She turned off the machine and popped the tape. She made a note in her spiral notebook, and Boldt signed alongside as a witness.
“He goes down to answer the door.” Boldt walked down the stairs, followed by Gaynes close on his heels. “Turns off the security and greets the person at the door. He locks back up but does not arm the system, and the two go upstairs.” He turned, and motioned Gaynes upstairs. “Guests first. He’s not going to give anyone his back.”
Gaynes preceded him up. In the sitting area, Boldt motioned her into a chair. He said, “Maybe this guy accepts the chair, maybe not. Probably they know each other well enough for Anderson to be relaxed. I wonder. Big mistake, as it turns out. What you look for when you and Dixie have got him on the butcher block is lividity consistent with some kind of choke hold or strangulation. Toxins. Poisons. And make sure Dixie works the earwax; that is extremely important.”
“Earwax,” she mumbled.
He turned his back on her. “At some point he made the mistake of offering his back.”
She looked down at the floor as if seeing the body there. She returned to the carpeted stairs and squatted as Boldt had earlier. She said, “Dragged up the stairs. You can see it in the nap of the carpet.”
“The visitor is strong enough to haul him up the stairs.”
“If I hadn’t worked with you before …”
“Hold the compliments. This is all smoke, no real proof.”
“This is amazing is what it is,” she said. “You saw that earlier,” she said, pointing up the stairs. “The nap of the carpet.”
“Yes, I did.”
“I didn’t even look.”
He shrugged. “Victims talk if you listen.”
“Undresses him, stages the shower …” She thought a minute. “I’ll be damned!” she exclaimed, when she understood. “Takes one of the three keys off Anderson’s key chain and locks the front door.”
Boldt agreed, nodding. “Basic to the ruse. The place has to be locked up tight, and Anderson found alone, dead from a nasty slip. Who’s going to investigate that?”
“But the security is not on. That’s what tipped you.” She showed Boldt to the clothes hamper. “This is where I found the pants. You’ll want to see ’em. Covered in that yellow pollen, Sarge-at the knees, I’m talking about. They’re lousy with the stuff.”
He said, “It makes Anderson important to us. It’s good work, Bobbie. We can only make an extremely circumstantial case. That’s all. If we’re right, then we’re up against someone who’s thinking. He assumed we would not check for the door key. He understood that the door being locked was crucial. That kind of guy scares me. We certainly have enough to investigate this. We need to bring in SID again, photograph everything. Maybe Bernie and his Boy Wonders can turn up something useful. Carpets. Phone records and finances if we find them. We give it a shakedown. Something falls out, we run with it.” Boldt nodded, unanswered questions all around him. A part of him hadn’t felt this good in ages, but he ached for those missing babies, and their parents who had to endure another night without them.
CHAPTER 15
Several hours later, Boldt was paged by LaMoia while on his way to the University Hospital, making the visit with Liz brief but memorable. She had natural color in her cheeks, light in her eyes, and warm hands. She called him over to sit on her bed and announced proudly, “I’m coming home.”
He felt a pang of hope. Tears. “You can go back to being an outpatient?”
“The doctors will tell you it’s the drugs. But I know better.” She looked over at the Bible, and next to it a copy of a religious textbook.
He gasped, “Liz-”
“Don’t! Keep that comment to yourself until we have a chance to talk about it.”
“The chemo took, that’s all.”
“That isn’t all,” she objected. “That isn’t any of it. But don’t do this now. Let’s wait ’til I’m home, okay? Tomorrow, or Sunday at the latest.”
He squeezed her hand, thrilled and troubled. “We need to talk about this.”
“We will. Let me get home first.”
He nodded. Then he saw a look he knew too well. “Dr. Woods approves, doesn’t she? Of your going home.” A resonating fear penetrated through him: She was giving up on treatment.
“Dr. Woods is somewhat baffled by my improvement, love. She would like to hold me for observation.”
“Improvement?” he said skeptically.
“My count is down significantly. Katherine can’t explain such a quick change, but I can. And I don’t need observation, love, I need to go home. To you, the children. Home. The work that needs to be done is better done there.”
“The work? You’re scaring me.”
Speaking like a Transylvanian, she mimicked, “It vill all be revealed to you in time.” And then she smiled a smile that could have filled a stadium with light, or a cathedral with warmth, a smile that had nothing to do with illness, a smile that came from a Liz before their marriage, their children, their trials, a smile that convinced him that she knew what was best.
“I’ll be damned,” he whispered.
“No you won’t,” she said, a different, all-knowing smile taking its place.
LaMoia appeared disheveled and tense. “First hail, then rain. I’m getting a little sick of this.”
Bobbie Gaynes, on the other hand, looked positively radiant.
“What did I miss?” Boldt asked. The fifth floor was near empty.
LaMoia said, “SID discovered a caller-ID box at Anderson’s.”
Gaynes declared enthusiastically, “The caller-ID unit kept a record of the last ninety-nine calls made to Anderson’s apartment.” She repeated, “Every incoming call.”
“Technology is a beautiful thing,” LaMoia said.
Gaynes handed Boldt a list of the calls. “These are the last thirty incoming calls. We’re thinking maybe his visitor might have paid Anderson the courtesy of an advance phone call before coming over. If so, it might be the Pied Piper, if the two had a relationship.”
“And?” Boldt asked, handling the pages. “What do we have?”
LaMoia explained, “The guy had an obvious network going. Look at all the pay phones: nine of the last thirty calls he got.”
Both detectives looked up at Boldt simultaneously with wanting expressions.
“Oh, I get it,” Boldt said.
“It’s your field, Lieutenant,” LaMoia fired back, with emphasis on the rank.
“We’d like to talk to all the people who called Anderson. Including whoever used these pay phones,” Gaynes said. “Maybe we find out why both Anderson and the Shotz crime scene had pollen all over them.”
“No, no, no,” Boldt cautioned.
“Sarge, it’s a homicide,” Gaynes pleaded. “A homicide that ties directly to the Pied Piper investigation through that pollen match.”
“You want me to run the pay phone numbers for you,” Boldt said, scanning the list, “and see if Anderson was running any of our snitches.” A number jumped off the page at him as he said this. He concealed his reaction by forcing a cough. The number belonged to one of his more reliable snitches, the pay phone in a tittie bar by the airport, The Air Strip. He tallied the number of its appearances: three calls, all just prior to Anderson’s demise.
“Sarge?” LaMoia asked.
“It’s nothing,” Boldt answered. Intelligence operated in its own sphere. The squad worked autonomously, gathering its information, creating its files, running its snitches, from five-hundred-a-night call girls to mayoral aides. Boldt had to protect the identity of his snitches, even from his own detectives. “Let me work with this,” Boldt said.
“Sarge?” LaMoia inquired, noticing the change of voice.
“I’ll run the phone numbers for you. Be thankful for small favors.”
“Sarge?” Gaynes asked in an equally accusatory tone. She exchanged looks with LaMoia, then back to Boldt. “We’re on the same team here, right?”