On his way into the kitchen, he sorted back through his brief but intense encounter with Pamela, searching for any possible mistakes he might have made.
He sat down at a stool in the kitchen. One of the kitchen help said something to him, but he waved him away. Then he thought better of it and asked for some more wine. "And the table's out too," he told no one in particular.
The Valiums were a hell of a good idea, he congratulated himself.
That dosage would knock her sideways. He decided that it might be a good idea to check up on her-to make sure she got home okay, to calm her down if the pills hadn't already done so. She wouldn't be feeling them for another few minutes; maybe she needed someone to talk to.
He took his wine with him into the garage, electing to use the cellular in the Isuzu because of his belief in the difficulty the police had listening in on such lines. He eased the seat back, dialed the number, and pushed SND. God, it felt good to be away from those hypocrites in there. He took a big swig of wine and felt his first sense of real relief in hours.
Her answering machine answered.This troubled him. His heart quickened. He thought himself stupid for forcing the Valium on her while she still had to drive home. He should have just given them to her for her to take once there. But, he recalled, he had wanted to ensure she had taken them. He didn't want her mucking about tonight, messing things up.
Had the cops gotten hold of her? He sat up and spilled some wine into his lap. In that condition she might tell them everything! What had he been thinking by giving her Valium? Another thirty minutes, she'd be a tongue-wagging wreck. He should have stuck with his plan to sedate her! He had wanted her out, not brain-impaired!
A voice from within told him to calm down. Control! She was probably just on the can and couldn't make it to the phone.
He dialed her number again. It rang four times and the machine answered. "Shit," he said into the receiver.
Maybe, his voice of reason argued, she was high already and had simply turned the phone off. Yes, that made some sense. Lying back with headphones on, or watching a movie on the tube. Valium behavior.
He sipped what was left of the wine, not feeling good about any of this. Slowly, his mind reconstructed a vivid memory of their final few minutes together. He could see her, could hear the conversation like a videotape playing inside his head. Had she ever spoken, ever opened her mouth after he had fed her those pills? Had she in fact swallowed them?"
What if she had not taken the Valium but tricked him into believing she had Where would she go What would she do?
The police? The farm!
A tic hit him so hard he heard his neck crack. The wineglass jumped from his hand, struck the gear shift and shattered.
The farm! He tripped the garage door automatic opener. It groaned open slowly. He couldn't believe how slowly. This thing had never run this slowly! What would he need? Had he forgotten anything?
The party! The garage door opened far enough to reveal four cars parked in the drive, more out on the road. Trapped?
The door to the kitchen opened. Peggy, in her red Japanese tea dress and her scarlet red face.
What could he say? At this point, what could he do?
Take control. There was a pretty good gap between the first parked car and the garage. Maybe just enough.
Tegg backed slowly across the wet lawn, the tires cutting deep ruts in the grass, his guests observing him through the window. The four-wheel-drive banged out onto the street, and he was off.
To Pamela's? No, he decided. Priorities. He would keep calling. The farm was far more important.
Indeed, the farm was everything.
Lto The Isuzu backed across the lawn, its tires spraying mud in all directions. Daphne could barely make out a bearded man's face behind the wheel. Elden Tegg.
She slumped in her seat, dropping low, placed her fingers on the key and waited. His headlights washed the interior of her car, hurting her eyes. She remained absolutely still. She thought her heart might explode.
He passed. She counted to three and started the car, lifting just high enough to watch his departure in her door mirror. The second he passed out of sight, she dropped the Honda into gear and pulled one of the quickest three-point turns she had ever made.
Only a few seconds later, she was following. Instinctively, she reached for her police radio and came up empty. Once again, the impact of her isolation from the department bore down on her. She needed to get to a pay phone. She needed a way to alert Boldt or the department that it was going down.
It was going down! She could feel it: Sharon was at the end of this ride.
It wasn't going to be Maybeck; it was going to be Tegg. It wasn't going to be Boldt; it was going to be her.
"I appreciate this, Loraine," Lamoia said to the attractive black woman opening the James Street entrance to the administration building. Boldt guessed her to be in her mid-thirties and just shy of six feet tall. She had beautiful almond eyes and a dancer's figure. She wore jeans and a khaki windbreaker. Boldt knew her face from somewhere-maybe she had worked at one of the civilian jobs for the department a few years back. "I could get screwed for doing this. You know that, John."
"Yeah, I know."
"Don't ask me why I'm doing this, 'cause I'll be damned if I know."
"And I thought it was because you loved me," Lamoia teased. "Don't get me thinking about it, lover, or I'll march your ass right out of here."
"We are the police, after all," Lamoia reminded. "It's not as if we're a couple of crooks or something."
"Yeah, yeah. Hey, Ernie," she greeted the security guard coming down the hall to intercept them.
Boldt and Lamoia took out their shields before the man even asked. "Hey, Lori," the former weightlifter answered. His arms were too big for the uniform he was required to wear. He'd gone a little soft around the middle. "These here are a couple of Seattle's finest homicide dicks." She introduced everyone all around. He checked their identification carefully. "They need a look-see at some of the records in the assessor's office and can't wait for nothing."
"Homicide? Sure thing," Ernie said.
He kept looking at Boldt as if he recognized him. "They got the elevators off, for inspection. You'll have to take the stairs." On the way up the steep stairs she said, "This place gives me heebeejies with no one in it. Know what I mean?" A few steps later she added, "Nah.
"You guys probably don't know what I mean."
"The deal is," Lamoia said down to Boldt, who was slower going up the stairs than the other two, "it occured to me that the first time I asked Loraine to run a few names into the computer-what was that, yesterday?-I was a little sexist in my approach."
"You?" she said sarcastically. "I can't imagine such a thing."
"I'm talking to him, if you don't mind," Lamoia complained. "You?" Boldt asked, mimicking the woman's sarcastic tone.
Lamoia continued, undaunted, "I didn't have the time to do the job right. I did check to see if either of the three vets owned land out near where Dixie dug up Farragot, but this was before we were tuned in to Tegg. When I got the employee lists I had Loraine try those names as well."
"And that was a bunch of names," she complained, as if he owed her something for it.
Boldt was out of shape, that's all there was to it. His legs seemed to weigh a few hundred pounds. "How much farther?" "Seventh floor, sugar. Two more to go."
"One way to do this," Lamoia explained, "is to use the county maps, because they identify each parcel of private land by name of the taxpayer." "But that's a huge job," Loraine said. "And it's random.