Pied Piper lbadm-5

by Ridley Pearson

  As Flemming’s Intelligence officer, Kay Kalidja had unrestricted access to Bureau resources, making her an invaluable ally. By not making an appointment, Daphne denied Kalidja any preparation for her visit. She was kept waiting for ten minutes in a small reception area. Behind the receptionist hung a photo of the president, another of the FBI chief and a third of WSFO’s special agent in charge. Kalidja appeared at the secured door and greeted Daphne, apologizing for keeping her waiting. Daphne followed her inside. “The digs here aren’t much for those of us from out-of-town. I’m sharing an office with two others.”

  She showed Daphne into the cramped and cluttered office and closed the door. “They resent us, of course-the local agents. They don’t want Washington coming in and dictating procedure. On the surface, it’s business as usual, but the resentment is there. Have a seat, if you can find one.” The office walls held bookshelves crowded with loose-leaf binders bearing the FBI logo.

  They faced each other from opposite sides of the desk.

  Daphne lied for the sake of her efforts. “They assign me all the no-brainers, assignments they wouldn’t dare ask a male officer to do.”

  “Same thing here, I promise,” Kalidja said, sympathetically.

  “They assume we’re incapable of using our brains,” Daphne said, hoping to strike a common chord.

  “And it’s not our brains they’re thinking about,” Kalidja said. She laughed. Her neck was long and elegant. She might have made it as a model had she tried.

  Daphne met eyes with the woman and said, “Have you ever noticed how quickly your ideas become someone else’s? Suddenly all the credit is going down the table?”

  Special Agent Kay Kalidja did not break the eye contact, understanding perfectly well that Daphne had come for a favor. Daphne placed Thompson’s rendition of the tattoo in front of Kalidja and let it sit there. She said, “VICAP and your other databases keep track of body markings, don’t they?”

  Kalidja fingered the photocopy.

  “Left forearm,” Daphne said.

  “His?” Kalidja nearly shouted. “The Pied Piper’s?”

  Daphne nodded. “If it pans out, we unveil it at a four o’clock, the two of us. With two of us, one SPD, one FBI, they can’t take it away from us. Everyone’s talking up joint cooperation, but doing little if anything to make it happen.” She paused. “What do you think?”

  “You mean keep it from our own people?” Kalidja was clearly afraid of the idea. Flemming ran a tight ship. “Where did you get this?”

  “We keep it between us until we know if we’re going to look like fools or geniuses.” Daphne broke into a sweat.

  A smile slowly crept onto Kalidja’s face, illuminating her features and lending her an attractive innocence, younger and less formal. “I could have something this afternoon. Tomorrow at the latest,” Kalidja said, eyes sparkling with excitement.

  Daphne settled back in the chair and relaxed. She had her right where she wanted her.

  CHAPTER 43

  Wednesday morning greeted Carlie Kittridge with excitement beating in her chest, her focus on the volleyball game later that evening. She climbed out of bed the moment she heard Trudy’s little coughs over the baby monitor. The coughs signaled a gagging sound followed by outright crying-hunger-and she attempted to fend off that stage whenever possible.

  The house was small but the master bath oversized, and so she kept the cradle in the bathroom alongside the tub and in front of the windows, with the beige cafe curtains, that faced the Wallingford Bridge. She unwrapped and pulled away the receiving blanket, talking silly at little Trudy and planting a gentle kiss on the five-month-old’s forehead, amazed at the softness of the skin and its sweet cream smell.

  Just before Trudy’s impatience built to a peal, her mother scooped her up gently and pulled her tightly against the warmth of her chest. Carlie, wearing a terry cloth robe, immediately planted her daughter onto her left breast, who suckled hungrily. She held her effortlessly there, remembering briefly how unnatural it had all felt in Evelyn’s first week on earth, how far mother, father and family had come since then. With Trudy, everything seemed second nature for Carlie, as simple as could be.

