“We seem to be missing a body,” Boldt said.
KCSO CSU was stenciled across the back of the man’s white paper coveralls, the crime scene unit of the King County Sheriff’s Office.
Boldt repeated, “Do we have a body?”
The man turned around. He wore plastic safety glasses over a pinched face. “We’re told we have an earlier ID made on the possible victim by the surveillance team. The mobile home’s rented to one David Hayes. Male. Caucasian. Thirty-four. Our guy claims Hayes was observed inside this structure earlier this evening.” Boldt experienced a small stab of anxiety; he knew the name, yet couldn’t place it. Another unpleasant reminder of his being on the other side of forty.
“Your guy, or BCI’s guy? Are you talking about Agent Foreman?”
“We are. We do BCI’s forensics,” the technician clarified. Boldt had forgotten about the arrangement between BCI and the Sheriff’s Office. SPD had their own lab and field personnel.
The ambulance driver wouldn’t let Boldt ride along, so he followed in the Crown Vic. Once at the hospital, while they awaited processing, Boldt found himself a sugar-and-cream tea and joined Foreman in the emergency room. No one seemed in any great hurry to help.
“A pro job by the look of it,” Boldt said.
“Sounds like it.”
“Who’s David Hayes? And why is his name so familiar to me?”
“It’s a case we’re working.”
“We? Are you sure about that, Danny? Because I may have squirreled things for you there, without meaning to. I called your Lieu on the way over here. He said they’d assigned CSU to your assault. He didn’t know anything about any stakeout, anything about a bloody trailer. You put CSU into that trailer when they showed up, Danny, didn’t you? This is before you lost your breath and went unconscious. Isn’t that right?”
“Hayes was paroled from Geiger four days ago. Two years in medium, two in minimum.”
“And someone wanted him more than you did. Why’s that?”
“Seventeen million reasons.”
The light finally went on in Boldt’s head. “He’s the guy-”
“That’s right.”
A wire fraud case involving his wife’s bank, six or seven years earlier. Seventeen million intercepted electronically. Not a penny recovered. “A Christmas party,” Boldt said.
“How’s that?”
“I met the guy, Hayes, at a Christmas party. For Liz’s bank.” Sparks firing on top of sparks. “You were with us at the time.”
“I was in my fifth year with Fraud. Yeah. Before Darlene’s illness. Before everything. Like eighteen-hour shifts for me.”
“It was wire fraud, right?”
“Fucking black hole is what it was.” Police used the term to define an unsolvable case. “We collared Hayes-by luck, mostly. We never recovered the software he used, and we never found the money. More important, we never uncovered whose money it was. We knew it was headed offshore, but it never got there. That meant someone had seventeen million bucks he was willing to lose rather than identify himself. That’s what interested us.”
Boldt considered this and offered unsolicited advice. “A cop pulling an unauthorized stakeout on a guy who helped steal seventeen million dollars is going to get asked some questions, Danny.”
Foreman said nothing.
More of the case came back to Boldt. It had been a bad time for him and Liz. He remembered that especially. “So we put the bloodbath in the trailer down to the rightful owners of the seventeen mil coming after Hayes,” Boldt speculated.
Foreman changed the subject.
“We couldn’t prove the money ever left the bank. Bank figured it got deposited into some brokerage account, papered over by Hayes. Still inside the bank’s system. There, but not there. A real whiz kid, our David Hayes. A real wunderkind,” he said, with the animosity of a scorned investigator. Boldt knew the feeling. “He was twenty-seven at the time, and the bank had basically given him control over anything with a chip inside it. They even called him that: ‘Chip.’ His nickname.”
“Did you write this up? The stakeout?” Boldt brought it back to the here and now.
“No one in BCI gives a shit about a cold case like this. Ask around. I guarantee you this isn’t anywhere on SPD’s radar either.”
“Tell me you’re not pulling a Lone Ranger, because you know that’s how this is going to play.”
“Do I want the money? Yes. For me personally? Come on! This is about closing a black hole, nothing more.”
“And you think that’s how it’s going to play?” Boldt repeated. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“We connect the dots on this, Lou, it’s going to prove me out.”
“We?”
“You’re investigating my assault, right? SPD is in on this now.”
It almost sounded as if Foreman had planned it that way. Boldt wouldn’t put it past him. “You took a dive in order to get a case reopened?”
“It’s not like that.”
Part of Boldt wanted to congratulate the man if this were the case. Any cop taking a hit, even a Lone Ranger, was certain to awaken the sleeping giant of the SPD bureaucracy. The other part of him didn’t want to give Foreman that kind of credit, didn’t want to see a friend misuse the system, didn’t want to believe the assault had been anything but a surprise to Danny Foreman. Most of all, he didn’t want to think that Danny had caused that bloodbath inside the trailer and then done damage to himself in order to cover it up.
“Remember, Lou, this was Liz’s bank. Still is, right? Tell me they don’t want their money back. Or maybe you don’t remember. I promise you Liz remembers.”
Boldt felt stung by the comment, and he wasn’t sure why. He remembered plenty. Just seeing Foreman’s face and hearing his voice triggered any number of memories. The cancer ward at University. Darlene Foreman’s funeral. A wake for her, while Liz healed and grew stronger. A growing distance between them as Foreman stopped calling and stopped returning calls.
“What the hell happened to us?” Boldt asked.
“Liz lived,” Foreman answered, as if he’d been waiting to say this for years. And perhaps he had. “Resentment. Envy. Hang any name on it you want-that’s what happened. And I’m supposed to tell you I’m sorry, but I’m not. I still can’t bear the thought of being around you two. Throws me right back into all my shit. Seeing you now, it’s a good thing, don’t get me wrong. But not with her. Not the two of you. Not together. I feel cheated, Lou, and my guess is it’ll never go away.”
“You want me to pass this off to someone?” Boldt wanted nothing to do with the case, nothing to do with old wounds like these.
“It isn’t like that.”
“I’d offer LaMoia but he’s tied up in a seminar. Two weeks of counterterrorism.”
“Heaven help the enemy. Nah. My guys’ll take care of this in-house. I realize it falls within city limits, but cut us some slack and we’ll save you the paperwork.”
“That doesn’t sit right with me. You’re saying you don’t want me to open this up?” Was Foreman playing him? Taking it away so that Boldt would reach all the harder for it? And why was he suckering into it?
“It’s open now, isn’t it? I know how you are. Leave it be, Lou. Be a pal and pass it off to my guys.”
It still felt like an attempt at reverse psychology. The paperwork finally came through and Foreman was officially admitted. An X-ray orderly arrived to escort Foreman to the “photo booth.” Boldt stayed seated in the uncomfortable chair, a three-week-old copy of People magazine dog-eared in the Plexiglas rack, Stephen King looking at him sideways.
Boldt called out, “I’ll wait and see if you need a ride home.”
Foreman trundled off, his walk giving away the lingering effect of the drugs. Boldt felt a knot in his throat, still stunned that friendship could go so far wrong, guilty for getting all the breaks while Danny Foreman had gotten none.