She tore the tape from her mouth and slipped off the hood, slammed the retractable video screen up into its locked position, and lunged for the phone. She fell to her knees, her ankles still taped.
“Help me!” she hollered into the phone before her mind registered that this tape must never be revealed to anyone. Any kind of help was the last thing she wanted.
A deep male voice that nearly hid the rich, Eastern European accent said, “Next time you are asked to do something, we will expect you to do it yourself, not send a replacement. Cooperate, and you can be the last person to ever see this tape. Be ready to act at a moment’s notice.” Disconnected.
Standing away from the van, listening carefully, one could hear, along with the whine of passing traffic, a woman’s painful sobbing from within. A woman stretched thin between the past and the present, a woman faced with the reality of self-loathing and the disintegration of all things good, of all things held dear and sacred. Bared before her eyes. Destroyed.
TEN
BOLDT MUMBLED THROUGH AN APOLOGY, embarrassed, humiliated, even, that Miles had not been picked up from his piano lesson and was awaiting a ride. Like every aspect of private education, admission to concert pianist Bruce Lavin’s afternoon session had required an application, referrals, a waiting list, and a substantial deposit. Six months later, Miles had finally been “asked to join.”
“A confusion on our end,” Boldt said, sucking up to Lavin and feeling like a sycophant. He realized how stupid this explanation sounded.
“I don’t run a babysitting service,” Lavin clarified. “The schedule here is-”
Boldt interrupted, “-very tight. I know.” Lavin had nearly beaten this mantra into parents. Preparation and punctuality were his credo. As long as his students practiced and showed up on time, Lavin kept them in the program. “I’m on my way.”
“If it should happen again… ”
“It won’t,” Boldt assured the man. The cost of the course, paid in full and up front, was nonrefundable if a child was let go. Expulsions could not be appealed, but the child could reapply for future sessions.
Boldt tried Liz at the office, and then on the cell, ready to give her a piece of his mind. But when she failed to answer either phone, his anger quickly shifted to concern. He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t heard from her since their meeting out at Beth LaRossa’s house, earlier in the day.
Having assigned it himself, he knew that the security duty amounted to a single, unmarked car watching either the bank or their home, depending on her location. By mutual consent, she wasn’t to be followed unless she requested it, and she was asked to make that request if her movement involved contact with Hayes. Otherwise, Boldt and Liz had agreed she should be allowed to “have a life.”
Boldt was informed that “the Sienna was observed leaving the garage about twenty minutes after its return from the LaRossa residence.” That put her leaving work late morning or early afternoon.
“No contact prior or since?”
“No contact, Lieutenant.”
He tried both lines again, and then on a hunch he tried home, but to the same result. A cop with Boldt’s experience didn’t panic; it had been programmed out of him, but a groundswell of internal dialogue ran as background chatter in his thoughts-several voices inside him competing for airtime. Prioritizing his responsibilities, he hurried to the Crown Vic and challenged traffic to reach Miles before Lavin reconsidered and expelled him from the program.
He inched the car up to First Hill, staying on small streets with stop signs every block, trying to avoid the congestion of traffic lights, but he and a few hundred other drivers all had the same idea, and the going remained bumper-to-bumper. When his cell phone rang, he prepared to berate Liz.
He answered, “Yeah?” hoping to project his anger so she couldn’t miss the subtext.
“Lieutenant?”
His expectations flattened, he barked, “What is it?”
“Call for you. Something about your daughter.”
He called the number. A cat did a somersault in his chest.
Mindy Crawford answered-Sarah’s ballet teacher. He knew what was coming and cut in immediately, interrupting her introduction of herself.
“We messed up our pickups today,” he said. “My fault.”
The woman paused, perhaps surprised by his prescience. “I could drop her by your house,” Ms. Crawford offered, “but I’ve another class to teach first. It would be a little after seven, if that’s all right.”
The ballet school was the other end of the world from Madrona, where Boldt was heading. He and Miles could try to make it, but her offer sounded like a better idea. He told her so.
“No problem,” she said so cheerfully as to instill guilt in Boldt. It was a problem, a big problem for the Boldt family. He tempered some of his anger with calls first to SPD’s Metro, and then King County Sheriff’s Traffic Patrol, to make certain Liz hadn’t been in a traffic accident. Then he called LaMoia. Sergeant John LaMoia, who had mentored under Boldt for a good part of his Homicide career, who had stepped in as squad sergeant behind Boldt after Boldt’s promotion to lieutenant, was a man who knew few bounds but got the job done.
“Yo,” LaMoia answered.
Boldt asked how the terrorism seminar was going, unable to jump right in with a request to find his wife.
“I’ve seen shit you wouldn’t believe! Bombs the size of cigarette packs and briefcase gadgets that can zero every computer in a building. This is the ultimate techno-romp, Sarge.” LaMoia continued to call Boldt by his former rank. “If these rag-heads get their mitts on half this shit, we got big problems.”
“Danny Foreman said if you’re our line of defense, heaven help the enemy.”
“Got that right.” LaMoia understood when to rescue Boldt from his own misgivings. “Talk to me about Foreskin.” LaMoia had nicknames for everyone.
“I’ve got some problems of my own,” Boldt said, grateful for the bridge LaMoia offered him. “One I could use your help on.”
“Go.”
Boldt explained his situation-Miles needing to be picked up, and the greater need of finding Liz. He didn’t go into details on Liz’s current situation or the case in general because LaMoia would have picked up most of it already. The ferry surveillance had involved too many people not to get talked up in the department.
“I can cut out of here in ten. I’ll hit all the hot spots, though I can’t exactly see Mrs. B. in a fern bar.”
“I was thinking you could check with Danny Foreman. You should know he’s fresh out of the hospital himself. Make up some excuse that you screwed up surveillance on my wife and don’t want me finding out, and wondered if he knew her ten-twenty.”
“Me screwing up. That would fit. That’s good cover.”
It was generous of him; LaMoia was no screwup. But his reputation as a rogue player would make just about anything he said believable. Ironically, Foreman, of all people, a class-A Lone Ranger, would understand his situation.
Clearly deeply concerned, a different LaMoia asked, “How worried are we here, Sarge?”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that she’s in play. Their first mark, a guy named LaRossa, a friend of ours through the bank, keeled over of a heart attack this morning and is in Intensive Care. The way it plays for me is that the tune-up that Hayes took-this is the night we found Foreman lying in the bushes outside that trailer-was to win some cooperation from him. He ends up accessing a safe-deposit box, where he’d probably hid the software that had cloaked the embezzled money. That software gets passed to LaRossa by whoever’s now running Hayes, because LaRossa can get to the bank’s computers. LaRossa didn’t get the job done for them, so Liz moves to the top of their list. She, too, has access to the bank computers. And now she’s missing.”