“Yes,” Boldt said, “but at least I called. That’s got to count for something.”
“Not much,” Mahoney replied. In fact, officers could and did kick doors based on probable cause without ever applying for the proper paperwork. Boldt knew that maybe sixty percent of the time evidence collected in such raids actually made it to court. He didn’t want to lose evidence, but he didn’t want to leave Foreman or Hayes inside this building another minute, and so he made a hasty and difficult decision to give LaMoia a thumbs-up from his place below the man in the alley. Part of his reasoning should have included that they weren’t even sure they could reach the impounded property from that broken window, and that argument might have held up if it had been anyone but LaMoia climbing that fire escape. But as Boldt gave the signal, he moved immediately back toward the building’s locked front door, knowing that at any minute LaMoia would appear there, a shit-eating grin on his face, a wisecrack ready on his lips.
“Welcome to the Hyatt. May I check your reservation?” LaMoia asked.
“I knew you’d have something cute. You just can’t leave it alone, can you?”
“I have a reputation to live up to,” LaMoia said.
Boldt stepped through into a vast, empty space that smelled of cat urine and feces. A poured concrete floor stained from spilled ink, papered with litter. It was dark. Both detectives used small Maglites to light their way.
The central space looked to be about the size of a basketball court but beneath a low ceiling. Boldt experienced an immediate sense of dread, an early-warning sign he’d come to trust over the years and felt inclined to do so now. This “sense” usually proved to be no sense at all, but his picking up on evidence subliminally, evidence that didn’t jump out at first. When Boldt stopped walking to take in the vastness of the space, LaMoia knew better than to challenge him, or even speak. Boldt trusted the man to put the wisecracks away and knew it would be so. Despite all his antics, LaMoia was a serious cop on the inside. LaMoia squatted, also looking around, sweeping his own flashlight across the floor.
LaMoia’s light stopped moving, illuminating a wedge-shaped cone of concrete. “Is that what you’re looking for?” His light held on two thin hash marks, black, like skid marks from a bike tire. Not one, but two of them, and nearly parallel.
“Good work, John.”
The men followed the irregular black lines across the floor. Fat to narrow. Long to short. Boldt discerned the direction of movement from their shape and pattern. “Heel marks,” he said, following them across the cavernous space. A body being dragged. Boldt’s temperature increased and he worked to control his breathing, to fight the adrenaline that wanted to own him. The deeper they moved into this room, the darker, the more dependent they were on the small flashlights. Boldt knew they could be following the markings of a machine being dragged across the print shop or a cart with black rubber tires or a hand truck. But he believed otherwise. A body, his internal voice cautioned. The body of David Hayes, his first thought.
“This is SPD turf, and that gives us jurisdiction to investigate that busted window. We’re cool, Sarge. This isn’t coming back on us.” LaMoia said all this for himself, knowing instinctively as did Boldt that they were on to something, and not wanting to face that they could lose by technicality whatever lay at the end of these skid marks. But both men had experienced such loss enough times to know the truth. They’d taken a gamble. The admissibility of whatever they might discover here remained in question.
They followed the skid marks around a wall to a missing door and a wide set of steel and concrete stairs leading down. Reflexively, LaMoia grabbed for his handgun, checked the weapon for operability, and gripped it along with the flashlight, both hands extended before him. Boldt remained half a step back, avoiding any line of fire, but did not take up his weapon. He checked it once, hooking his sport coat behind its bulge, so that he could withdraw it at a moment’s notice, and only then if LaMoia needed backup. John LaMoia was a crack shot. If anything moved down here without fair notice, Boldt knew the outcome.
The bottom of the stairs presented them with a closed door, and LaMoia tugged it open, standing to one side to screen himself. A pitch-black space faced them, slowly illuminated by their flashlights. This basement level was crowded with discarded printing presses, stacks of white plastic, five-gallon drums, junk of every shape and size, all stacked together without logic or organization. The floor failed to yield the telltale skid marks of a body being dragged, and so the two split up, Boldt heading to the right, LaMoia to the left. Using hand signals they communicated a rendezvous point at the far end of a space that remained so dark that the light they carried died in blackness before reaching a distant wall. The operating theory was that it had to end somewhere, and when it did, they would find each other. Meanwhile, Boldt kept glancing over his shoulder to keep track of LaMoia’s ever-dimming light.
The junk was piled in heaps that created a few aisles to Boldt’s left, and the larger aisle that he continued to walk. He squared a corner, discovering a side wall, and felt tempted to call out to LaMoia when, at that same instant, he felt a vibration travel up his legs, resonate through his body, and he guessed that a vehicle had either just passed by the building or had parked alongside.
Boldt’s skin prickled as he hurried his pace, checking a number of side storage rooms. He had his weapon out now, in hand, and wasn’t sure when that had happened. He reminded himself that he had a Kevlar vest in the trunk of the Crown Vic and that Miles was almost seven and Sarah just four and that they deserved to have a daddy well into their childhoods. He also reminded himself that he had applied for the lieutenant’s shield to raise his pay, but that Liz saw it as a means to keep him out of situations like this, and he struggled with the irony that Liz herself had put him into this situation. It seemed it was always at moments such as these that memories and considerations tried to overrun his thoughts, an involuntary invitation of images that challenged his ability to stay focused and made the job all the more difficult. As a young cop, such images never plagued you; experience had its downside.
The fourth door that Boldt tried failed to open, and his flashlight revealed a shiny new hasp and padlock at head height. He whistled once, and LaMoia whistled back, and at the same instant a muffled voice came from the other side of the door, and Boldt felt his bowels rumble. When it came to victims, Homicide cops rarely dealt in the living.
The muffled cries continued from the other side of the door.
“You feel the shake and bake?” LaMoia asked in a forced whisper, coming up behind Boldt.
“I did,” Boldt said, snapping on a pair of latex gloves before tugging on the lock.
“Visitors?”
“We knew it was a possibility.” Boldt added, “It could be our own guys trying to catch up to us and update us on Foreman’s status.”
LaMoia nonchalantly located a section of pipe amid the debris as they talked, leveraged the lock and hasp, and split the wooden doorjamb as the screws pulled loose and the hasp gave way. Still locked to itself, the hardware hung from the door. Boldt twisted the doorknob and eased the door open an eighth of an inch, aware there could be trip wires rigged to an explosive or incendiary device. If the work of Foreman, as an investigator he knew to destroy evidence and leave a few surprises for visitors. LaMoia leaned in close as Boldt held the door, and without a word of instruction searched the open space carefully with his flashlight held to the crack.