“Bradley!” Daphne barked at her husband, “don’t you dare mess this up.” To the attorney she said, “He didn’t mean a thing by it, Mr. Chevalier. Not a thing. Bradley just likes to talk, that’s all.” She added teasingly, “Whataya say?”
“Bradley?” Chevalier questioned suspiciously, throwing the name into the air with great disdain. “Bradley?” he repeated.
Boldt blanched the moment Daphne barked at him. He had practiced the signature enough times to recognize her mistake.
Printed in capital letters on the documents in process of being signed-documents that shouted up at him from the low table where they lay open to the last page-was the name she should have called him: Bradford, not Bradley, as his make-believe wife had misspoken.
Attorneys caught such details. Chevalier had drawn up the documents, likely without the word processing abilities of an assistant: Why involve anyone else? He had typed them, printed them and proofed them. He certainly knew Brehmer’s first name. He had to be wondering why the man’s wife did not.
Tension hung in the air as thick as the smell of smoke and burned coffee.
Chevalier’s head snapped toward the street; he had heard something only a resident of the building could discern. He eyed Boldt cautiously, crossed to the window and peered down into the street. When he looked back into the room his eyes flashed angrily between his two guests, and though Boldt scrambled for an alternate plan, his mind wouldn’t function, clouded by thoughts of his daughter.
Smoke caught in the man’s throat, burning it dry as Chevalier said, “She has arrived.”
CHAPTER 66
People were creatures of habit, LaMoia thought, as he watched a Ford Taurus pull into the postage-stamp parking lot behind Chevalier’s office. Such habits were a detective’s bread and butter; they offered behavioral links to the past and future alike. People chose to dress the same, eat the same food at the same places, travel in the same circle of friends, frequent the same bars-drive the same cars.
Lisa Crowley had a thing for the Ford Taurus.
She parked in the first open spot in the lot, the one immediately adjacent to the street, providing LaMoia a good look and the driver a quick exit.
As the driver’s door came open, LaMoia prepared himself for the ready, putting away the.38 Boldt had loaned him and the stun stick he routinely carried tucked into his right boot, a handheld, less powerful version of the Pied Piper’s air TASER. He confirmed the pick gun’s location in the pocket of his windbreaker. No cuffs, no ID wallet. His life had changed, no doubt about it.
He did not recognize Lisa Crowley from the mug shot provided Daphne by NOPD’s Detective Broole. Dressed in a professional style in keeping with a job of such responsibility, and yet a state employee, this woman wore a starched white cotton top and a pair of crisp, pleated khaki pants. He assumed the hair was not hers, but one of many wigs, and yet it seemed perfectly in keeping, fitting her face and complementing her looks remarkably. She wore a colorful scarf on her head and a pair of shades. She might have been anybody.
LaMoia wondered if the scarf and glasses concealed head injuries sustained in the Boise pileup. If so, there was little she could do to fully hide herself. Body markings, regardless of how small, were an investigator’s God-given gift.
Confidence artists were fully versed in identity changes. LaMoia was prepared for Lisa Crowley to enter a building with one look and, moments later, leave as an entirely different person. The woman who climbed back in the Taurus and drove it away might not be the same woman who had arrived and now climbed out. Opening the car’s rear door, Crowley leaned inside and retrieved the baby seat.
LaMoia headed for the burned-out tenement’s fire escape and the blistering heat of another hazy morning. His assignment was simple in word, difficult in practice, and yet critical to Sarah’s rescue: to place Lisa Crowley under surveillance and never lose track of her. Boldt had entrusted him with nothing less than his daughter’s life. He had no intention of letting anyone down.
CHAPTER 67
“Bradley?” a suspicious Chevalier repeated curiously, stepping away from the window.
“Cindy’s way of putting me in my place,” Boldt told the man, vamping. “One of those husband and wife things, that goes back to a childhood story I wish I’d never told.” Looking at Daphne, Boldt said for the benefit of the attorney, “No one but the teachers ever got my name right in school. It was always ‘Bradley’ this and ‘Bradley’ that. It really got on my nerves after a while. I came to hate the name. Still do. No one ever seems to get Bradford.”
