Pied Piper lbadm-5

by Ridley Pearson

  On some of the Spitting Image invoices the handwriting barely rose above a scrawl, making Boldt’s task even more difficult. Interestingly, the numbers read fine.

  Name by name, date by date, month by month, Boldt slogged through the paperwork. If he could find another Seattle customer, he might have a way to locate and follow the Pied Piper back to his daughter. Twice he fell asleep and had to start farther back in the pile, finding an invoice he clearly recognized. In between pages, he glanced furtively at the wall clock, feeling the minute hand like blows to his chest. You’re risking another child, the voice inside him reminded. He thumbed faster and fell asleep a third time.

  John LaMoia wondered what kind of importance Intelligence could assume over the needs of the task force. How could Boldt care about busting someone or protecting sources when the lives of children were at stake? Or was Intelligence, a unit that thrived on secrecy, directly involved in the Pied Piper investigation without the knowledge of the task force? The only reason LaMoia kept his promise to Boldt was that he trusted the man in ways he trusted no other.

  His decision came more easily due to the fact that he was overwhelmed with paperwork of his own. On Saturday night, he worked at his cubicle reviewing property damage reports he had sought for the better part of a week. He hoped Hill might show up and offer a night together; he caught himself glancing toward the door each time it was opened. But Sheila Hill never showed. He worked alone.

  Even in the greatest of emergencies, the incompetence of SPD’s bureaucracy lived up to its stereotype. People could move quickly, meeting to meeting, floor to floor; paperwork never did. It lumbered under the control of a civilian labor force, many of whom worked for minimum wage and to whom the word urgent was seen so often that it blended into any request form. The joke around SPD was that if you needed a vacation, if you wanted to slow an investigation down to a crawl, place a request for an archived file.

  Ironically, LaMoia was working off of a suggestion made by Boldt, the theory being that the chips of automobile glass might be the product of vandalism or theft-car windows shattered for kicks by teens, or for profit by petty thieves looking for car stereos-that the Pied Piper may have repeatedly walked through a field of such glass and, by the rule of mutual exchange, carried the evidence into his crime scenes. It was vintage Boldt.

  Frustrated by the failure of the FBI to deliver a lab report on the glass, LaMoia turned to the time-honored process of reading each and every property damage report filed in the prior six weeks, trusting that for insurance the owners of the vehicles would report any damage to the police-a requirement for insurance reimbursements. He read reports on every kind of damage conceivable, from the bizarre to the mundane-from thousand-dollar leather jackets torn by bar bouncers to a home stereo thrown across an apartment and out a patio window by a jealous lover; random vandalism, including spray painting, rock throwing and minor arson. Any such report involving a vehicle, LaMoia read carefully. If a shattered windshield, or any vehicular glass was listed anywhere in the report, or if it seemed to LaMoia that the only way a dashboard might have been torn apart was to break into the vehicle and therefore smash a car window, he set aside the report.

  One by one these separated reports stacked up. He had been reviewing documents for over three hours when the first hint emerged. Establishing a pattern-any pattern-was reason for excitement.

  Human behavior could be broken down into a series of learned patterns. In the shower, a person soaped his or her body parts in the same order, day after day. A man shaved in the same sequence. The cop’s job was to identify as many of these patterns as possible in his suspect’s behavior or his crimes. Patterns proved predictable. Predictability meant arrests.

  At first there was nothing to tie one broken car window to another-a truck, a car, a minivan; the parking lot of a mall, a Sonics game, a supermarket. But when the fourth property damage report indicating window damage cited a northbound I-5 Park and Ride, the similarity jumped out at LaMoia. Two of the four dates were the same, but two others were not, meaning the Park and Ride had been hit a minimum of three times on different dates, which in turn meant that an individual or gang had targeted the Park and Ride as a good place to pick up car stereos. The Pied Piper might have picked up the broken glass anywhere-from his own garage, to an auto shop, to any of the locations listed on the reports he was collecting into a stack-but police work meant playing percentages, and the area of highest percentage was this Park and Ride. LaMoia saw one clear way to narrow the field. He picked up the phone and called Bernie Lofgrin at home despite the late hour.