  Carlie quickly glanced over her shoulder, experiencing the disquieting sensation that she was being watched. She wrote it off to the exposure of her bare breast-she still felt self-conscious about the nursing.

  With Trudy gumming and nibbling at her, Carlie walked a little faster downstairs through the morning darkness and changed her girl’s diaper in the nursery. She entered the kitchen and brought a bottle of formula from the refrigerator, the automatic light spreading white over her and again instilling a sense of vulnerability.

  Carlie ran some hot water to warm the bottle and switched Trudy to her right breast without a thought. Weaning was the worst, she enjoyed the breast-feeding so much, but her milk had not come in as strongly for Trudy as it had for Evelyn, and so she had been supplementing with the bottle. She was on a schedule to have Trudy completely off the breast by the time the summer sand leagues started. No sense in having engorged and painful breasts all summer long.

  She tuned the stereo to a light rock station and burped Trudy to cuts from the Beatles’ White Album. With Trudy in the mechanical swing, Carlie slipped into a pair of fresh underwear, shorts, socks and a jog bra. Her sweatshirt was from the university bookstore. As the sun broke over the eastern horizon, she carried Trudy upstairs and awakened David. She held the child while David freshened up, and then, with Trudy safely in her father’s arms, Carlie broke out into the crisp moist morning air, alive and vital, but harboring that same unsettling feeling that someone was indeed watching. The evening game would be upon them before she knew it.

  Lou Boldt dismissed the first call from sketch artist Tommy Thompson as a cry for payment. Thompson, a freelancer and former employee of the police department, understood he faced a four- to six-week wait for his check. Boldt believed Thompson was merely attempting to hasten the process by applying some pressure.

  He reluctantly heeded the second call, however, because the word “urgent” was conveniently tacked onto the message. If Thompson was misusing their relationship, Boldt would give him a piece of his mind, but as it was he owed him the professional courtesy of a return call.

  “You’re either getting sloppy, lazy or both,” Thompson began their telephone conversation.

  “I put in for payment the minute I got back, Tommy. You did great work with that tattoo. If I had my way I would have paid you on the spot.”

  “I’m not talking about my check, I’m talking about your lack of hindsight, that is, covering your tail end.”

  Boldt understood the implication immediately-that he had been followed to Vashon Island and the session with Thompson-and felt sick to his stomach. The Pied Piper had warned him in the ransom note to derail the investigation, not work to improve their evidence. He experienced a flutter in his chest and a light-headedness that bordered on nausea. If the Pied Piper knew about Thompson, then Boldt had just sabotaged his own daughter.

  “You were contacted?” Boldt nearly screamed into the receiver, furious at himself for having let down his guard. He had not thought to look for a tail the day of that ferry ride.

  “You might call it more of an interrogation,” Thompson said. “I got a little door-to-door from a blue suit named Hale, Dunkin Hale. You know him?”

  “I know him,” Boldt confirmed.

  “Was interested in a little bird-watching.”

  “As in eagles?”

  “You got it.”

  “You showed him the sketch?” Boldt complained into the phone.

  Thompson snapped sarcastically, “No. I told him to go screw himself. I do that with all the FBI agents who come knocking.”

  “If I had wanted the thing broadcast,” Boldt reminded, “I would have done it in-house.”

  “Yeah? I trained every one of them kids. We both know why you made the ferry trip.” He added, “Listen, he told me not to
say a word about his visit. Told me the IRS loves to audit artists working out of their houses. A real peach, this one. Meaning, you put it back onto him and I’m a screwed pooch. You got that?”

  “I got it.”

  “Intelligence,” Thompson mused. “What exactly does that mean, anyway?”

  Boldt wondered how Hale had found out about Henry Shotz. Would Doris Shotz, reluctant to involve her son in the first place, volunteer to the FBI that she’d withheld information from them? Doubtful. Had Hale placed a tail on Boldt? Had he wiretapped Boldt, the same way Boldt had wiretapped him? Perhaps Boldt had just found him.

  CHAPTER 44

  The idea of running one investigation inside another appealed to LaMoia in the same way as did the secrecy of having an affair.

