Free Boldt 03 - No Witnesses by Ridley Pearson

shooting and an assault-with-intent in a bar-fight-turned-knifing, Boldt was officially detailed to the Tin Man. His duties as squad leader were to be passed to Chris Danielson, his squad’s newcomer. Boldt needed LaMoia and Gaynes for his own purposes; Frank Herbert was available to Danielson. Guccianno was on vacation leave for another ten days.
    They called Danielson “Hollywood” because of his Vuarnet sunglasses and ostrich boots. He was a handsome black man who carried a chip on his shoulder the size of Rhode Island because he owned the highest individual clearance rate ever recorded in the books. Danielson kept to himself, rarely socializing in any of the cop bars or at functions. He was ambitious, maybe too ambitious for his peers. The complaints were that he avoided the phone, avoided the Book, allowing others in the squad to pick up his slack. Pasquini had passed him off to Boldt’s squad for this very reason, but Boldt was glad to have him. Danielson liked black holes . He thrived on attempting to clear those cases where others had failed—and he was good at it, which also accounted for his unpopularity: a newcomer beating the veterans at their own game.
    “I’d rather be assigned to whatever it is you’re on, Sarge,” he complained.
    “I’m giving you the entire squad,” Boldt said.
    “Don’t want it.”
    “You got it,” Boldt informed him sternly.
    “You could use me on this,” Danielson attempted.
    Danielson had no way of knowing what case Boldt was being detailed to, other than by rumor, and this attempt to milk the sergeant for information fell on deaf ears.
    “You’re a problem solver, Chris. We all are, but you especially. Some guys come by it naturally. Women, too: Gaynes is a natural. You pick up the black holes other people drop—some of them you even clear. Well, now you get all the black holes you want, and a lot you don’t. You run a squad and every case is yours. You problem solve on a magnitude, on a level that I think is important for you to see.”
    “What’s more important, solving this case of yours or shuffling a lot of paper? You need me, Sarge. This is my kind of case, this one you’re on.”
    Danielson had a nose for it, that was all. He understood the look in Boldt’s eye and he knew from the hours that Boldt was keeping, from the long meetings with Shoswitz behind closed doors, and most of all from the lack of any entry in the Book that this was one of the ones that came around once in ten years, this was a career maker. Boldt could tell all this by just looking at him. “It’s a ball-buster, Chris,” he advised him. “This is one of those that if you don’t clear it, it breaks you. You put a month, six months, a year, six years into it, and it never goes down. Guys eat barrels over cases like this. Believe me: I’ve had them before.”
    “Cross killer,” Danielson said. He knew all of Boldt’s cases. Knew them so well it bothered Boldt, it embarrassed him.
    “Sometimes you get lucky.”
    “You could have made captain in two years after that case,” Danielson observed, reminding Boldt of Liz’s arguments.
    “But instead I took a leave of absence. That should tell you something.”
    “You took two years . That’s hardly a leave.”
    “My point exactly. The squad is yours. The shit-eating clearance rate is yours. Do with it what you will.”
    “I don’t want it!” he complained, knowing there were others who would kill for it.
    “Maybe that’s why it’s yours.” Danielson’s eyes registered disgust and contempt. “Someday you’ll thank me,” Boldt said.
    Danielson hesitated and cautioned ominously, “Someday I’ll outrank you.”
    “But may I remind you that you don’t today, Detective.” Boldt handed him an enormous stack of files and said, “Careful of your back. They’re heavy.”
    Boldt spent the rest of his Saturday trying to shake the memories of Slater Lowry’s death and to organize the manpower and paperwork necessary to