“Bradley gets your attention, sweetheart,” she said without hesitation, picking up the ruse beautifully. “And you know how I just love to have your full attention.” She tugged on the hem of her shift, lifting it a little more open than necessary, well aware of how to win Chevalier’s attention as well.
Chevalier sucked on the cigarette, his small eyes flitting between his two clients.
Boldt felt a tear of sweat charge down his ribs. He knew that Trudy Kittridge’s keeper had arrived when footfalls in the hall drew Chevalier to his office door.
Daphne jumped up, ran an open hand down her shift and headed straight for the car seat-the baby! — catching herself at the very last moment and thinking to introduce herself to the woman. The woman responded, “Susan Chambers.”
The woman who called herself Chambers passed the baby seat to Daphne, set down a baby bag slung over her shoulder and gingerly removed her sunglasses. Her left eye was badly blackened and considerably swollen.
She preempted any questions. “Slipped, standing up out of the tub.” She touched the scarf. “Pretty stupid, you ask me.”
“You’ve seen a doctor, I hope,” Boldt said, stepping closer, studying every line in her features, every bump, blemish and bone. He would never forget that face; he made sure of it.
“I’m fine.”
Boldt couldn’t help himself. “A blow to the head like that can give you real trouble,” Boldt said. “Headaches?” With an eye like that she would be living on pain killers-aspirin at the very least.
Chevalier agreed with Boldt, nodding. He said pointedly, “You should have it looked at.” He added strongly, “Hear?”
The woman clearly didn’t like the conversation aimed onto her. Maintaining her composure, looking down at the child, she asked them all, “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
Daphne repeated her introduction. She spoke in a breathy, slightly hysterical voice, slipping at once into baby talk as she dropped to one knee to greet the baby girl. Daphne’s performance, the use of the altered voices, was essential because the social worker-in all likelihood, Lisa Crowley-had spent the most amount of time in phone conversations with Cindy Brehmer. With only the few calls made over a protracted period, it was doubtful Lisa Crowley would identify the voice as that of another woman, but Daphne was taking no chances. She focused her attention on the child and left the documentation, paperwork and chitchat to Boldt.
“May I?” Daphne said in a girlish voice, indicating the baby seat.
“Please,” Lisa Crowley answered, “and I’m here to answer any questions you or Mr. Brehmer may have about parenting the child.”
Boldt felt a sudden fit of rage unlike anything he had ever experienced. Triggered initially by simply the woman’s presence-his daughter’s kidnapper in the same room with him, for there was no mistaking Lisa Crowley-it struck to his core as she spoke so evenly, so controlled, so generously. She was a social worker, not a woman playing a role. Her professional calm and authority were an affront to his own professionalism and authority. He could picture her in a police uniform at the door to Millie Wiggins’ day care. This woman had physically touched Sarah, had trained a video camera onto her while she screamed for her daddy. Boldt wanted desperately to hurt this woman.
“Sir?” she asked.
“Yes?” Boldt returned.
“I asked if you have any questions on the caring and feeding of the child.”
&nb
sp; “No, I don’t think so. We’ve been through the parenting classes as you know,” he said, pointing to the documents. The Brehmers had briefed them on the requirements they had fulfilled in order to take possession of the child. The nationally sanctioned parenting classes, offered by a Houston hospital, included a certification diploma that accompanied the Brehmer paperwork. After two kids of his own, Boldt could have given the parenting classes himself.
Something in him stirred, and Boldt couldn’t avoid confronting her. He looked directly into her eyes and said, “Do you have children of your own, Ms. Chambers?”
All color drained from Lisa Crowley’s face.