  LaMoia spent five minutes describing his discoveries to Lofgrin, the head of SPD’s Scientific Identification Division. Lofgrin, a civilian, did not work weekends unless on call and attending a crime scene, neither of which was the case, but he took to LaMoia’s discoveries like a bloodhound on a scent. The detective pointed out the increasing importance of determining the make and model of the vehicle or vehicles from which the chips had come. Whatever pressure Lofgrin could apply to the FBI’s Washington, D.C., forensics lab would be appreciated.

  At the same time, LaMoia elected to place the Park and Ride under twenty-four-hour surveillance, hoping to use a combination of detectives under the direction of Bobbie Gaynes. In a political nod to Sheila Hill and the politics of the task force, he took his recommendations to Patrick Mulwright, whose Special Operations unit was the department’s premiere surveillance squad. Mulwright, who had undergone a suspension ten months earlier for boozing on the job, was caught drunk as a sailor by LaMoia’s midnight call. After a rambling attempt to sound coherent, the lieutenant assigned the surveillance back to LaMoia, mistakenly assuming LaMoia was currently on call. LaMoia awakened Gaynes and told her to organize a rotation. Reminding him that with over a dozen vacant houses under surveillance and Hill squawking about overtime pay, the manpower was not there, she suggested he rethink the assignment. “So work the uni’s,” LaMoia told her. Uniformed patrol officers would, on occasion, work plainclothes detail gratis for the chance to be noticed and recommended for advancement.

  “Do it yourself if you have to, just get that Park and Ride covered.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Boldt sensed someone behind him, spun in his chair in time to see a woman at his office door, emaciated and pale. His wife.

  Her release had been postponed twenty-four hours because of a scheduling conflict. He did not expect her, and so for a moment simply stared.

  “Forgive me,” she said calmly. She stepped inside and closed the door.

  Forgive you? he thought, a bubble of painful guilt overwhelming him. No words came out. He stood and approached her.

  “I’ve acted foolishly,” she said, “unchristian in every way, and I-”

  Boldt hugged her unfamiliar body, once soft but now sharp with bone. “No. You have every right-”

  “Nonsense. I was horrible to you. I apologize. Please forgive me.”

  They spoke, simultaneously, their apologies blurred.

  “We’ll get her back,” the wife said.

  “We’ll get her back,” the husband echoed.

  “The two of us.”

  “I never thought-”

  “Tell me,” she said, gently breaking the embrace and holding him at a distance. “Tell me everything. Time is against us, isn’t it? I know it is. And yet I also know that God will not allow this. God will see her safely returned. But not without you, love. You’re the best cop there is.”

  Words he had lived to hear spoken; words she had never said, instead voicing resentment, anger and frustration at the demands and risks of his job. Words he would have gladly given back in a heartbeat for Sarah’s safe return.

  Sensing his every emotion, she said, “We aren’t alone in this.”

  His enormous emptiness waned. A state of mind, he realized, not reality, for what else could explain it passing so quickly and completely? With Liz in the picture, everything changed.

  “Together,” he said
, his lips gracing her ear, her cheek hot against his neck.

  His wife gave in to her tears like a tree uprooted by the wind, begrudgingly and with much protest. “Together,” she agreed. “Bring her home.” She wept openly.

  For a moment Boldt thought she meant him, but then she whispered so closely that he felt it clear through to his soul, “Please God, bring her home.”

  “Together,” Boldt repeated, a single word as healing as any he had known.

  CHAPTER 37

  Boldt awakened Liz at four in the morning from a deep sleep. She came awake, arms flailing, from either the clutches of a nightmare or reaching out for a husband who had not slept by her side for far too long.

  There had been no lovemaking between them-Liz needed more strength-but the loving had been intense and more intimate than many other nights shared physically. Boldt had found a brief piece of the sleep that for days had eluded him.

  “Something you said,” he told her.

  “Love? What is it,” she said, using her private name for him.

