The Angel Maker Read online

  He nodded. “The same.” Why should it feel odd to admit such a thing? “You?”

  “I’m good. I’m volunteering at The Shelter now.”

  “So I’ve heard,” he said. “I’ve kept up, too,” he added, wanting her to hear this.

  “Through Dixie,” she said, referring to King County medical examiner Dr. Ronald Dixon, a close friend of Boldt’s. A short silence fell between them.

  “Are you going to tell me about it?” he asked. “The case,” he added, trying to sound smart. It worked; she gave him one of those impressed looks.

  “She’s sixteen-years old.”

  “Is or was.”

  “Is,” she confirmed. “She walked into The Shelter this afternoon in real bad shape. Drugs. Evidence suggesting the use of electroshock therapy. A fresh incision right here,” she touched her side. “Too fresh. The bleeding kind of fresh. We thought she might be an escapee. We checked with hospitals and institutions. No one had record of her. Her stitches had popped, hence the blood. We admitted her to the Medical Center. I can’t tell you what drew me to her, Lou. Not exactly. It was more than curiosity, more than sympathy. You run out of those after a few weeks at The Shelter. You’re the one who taught me to listen to the victim—”

  “Victim?” he interrupted. “They got her stitched back up, I take it.” Exactly what was Daffy after? Why the compliments? She was a professional manipulator—he had to watch that. She knew her way around the human mind. Dealing with her was like playing blackjack with someone who could count cards.

  She answered, “They stitched her back up. But they took X-rays. She’s missing a kidney.” She let it hang there a second. “No hospital record of any such operation. She has no memory of any surgery. None. No explanation at all. I’m looking for the explanation.”

  “Phil went along with this?” he asked curiously. As staff psychologist, Daphne reported to Lieutenant Phil Shoswitz, Homicide, the logic of which was known only to the upper brass. If there were to be an investigation and she part of it, it would more than likely be overseen by Shoswitz.

  “He doesn’t even know about it yet,” she admitted, looking away—an uncommon gesture for her. “That’s one of the reasons I’ve come to you,” she added. “I need your help, your expertise.”

  Trouble! He knew her too well. “Help?”

  “Her name is Cindy Chapman. She’s been on the road for seven months. Left Arizona last winter after her stepfather sexually abused her. She went through Flagstaff, Salt Lake City, and ended up here about a month ago. Her long-term memory is fine. But she’s lost a twenty-four-hour period during which she was exposed to electroshock and her kidney was removed. Let me tell you this: No two medical procedures could be less related to one another. I’ve studied this stuff, Lou. This is my turf. But investigating it? That’s why I’m here.”

  He felt the stability of his marriage was at stake. Police work swallowed him whole. He and Liz had come to certain agreements. “What are you saying? Someone stole her kidney?”

  “If a hospital or an institution is involved, it has to be local. These kids stick to a pretty small area. They develop small societies of self-help or self-abuse. When they move away, it’s forever. On to Portland, San Francisco, L.A. You champion the cause of the victim. It’s the victim that can tell you the most about a case, dead or alive. Right? You’re the expert on the victim.”

  More compliments. He fought like hell to maintain his guard.

  “She may have been raped. She won’t admit to consensual sex. The evidence is there, but she doesn’t remember. That’s the electroshock. You see?”

  She was beginning to frighten him. “No,” he admitted, “I don’t see.”

  A commotion at the front door attempted to steal his attention but failed. Daphne’s eyes—convincing, terrified, searching, hopeful—held him firmly.

  “Someone cut this girl open and stole her kidney. I’m convinced of it. The electroshock was used to ensure she didn’t remember anything about it.” Fire filled her eyes. “I can’t prove it. Not yet.” She placed her hand on her chest. “But I feel it in here. You know that feeling, don’t you? I know you do.”

  He resented being cornered by her. Yes, he knew that feeling. Yes, he had been forced to defend it on a dozen occasions; and no, there was no real sense to it. But this was her feeling, not his, he reminded himself; her case, her instincts, not his. “What evidence is there?” he asked coldly.

  She winced. “I’m not an investigator. I can’t even take this to Shoswitz until I have something convincing. Hell, he’s Homicide. He may not want it even then: She’s alive after all. What do I do? Where do I turn?”

