Middle Of Nowhere

   Boldt didn't always deal well with his anger, and he was very angry now. A rational thinker, he tried to avoid anger altogether by compartmentalizing explanations and analyzing situations, though he frequently failed. LaMoia was too close a friend for Boldt to see him solely as a wounded sergeant. Boldt had connected Ragman to LaMoia—and from the sketchy details he had, Boldt believed himself responsible for the injuries.

   "How long like this?" Daphne whispered to the doctor, but so that Boldt could overhear. She wanted to bookend this for Boldt, to show him it wasn't forever, to make it finite.

   "The lung will keep him here for a day or two. We'll get him pretty healed up by then. He'll be home with just a couple bumps and bruises in no time. Six to eight weeks, it never happened."

   "Try telling him that," Boldt said.

   "Medically speaking," the doctor replied.

   The body in the bed grunted, its bloodshot eyes open now and fixed on Boldt, who slowly made his way to the injured man's bedside. Boldt saw a familiar morbid humor in those eyes, and for some reason this made his anger all the more palpable. How dare LaMoia make light of this! How dare he try to forgive him— Boldt knew what that attempted humor was about.

   "Flek?" Boldt asked.

   The man's lips moved, but Boldt couldn't hear.

   The doctor warned, "He shouldn't attempt to speak. Please. In the morning, maybe."

   But LaMoia grunted, drawing Boldt's ear closer to his lips.

   "Good drugs," the man whispered.

   Boldt felt tears spring from his eyes. "Jesus, John, I'm sorry." He dragged his arm across his face, trying to hide his reaction.

   LaMoia just grunted in response. The doctor pulled Boldt away and checked the monitors.

   "It's rest for you," he said to LaMoia, addressing an I.V. pump and increasing the rate of flow. "And stop flirting with the nurses," he added.

   "Never," LaMoia whispered, meeting eyes with Daphne, and trying to smile.

   "Healthy as ever," Daphne said.

C H A P T E R

32

"The Flek brothers," Daphne said. "You want to hear this?" Boldt sat at his office desk, still preoccupied by his hospital visit to LaMoia. He nodded yes, all the while thinking about LaMoia's empty office cubicle just around the corner.

   "We have a pretty classic Svengali here. Bryce Abbott Flek, the older brother, has been in and out of trouble—in mostly—since he could ride a bike. The bully in school. Truant. Petty theft—bicycles, cigarettes from the candy store. A couple juvie arson arrests. Possession of a switchblade. Grand larceny auto at the ripe age of fourteen. Liquor store robbery, fifteen."

   "Model citizen."

   "One troubled kid. Trailer park life in the Colorado oil fields. Statutory rape charges when he was eighteen—turned out it was consensual, charges dropped. He beat up a lot of people. One hell of a volatile personality. It's endless."

   "You don't need to sound so excited," he said. Daphne's professional curiosity about the criminal mind exceeded one's reasonable expectations. She was always looking for ways to interview suspects ahead of their arrest—while they still showed their true colors.

   She cast him a disapproving look and continued, saying, "In and out of youth detention facilities, corrections. Six months for this, eighteen for that—minimum or medium facilities, never the big house. Fast forward: He's thirty-three years old, he has two recent felonies on his dismal sheet, one aggravated assault, one grand larceny."