  “You said we aren’t alone-”

  “I meant that God-”

  “Yes, I know. But it’s more than that, you see? I think I know now why we have never received the Portland file. The same for San Francisco. What if it wasn’t the Bureau dragging its feet, but the police departments themselves, someone in our exact situation?”

  “Wouldn’t you know that by now?”

  “Would I? Does anyone know about us? About Sarah?” He switched on the room light and she flinched. He said, “I let myself believe that. But why should anyone know? Hill’s wrong about a reporter working an insider. It’s not one, but a string of insiders, a string of cops, city to city, in the same situation as we are.”

  “And what if it is?” she questioned, confused and even frightened by his excitement.

  “Then there’s evidence that has been withheld. Victims we don’t know about, some of whom may have information they’ve never disclosed.”

  “Like you with this clothes company,” she said.

  “Exactly. I don’t know anyone on the San Francisco force, but in Portland a CAP sergeant named Tom Bowler-a guy I know pretty well-was lead on the kidnapping, and the Serious Crimes committee, their version of a task force. Bowler has two kids.”

  “It’s four in the morning, love.”

  “I’m going down there, to Portland.”

  He spun his legs out of bed and sat up.

  “Now?”

  “Be there by morning.” He asked, “Okay with you? It’s a Sunday. It’s the only day I could get away with this, without somebody questioning it.”

  “You need sleep. Rest. You need to be thinking clearly.”

  “I’m going down there.”

  “Love, has it occurred to you that you can’t do this alone? If we’re going to obey the ransom, it’s one thing. But we aren’t, are we?”

  “No.”

  “So you need help.”

  “No. We can’t.” Standing, he told her to get some sleep. “I’ll be back afternoonish. Cell phone is on if you need me.”

  “I need you,” she assured him.

  She was back asleep before he was into street clothes.

  At 7:30 A.M., the Columbia River was caught in the dusk of sunrise, its swirling dark waters reflecting back a rose-hued sky with patches of white cotton clouds. Shorebirds and gulls flew low while a barge and tug cut white-feathered wakes into its surface. The noise of traffic obscured any sounds, so that if one stared long enough, he might believe it was the river making that noise.

  Boldt ate scrambled eggs with his four cups of tea at a trucker’s diner. The waitress was too old for the hairstyle and too friendly for the hour.

  At 9:00 A.M. Connie Bowler claimed her husband was running errands. At ten, when Boldt called back, he heard the twinges of panic in her voice as she fired off an excuse. Boldt had met Connie only once. He reintroduced himself, asked after their kids, and said he was passing through town and would love to see Tom. She said the kids were fine, but there was relief in her voice. Boldt pressed her about Tom. She carefully volunteered the name and address of The Shanty Lantern.

  The watering hole was six blocks from the Portland Police Department, in a basement area beneath a Chinese restaurant named Wang Hong’s. Entering from sunlight, it was several minutes before he could see clearly. The bar smelled strongly of egg rolls, but it had an Irish decor. It was not a happy bar, but a drinker’s bar; Boldt had played piano in both kinds. It was not a cop bar either. Police were a strange breed. After spending eight-hour shifts together, cops tended to spend another two hours together getting pasted before heading home. They shared war stories. They bragged. They exaggerated. They talked sports and cars and, in the right company, women. Daphne would have all sorts of explanations for cop bars, some of which might make sense to scholars, but at the heart of such a place was that police work was teamwork. After the bruising, the team enjoyed a moment or two on the lighter side.

  The Shanty Lantern was no such haunt. On a Sunday morning it played host to ten determined souls, all of whom struggled to either continue their drunk, or find one. Tom Bowler owned a table, a pack of cigarettes and a disconnected look. He paid no attention to the sports discussion on the overhead Sony. He had a Scotch in front of him-half empty. By the way the man stared into space, Boldt knew it wasn’t his first.

  Bowler looked all wrong for a man in his late thirties. Boldt might not have spotted him had he not been looking for him. He wore a wrinkled white shirt that was stained with either ketchup or blood. When he saw Boldt, he shook his head, refusing the visit.

  Boldt took a chair at the man’s table, sat down and stared at him.