  At 11:30 that Wednesday morning he was paged to the Four Seasons Olympic, arguably the best hotel in the city. He drew attention as he passed through the elegantly appointed lobby, in part because of his cocky body language. He rode up to the fifth floor along with a Chinese woman laden with Nordstrom shopping bags. A few minutes past twelve noon, he knocked sharply on the door to room 512.

  The routine nearly always the same, the room door came open for him and LaMoia stepped inside. Sheila Hill had pulled the window’s gauzy inner curtain so that the noonday light bled across her skin in an induced twilight. She wore a black underwire bra that forced her breasts up invitingly and black high-cut underwear revealing her tanned flank.

  She stepped toward him with her practiced hungry look in her polished eyes and LaMoia suddenly wondered what he was doing there. She allowed him a modicum of control by eagerly submitting to various fantasies, but her reason for being there was a form of addiction, whereas his was a desire for companionship: He had dated twenty-year-olds for too long.

  He turned away from her, taking in the room with its glimpse of the sound’s gray-green waters and shipping traffic. He wanted a conversation, something more than G-strings and the Kama Sutra. He told her, “Boldt was able to get some of the credit records from the Bureau-you don’t want to ask.”

  “I don’t want to talk,” she corrected, swaying toward him, but stopping short of making contact. “Let’s see what can make you stop talking.”

  She slipped off a shoulder strap and sucked on her fingertip.

  “We’ve got to talk,” he dared. “This isn’t working for me.”

  “How ’bout this?” she inquired, slipping off the other strap. “It certainly worked last time.” She placed her hand between her legs.

  “Can’t we just talk for a change?”

  “Damn you!” she said, her act over, though her chest and cheeks flushed with anticipation. She stormed over to her pack of cigarettes, all femininity gone, and lit a smoke. Until that moment he hadn’t fully allowed himself to realize how much of her was an act. “So talk.”

  LaMoia said, “Not like that. I mean talk.”

  “About?”

  “Something other than work and sex,” he said.

  “And the leading candidates are?”

  “What if we just had dinner tonight? A bottle of wine, some pasta.”

  “I hate pasta. I bloat up. What has gotten into you?”

  “We shouldn’t be doing this at lunch hour,” he complained, regretting his earlier line of argument. Born of guilt and concern over Sarah’s abduction, he said, “Those kids need us on this ’round the clock.”

  “What the hell have you been smoking?”

  She sucked on the cigarette though didn’t seem to notice it. She appraised him like a tailor, paying no mind whatsoever to her own partial nudity. Reaching for the table, she tossed him a key ring and said, “Make me a gin and tonic.” She indicated the minibar.

  “It’s lunchtime, Captain.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Make it a double. And make one for you too.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Make one for you too. I’m not drinking alone, cowboy.”

  LaMoia obeyed her, observing himself as if watching another. He poured the drinks, a stranger to himself. From where did she extract such power over him? He even went down the hall for ice. The drinks were poured strong. The cigarette smoke annoyed him.

  She circled him as she drank. “More important question,” she said. “Why would you give a shit about conversation? Hmm?” She dipped her finger into her drink and offered it to his lips, and he sucked on it. “Tongue,” she said, and he obeyed. “Are you going soft on me, so to speak?” She plopped herself down onto the bed, the drink spilling onto her hand. She licked off the excess lasciviously, making a great show of her abnormally long tongue.

  “I want more than nooners,” he blurted out.

  “Not from me you don’t.” She leaned back and poured a stream from her drink so that a silver line of liquid jumped through the delicate white hairs on her belly and vanished into the underwear’s black elastic. “Ready or not,” she said again, rocking her legs open and closed. She giggled girlishly. He knew that was part of it as well-she was someone else in these hotel rooms.

  LaMoia upended the drink. She liked his long neck and its angular Adam’s apple. He did this for her, again not understanding why.

  Her thighs slapped softly.

