“Are the cases stored somewhere-temporarily-in a back room, perhaps?”
“Sure.”
“Show me?”
“Sure.”
He led Boldt through the store into a loading dock area that served as a staging zone. Meats and produce and dairy went to giant walk-ins, some of which were built directly behind the shelved product-beer and soda mostly. A conveyor system and dumbwaiter transported the nonperishables to an enormous basement. Boldt looked around, stunned by the quantity he saw-row after row, stacks of cases of every conceivable product. “I hate carrying this much inventory,” Hyundai said. “Cheaper in these quantities, though.”
“Some of these cases are open,” Boldt pointed out. “Quite a few, in fact.”
“Sure. We’re constantly restocking.”
Boldt would ask for an employee list before he left. Not now, but later, when he would claim it was “routine.” The list would be checked against Adler employees past and present and against the Criminal Identification Bureau’s computerized database of state felons. Maybe the FBI would get a copy as well. Alone, down here in this basement, placing a tainted can would be effortless. Boldt assumed the employee list would draw a blank-blackmail was rarely so simply solved.
“How bad is your shoplifting?” he asked, steering the man away from any thought of open cases.
“We’ve hired a new security company. All the latest stuff.”
If the blackmailer worked for a security company, he would know the store’s surveillance weaknesses better than anyone.
Where is he, right now? Boldt wondered.
He questioned Hyundai about his soup distributor, wondering privately how hard it could be to open a case, substitute a can, and reglue it. That kind of deceit was certain to go unnoticed. He was told it was the same wholesale distributor he had worked with for years, but that the distributor had switched truckers a couple of months ago. Boldt scribbled notes, his thoughts and suspicions branching continually. He tried to keep each thought separate, to give each full consideration, and yet never to lose that thread that might lead to another, more promising possibility. These mental gymnastics continued, as did his questions. He felt exhausted and must have looked it. Hyundai interrupted, offering an espresso. Espresso in the grocery store! Boldt thought. He said no, he didn’t drink the stuff.
“Tears a hole in my stomach.”
“Too bad,” Hyundai said.
“It’s simpler,” Boldt replied.
Hyundai steered them toward the deli and ordered himself “a tall double with shavings.” There ought to be a handbook, Boldt was thinking. The man signed the receipt and handed it back to the attendant.
“If I knew the nature of your investigation, perhaps I’d be able to help more,” Hyundai suggested.
Boldt flashed a false smile that said, Answer the questions, don’t ask them. Hyundai received the message, returning to a description of the surveillance system.
“The name of the new company?” Boldt asked.
“Shop-Alert.”
Boldt flipped another page in his notebook.
There was always a time in any investigation when he sensed the enormity of the case. The limitless possibilities. It was the first, brief glimpse of the black hole opening up to swallow him.
Hyundai knew his facts and figures: average number of customers, daily and weekly; average purchase amount: $42.50; the demographics of his customers; figures skewed by this particular neighborhood, for it leaned toward the college crowd. Scribble, scribble, Boldt caught it all, useful or not. He could, and would, throw most of it out later, but not until he had taken the time to review it.
The veins of the leaf were many: Each required one or more detectives to chase down leads. Boldt would be awake a good part of the night writing it up. Up early to start it over. Somewhere in this city, as Boldt stood questioning Hyundai, the Tin Man could be twisting his drill into the seam of yet another can of soup. Somewhere, a Slater Lowry was dying to eat it.
Confused, Boldt asked the man about the numbers printed on the lid of the can and whether or not anyone in Hyundai’s employ would catch it if a can suddenly showed up with a different number. He was told they would not. As long as the UPC bar code remained the same-and it would from one product run to the next-there would be nothing to alert them. “Even a label change would be likely to carry the same UPC code,” Hyundai concluded.
A bell rang in Boldt’s head, a way to ensure that no more cans of tainted chicken soup reached the public. Tossed out insignificantly by Hyundai, it went into Boldt’s notebook in thick bold letters: A Label Change.
He was still writing this down when the bell tolled again, causing a surge of excitement in his chest.
“What’s that? Repeat that,” Boldt stuttered.
Hyundai stiffened; he didn’t appreciate repeating himself. “I was talking about the automated checking system,” he said. “The registers itemize every sale. I can tell you which brands sell on which days. Mondays, for instance, are big on dairy products; Wednesdays, we do a lot of cigarettes-don’t ask me why; and Fridays we can’t keep beer or fish in the store.”
“You said ‘each sale,’” Boldt reminded. “Let me get this straight: I come in here and buy a shopping cart full of groceries and you track every item?”
“Sure.”
“I come back three days later and you can tell me what I bought?” He was thinking: right down to a can of soup!
“Sure. No problem. Computers. Register tapes. We got it.”
“And if I paid by check, would you know it?”
“Sure. Cash. Check. Credit card. We keep records of all forms of payment. Sure.”
Boldt needed to know when Betty Lowry had purchased her can of Mom’s Chicken Soup. This would provide him a way to work backward with the distributor, and even possibly the security company’s surveillance videos. Timing was everything. Tracking bank checks and payment by credit card would also give him a chance to identify other customers who might have witnessed the blackmailer in the act. This, he realized, was the trail to follow. A crime scene.
Boldt received a page and placed a call downtown. Dixie had come through: State Health had identified the particular strain of cholera and had traced it to the Infectious Diseases lab at King County Hospital. Excited by this news, Boldt reached out and shook the man’s hand vigorously, anxious to be going.
A stunned Lee Hyundai was left standing there with a drained espresso in hand, shouting after the detective, “What did I say? What did I say?”
SIX
Dr. Brian Mann had an energetic handshake, eyes glassy with exhaustion, brown curly hair, and a disheveled look to which Boldt could relate. He led the detective through the Infectious Diseases lab at King County Hospital and into a small corner office littered with reading material. A computer terminal hummed in the far corner. Boldt was overly sensitive to such noise. There was also a phone, its receiver discolored from activity.
“Neither of us has much time, Sergeant, so I’ll get right to it. You and everybody else would like to know where this strain of cholera originated, and I can answer that now.” Mann had pulled a twenty-hour shift, and he looked it. He pointed into his lab. “We’re the only ones in the city-in the state, for that matter-with that strain, cholera-395.”
This was what Dixon had told Boldt: a single source for the offending bacteria. Another possible crime scene.