The Angel Maker - 2 (35 page)

Pit bulls? What are we talking here, a hundred dollars and animal confiscation? What are you, the ASPCA? Come on! Whatever your intentions, you had better speak to Bob Proctor. I certainly am going to as soon as I am done here. Are you bringing additional charges against my client?"

"Your client?" Boldt asked. "At your fee? Or are you doing charity work now?"

"My relationship with Donald is confidential." Daphne said, "it must be. He doesn't like that name. Has anyone even introduced you two?" To Maybeck she said, "You called Tegg, didn't you?"

but she watched Chamberland for a reaction. He was expressionless-worth every penny. Daphne felt the frustration as a knot in her throat. So close! What were Sharon's chances now?

Boldt said, "A few minutes ago your client was requesting to see a public defender, Mr. Chamberland. Are you sure you have the right man?"

"Are you?" asked the attorney, holding the door open for them, waiting for them to leave.

As Boldt and Daphne headed down the narrow hallway leading from Interrogation, Lamoia rushed toward them waving a pink telephone memo, his face a youthful combination of fatigue and exhilaration. Before the detective reached them, Shoswitz appeared behind him at the main door and shouted loudly,

"Everybody-and I mean everybody but uniforms-in the Situation Room now! No tears!" he emphasized, meaning he would take no excuses. "I don't like the sound of that," Boldt warned. "I don't like a sharpshooter with Chamberland's reputation representing Maybeck." She added, "He's a heavy hitter."

"Agreed. We've lost Maybeck."

"I'm about to scream."

"Better not." Boldt happened to catch the lieutenant's eye, just a fleeting glimpse that caused him to make an aside to Daphne. "We're baked." He had worked with Shoswitz for over eleven of his seventeen years with the department and had learned to measure even the slightest nuance in his expression.

Such a sixth sense was a prerequisite to a successful career in Homicide; it told you when to shut up and when to push hard.

This was one of the times to shut up. "I think you're right.

The last time he called for all of us," she reminded, "was that neo-Nazi thing three years ago."

"Lamoia!" Shoswitz chastised, stopping the man. "The Situation Room is the other way! I said nowill Lamoia switched directions abruptly. He shoved the memo into his pocket. The two sergeants increased their strides, attempting to catch up with Lamoia.

They entered the large, open room with its folding chairs and tables.

Daphne rushed to a spot along the wall closest to the room's only other door, hoping to sneak out if necessary. Shoswitz could be long-winded. Sharon couldn't afford long-winded.

The room was in a temporary state of chaos, as investigators of all ranks flooded the seats and established leaning zones.

There were two other women in the room besides Daphne, both detectives: Bobbie Gaynes and Anita Desilva. The two women on loan from Sexual Assault for the pawn shop sting were back on their regular assignments. "Sit down and put a lid on it!"

Shoswitz ordered.

Lamoia reached them and stood behind Daphne, leaning against the door. Facing Shoswitz along with the two men, she said,

"What have you got, John?"

"The name of the courier," he whispered.

He pulled out the memo again, and Daphne snatched it from him without looking, stunning him. "The employee lists arrived on my E-Mail while you two were in Interrogation. I called over to Port of Seattle Police and they started running the names through the airliner computers. We got luck on two counts: One, she used an airline early in the alphabet, which was how we started our search-Alaska Air; two, she was greedy-she credited every single flight to her mileage program. It was my buddy's idea, the first place he tried, because the data is essentially already sorted for you, and barn: Twenty-some-odd flights stacked right in a row, all to Vancouver International, all on the dates of the previous harvests."

"What's the name?" Boldt asked anxiously, cocking his head just slightly over his shoulder. "Listen up, people, and listen up good. Come on. Quiet!" Shoswitz roared. "Meyers, put a sock in it! Boldt, you done having your meeting? I'd like to get on with mine."

Daphne, who was just about to read the name to Boldt, slipped the memo back into her pocket. She felt her face burn.

Shoswitz became intensely serious. "Listen up. Five minutes ago, a little after 4 P.m., a male Caucasian entered the Stoneway Safeway and opened fire with a semiautomatic weapon as yet unidentified."

"The guy or the gun?" an anonymous, disguised voice shouted out. It won some limited laughter.

