They wrestled briefly, locking forearms with matched grips, Flemming the larger, more powerful man. The crowds flowed around them, barely paying them any mind.
“Fight!” a kid shouted.
“Forget about it,” Boldt said, struggling, glancing around furiously through the mist for Flemming’s backup.
“It’s my investigation now,” Flemming announced, shaking him like an angry parent. “It’s my task force, not Hill’s. I took over in Boise.”
“It’s irrelevant,” Boldt conceded. He wondered about what Hale had told him. If true, he was looking into the eyes of the Pied Piper’s insider, his accomplice, a traitor.
Hundreds of people streamed past, most oblivious to the weather. The Taurus inched forward in gridlocked traffic, the rain in the headlights swirling like oil in water.
“You’re within my jurisdiction,” Boldt reminded. “This is my city.” It seemed possible that Flemming might have gained control of the task force, and if so the investigation was indeed his, its outcome his to bend, break or detour. But Boldt remained proud of Seattle and his own place within it.
“You’ll follow orders, Lieutenant. You’ve run investigations. You know the importance of-”
Boldt managed to yank his right arm free, reached in for his ID wallet and pressed it into Flemming’s huge open hand. “Wrong.”
Flemming glanced down at the ID wallet. “Nice try.” He attempted to pass it back.
Boldt threw his arms in the air and said, “No harm, no foul. The investigation is all yours.” He inched his way to Flemming’s left and into an area of clear sidewalk that had formed around them like an eddy behind a rock in a stream. He turned his back on the man and took a tentative step forward.
Flemming roared over the noise of the passing crowd, “She celebrated her birthday in captivity.”
The words froze Boldt. He turned, and said, “Not yet she hasn’t.”
“Stephanie,” Flemming told him, eyes shifting nervously among the passers-by. “I’m talking about my daughter.”
“You aren’t married,” Boldt said. “Have never been married,” he corrected. Drawn to the Taurus, he couldn’t keep his eyes off it. Flemming was not one to look away from. Following Sarah’s abduction Boldt had looked into the private lives of the various members of the FBI team; only Hale was married and a father, only Hale had made sense as a candidate for the Pied Piper’s insider. Everything was turned around. He backed off, taking another step toward the Taurus, which had crept even further down the street. He wasn’t going to lose that car. Again, he threw his hands in the air and said, “You’ve got to shoot me, Flemming, you want to stop me.”
That comment won him some extra room from the pedestrians.
“Gun!” a shrill voice called out. The pace of the crowd picked up, but it did not scatter as Boldt expected.
Flemming’s hand was indeed stuck inside his sport coat.
Flemming explained loudly, “She’s white, Boldt-my woman. We never married, no. We thought it a bad idea for both of us. Our daughter was two-and-a-half when this monster took her.” He said clearly, “I know about Sarah. That is, I suspected. I didn’t exactly know until right now.”
Boldt’s knees felt weak. He sagged. Sarah … Flemming knew. “Not possible,” he mumbled to himself, the Taurus slipping away. The ransom demands were violated. He felt comfortable with Flemming as a traitor; Flemming the victim was all too unreal for him. Six months of abduction? Impossible to survive such a thing. Flemming? he wondered. Had Hale lied to protect his own interests? Or was this a smoke screen to allow Crowley to escape?
“Kiss and make up,” some punk kid with green hair shouted at them.
Flemming said, “They sent you a video clip on CD-ROM. Hell, I didn’t even know how to work with one of those things. Saw it for the first time in a computer store.” He insisted, “How would I know that? Think about it!”
An insider would know this as well as a victim. By posing as a victim, Flemming had frozen Boldt-exactly what he would want to do. The Taurus eased ahead in traffic. Boldt’s hand found the butt of his sidearm, his index finger pried loose the Velcro tab that secured the weapon. He glanced over his shoulder.
“Do you know her name?” Flemming asked. “The driver? Who is she?”
Nice try, Boldt thought. Convincing as all hell. The powerful man with a small federal army assigned to him playing the naive victim.
Flemming stepped closer. Boldt looked around for the man’s agents then, late in doing so, expecting they might be closing in on him. Too many people to tell. Flemming said, “You want to follow her, I’m with you. But you know the rules: No suspects in custody, or I never see my daughter again.”
“I know the rules,” Boldt answered, out of energy, out of time. He could still reach the Taurus if he ran. “I even played by them for a few days.” It seemed like a month ago.
“We follow and we see if our kids are there,” Flemming proposed. “Follow only.”
For the first time, Boldt heard the man’s calm, penetrating baritone break, riddled with grief and uncertainty. For a moment he actually allowed himself to believe the man, which was, no doubt, exactly what Flemming wanted.
Flemming said, “My team is chasing the car you substituted, same as your people. But you? I followed you and that piece of shit Ford.”
Boldt searched the area again. Still no sign of agents. Could Flemming possibly be telling the truth?
Boldt said confidently, “I have one stop to make, and I’ll know where she’s going. Some paperwork was left with my wife. I can find the place.”
“Bullshit.” The man was unnerved.
“No bullshit. Anderson could have told you, if you hadn’t killed him.”
Flemming’s jaw quivered, his eyes hardened and went cold. He looked into the stream of pedestrians as if debating to shoot Boldt right there and then. His eyes flashed darkly toward Boldt, who explained, “The choke hold you put on Weinstein. Left-handed. Same thing killed Anderson. I should have made the connection right then.”
