She remembered LaMoia from the raising of the container. Flippant, cocky and a womanizer, if she was any judge of character. Adding to insult, she had the sinking feeling she was going to have to reintroduce herself.
‘‘Stevie McNeal,’’ she reminded him, as loath as she was to do so.
‘‘I know,’’ he said. ‘‘We met last week. You wouldn’t remember.’’
‘‘But I do remember.’’ She won him over with that one comment, and congratulated herself on knowing how to play him. He traveled the length of her—head to toe with a few layovers—before offering her a chance to sit down. Across the room, a number of heads began turning. There were times celebrity had its benefits.
She said, ‘‘I’m working with a freelance reporter to assist me in my ongoing series. She does the footwork and the footage. I do the voice-overs. It’s an investigative, expository piece. I’ve lost contact with her. I want you to find her.’’
‘‘To say I’m a fan would not be fair, Ms. McNeal. Not always. But I’m familiar with your work. I’ve been taping this series on the illegals—both to see myself on TV,’’ he offered a toothy smile, ‘‘and to pick up any leads you might have to offer.’’
‘‘Her name’s Melissa Chow. Chinese by birth. Five foot two. A hundred and five pounds. Oval face, small nose . . . I have pictures.’’ She passed them to him.
LaMoia studied the snapshots. ‘‘She’s just a colleague?’’
‘‘We’re sisters. Legally. It’s a long story. We grew up together. My father brought her over from China when she was little, and we adopted her. She’s family, and now she’s in the middle of doing this work for me, and she’s gone missing.’’
‘‘Missing for how long?’’ LaMoia asked.
‘‘I don’t know exactly. I last saw her on Monday.’’
‘‘It’s Thursday.’’
‘‘Thank you for that,’’ Stevie said. ‘‘I loaned her one of the station’s digital cameras, and sent her off to get a story. I’ve lost touch with her.’’
‘‘We can put a photograph of her into our radio cars. We can get her paperwork going,’’ he conceded. ‘‘But most of the investigative work I suspect you’ve already done: contacting co-workers, family members, friends, neighbors. If you’d gotten anywhere, you wouldn’t be here.’’
‘‘And here I am.’’
He jotted down a note. ‘‘We’ll check with pawnshops.’’
‘‘You think she sold the camera?!’’ she asked, incredulous. ‘‘Do you have any idea what is going on here? Melissa stuck her nose into something she shouldn’t have and she’s gone missing. That’s it. That’s all. We need to find her, and we need to find her fast.’’
‘‘Let’s start again,’’ he suggested. ‘‘She was working on your series? The illegals?’’
‘‘She was following a lead I got on this illegals story.’’
He bowed his head and gave her a telling look.
‘‘I don’t know exactly how far she had gotten, where she was going with it.’’
‘‘We need to know exactly what she was working on,’’ LaMoia prompted.
‘‘There was a man who offered us some information,’’ Stevie explained cautiously.
‘‘His name?’’ LaMoia inquired.
‘‘He wished to remain anonymous. I honored that. We met at a restaurant.’’
‘‘His name,’’ LaMoia repeated, a pen hovering above paper.
Calculating how much to tell him, Stevie said, ‘‘If I give you that, you’ll track him down and then we’ll both lose him. I don’t see how that helps anyone.’’
LaMoia said, ‘‘And what if your ‘source’ is actually the one responsible for her disappearance? Have you thought of that?’’ He added, ‘‘Listen, Ms. McNeal, I see things that even as a reporter, you couldn’t dream of. My job is to find her as quickly as possible. I need every scrap, every handout I can get.’’
Stevie placed a file folder onto the desk. ‘‘Photos, background, handwriting samples. Find my sister, goddamn it, or I warn you: Your incompetence will be my next story.’’ With that she stood up and walked out. One way or another, she would get them to help.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 21
4 DAYS MISSING
CHAPTER 15
he call came an hour before sunrise, while the population at large, including Lou Boldt, remained fast asleep. With two kids, the Boldt home looked alternately like a petting zoo or a toy factory, its floors and shelves cluttered with stuffed animals, pieces of Lego sets, dolls and action figures. Liz typically went to bed immediately after the kids; her energy sapped. Once in bed, she read from the Bible and a book she called her textbook, doing ‘‘her work.’’ She no longer spoke of the lymphoma by name—she referred to it as her ‘‘challenge,’’ relying on her role as God’s creation to remain in remission. Boldt wasn’t sure what he thought about any of it, but he kept his mouth shut. For whatever the reason, Liz did seem well. Whether temporarily or permanently, no one knew— though Liz fervently believed it was the latter. And as any cop knew, it wasn’t worth it to fight City Hall. For now, he placed her continuing remission in the win column.
Boldt answered the bedside phone in a groggy voice and continued the call in the kitchen so as not to disturb Liz. On the other end of the phone, dispatch informed him of a floater found face down in the canal on the border of Fremont and Ballard, a one-mile stretch of protected waterway where working fishermen of five nations frequented sailor bars. The victim was Lo Wan Chang, the former captain of the freighter Visage.
Within ten minutes of hanging up the phone Boldt was in his Chevy Cavalier heading for the crime scene.
Boldt arrived ahead of the chuck wagon—the medical examiner’s emerald green panel van that transported cadavers—and refilled his plastic tea mug before venturing out to join the two uniformed patrol officers who had responded to the original call and who had correctly established a crime scene perimeter in an effort to protect the scene. The sky was brighter now. The wharf area where the body had been found was within easy walking distance of a half dozen bars and rooms for rent by the hour. It was a decrepit stretch of sea-rotted piers, their tops stained white by seagulls, the air pungent with seaweed, engine oil and the exhaust of a patrol car left running to power headlights aimed onto the ugliness of the captain’s soggy body stretched out on the cracked and weathered blacktop.
The patrolman pointed, ‘‘This big guy over here seen the body on his way to his boat. Says he was floating face down right about here,’’ he said, walking over and indicating a space between pier and hull. ‘‘Side of his head all thumped in like that, looks like maybe he slipped. There’s some blood smeared back here.’’
Sure enough, a foot-long streak of something dark brown was adhered to the hull of a wooden fishing boat. ‘‘Could be,’’ Boldt agreed, not eager to rule the death an accident, nor to accept its timing as coincidental. If the captain had talked, if he’d cut a deal with either Boldt or Coughlie, if he’d tried to scapegoat the responsibility for the container and the deaths of the illegals, then any number of people might have wanted him dead. Boldt wondered if his own candor during the shipboard interviews had gotten the captain killed. ‘‘There’s a Polaroid in my trunk. Make yourself useful and take a couple pictures,’’ Boldt said to the patrolman. He handed him the car keys. ‘‘Canvass the neighborhood. See what we can come up with in terms of witnesses.’’
‘‘People around here talk?’’ the young officer questioned sarcastically.