Shoswitz wasn't having any of it. His face remained rigid and impassive as he continued, "Eleven known dead." A hush swept the room. Maybe no one was breathing. "Including two children, an infant and seven women. One of those women was the daughter of state Senator Baker. SPD and County Police vehicles are presently in pursuit of the suspect-five-foot-eight inches, brown hair, camo clothing, jump boots-believed to be headed north on Aurora around the Eighty-fifth Street crossing. You're all assigned to this one, people." There was a major grumbling of protest throughout the room. "All other investigations, except-" he pulled out a cheat sheet, "the docklands bombing, the Toyland rape/assault, and the harvester kidnapping take backseat to this. On those cases just mentioned, only, I repeat-ONLY!-the lead detective remains active." More grumbling from his audience. "All support activities, including surveillance, are terminated until notified." That really stirred up the crowd. "Listen! Listen! This is from the top down okay? Don't kill the fucking messenger-excuse the French.

I want you all to roll to the crime scene immediately, but watch your driving, especially you, Lamoia-no stunts. We want witness reports, a full ID workup; you know the drill. "We're going to be under a microscope on this one, people. National news affiliates are already working with Public Information.

This has got to be first-class police work. Let's see that it is. Let's zip it up. I will be coordinating along with the Bureau's boys-those experts in homicide." This finally won him some sympathy. A ripple of laughter swept the room. The FBI, who taught homicide investigative techniques, annually conducted fewer homicide investigations on a national basis that a even a small experience, they occasionally caused bad blood by exerting that authority. "Matthews, we'll want you to interface with the FBI on a psych-" He paused. "Where the hell is Matthews? Matthews, pipe up. Raise your hand or something!

Boldt!" he hollered, "wasn't she standing right behind you?"

"I'm not sure, Lieutenant," Boldt lied cautiously, his hand curled around the note she had slipped there. He had felt her writing against him, using his back as a desk, just before she slipped out. "Maybe the little girls' room," Lamoia offered. He knew better.

"Gaynes, find her!" Shoswitz ordered. The detective hurried from the room. "Don't look too hard," Boldt advised from the corner of his mouth as Gaynes passed. She turned and winked at him. Wherever Daphne was headed, she would make it.

He opened his hand and read the crumpled note, written in mascara on the back of Lamoia's pink memo. It read: "You take Maybeck. I've got her." An arrow lead around the note to the other side where the name was boldly circled: Pamela Chase.

Boldt aimed his back squarely at Lamoia and asked, "Hey, did she get any of that stuff on my coat?"

Situated in the northern reaches of the university district, Pamela Chase's apartment building was around the corner from a Greek restaurant, a stationery store and a sewing shop. It looked more like a double-decker motel. Daphne was driving her own Honda Prelude because her assigned vehicle had yet to be returned by the airport security personnel; she would probably never see the car again. As she was checking to make sure her Beretta semiautomatic was secured in its holster up under her jacket, her pager began beeping. She unclipped it from her waist, studied it a moment, and dropped it casually between the seats, muting its tones and distancing herself from it.

Shoswitz; wasn't reassigning her that was all there was to it.

For several years of her life she had never gone more than thirty days without a trip to the firing range. Ever since that scar, more often than that. Only now, as she faced the possibility of actually using the weapon on a human, did she worry whether or not she could go through with it.

She climbed a flight of cement stairs, a dozen thoughts crowding her brain, paused at the top to catch her breath and clear her head, and approached number six. The mail slot to number six had Pamela Chase's name on it. Daphne felt like a detective now, not just a desk jock: Her stomach was nauseated, her eyes burning, her fingers cold. She had two bold lines of tension running up the back of her neck, as if an eagle had sunk its talons there. Her mouth tasted salty and dry, and she couldn't hear because of the humming in her ears.

Everything seemed to be riding on this moment. If Pamela Chase would go against Tegg, then Sharon might still have a chance.

She knocked on the door. The woman who answered it was overweight, in her-twenties. She carried a surprised innocence in her eyes, a piece of jellied toast in her right hand.

"Pamela Chase?" Daphne asked. Although she looked like a pushover-someone easily broken daphne put herself on guard.

Maybeck's strength had surprised her. With only hours to go until Friday, February 10, Pamela Chase seemed the last link to Elden Tegg.