  The bartender interrupted, attempting to rescue her regular customer. She was the owner of a great deal of dyed hair, a pair of artificially large breasts and a vivid shade of blue eye shadow that could be seen even in the cavelike atmosphere of The Shanty Lantern.

  Boldt ordered an orange juice for himself and a cup of coffee for Bowler.

  “Who put you in charge?” the man asked, correcting the coffee to another Scotch.

  “We’ve never received your file, Tom,” Boldt said, deciding to play it straight. “You were lead,” Boldt reminded.

  “Queen for a Day, you mean. Flemming shows up, my brass bends over and greases up the old red eye and says, ‘Park it here please, Mr. Federal Officer.’ We form a serious Crimes Unit, but all we end up with is bottle washers for Flemming’s suits. He’s a monster, you know-Flemming, I’m talking about. A dictator. Eyes in the back of his head, an ear to every wall. Knows what you’re thinking before you do. On edge. I had the feeling that at any moment … he used us. Manipulated us, worked us-and the brass seemed to never catch on. We processed the evidence, but they analyzed it. I gotta admit, he played it brilliantly, like a quarterback working a cheerleader to get her panties down. We get the public exposure, the blame, if it goes south; Flemming gets the real control. Knows which wheels to grease, which buttons to push. Has our chief bragging at cocktail parties that he’s taking phone calls and sharing beverages with our U.S. Senator. It’s all politics, Boldt. Blame management: Who’s to blame if the investigation goes south? Who takes the front page if the guy walks into the seventh precinct and gives himself up? Let me tell you this: Talk radio has done in law enforcement. The public is like a child, you know? You give them too much information too soon and they’re dangerous with it.” He killed the Scotch. “To hell with it.”

  “How’re the kids?” Boldt asked.

  Tom Bowler’s jaw set and his eyes grew large as they met and held Boldt’s. He shouted a little too loudly. “Ginger?” Barroom shorthand. She delivered the two drinks. “What about my kids?”

  Boldt said, “Let me run a hypothetical situation past you, Tom, and maybe you can help me see clear of it.”

  “What about the kids?” the man asked, mean in a way only a drunk can get.

  Boldt had won the man’s attention. The
room suddenly felt warmer.

  “What the-?”

  “Sarah’s going to be two. Can you believe it?” Boldt sipped his juice. It was from a can. He set it aside. He locked into Bowler, saying no more. The man’s expression slowly hardened. He knew why Boldt had made the trip. “So let’s just say, hypothetically,” Boldt continued, “that a cop is working a case, a big case, like a string of kidnappings or something.”

  Bowler shifted uncomfortably.

  Boldt continued, “And let’s say the doer is no dummy. He knows he either has to have an enormous string of luck or someone pulling strings for him. He knows the Feds will be players. Tens of thousands of kids vanish every year. Few, if any, of these disappearances are ever connected. Fewer prosecuted. But this guy is making a statement. He leaves a calling card.”

  “A penny flute.”

  “Exactly.” Boldt hesitated. Other than Liz he had not told a soul. He couldn’t bring himself to. Instead he said, “The doer understands it’s the local cops who will work the crime scenes for evidence, the locals who will most likely process the lab work on that evidence. In that way it’s the locals’ case to give away, not the other way around. The Bureau may be running things, maybe not, but the local cops control the evidence and therefore the success or failure of the investigation.”

  A bead of sweat ran from Bowler’s sideburn into his collar. He looked jaundiced. Malarial.

  “One other thing: The doer is much more frightened of the Feds than he is of local law.” He paused briefly. “Did I ask you about your kids?”

  Bowler coaxed the shiny surface of the Scotch into a swirling disk of light suspended in the glass. “You wasted a trip,” he said.

  “I’m just talking hypothetically,” Boldt reminded.

  “How’s Liz?”

  “Cancer,” Boldt fired back harshly. Mentioning it didn’t sting him the way it used to. If he expected Bowler to talk to him, then he had to reciprocate. “They cut her open. They ran her full of drugs and radiation. Now she’s found religion.”