Daphne looked up sharply from the baby. “Bradley!” she chastised. “What possible business is that of ours? Please excuse my husband, Ms. Chambers. He can be impertinent and obnoxious in the most unexpected situations. And I assure you our little angel will learn nothing of the kind from her daddy. I nearly have him trained for the dinner table, after all, don’t I, Bradley?”
“None,” Crowley whispered. Regaining herself quickly, she added, “Which is one reason this work is so rewarding, so fulfilling for me.” She met eyes with Boldt; for a moment he believed she might have seen through their ruse. Her subsequent smile, patronizing though it was, relieved him of this fear.
“Of course it is,” Daphne said, supporting him. “I’ll bet you want to go home with every one of the children you and Mr. Chevalier place.”
“Mr. Chevalier places them, Mrs. Brehmer,” she corrected. “I merely oversee the transfer for the benefit of the children and the state. Though, yes, every child is precious and a wonder under God.”
Boldt felt a knot in his throat. He fought against it but broke into tears. They spilled down his cheeks.
“Well, looky there!” Daphne said sarcastically. “I don’t think I’ve seen my husband cry since the Rockets lost the finals.”
Chevalier smirked as he busily sorted through the remaining paperwork, a cigarette pinched tightly between his moist lips.
Daphne approached Boldt, kissed him gently and said, “We’re a family now, sweetheart.”
Boldt nodded, recovering quickly.
Daphne said, “We’re so eager to get her home.”
“Yes,” Crowley replied, “you’re very lucky.” She glanced at Chevalier.
“A few signatures is all,” Chevalier piped up anxiously. “Now that Miss Susan is here, she can witness for us.”
A thunderous rain crashed down on the roof of the building without warning, sounding more like a small explosion. The baby cried out.
Daphne reached down, unfastened the seat’s restraints and scooped Trudy Kittridge into the safety of her arms.
The first of the children had been recovered.
CHAPTER 68
LaMoia cursed the rain from behind the steering wheel of his rental. It wasn’t simply rain; rain he could handle; rain he was used to. Anyone who had lived in Seattle for fifteen years knew rain on a first-name basis. But this? The sky blackened like someone had thrown a switch and water fell in sheets, like a fire hose aimed at the ground, fell so hard that when it struck the hot pavement, droplets bounced up a foot or more before falling again and converting to a layer of steam.
Water pounded the roof of the car so loudly that LaMoia could not hear the radio.
The downpour cleared the sidewalks. Umbrellas made vain attempts to withhold the deluge; the roadway flooded as gutters roared like rivers. LaMoia saw only a blurred silver film. To turn on the wipers of a parked car was to give his position away.
Through the blur, he saw Boldt running toward his Volvo. He pulled the wagon up close to the building, and the woman he assumed to be Crowley braved the downpour to help Boldt and Daphne get the child seat into the car. Crowley then sprinted to the Taurus, opened the trunk and withdrew a dark overnight bag before scrambling into the front seat.
The only movement on the street came from the windshield wipers of a pair of cars that had double-parked to allow the rain to let up. These double-parked cars in turn blocked others parked legally.
Boldt’s rental edged forward out onto the flooded street, one of the only cars moving.
LaMoia caught another set of wipers moving-this from one of the blocked cars.
Crowley’s Taurus backed up, but then paused as the rain fell even harder.
LaMoia snagged the cell phone as he saw a man wearing a trench coat hurry from the blocked car and pound on the window of the car that was blocking him. This man motioned frantically for the double-parked car to move so he could pull out from his own parking space.
The driver took the hint. The double-parked car rolled.
So did the Taurus.
LaMoia fired up his engine as Crowley’s Taurus backed up and pulled out into the street.
The phone rang through and Boldt’s voice answered, “Brehmer.”
“Can you talk?” LaMoia followed out into the street. Cars that had pulled over were moving again. The cell phone reception was awful.
“She’s smacked up pretty badly,” Boldt told him, attempting to supply identifying features. “Her left eye …” Static sparked loudly in LaMoia’s ear. “A scarf …”
LaMoia interrupted, “We got ourselves a problem, a visitor. You copy that? We’ve got ourselves a stick in the spokes. You there?”
