Beyond Recognition by Ridley Pearson

for Bahan’s arm and caught the man, saying, “If it’s all the same with you, someone should conduct a perimeter search before we lose it to contamination. Gum wrappers, Popsicle sticks, bottle caps, toothpicks, pieces of clothing—”
    â€œI’m with you.” He pointed down. “The action is all down there, anyway. Area of origin was right in the center of the structure. They don’t want us in their way. It’ll be another hour or two at least.”
    â€œWe’ll each take a side and then swap.” Boldt felt on familiar ground as they cleared the structure and reached dirt and mud. “Eyes to the ground,” he instructed. “Eyes wide open.”
    Understanding what Boldt was after, Bahan said, “Anything this close to the structure went up with the fire. Not gonna be any gum wrappers on the ground.”
    Boldt appealed to the man. “Humor me.”
    â€œHey, gladly,” Bahan replied. “Beats wandering the charcoal waiting for Marshal Five to move his sorry butt.”
    Boldt winced and glanced down into the black pit where Garman and the other inspector searched the rubble. He thought everything was too far burned to find a body, and without a body there was no homicide. No investigation. His squad had a knifing up on Pill Hill to work, an apparent drowning near Shilshole. His nose knew what eyes could not confirm. Perhaps the body he had smelled would never be found.
    The grass surrounding the structure’s foundation was charred black from the heat and the ground beneath it soaked to a spongy mud by water from the fire hoses. Boldt looked for bottle caps, cigarette butts—anything at all that might tie in to a suspect. As he moved around the concrete foundation of the burned-out home, he attempted to reconstruct the crime. There were mythic stories of cops able to “see” a crime—to visualize a killing. Boldt possessed no such prescience. But on occasion he could reconstruct the methodology of a homicide based on the observable facts. On rare occasions, his imagination overpowered him, ran away from him, leaving him a spectator as the crime played out before him. That night in early October was just such an occurrence.
    He looked up, and suddenly the unburned house stood before him, a house he had never seen. It had brown shingles and chipped white paint trim around the windows. It was a simple saltbox, two-story. No chimney, only an old TV antenna, bent and rusting, long out of service to the cable system. He saw a ladder leaning against the side of the house and the back of a man climbing up this ladder.
    A siren sounded behind him, and Boldt lost the image. He looked around, taking his bearings, like a person just coming awake. These hallucinations were never shared with anyone, not even Liz. Part of his reluctance arose from the potential for embarrassment, part from superstition—he didn’t want to do anything that might jinx his ability to occasionally transcend.
    He knew enough from past experience not to move from this location. He knew from his discussions with Daphne that such moments of vivid “imagination” were typically triggered by an observation, a sound, a smell; that such stimuli imprinted themselves subconsciously. He understood that the trigger was probably close by or just past. He listened first for any sounds in the air. Then he paid attention to the burn smells overpowering him. All the while he visually scanned his surroundings.
    The answer lay at his feet, not in the smells or sounds. Twin impressions in the mud. Two rectangular indentations in the black grass. Next to the right-hand dent were some blue flecks in the mud. He crouched and studied the area, disappointed as he identified them as ladder impressions. Firemen, he thought. The legs of the ladder had sunk about two inches into the turf and mud, leaving a distinctive stamped imprint of chevrons.
    Boldt immediately sketched what he