  She poured another stream down her belly to where it disappeared. “Come and get it!” She waved the cigarette at him.

  LaMoia slipped it from her fingers and extinguished it, suddenly boiling mad. With the reactions of a snake, he knocked the drink from her hand, snagged her wrist, and pulled her so hard and so quickly toward the head of the bed that he pulled her out of her underwear. It rolled into a lump between her knees.

  “Whee!” she squealed, possibly appreciating that he had mixed her drink as a triple and his own as a single.

  “Take a few minutes to think about us,” he said, cuffing her left wrist to the headboard. She made an exaggerated expression of concern and said, “Oh, you’re scaring me!”

  The liquor glass rolled to a stop.

  LaMoia hurried to the closet and returned with two terry cloth bathrobe belts. A moment later the underwear was on the floor and her ankles bound to the bed.

  “Something new!” she said excitedly. “Have we done handcuffs?”

  “You’ve been rude to me, Sheila. Demeaning.”

  “Rank has its privileges,” she fired back at him, waiting for him to undress. “Once you’re captain, I’ll make the drinks. But you’ll still come when I call. And you know why? The twenty-year-olds gratify the ego all right, but not the loin.”

  LaMoia tugged the comforter off the bed, then the blanket out from under her and the flat sheet. Hill, naked and writhing, legs bound, one hand in the cuffs, didn’t know what to make of this. She forced a smile, beginning to question his actions. He reached beneath her, and she cooperated, arching her back. He freed the corner of the fitted sheet and also stripped this from the bed, pulling a mattress pad with it. Nothing left with which to cover herself.

  “What the hell?” she said.

  He showed her the handcuff key as he carefully set it down in plain sight next to the television.

  She looked around searchingly, suddenly understanding the game. “No way,” she said, believing it a joke.

  “Phone’s in reach,” he said, pointing.

  “You will not do this,” she shouted. “I am stark naked!”

  He nodded. “And you know something? You’ll call me again-”

  “You’re dead you do this!” She squirmed but wasn’t getting loose. Her free arm could not reach her ankle.

  He moved toward the door. “And you know why? Because you’ve never had it like this. Those fifty-year-olds just don’t do it for you.” LaMoia pulled the door shut, her insults filling the hall. He wondered how long until she made the phone call to room service.

  CHAPTER 45

  With the volleyball tossed and hanging in the air, awaiting her open palm, Carlie Kittridge suddenly worried over having left Trudy with a sitter. She knew this stemmed from the pregame
discussion about the kidnapper called the Pied Piper that had focused on news stories warning parents not to leave their children in the care of others until the kidnapper was captured.

  Carlie caught the ball rather than serve it. Her husband shouted back at her, “Let’s go! Serve ’em up a beauty.”

  Instead, Carlie bounced the ball toward Jenny, their weakest player but the only woman on the bench. Conference rules required gender-balanced teams.

  Her husband chastised, “What the hell?”

  She felt no need to have to explain herself. A mother’s prerogative. She searched for the car keys in the pocket of David’s warm-ups. Possession of those keys lent her a great sense of freedom and relief. “Have Danny drop you off,” she told him.

  Her husband’s expression conveyed a sense of treason. “Danny?” he croaked incredulously.

  Jenny stepped up to the service line, having little sense of her own inability to play the game. A member of the opposing team complained loudly about the substitution taking too long and demanded a serve.

  “At least serve out the game,” David pleaded.

  Jenny called out the score and served a lofting floater to the opponent’s backcourt. The resulting bump was a perfect set for the front line. The spike came right at David, who failed to block it. Side out.

  Carlie hurried out of the gym.

  A stunned and defeated David Kittridge shouted after his wife, far too late to be heard, “Don’t forget it’s damn near out of gas.”

  Carlie Kittridge had forgotten. She ran out of gas eleven blocks from home, at the corner of 42nd and Stoneway. Blinded by her fear for her baby, she failed to pull the truck entirely off the roadway, leaving it dead, angled toward the curb and blocking traffic, the lights still on.