldt felt tempted to explain his evening to her but didn't know where to start. He was a ma.s.s of confusion, fatigue, and frustration. He glanced at the wall clock. Late.

"I miss you," he heard her say sometime during his frantic efforts to change s.h.i.+rts and shave. He had been a lousy father and an even worse husband these past four days, and though he wasn't keeping score, he feared maybe she was.

Back in the kitchen with her, the two of them talked over each other as they hurried through a running list that included shopping that had to be done, oil that needed changing, the plumber that had overcharged for shoddy work, a dental appointment Boldt had missed, and then, dropped as a bombsh.e.l.l, Liz said, "I'm two months late."

"Late?"

"My period. I'm two months late."

"Months?" he asked, stunned.

"That's the usual way it happens."

"Two months late." He made it a statement.