“But where?”
“Daniels!” Boldt called out.
“Sarge?”
“I need a name attached to that partial plate registration.”
“Working on it.”
“I’ll take ten names. I’ll take twenty. But zero isn’t going to cut it.”
“We’ve got more like seventeen hundred at the moment. We’re working to narrow it down.”
“Run it through Skagit,” Boldt said.
“How’s that?”
Calling across the room had raised some heads. Boldt was making a nuisance of himself.
“Skagit County—a Taurus with that same partial. You want to narrow it down? Narrow it down.”
Some in the room laughed. Not Daniels. He sank back into his chair and picked up his telephone receiver.
“Because of the bridge? Deception Pass?” LaMoia asked.
“She said he wouldn’t want to move them far. It’s a long way from here—nearly two hours when the traffic’s bad. That doesn’t fit with what she told us.”
“You’re telling me she’s running this thing from wherever she is?” LaMoia sounded skeptical.
“Who are you going to trust more?”
It hit LaMoia in the chest. He sat down, looking wounded.
Five minutes passed feeling like twenty. Twenty, like forty.
“James Erwin Malster,” Daniels said from behind Boldt.
He placed a photocopy of a driver’s license in front of the sergeant.
“Fifty-one years old. Caucasian. Male. Registered with the pipe fitting union. Member of the United Association—”
“Pipe fitters. Plumbers,” Boldt said.
“Exactly. Retired in good standing nine years ago, following the death of his wife. Health complications.”
“This is who the car is registered to?”
“Correct.”
“But it’s not correct,” Boldt said. “She gave me a profile. Twenties. Thirties at the oldest. Is this the father?”
“It’s his car.”
“It’s not him.”
“A pipe fitter,” LaMoia said. “So he knows how to rig things.”
“It’s not him,” Boldt said.
“She could have had the profile wrong,” LaMoia said. “Guy loses his wife, spends years grieving…comes apart at the seams.”
“There’s a son,” Boldt said to Daniels. “Find the son.”
“I’m not showing—”
“Find the son,” Boldt repeated.
“Yes, sir.”
“You have the location of residence?”
“Oak Harbor.”
“Christ,” LaMoia said.
“I say something wrong?” Daniels asked.
“Oak Harbor’s only a few miles from Deception Pass,” Boldt said. He turned to LaMoia. “She called that one right.”
“She also said he’d change bridges once we publicized the death, and we publicized the death.”
“Which is what got us in trouble. Is that what you’re saying, John? Are you laying this onto me, because I can take it. But it isn’t going to do a damn thing in terms of bringing her back.”
“She said he’d switch bridges.”
“She was wrong about that,” Boldt said.
“Because? Which is it, Sarge? Was she right or wrong, because I don’t think you can have it both ways.”
Boldt had been having it both ways for years: part of his heart left behind while the rest of him loved and stayed with his family. He’d built a Great Wall between his true emotions and the Presentable Parent to where no one could see the other side, not even him most of the time. But LaMoia had loosened the lid with that last comment. Contents may explode under pressure.
Boldt said, “He’s going to throw her off Deception Pass bridge. His angel is going to fly this time. He’s screwed this up twice. If it is the pipe fitter, he’s not a give-up guy.”
“You’re not the psychologist, she is,” LaMoia said, his arms crossed, his voice hoarse.
“Father or son? Pipe fitter, or who knows what? You’re all over the map, Sarge.”
“I’ll disregard that,” Boldt said.
“LaMoia,” Daniels said in a cautionary tone.
“You think she was wrong, John?” Boldt asked. “Then what if she was wrong about his doing this at sunrise. What if sunset works just as well for him?” He eyed LaMoia up and down. “You want to sit here, or you want to take a ride in the chopper?”
Daniels squirmed, caught in the crosshairs. “Sarge?” he said.
“Call a prosecuting attorney named Rickert up there. Mount Vernon. Tell him to rally the best guys his sheriff’s office can muster and to have them put eyes on the residence. We want an open channel with our dispatch. Real time updates. You getting all this?”
“I got it.”
“I can be up there in twenty, twenty-five minutes.” Boldt looked over at LaMoia. All the bravado was gone, the luster, the very sense of who John LaMoia was. Someone, something, now inhabited his body.
“You coming?”
LaMoia looked up through fixed eyes. “I hate helicopters,” he said.
“That’s been…the mistake,” Daphne told him. It took all of her courage, and more than a little part of what energy she could summon. He had her tied to a narrow wooden-slat table, a scratchy rope across her bare chest, her hands connected by a rope beneath the table, another rope at her knees and yet another holding her ankles apart, also connecting under the table. She was naked, her legs spread, at once both horribly embarrassing and making her feel incredibly vulnerable. He could do whatever he wanted to her; there would be no stopping him.
She was in a dreary, dimly lit room. The windows were small and high on the wall and covered in soiled, decaying curtains. The pungent oily, stale-salt smell told her water was close.
She was not blindfolded; he had no fear of her seeing his face, her being able to identify him. This increased her panic.
He hovered over her, paying her nakedness no mind, preparing to administer a pill and what smelled like cough syrup. He was intending to drug her. He would then either leave her here to sleep it off, or walk her to his car while she was numb and transport her.
He was a soft-looking man, with piggish, squinting eyes smudged with a horrid blue eye shadow, and a pallor to his facial skin.
Her comment stopped him. She seized upon his hesitation.
“You broke her back. She…was too relaxed. The drugs…whatever it is you’re about to give me…it’s what killed her…what will kill me. If you…take away my strength to resist the force of the fall…you’ll break my back.”
He stared at her expressionless. He seemed to be thinking: How could she read my mind like this? How could she possibly know…?
“You want them to fly…want me to fly, don’t you?” she said, gaining some strength to her voice, though not much. The lingering effect of the stun stick was a massive migraine, a dry throat and pain radiating throughout her body. On top of that she was absurdly cold, chilled to the bone, a kind of chill that might be chemical, or a response to shock, but was unlike anything she knew.
“I can’t fly if you drug me. The harness…must dis-tri-bute the force of the fall better. Shoulders to hips. Bigger harness…maybe.”
He held up a series of nylon straps and buckles. It look liked he’d made it himself—there were nuts and bolts where a harness might have had stitching or grommets.
“You don’t need…to drug me…to put that on,” she said. “I won’t fight. I want…to help you…be the first to fly.”
She watched his eyes mist. She’d triggered something painful in him. She clawed through the purple and black orbs that threatened on the sides of her vision, that warmth flowing down from her skull, trying to overtake her.
He looked her over, head to toe, his eyes lingering where a woman always felt men looking. She thought perhaps she didn’t fit the look—the look that he sought. The victim they’d seen had been slightly heavier, wider in the hips. Maybe he was considering rejecting her. Maybe she’d spoken too much. But speaking was her living. Her life…depended on it.