  “The helpless female? I don’t buy it.”

  She glared. “This young woman was violated in the worst, most heinous sense. Some monster”—monster was not a word that Daphne Matthews, the psychologist, often used—”cut her open, reached inside her, and removed an organ—a physical part of her! My God! Phil Shoswitz may be committed more to the dead than the living, but you? After they stole her kidney, they burned her short-term memory with electroshock. Am I getting through? Maybe one of them raped her just for fun. Evidence? Do I need probable cause, Sergeant, in order to investigate, or just the suspicion that a crime has been committed?” She stared him down. “Will you help me or not?” she asked, adding, “If for no other reason than as a parent.”

  He couldn’t help but picture Miles—Einstein, the nickname belonging to his blond, curly haired son—involuntarily under the knife of such a butcher. She interrupted his thoughts. “The electroshock may have done permanent damage to her memory, not to mention her mind: She hears a constant barking.”

  “I’m out of the business. I’m off the force. My badge is collecting dust in Shoswitz’s drawer.”

  “You’re on extended leave.”

  “That’s just Phil’s way of holding a carrot out to me, of keeping my chance at twenty alive. That’s the way it reads on paper, Daffy, but in here?” he said, repeating her gesture of placing his hand on his chest. “In here, I’m a father and a hack pianist.”

  He had never dared speak the words aloud, had seldom even thought them, for he wasn’t one to lie, and he couldn’t be sure this was the truth: “It’s over.” It felt sacrilegious to say such a thing. Just hearing it spoken confirmed its falsehood. He felt a terrifying loss of control, as if hitting a patch of ice on a dangerous curve. It wasn’t over, was it? Someone out there had torn the guts out of a young girl. What surprised him most of all was the way he took to it so quickly. He wanted whatever evidence she had. He wanted the pieces of the puzzle. He wanted to put a stop to it before it happened again. Cop instincts—she was counting on them. Perhaps it was because the victim was alive.

  A voice—a man’s, big and thunderous—reverberated through the club. “Party’s over, everyone. No more drinks. I’m going to have to ask you all to leave.” Boldt looked over his shoulder expecting to see some drunk on the stage, but instead he saw a crew cut wearing a ten-year-old gray suit and scuffed wingtips with worn heels. A badge hung out of the breast pocket of the suit. Four or five clones of the man swept quickly into the club, fanning out to various responsibilities. It felt like a bank job to Boldt, an organized robbery. But when this guy announced, “Treasury Department,” he realized what it was. The man continued, “These premises are being sealed.” He repeated loudly over protests, “I’m going to have to ask you all to leave.”

  “Your idea?” Boldt asked her, nodding toward the T-man. “Trying to pressure me into this?”

  She grimaced, looking past him toward the stage.

  One of the suits was screwing a padlock clasp into the piano’s keyboard cover. Boldt could feel the screws biting into the wood as if they were drilling into his own flesh. He rose angrily, Daphne following.

  “What the hell?” Boldt hollered as he closed the distance. “That’s a musical instrument, goddamn it!” The one with the big voice was smart enough to step aside. The assistant kept righ
t on twisting the screwdriver. “Stop that! Now!”

  “Don’t make any trouble, pal,” the assistant cautioned. The screw chewed more deeply into the wood.

  “You don’t do that to a musical instrument,” Boldt repeated, wrapping one of his big hands around the boy’s wrist. “You just don’t do that.”

  The agent threatened, “You want me to call the cops?”

  “I am a cop,” Boldt declared. His eyes met Daphne’s; she wasn’t going to let him live that one down. Boldt released the man.

  “So am I,” Daphne informed the agent, producing her identification. “I’d sure as hell like to see the warrant that authorizes the destruction of private property in the process of seizure. You want to show me that document, please, Agent—” she craned forward to read his I.D.”—Campbell?”

  The man’s face went crimson. He looked first at her then at Boldt, then over at his superior. “You want to see warrants, you’ll have to talk to Agent Majorksi. I got a job to do here.”

  “Leave it be,” Boldt said definitively, grabbing his wrist again. Two screws had already violated the ebony.