“I’m here.”
“It’s Hale.”
An enormous flash of lightning occurred simultaneously with a crack of thunder that shook the car. The cell phone went dead.
LaMoia turned the wipers to high. Couldn’t see a damn thing.
CHAPTER 69
LaMoia and Hale followed the Taurus in tandem, Hale in the lead in a dark green Jeep Cherokee. The rainstorm remained so strong that LaMoia wouldn’t have recognized his own mother crossing the street, forcing bumper-to-bumper traffic. For LaMoia, the slower the better-both the Jeep and the Taurus stayed close.
Based on nothing concrete, he decided Hale had not noticed him, assuming he would be consumed with following the Taurus and paying little attention to other traffic.
He tried the cell phone again, its red NO SERVICE light pulsing in warning. His attention fixed on the Taurus through a series of turns and one red light he was forced to run, LaMoia tried to figure Hale.
There seemed to him at least two explanations for Hale’s behavior. Either Broole had alerted Hale to SPD’s presence, or Hale had made the same connection to Vincent Chevalier. Unaware of the Pied Piper’s identity, Hale had attached himself to Chevalier like a tic. In turn, he had stumbled onto Crowley.
LaMoia tried the cellular again. The network remained down.
The highway signs suggested Lisa Crowley’s destination was the airport. If Hale so much as attempted an arrest, he would blow Sarah’s chances.
He considered his options and made a difficult decision. Crowley would be alert for anyone entering the airport terminal behind her, but if he arrived ahead of her, he might stay with her.
He asked himself, When the hell have I ever been wrong? He pulled out of his lane and passed both Hale and Crowley. The international airport was the next exit.
CHAPTER 70
Boldt drove to the airport, wife and child in the car, exactly as the Brehmers had planned. His eyes remained divided between the rearview mirror and the traffic in front of them, believing it a good possibility they were being followed. They would make the flight to Houston together for the sake of appearance. From Houston, it was on to Seattle for Daphne and Trudy Kittridge. Boldt intended to return to New Orleans to assist LaMoia in the surveillance of Lisa Crowley, the only link to his daughter.
The recovery of Trudy Kittridge filled him with hope.
Daphne said from the backseat where she held a bottle of formula for the child, “Those injuries are severe, Lou.”
“I know.”
“You hear Chevalier trying to get her to see a doctor? He saw it too. That eye …”
“I know.”
“We need her health
y. If she’s going to lead you back to Sarah-”
“She’ll survive. It’s Hale I’m worried about. A couple phone calls from Hale and we’re either talking a federal invasion led by Flemming, or the Crowleys blowing to Singapore.”
Daphne considered this. “Are you saying Hale’s working for them?” she called out loudly from the backseat, sending the baby into a volley of cries. She settled her down.
“It would explain him playing this solo. It doesn’t fit with Bureau policy, Daffy. He has carried this too far. It has to be explained. If he’s not down here to investigate these people, he’s down here to protect them.”
“He came onto Flemming’s team late in the game.”
“The two have known each other for a long time, have worked together before. Hale could have easily monitored Flemming’s progress in each city and told the Crowleys when to bail out. It would explain their perfect timing.”
Daphne played along. “She gets involved in an injury car accident. That changes things. Flemming is warming to her. I see what you’re saying: At that point either the Crowleys or Chevalier could demand protection. Hale would respond.”
“Which explains his being down here alone. He tells Flemming he’s chasing leads. Flemming buys into it, it’s how he runs things. Flemming’s not sending in the troops before he’s absolutely sure they have the collar.”
“The tattoo shop?” she asked him.
“Hale removes that evidence ahead of us. They go ahead with the Kittridge adoption, thinking they’re okay. That’s the best sign of all as far as Sarah’s concerned: They haven’t pulled the plug.”
“But Hale?” She sounded incredulous.
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