Middle Of Nowhere

   Boldt shushed him with a raised finger and explained to the dispatcher, "I need a look at three hundred yards in any direction. Elevations. Obstructions. Get a detective in there and pick a spot that has the best long-range rifle shot at the location I just gave you. A long-range rifle shot," he repeated. "Right. . . . Right. . . ." Boldt began to sketch a slightly crooked finger onto a blank page of his notebook. It angled thinly to the right. He marked an X to the left of the middle knuckle. "Fastest route from here?" he asked. A fraction of a second later he pointed north, and LaMoia left two plumes of steam and black-rubber smoke behind the vehicle as it jumped through the turn. "I'll hold," Boldt said. He didn't mean the dash, but he held to that too.

   He cautioned LaMoia, "You've got to keep them reporting their movement. If you step on it," he said, indicating his crudely drawn map, "we beat them to the drop an hour before he expects to see us."

   "And we get the jump on him," LaMoia said gleefully.

   "Maybe," Boldt said, grabbing for the dash as they skidded through the next turn, the burning rubber crying out its complaint.

C H A P T E R

62

"Y ou need to focus on what Davie would think of all this," Daphne advised.

   "I warned you to shut up!" he reminded angrily.

   "Yes, you did. It's true. And maybe I'm just delirious from blood loss," she suggested, "but I want to help you if I can."

   "Fuck you."

   She said, "Does the name Maria Sanchez mean anything to you?"

   "I seen the news," he said.

   "Was that you? The Sanchez place?"

   He scoffed. "Cops are all the same. If it's easy, then that's your man."

   "What if they'd put this on Davie?"

   "Davie didn't have nothing to do with it!"

   "But you did?"

   "According to the news."

   "I'm asking you," she said. "I'm trying to tell you that that's the primary reason we wanted to collar you: Sanchez. We need answers. I've gotta believe," she said, trying her best to keep her brain functioning, to use vernacular capable of establishing a rapport, "that Davie wouldn't want you going down for something you didn't do."

   "You don't know nothing about Davie. What he did for me."

   He didn't complete the thought, but Daphne's mind raced ahead looking for answers. "What he did for me. . . ." Suddenly she saw it, she understood what he was talking about. Psychologically, it changed everything. Davie was a martyr. She said to Flek, "The robbery he went down for, he confessed to. . . . It was yours. He let slip about a delivery coming into the store, and you pounced. But you were about to get caught. Sitting on two convictions, with a third looming, you're fifteen to twenty without parole. Three strikes. And so Davie takes the fall for you, and big brother picks up bags and splits for Seattle." It was Flek who suddenly looked wounded. "But big brother can't leave well enough alone. He hears about little brother's work in the private commerce program—a program his brother has qualified for because he's such a model prisoner—and here comes another scam, and little brother can't say no."

   Flek glanced over at her with a look of crestfallen failure. The truth could soothe, or the truth could aggravate, and Daphne had taken a huge chance trying it out on him, but for the first time since climbing into this car in the belly of the ferry, she felt progress. She just wasn't sure she could retain consciousness long enough to take advantage of it.

   "We couldn't find any record of Davie having worked the phone solicitation on Sanchez. All your other burglaries were on his list. That is why we wanted to question you, Abby. Granted, our Burglary division would have heralded the arrest. You'd have gone away for five to twelve. But we're overcrowded, and with the crime being nonviolent, you'd be out in two. But breaking the neck of a policewoman and kidnapping another? You want to think about that for a minute?"

   "That's a bullshit charge, and you know it."

   "The kidnapping?" asked the hostage.

   "Sanchez," he said.

   "Do you have an alibi?"

   "What if I do?"

   "Then I shot myself in the foot. It's my gun—it'll fit. It happens more often than you think." She added, "Besides, I'm a woman. None of these guys think a woman can handle a sidearm."

   "You'd lie through your teeth to save yourself right now."

   "You're missing the point, Abby. What would Davie want you to do? That's got to be your focus. You want his name linked to this assault? Does he deserve that? He was a good kid, Davie was. He stepped up when others would have walked away. But now you're dragging him through it, and there's nothing he can do about it. But you—"

   "Shut up!"