Middle Of Nowhere

   "So does everyone," Boldt said. "Right now, that's the one advantage I've got."

* * *

It was too late to visit Sanchez at the hospital. She'd be medicated and fast asleep. But it wasn't too late to grab onto a few limbs and start shaking the tree. Whoever had committed the assaults would have fresh blood to hide, might even have defensive wounds to show for their efforts.

   Boldt called Gaynes and Matthews and caught them up on the assaults, as well as Shoswitz's alert about the surprise health inspections. He put them onto the task of firing up the departmental phone tree and to start making calls. Gaynes rallied without complaint, a soldier in the trenches.

   Daphne, as ever, ferreted out Boldt's true intentions: to question Ron Chapman at his home. She refused to allow him to go at it alone, and informed him she was bringing a stun stick along as backup. He knew better than to argue with her, or to admit that he'd welcome her company. He picked her up at her houseboat, and they drove to Chapman's together, using the drive time to prepare.

   "The two of you at this hour, it's not social," Chapman said, shutting the door behind them. He had made no effort to keep them out. Perhaps, Boldt thought, he didn't want to eat alone.

   "Little late for dinner, isn't it, Ron?"

   Chapman lived in a studio apartment with a partial view of Pill Hill. He had the TV going and a Stouffer's microwave meal on a folding table in front of the room's only chair—a La-Z-Boy recliner. He'd been widowed several years earlier, and the dust bugs and dirty windows confirmed a life of a man turned within. To Boldt, the room felt sad and depressed, crowded with too many snapshots of the late wife. Some people couldn't let go. Chapman suddenly struck him that way, and Boldt found it odd that his attitude about a man he'd known for years could change with a single look inside that man's home. If there had ever been joy here, it now rested in the urn that held his wife's ashes.

   Chapman didn't offer them seats, in part because the only two chairs were at a small table that framed the galley kitchen's doorway, and there didn't seem to be any more room for them elsewhere.

   "Little late for a house call, isn't it, Lieutenant? Strange times, these."

   "You hear about Schock and Phillipp?"

   "Rudy Schock?"

   Daphne said calmly, "They were assaulted tonight."

   "Not far from the Cock and Bull," Boldt supplied.

   Ron Chapman carried an extra thirty or forty pounds on his Irish bulldog looks. It wasn't easy for such soft flesh to remain so absolutely still. Then, at once, he returned to his dinner like a dog to its bone.

   "You were at the Cock and Bull tonight, Ronnie. What's that about?"

   "A guy can't buy himself a drink?" Chapman complained, working on the dinner in the small plastic tray. "Since when?"

   "What do Schock and Phillipp mean to you?"

   The man glanced up, as hot as his prepared dinner. "Who says they mean anything?"

   "Why play games?" Boldt asked. "Are you into something here? Tell me I'm wrong."

   "You're wrong."

   "Convince me," Boldt said.

   "I've got my dinner to eat."

   Daphne asked, "Are you afraid of them?"

   Chapman stiffened.

   She clarified, "I'm not talking about Schock and Phillipp. I'm talking about whoever did that to them. Are you afraid of those people?"

   He wouldn't look up from his food. "Way I heard it, they were mugged. A street assault. Why should I be afraid of that? Their bad luck is all."

   She said, "You don't have to swing the baseball bat to be guilty of assault. There's conspiracy. There's intent. You want to think about that."

   Boldt said, "Next to Narcotics, Property is probably easily the most tempting duty of all of 'em. You guys are carefully hand-picked. Doesn't mean temptation doesn't win out now and then. There's a heck of a lot of goods on those shelves."

   "There's cash on those shelves," Chapman said. "Jewels. Weapons. And as far as I know it's all still there, Lieutenant. Go ahead and check."

   "You came to that bar looking for someone. Two officers right behind you were assaulted. What if I told you they were following up on a case that was being worked by Sanchez just before her assault?"

   Daphne turned her attention to Boldt, angry at not having been included in on this.

   Chapman wouldn't take his head out of his dinner.

   Boldt said, "Maybe I've got it wrong. Maybe you were doing a favor for Schock, or Phillipp. Wearing a wire? Making a contact?"

   "It wasn't like that!" the man objected heatedly, fork in mid-air.

   Daphne picked up on Boldt's lead. "The rumor mill is brutal," she said.

   "You can't do something like that to me! Label me a squirrel for I.I.?" He thought this over and flushed. "It's not funny, Lieutenant. Especially not the way things are going right now."