  Across the room, bartender Mallory struggled with one of the agents in an effort to lock the cash register, but lost. The agent took the key from her. They had practiced this drill well or had performed it enough times to execute it flawlessly. Piece by piece, stage by stage, the agents took control in a matter of minutes. Confused patrons were herded toward the door, several chugging beers on the way. Another commotion—Bear’s arrest—grabbed Boldt’s attention as the agent started twisting that screwdriver again.

  The club owner was placed in handcuffs and read his rights. He glanced over at Boldt, shrugged, and smiled. “I should have hired H&R Block,” Bear shouted over to Boldt. That was Bear: ever the comic. He threw a couple of one-liners at the agents who had him, but they didn’t seem to appreciate the humor. “Drinks are on the house, fellas,” he tried one last time as they escorted him toward the door.

  “Hey, Monk,” he called out, using his nickname for Boldt, “I thought all you badgers were on the same team. Hey, Elliot Ness,” he called to the gray suit, Majorski, “this here is Lou Boldt. The Lou Boldt of the Seattle Police Department! Have a heart!” He was ushered out of the building.

  “Louis Boldt?” Agent Majorski asked.

  “That’s right,” Boldt answered, surprised to hear his proper name come from the mouth of a stranger. These guys were as stiff as cardboard. “You mind calling this guy off? He’s screwing a friend of mine.”

  Daphne displayed her I.D. for the second time. “I’d like to see the warrant that permits him to do that.”

  Majorski looked over her badge and photo. “Tommy,” he said, stopping the one at the piano. “Why don’t you help with the files?”

  Reluctantly, the rookie abandoned his task.

  Boldt and Daphne briefly exchanged looks of triumph.

  The euphoria was short-lived. Majorski consulted a typed list he withdrew from his coat pocket. “You’ll be hearing from the IRS,” he said to Boldt with a disturbing smugness. “I’d speak to my accountant if I were you.” He moved off to reorganize his people.

  “My accountant?” Boldt responded desperately, the man not listening. Liz handled their tax returns.

  Daphne and Boldt were herded toward the door.

  “Just let me use you as a sounding board,” Daphne pleaded, ever persistent. “I can bounce my ideas off you. Show you what I’ve got.” She feared she had lost him, that her effort had been overshadowed by the raid, that all was for naught. She couldn’t leave it as it was, she couldn’t bear the thought of facing Shoswitz alone; she needed Boldt.

  “Daffy, I can sleep at night. My stomach is better than it’s been in years. I take naps in the afternoon, with my little Einstein purring in his crib. I read books—imagine that! Liz and I actually find time to speak a few complete sentences to each other. You know what you’re asking?”

  “Please,” she tried.

  The way she said it. Boldt looked at her intently. “As a sounding board, but that’s all.”

  “Sure,” she said, unconvincingly. “That’s all.” He hated losing.

  THURSDAY

  February 2

  3

  Sharon Shaffer, barely tall enough to see over the wheel even with a cushion under her, was driving her seven-year-old Ford Escort, Daphne in the passenger seat. Daphne lived on a houseboat at Gas Works Park; Sharon lived about a mile away on Linden, a block from the Freemont Baptist Church. They car-pooled together whenever possible, mostly for the company. Following her meeting with Boldt at the library, Daphne was going to spend the evening at The Shelter and then ride home with Sharon.

  Crossing the colorful Freemont Bridge toward town, Daphne strained to see her marina but couldn’t. With Lake Union to their left, they drove along Westlake, cluttered marinas gradually evolving into condos and corporate headquarters as they drew closer to town. Ninth Avenue was a no-man’s land of struggling small businesses. Then it was the fast-food and franchised commercialism of Denny Way.

  A ferry horn sounded, dull and low, like the groan of a huge animal. Daphne’s watch read three twenty-eight. The ferries represented a kind of freedom—island life. Isolation, escape.

  “Judging by yesterday’s weather,” Daphne said, “I’d say the groundhog drowned.”

  “We’re halfway through the rinse cycle,” Sharon agreed. “Four more weeks of this at least.”

  “Makes you really love the place, doesn’t it?”

