The door swung open. They were greeted with a penetrating darkness, and foul, bitter odors. The dogs barked wildly. Michael Washington checked silently with Elden Tegg. Encouraged by him, he began a slow, tentative walk down the darkened aisle. The white teeth of the dogs, bared and snarling, challenged him at every step. The shock collars sang with warnings, and the dogs cried with pain as they threw themselves against the chain link walls of their cages.
Elden Tegg, dart gun in hand, followed a few steps behind. With each cage Tegg passed, the dog inside went silent. Michael Washington took no notice, made no connection, his attention instead riveted on the inhabitant of the cage up ahead on the left. On the bare back and buttocks of the woman crouched into the far corner.
She glanced over her shoulder briefly, her arms tucked tightly, covering her breasts, looking first at Michael Washington, then at Elden Tegg. She hid her face. "I was right!" Michael Washington proclaimed triumphantly, turning toward Tegg. "But you'll soon wish you hadn't been," replied Elden Tegg, who was waiting several feet away, dart gun raised. He squeezed the trigger. The gun went off with a crack. Tegg had never fired a dart gun at a human. He had hesitated an instant too long. A shocked and stunned Michael Washington reached down and pulled the dart free.
Eyes filled with rage, he charged Tegg, who would be no match for the younger man.
The dogs' barking was deafening! Te's mind worked furiously: the shovel! Leaning against the near wall, it offered possibility. He lunged toward the wall, jumping left toward the shovel as his charger misjudged his intentions and crashed into the door, slamming it shut. A drugged Michael Washington got out of his own way then and managed to crack the door open as Tegg seized the shovel and swung it in a long, unforgiving arc toward the other man's head. The shovel dropped quickly, only grazing the black man's arm. Washington caught hold of the shovel, and hand-over-hand drew Tegg closer-both of them struggling for possession. Tegg saw the man's pupils then, and he let go of the shovel, surprising Michael Washington, who staggered back, shovel in hand. Tegg witnessed the first major seizure in the man, a ripple of muscle contraction that ran from his feet to his shoulders.
Michael Washington fought it. With great difficulty, he managed to move one heavy step forward. Fear belied his intentions.
Tegg watched, catching his breath. He smiled. "There's no use fighting it now," he said. Washington's entire body tensed as a second contraction hit him. He collapsed. Tegg stood over him, watching. Studying. He had never seen such a severe reaction to Ketamine. As a doctor, he found it fascinating. In higher doses, it was lethal." Oh, no ... " the drugged man groaned. "Oh, yes," answered Elden Tegg, another smile forming on his lips.
Boldt was driving his Toyota, Daphne riding with him. He had been warned that it might be days or even weeks until he could draw a vehicle from the pool. He didn't have an office cubicle yet, either. In many ways he remained the outsider, his return to the department more technical than actual.
A few miles passed. The Emerald City receded in the rearview mirror. He could see out across the Sound. Lush green islands like jewels. More pleasure craft than on the weekdays, their sails catching the brilliant sunshine like sun-starved flowers. Ferries like big bugs, back and forth, back and forth. The waterways came alive on weekends when the sun shone. His eyes refocused. OBJECTS CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR read the message stenciled across the outside mirror. "No lie," thought Lou Boldt, studying Daphne's profile. "You don't have to be so mad," he said to her. "We should have done this yesterday." "You did speak to her yesterday. It couldn't be official for twenty-four hours."
"That's a stupid law. Twenty-four hours?
Sharon could be anywhere by now." She added, "And don't give me the statistics sermon! You'll see. Once you have spoken to Agnes you'll be convinced. I know you. I know you will be. Sharon did not take off somewhere. Those goddamn statistics weren't made for people like her. And don't hand me that crap about her having been a runaway. That's all behind her. I could have popped Shoswitz for that. He's a misogynist, you know that?"
"Lamoia's running the surveillance on the Bloodlines employee, Connie Chi," he said, trying to distract her. She was worked up for nothing-they were almost there. In the police department nothing moved at the pace you wanted. Investigators learned to accept it; psychologists-turned-investigators suffered for it. There was a long silence. "So how are things?" he asked. "Things?" she questioned. "What things?"
"You know," he said. "My sex life?" she asked bluntly. "Am I getting enough? Something like that?"
He felt himself blush. "Sorry." He wasn't asking about her sex life, but her happiness, though he felt helpless to explain. "I'm on hold at the moment," she answered. "There was someone for a while, but I handled it all wrong. I wanted too much too soon. It wasn't even that I wanted it, I expected it. The truth is I don't know what I want, and that doesn't work in a relationship."
They stopped at a light, but Boldt didn't look at her. She sounded so damaged. "You seem happy," he said optimistically. "I'm in therapy. It's fantastic! That's what I mean about being on hold. I'm working a little too much. Surprise! But it fills the hours. You know? And the therapy is helping a lot. It's nice to have some control again."
A single evening they had spent together. A dinner that had run out of control. Boundaries crossed. Honesties voiced. And now, strangely, as if it never had happened. "Well, you look great," he told her, feeling stupid to have said it. "Thanks." She hesitated. "No regrets. You?"
"None." He felt her look at him, and he warmed all over. "I'm glad," she said.
Sharon Shaffer's housemate, Agnes Rutherford, was five feet tall with silver-blue hair that gleamed like silk and perfectly brilliant ice-blue eyes that belied their inability to function. Agnes Rutherford was blind. She wore a cardigan sweater littered with dandruff and a skirt that was losing its hem. Leather slippers worn shiny on the sides from sliding her feet along, like a person wearing boots on ice.
When Boldt and Daphne were only a few feet inside the door, Agnes Rutherford asked him, "How old is your child, Mr. Boldt? Or am I supposed to call you by your rank?"
Boldt looked over at Daphne in astonishment. She touched her nose in pantomime. "He's six months," Boldt replied. "Still a baby."
"And do you smoke, even with a child in the house?"
"Smoke? No. Not me. I'm a musician. On the side," he added, though he wasn't sure which side anymore. "A night club." He sniffed at his coat. "It's probably my coat that smells like cigarettes."
Agnes Rutherford grinned, proud of herself. Her teeth were too perfect to be hers.
Daphne repeated what she and the woman had discussed a day earlier. "Hasn't been home, either," the blind woman said in a troubled voice.
Boldt asked, "Why is it you think something happened to Sharon?"
"Oh, something happened all right. Why else would that man have lied to me?"
"Which man?"
"You can hear it in a person's voice when they're lying. Did you know that? He was a very tense man. What a voice he had-like fingernails on a blackboard. Nervous. Not just because I surprised him which I did, mind you but out of fear. Strange as it may seem, he was afraid of me. Me!"
Daphne suggested calmly. "Why don't you start at the beginning, Agnes."
"I heard voices through the wall. Two men talking to Sharon. And Sharon was scared. Plenty scared. I couldn't hear the words, you understand, but I A didn't have to. She was good and scared."
"Voices ... " Daphne repeated. "Yes, so I came in through the kitchen. We share the kitchen. My rooms are just off the back side there. Came in to make sure she was all right. That's why I say the man lied-he told me Sharon had gone out for a minute and that he and his associate were also leaving. But the other one-the one with the halitosis-I think he dragged Sharon out. I heard something dragging on the carpet. She had been sitting in that chair, right over there. That chair squeaks. I heard it. I heard her voice, too, though not her words, not what she said. Not exactly."