Middle Of Nowhere

   "Chapman clammed up, but he grew all nervous when I pointed out he didn't belong in that pub. Daphne and I are thinking we've got this one wrong. What if Schock and Phillipp were into something Ron Chapman found out about?"

   "Something inside Property," LaMoia said, connecting the dots. He nodded, "I suppose it could fall that way, couldn't it? What about Maria and the possible I.I. connection?"

   "Tomorrow morning," Boldt said. "Tonight we deal with the assaults while the blood's still fresh."

   LaMoia squinted his eyes shut. When Boldt had first started working with him, LaMoia had been a smoothfaced young loudmouth, smart but a little too sure of himself. Now the face showed ten years of rough road, and though the mouth still broadcast his unparalleled self-confidence, the eyes revealed a more practical, sea soned man. "What I remember," he said, squinting ever more tightly, "in terms of Property, is that Pendegrass and some of them guys were whooping it up over the race—a NASCAR qualifying heat—on account I was trying to hear about this unscheduled pit stop, and I couldn't hear nothing because of their racket. And I'm trying to think now, but I gotta put Chapman's arrival right about then. Maybe I looked up and caught sight of him or something, you know? Maybe I had this little brain fart on account Chapman's still active and I'm thinking it was gonna be him getting the shit beat out of him, and how I'm not gonna let something like that happen, and what a pain in the ass it was going to be for all concerned. And then I'm thinking how stupid it is for Chapman to show his face at the Bull. You know? And then I'm wondering if maybe he took a brick the way you did, because there's been more of that, you know, and so maybe he's showing up pissed off and ready to settle the score or something, and that kinda leans me away from wanting to help him out too much. I mean, if a guy is stupid enough to walk into a room like that, maybe it's Darwin's law that he get the living shit beat out of him. But the point is, the pit stop was something to do with communications. Radio problems between the crew and the driver, and they didn't want to get into the final third of the race without communication—"

   "John. . . ."

   "Which means I heard the explanation, Sarge. Get it? I heard the guy explaining the pit stop. Which means that Chuck Pendegrass and his riot squad had either shut up, cut out, or all gone to take a piss at the same time, which is technically impossible on account the men's room is only one urinal and a crapper, and there must have been three or four of them over there hooting it up." He repeated, "I got a hunch Pendegrass split the minute Chapman walked through that door. And let me just say that he and his buddies did not impress me as being ready to leave a few minutes before that."

   "When Chapman arrived, or Schock and Phillipp?" Boldt pressed.

   "You got me there. Maybe it was a minute later."

   "But Chapman didn't speak to Pendegrass?"

   "I can't say one way or another. Maybe Pendegrass shut up when he saw Chapman, same way Chapman caught my eye." He added, "Chapman caught a lot of people by surprise, Sarge."

   "So Pendegrass left when?"

   "No clue."

   "They could have talked," Boldt theorized. "For that matter, they could have simply made eye contact. Some kind of visual."

   "We don't even know that Chapman came looking for Pendegrass," LaMoia reminded him.

   "No," Boldt agreed. "But we could ask him."

   "Yes, we could at that," LaMoia replied, collecting his coat off the back of a chair.

   "Doesn't Chuck Pendegrass have a boy about ten?"

   "Tanner," LaMoia answered knowingly. "But what's that about?"

   "Nothing," Boldt said, but inside he was thinking that ten was a good age for Little League and aluminum baseball bats.

* * *

Before LaMoia knocked on the front door of the gray house, he said to Boldt, "I hate this shit. Cop on cop. I don't even want to think it, much less confirm it."

   "We don't know that that's what we've got," Boldt said. "Sanchez could have been a burglary gone wrong. She could have nothing to do with Schock and Phillipp. Probably totally unrelated."

   "Then what the hell are we doing here, Sarge?"

   "I'll tell you what. . . . Boredom does weird things to people."

   LaMoia tugged at the sleeve of his deerskin jacket. "This rain's a bitch."

   "That's the wrong coat for Seattle. I've been telling you that for a couple years now."

   "They make chamois out of deerskin, Sarge. Doesn't hurt the jacket."

   "Jacket doesn't stop the rain," Boldt said.

   "Can't have everything."

   Pendegrass met the front door himself, his face enmeshed in a three-day beard, already in a snarl. His hair was wet, his eyes rheumy. "Don't want any." He stepped back, intending to shut the door on them.

   LaMoia slipped the toe of his cowboy boot up onto the jamb. "I've seen this done in movies," he said, giving Pendegrass his best Pepsodent smile.

"A pair of detectives got hurt tonight," Boldt said.

"Is that right?"