Middle Of Nowhere

Boldt and Matthews sat across a speckled vinyl tabletop in an employees' cafeteria. Boldt read from the folder in front of him. "Inmate number forty-two, as listed on the phone solicitation sheets. David Ansel Flek—no 'c.' Serving a three-year sentence—get this—for grand larceny. He's been part of the private commerce telemarketing program for the past eight weeks."

   "Right about when our robberies started," Daphne said.

   They had half the connection: Flek had been the telemarketer who had spoken to each of the burglary victims. Before interrogating Flek, they needed the other half: contact with the outside. They awaited the warden.

   When the man arrived, Boldt noticed that some of his military composure had worn off. He understood the implications of all this for his facility. Nothing less than his job was at stake. Yet he was on orders from Etheredge to cooperate—a private facility refusing to cooperate with law enforcement would sound a death knoll for state prison contracts.

   "Our pay phones here are owned and operated by an Etheredge subsidiary," he began.

   "Never leave a dime unturned," Daphne said.

   "The home office is still working with the database of calls placed from those pay phones. The attorneys will eventually have to sort out the first amendment issues. Many, if not most, of the calls made from our pay phones are placed using calling cards owned by relatives or friends on the outside. We can get these numbers from the various carriers, I'm told, but it will take some time. In the meantime, I have this." He handed Boldt a stack of twenty faxed sheets. "They are not sorted by area code," he apologized.

   "We'll live," Boldt said.

   "But I did have my secretary highlight any directdial calls made to the two-oh-six area code." He added somewhat proudly, "And she put a check by four of the calls that could have been made by inmate number forty-two."

   "Determined how?" Daphne inquired, pulling her chair next to Boldt's and looking over his shoulder.

   Boldt pointed to the top sheet. "By time."

   "Schedule," the warden said. "It's not open access. Pay telephone time is closely controlled."

   Boldt said, "So how many others had access to the phones at the same time Flek did?"

   "There are five pay phones," the warden explained. "We give each inmate fifteen minutes a day."

   "So four other guys," Boldt suggested. It was a nice, narrow field, something he could work with. He recognized the prefix of the highlighted 206 number as a cellular prefix. He would call LaMoia and have the owner of the cell phone identified. He would make sure David Flek made no more calls. If they got lucky, they'd have their burglar. He wasn't holding his breath; it was rarely that easy.

   Daphne tested him. "So our chances are one out of five that Flek called Seattle and passed along the names and addresses of possible burglary targets?"

   "He doesn't know that," Boldt answered. To the warden he said, "I think it's time we meet Mr. Flek."

   "We can arrange that. But first, you mind explaining how all this works? My people are going to ask me, and I'm going to look a hell of a lot smarter if I know what I'm talking about."

   Boldt thought it sounded fair enough. "Flek is supplying names to someone on the outside. Through the phone solicitation, this survey conducted by Consolidated through Newmann, he identifies homes that have a couple computers, a high-end stereo or a couple TVs. A nice bottom line."

   Daphne had returned her attention to the original fax of phone numbers called by the phone solicitation team.

   Boldt continued, "He calls out on the pay phones— probably to this cell phone number—and supplies the names and addresses of potential high-end targets. At that point it's in our part of the world. We get a burglary call."

   Daphne, her nose still in the fax, said, "Lou! Granted, three of the burglary victims are not anywhere on this list from last night. Maybe they were placed a week earlier than the records we've been provided. Maria's not on the list either."

   In his excitement over the connection to inmate 42, Boldt had neglected to search out Sanchez's number in the database. It was such a simple oversight, but suddenly the absence of her number from the phone solicitation's master call sheet loomed largely over their efforts.

   "She could have been called earlier as well," he suggested.

   The closer they came to the interrogation of a possible suspect—even an accessory to the fact like David Ansel Flek—the more Boldt dreaded the possibility of discovering that Maria Sanchez had never been one of the burglary targets. The implication would then be that Maria's assault had been cop on cop, the same way he feared his own assault had been. Now that he approached whatever truth existed, he did so cautiously, well aware that on rare occasions, some truths were better left undisturbed.

   "No," she said, shaking her head. "In every case the burglaries come within ten days of the initial phone solicitation. That being the case, she'd be on here."