There was no time to play sweet, no time to nibble at the edges.

Daphne had to take a big bite, right away, and make this woman hurt, make her panic. "I'm with the police, Miss Chase." She offered her a look at her identification. "I'm investigating a kidnapping, four homicides, and a series of organ harvests that date back at least three years."

The toast slapped onto the forest-green shag carpet in a wet landing. She had pinched it too hard. There was still a piece lodged between index finger and thumb. She was far from tan to begin with, but she was paler now. She had locked into a squint as if the sun were shining brightly over Daphne's shoulder. The sun was down, the sky a kind of glowing charcoal gray, like a colorless stained-glass window backlit by a low-watt bulb.

Twice, Chase started to say something, tried to get a word out, but something was lodged in her throat. Something like guilt, thought Daphne. The kind of thing, try as you might, you can never swallow away. "What do you say we give your furnace a rest?" The girl didn't get it. "May I come inside?"

"What do you want?"

She felt like saying, "I want Sharon back alive!"

"I want more time in which to operate."

"I want our surveillance people back. A fighting chance."

She said, "I want Elden Tegg behind bars." The door swung open.

The girl staggered into the center of the dormitory-decorated room, dizzy and disoriented. It wasn't exactly an invitation, but Daphne followed, closing the door behind her. As it thumped shut, the girl glanced over at her, still in that painful squint. "I don't ... I don't know anything," she said.

Daphne replied, "it would be nice if we had time to talk about it, wouldn't it? You could lie to me, I could lie to you. We call that 'the dance' in my business. I make promises I can't keep; you repeatedly tell me that you have no idea what I'm talking about. But you're small potatoes to me, Pamela Chase.

You hardly count. I haven't got time for you.

Neither does my friend-the one you kidnapped. Time is the one I'm chasing now, and you're in the way, and I don't much care what happens to you, as long as you pay for what you've done and I get my friend back. This really isn't like me, but it's the way I feel, and I'll be damned if I can be any different right at the moment."

The girl's mouth sagged open. Dumbfounded, she again tried say something. Again, she failed.

Daphne smelled success brewing. "What it boils down to is whether or not you're willing to go to jail for the crimes he committed." Maybeck hadn't responded well to this line of reasoning, but Daphne sensed more chance in a girl like this.

"Have you ever seen the inside of a women's prison? You know what they do to each other in there? All we ever hear about are the abuses in the men's prison system, but that's because we're in a male-dominated society. You know what the guards do to the women prisoners? They sell them goods--drugs and cigarettes mostly. And do you know what the women pay with? Why don't you sit down, Pamela? You're going to faint if you don't watch it.

That's better. You feel okay? No? You shouldn't. You're not okay. You're in the deep stuff. You're in the stuff that hardens and turns to cement and never lets you go, and you know that all I need from you is a little talk. That's all. How you got into it? What he's done? just tell me that Elden Tegg is the harvester and tell me you'll sign a warrant to that effect.

You do this for me and you may walk away from it. I don't much like that. If it were left to me, Id make you suffer for what you've done, but the law acts in strange ways. I'll play along, if you will. You buy yourself a big chunk of freedom by cooperating. You buy yourself nothing but trouble if you play it any other way." She took off a shoe and rubbed the sole of her foot.

"Tell me about it, Pam. Tell me how it works. Tell me where Maybeck fits in. And Connie Chi. Did you read in the paper about Connie? She's dead, you know? We think it was Maybeck, but it might have been Tegg. Someone killed her. That could have been you, girl. It may yet be you. That's something else I would think about if I were you. Life expectancy in this business of yours is on the backside of the curve." That kind of talk was going to lose her. She looked confused. Daphne didn't want her confused, she wanted her terrified. As terrified as she was. What if she failed with Pamela as well?

What then? She spread her fingers into a church steeple, as if she were praying-maybe she was-and stared over nails that needed attention. All of her needed attention. "Sit down!" she shouted.

Pamela stumbled backward and fell to a sitting position on the couch. She was crying. "Better," Daphne said. She felt about as bad as she had ever felt. "I don't know what you're talking about," Pamela mumbled again. "Tell me about your flights to Vancouver. Who asked you to make those deliveries?"