  “You look a little tired,” Sharon said.

  “I spent the day poring over some autopsy files the medical examiner wanted me to see. It’s exhausting.”

  “Sounds disgusting.”

  “I made some headway. I’m not sure Cindy Chapman is all alone in this.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I need to run it all by a friend and see what he thinks,” Daphne explained.

  “I don’t like the sound of your voice.”

  “I’m a little scared, that’s all.”

  “I don’t think I could ever be a cop,” Sharon said. She ruminated on this for a moment. “Three years ago, if someone had tried to tell me that someday one of my best friends would be a cop, and a forensic psychologist at that, I would have tagged them for the bird house—the loony bin. It’s weird how things work out.”

  “In your case, they’ve worked out rather nicely.”

  “It’ll happen to you,” Sharon encouraged. “It’s all in your attitude, and your attitude is improving. Something’s working.”

  “It’s the therapy.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s good to see.”

  “Have you ever worked with someone after you’ve had a thing with him?”

  Astonished, Sharon cried, “Did you sleep with your therapist?”

  “Not my therapist, dummy. Just answer the question.”

  Sharon stopped at a light and said, “On the street I slept with everyone. You’d sleep with someone because they had the coke that week. Coke whores. We were all coke whores.” She drifted off for a moment. When she spoke again, the pain was gone from her voice. “But I know what you’re asking about, and it did happen to me once. I slept a couple of times with a guy I met in A.A. Then it fizzled out. I’m not sure why. But we kept running into each other at all the meetings. It worked out okay, except that no matter what we talked about on the surface, there was always this sexual tension—at least for me—going on underneath, you know? I wasn’t after him—nothing like that—but you don’t forget the really good ones, and this guy was really tuned in, really good for me.”

  “But you don’t forget, do you?” Daphne asked, repeating her friend’s comment.

  “I sure don’t.”

  “And it worked out?”

  “Depending on who you ask. He’s got a woman now. I have The Shelter. But,” and she laughed, “it’s hard to curl up with The Shelter. And there are times … Well, you know. But you can’t project. ‘One day at
a time,’ girl. ‘An attitude of gratitude.’ ”

  “Yeah, yeah. Don’t preach,” Daphne chided.

  “Sometimes I think I’m lucky I got so messed up on the streets. Without A.A. Well, you’ve heard all of this.”

  “A number of times.” Even three years into the program, Sharon was still on a sort of honeymoon. Sometimes it was all she could find to talk about.

  “Who’s the guy?” Sharon asked.

  “Just that: a guy.”

  “Don’t give me that.” She laughed. “If you slept with him, he’s not just a guy, he’s an endangered species.”

  “Once. Only once. And I didn’t even spend the night. It isn’t the sex.”

  “Those are the dangerous ones,” Sharon said, turning the corner and pulling over to the curb.

  “Yeah, I know,” agreed Daphne. She looked at her watch. Thirty minutes in which to do her research.

  “You’re meeting someone here, aren’t you?” Sharon asked. “Him,” she stated.

  “I’ll catch up with you later,” Daphne reminded. She climbed out of the car, wondering why she felt so damned nervous.

  4

  The Lakeview Animal Clinic veterinarian offices occupied the ground floor of a relatively new business complex facing Madison. The reception area had vinyl flooring in a brick pattern and long benches against each wall. In huge letters a sign read: Keep Animals Caged or Leashed At All Times. Dogs, to the left benches. Cats to the right. There were a few of each in the small room, the air electric with possible conflict.

  Pamela Chase, short and overweight, wore a yellow crew shirt with the words “Lakeview Animal Clinic” embroidered on her breast pocket. She inspected the form that belonged to the cat she was carrying. Camile hadn’t eaten in three days. When she had managed to get food down, she vomited it back up. Camile, like so much of their work, was a referral—Dr. Elden Tegg was the one vet to whom the other vets turned.

  The examination room had a chart on the wall that diagramed the nerves, lenses, and muscles in a cat’s eye. There was a large, framed color photograph of Puget Sound at dawn, a nuclear submarine just barely visible alongside a pod of surfacing Orca whales. The room had no window but did possess a large air grate in the ceiling. It smelled of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant.