“So that’s the question he wants answered: Why Steven Garman?” A thin film of perspiration glistened under his hairline. “I’m asking myself if it doesn’t go back to your Air Force days. Something out of your past.”
Garman swallowed heavily. His eyes were soft again, but they were scared. His pupils were dilated; he was mouth breathing.
Talk to me, she encouraged silently.
“Nothing I can think of,” he said. His voice cracked and belied his words.
Got you!
She wanted to stay there the rest of the day, to keep working on him until he asked if she were hot or loosened his tie or opened a window. She had no idea what was hidden inside him, or if it bore any real significance to the investigation. People inflated their own self-worth. But she wanted to get at it. She wanted to sweat him. There were a dozen ways to trip him up, but she would go gently. Consult Boldt, play it his way. She said, “You mentioned that you were stationed on a base.”
“It isn’t relevant. Seriously. It was-what? — nine, ten years ago. The world changes a lot in ten years.”
“You were married then,” she said, adding a little tug to the hook.
Garman’s eyes went to glass. If the pen had been a pencil it might have snapped between his powerful fingers. He glanced away, then back at her, then away again, unable to decide where his eyes should light. There was anger concealed within him. Rage. Its bubbles broke the surface, indicating the roiling boil below. “Exactly what is the purpose of this meeting?” he inquired tightly.
Instinctively, she switched off the role of interrogator. She had more than enough to present to Boldt. To push further without backup, without surveillance in place, would be a mistake. Garman was a suspect. She felt a flood of hot, almost sexual energy pass through her chest and through her pubis and down to her toes. “The purpose of this meeting was to get to know each other, that’s all. I have the jump on you in that regard. Sorry if it came off as the third degree. Product of the profession, I’m afraid.” She had saved one last gem, held it in her bag of tricks from the moment he had confirmed his service in the Air Force. Kept it ready, compartmentalized in her mind, one hand on the door. She opened that door by telling him, “The ATF lab believes the accelerant was some kind of rocket fuel.”
For a split second Steven Garman appeared chiseled in stone. Daphne wished she had a camera.
She continued, “You see the possible connection to the Air Force, I’m sure.”
Garman seemed incapable of speaking. She knew that look. She had seen it a dozen times: He was devastated. She had touched his most sensitive nerve. Rocket fuel, she thought.
She looked over at the photograph of the Challenger explosion. Framed beneath it, she recognized salvaged pieces of the craft spread out on a hangar floor. He must be something of an expert. That was how Garman looked too: blown apart, his world a mass of smoke and flames.
26
“Looking good, Detective,” a female voice cooed from behind Boldt.
The sergeant turned in time to see the target of the comment, John LaMoia, strutting his stuff-creased blue jeans and all-heading in the general direction of his sergeant. LaMoia was style: those pressed jeans, a crisp Polo shirt, ostrich cowboy boots, and a rodeo belt for taking second in bronco riding when he’d been seventeen and stupid enough to enter. He had a bony, thin face, wiry hair, and a prominent nose. Exactly what women saw in LaMoia was a mystery to his senior in rank, a man whose job it was to solve mysteries, but women flocked to him, even if one discounted his reported conquests by half, which was only sensible given LaMoia’s tendency toward exaggeration.
Maybe, Boldt thought, it was that walk-confident and tall, with a certain swagger to the hips. Maybe it was the large brown eyes, or the way he used them so unflinchingly on his targets. Or maybe it was simply his self-centered, cocky attitude, a quality that clearly endeared him to the uniforms as well as the brass. Whatever the case, LaMoia led, he didn’t follow. He’d have his own squad someday if he wanted it. He’d have a wife and five kids, or a woman in every part of town, or both. One liked the man from a distance, trusted him up close, and could rely on him, unequivocally, in any situation. Boldt tried to disguise his admiration but not his fondness. He didn’t need a loose cannon-and LaMoia trod dangerously close most of the time.
LaMoia began as he so often did, without any greeting. He simply rolled an office chair into Boldt’s cubicle and straddled it backward, leaning his frame on the chair’s hinged back. “Needless to say, you have no idea where any of this came from.” The detective had enviable connections to the private sector: credit unions, insurance companies, banks. Some believed it was past or current women who supplied him with such broad access. Shoswitz said it had to do with LaMoia’s military service, though Boldt thought it was nothing more than the man’s undeniable charm and his incredible ability to network. If you met him, you liked him; if he asked a favor, one was offered. If he received a favor, valuable or not, he reciprocated. He knew people: how they thought, what they wanted. He knew the streets. He could probably supply anything to anyone, though Boldt turned a blind eye to this possibility. He had the knack. He was envied by most, hated by few, and always at the heart of controversy.
LaMoia placed a folder in front of Boldt. He explained the contents. “Enwright and Heifitz-their financials: credit cards, banking. Nothing there to connect one to the other-in terms of buying patterns, restaurants, health clubs. Nothing that I could see. But there it is for you.”
“Too much cologne,” Boldt said.
“It wears off. It’ll be all right in another hour.”
“We could suffocate by then.”
“You like the shirt? It was a gift.”
Boldt said, “You’re saying there’s nothing at all to connect them to each other? It doesn’t have to jump out at you; I’d take something peeking around the corner. A department store they both shopped? A gas station?”
“The wheels.”
“What?” Boldt asked.
“Has anyone worked the wheels?”
“Cars?”
“The houses were torched, right? Toast. So what was left behind?” LaMoia asked rhetorically.
“Their cars!” Boldt said, his voice rising. Investigations took several sets of eyes-that’s all there was to it. Boldt had not given the victims’ cars a second thought.
LaMoia shrugged. “Not that it means shit, mind you. How would I know? But I’m not seeing a hell of a lot of physical evidence to chase. The wheels kinda jumped out at me-or maybe they just peeked around the corner,” he teased.
“Check them out,” Boldt offered.
“Moi? And here I was thinking you’d be more interested in the ladders.” LaMoia studied his sergeant’s expression.