“You ran away from the police,” she completed.
“They were busy,” he said. “Daphne was supposed to meet me.” Emily’s face screwed down a little tighter.
“What?” he finally asked her.
“We had a deal, Ben, you and me.”
“I know, I know, but-”
“Not buts. We had a deal. The police are looking after you. They’re trying to do their job.”
“They threatened you.”
“It’s not that,” she objected. “The police have been on my case for years. Sometimes they love psychics, like when they need them; sometimes they want to run them out of town. Believe me, I’m plenty familiar with the police. I can handle them. It’s you I had the deal with, not them.”
“I know.”
“And you promised me.”
“I missed you,” he said honestly, daring to look up at her, though afraid of her anger with him.
Tears sprang from her eyes. She blinked them away. Black ink ran down her cheeks, carried by the tears. Her lips were wet and puckered, and they quivered as she tried to speak. But then she came out of her chair, and around the table toward him, and took his head between her hands and drew him into her for another of those wonderful hugs.
And Ben knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
55
Lou Boldt was a tangled knot of emotions. He had gone from the high of a surveillance operation to the low of losing the suspect amid a light drizzle that turned the air the same color gray as the sky, and everything in it the same color gray as the rain, until the world was a blur of gray images that blended together so that buildings, streetlamps, vehicles, people on bicycles, formed a homogeneous mass, and Jonathan Garman vanished into it like something in a magic trick.
The fact that the video tape shot at the car wash did not show Garman going for the glove box, did not support a subsequent surveillance operation, meant that when Shoswitz looked for a scapegoat he did not have to look very far. That Boldt had engaged the follow-up surveillance operation before studying that video was at least explainable-he had wanted to protect Martinelli at all costs. But with nothing more than a psychological profile that played well, Boldt had only his twelve-year-old witness to connect Jonathan Garman to any crime whatsoever-and he had lost both of them, Garman and the witness.
Boldt found himself in the unenviable position of preparing to eat crow. They had a fire inspector in lockup who had confessed to the arsons. They had Nicholas Hall’s admission that he had sold hypergolic rocket fuel to an unidentified third party. Garman had, under questioning, also confessed to the additional crime of setting fire to his estranged wife’s house trailer, a fire that had burned his son to disfigurement, proving in the eyes of many that he was capable of just about anything.
With Garman’s first confession firmly in hand, the upper brass and the mayor had put the Scholar’s reign of terror to bed, assuring the public the fires were over. This had been done without Boldt’s involvement, just as the subsequent surveillance of Jonathan Garman had been done without their involvement. Shoswitz, the middleman, pushed Boldt to a decision the sergeant did not want to make.
The lieutenant’s office smelled of foot odor and old coffee. Boldt remained standing despite the lieutenant’s repeated offer of a seat. Shoswitz confirmed himself as a pacer, working up a sweat between the back corners of his office. “I don’t know what to believe,” he finally said, in a tone that Boldt interpreted as his rambling phase. “Believe it or not … I mean, you want to know what the real truth of the matter is … Your ass, my ass … if we want to go upstairs tomorrow morning and try to tell them the fucking Scholar is still out there playing his games, the truth of the matter is we need another fire. I’m not shitting you. No fire, no sell. I’m not kidding. We got the note … every note meant a fire … so if there’s no fire tonight they’re going to say Garman mailed it to himself before we arrested him-and don’t go fucking waving the postmark at me, because I know all about it, and my career, your career, is not going to hang on a fucking postmark.”
“It’s early yet,” Boldt reminded.
“Bullshit. These fires go off early. We both know that. Early? Bullshit.” He stopped and stared at Boldt. “It’s late is what it is. We are way fucking late with this Jonny Garman crap and they,” he said, pointing overhead, “are not going to buy it. We’ve got nada. Zilch. Zippo. A kid with an applesauce face drying windows in a car wash.”
“We’ve got the towels. The fibers.”
“A thousand fucking towels over a six-month period.” He began pacing again. “Jesus H. Christ! This Garman shit was a bonehead move, Lou. Strictly bonehead material. We let Matthews wind us up and we marched to her tune, and the only fucking way out of this is to drop it. I mean drop it. Gone. Forgotten. We pull Martinelli and send her home, we say a few thank-yous to all those involved, and we go home to bed. You need it, my friend. You need bed. You look like shit. I feel like shit. I need a Scotch. Two or three would be better. We pull it, we bag it, we bury it in the budget somewhere, and we hope no one asks any questions.” He stopped and looked directly at Boldt’s pants, of all things. “Where do you buy those khakis?”
“Mail order.”
“Not Brooks Brothers? They look like Brooks Brothers.”
“Mail order,” he said again. “I think we should keep it up and running for tonight-the surveillance. It started to rain. Maybe that was why he took Madison up Broadway and the school. Maybe just to get out of the rain. It doesn’t mean he’s dropped it.”
“Did you watch the same video I did?” the lieutenant asked, perplexed. “Drop what? He never picked up the ball. He never went for that glove box.”
Repeating what Daphne had mentioned to him, Boldt said, “Maybe the truck is kept at the university somewhere. Maybe he has access to computers there and can run the tags or something.”
“We can’t even confirm this guy’s name.”
“LaMoia, Gaynes, Bahan, and Fidler,” Boldt said. “Give me my team for another day. One day. Martinelli too. She stays. Drop the vans, the techies, the overtime payroll.”
“No fucking way!” he bellowed. “Bahan and Fidler stay where they are, working up Garman Senior into something we can take to court. Something we can work with. Something I can explain.” He pointed to the ceiling for a second time. “You and the others? I turn my back. I don’t see. But I don’t hear about it either. No one hears about it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re working on evidence against Garman. You need his son as a possible witness-there! You hear that? I amaze myself sometimes. A witness. That’s all. Someone who can provide the state with damning testimony about Steven Garman setting that arson you were telling me about. Fucking genius, is what I am. Be glad I’m the one looking out for you, Lou. You’re in good hands here. I may have just saved your ass with this idea of mine.”
“A witness,” Boldt repeated.
“Exactly.” The lieutenant appeared more his own color. “You eaten anything lately?”
“Not hungry.”
“Order some pizza in.”
“No, thanks.”
“The Scotch sounds better anyway.” He looked at Boldt’s pants again. “Do they shrink?”
“Jonny Garman is the Scholar, Lieutenant.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Lou.”
“If you’d been there when we spoke with Garman, you’d know it’s true. He’s covering for him, that’s all.”
“And doing a fine job of it.” He walked over to Boldt and felt the khaki fabric between his fingers. He clearly liked what he felt. “Go find your witness. Bring him in and we’ll chat him up and maybe something changes. But until then, not a peep. Not to anybody. No hysterical comments about the Scholar still being out there, no casual talk. No dispatch. No crying wolf. Goes for your people as well. I watch your ass, you watch mine.” He looked Boldt directly in the eye. “Don’t fuck this up. You do, and you’re all alone.”