“I … It …”
Boldt wished the man’s hand out from inside the coat, but it remained. He said, “You want to shoot a cop in the back in front of a couple hundred witnesses, that’s your choice.” He turned and ran for the Taurus-for Lisa Crowley, stuck in traffic-the rain beginning in earnest.
Flemming caught up to Boldt a few yards from the Taurus, both men at a run. “I’ll take the driver’s door. You take the passenger,” Flemming said.
“We need her alive.”
“I know that.”
As the traffic surged forward again, the two split up. Boldt cut behind the Taurus and hurried to the passenger door. “Locked!” he called out to Flemming just prior to the agent presenting his gun and shield to the driver’s window.
“FBI! Open the door!” The car lurched forward, but only a matter of feet before slamming bumpers with a Mazda. Flemming shot the rear tire. Screams errupted from the sidewalk.
Boldt stayed with the passenger door. He pounded on the side window with the butt of his gun. The safety glass cracked, but held.
An enraged Flemming reached across the front windshield and aimed his weapon directly at the driver’s head.
“No!” Boldt shouted, understanding the temptation. “We need her!”
“Out!” Flemming shouted to the driver.
Lisa Crowley popped open the door.
“Hands where I can see ’em,” Flemming hollered. He said to Boldt, “I’ll cover. You cuff. We’ll take my car.”
Boldt came around the vehicle. He tugged the woman’s arms behind her with more force than was necessary. He squeezed the metal around her wrists, an incredible anger burning through him. It felt incredibly good to feel the metal click into metal. “Lisa Crowley, you are under arrest for the kidnapping of Trudy Kittridge, Stephanie Flemming and Sarah Boldt. You have the right-” The words caught in his throat. Tears stung his eyes.
“-to remain silent. You have the right
to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney-” Flemming ran through the Miranda effortlessly. Together the two men led the handcuffed woman down the sidewalk, against the flow of pedestrians. Horns sounded behind them, frustrated at the parked Taurus. Flemming finished the rehearsed piece and then said, “Now let me tell you something, Crowley: Where you’re going those rights won’t do you a damn bit of good, because you’re going with us.” He met eyes with Boldt, and the two men understood each other perfectly.
Boldt said, “It’s over.” But his words fell flat. For he and Flemming, it was only just beginning.
CHAPTER 79
LaMoia drove east on I-90, well over the speed limit, maintaining a decent lead on the surveillance cars that trailed behind him. He cringed as the rain lessened to sheets of gray mist, for he feared the Nissan would be seen to have taken the place of the Taurus, at which point the surveillance net was certain to collapse upon him en force.
Dividing his attention between the road ahead of him and the cars behind, he thought for a moment about the road of life he traveled, and how little time he spent thinking about the future. His affair with Sheila Hill had awakened him to wanting more than raw physical relations, and he considered putting some distance between that relationship and his next, to solidify his notion of John LaMoia. In the past, it had been one bed to the next, one pretty face to the next in a long chain of women that rarely went broken by more than a week or two. The damn kidnapping case was getting to him, he decided at last. He wanted children. A family. A future outside of himself. He was, for the first time in his adult life, tired of John LaMoia. He didn’t like himself.
The red flashing lights appeared in his rearview mirror simultaneously, one vehicle directly behind him, the other partially blocking the highway’s center lane. It felt as if they had gained on him in a matter of seconds, pedal to the floor. He stretched it out for half a mile, letting them sweat whether or not they faced a high-speed chase. Then he signaled and pulled over.
He thought the signal a nice touch. Just wait, he thought, until they find out who they’ve pulled over. He wanted to see their faces. He could hardly wait.
CHAPTER 80
The contents of the envelope left for him by Theresa Russo lay scattered across the front seat of Flemming’s Town Car along with a map of Skagit County. Liz had passed them through the passenger’s window with a simple kiss to Boldt’s cheek, a suspicious glance at the driver and a look of hatred aimed at Lisa Crowley, handcuffed in the backseat. They drove with the windows partially down, delivering a wet, heavy air. Little more remained to be said. They had decided on a course of action. They intended to see it through, regardless of the outcome.
Millie Wiggins’ address in Haller, near Bitter Lake, proved difficult to find. After several incorrect guesses on Boldt’s part, the Town Car drove into the paved driveway in the Pinnacle Point subdivision. Flemming locked the parking brake and kept the car running. A moment later the front curtains parted, an expectant face peered out into the dark and the front door opened.
The detour, while not costly in time, offered the unlikely partners substantial long-term risks that, if taken to their limit, included imprisonment. But the cop in Boldt had overruled the father for the first time in weeks, and he accepted that as progress.
In blue jeans and a green flannel shirt, Millie Wiggins looked nothing like she did while running her day care preschool. She hurried down the brick walkway carrying an umbrella open over her head and called hello from a distance. Boldt signaled her around to his side of the car.
As she stepped up to Boldt’s window, she bent over and studied Flemming. Boldt said calmly, “Just a yes or no is all we need. You must be definite. There must be no doubt whatsoever. Even a hint of doubt and I’d rather you say no.” He hesitated. They needed probable cause to ever hope for criminal charges. Without the chance of criminal charges, Boldt feared it would, quite possibly, come down to killing this woman. Strangely, he felt no remorse at the idea. He told Wiggins, “You know you don’t need to do this. No one is forcing you to do this.”
“I understand.”
“I’m sorry, but we can’t open the back door. You’ll have to look from here.”
“That’s fine.”
Flemming switched on the car’s interior light, illuminating the woman in the backseat. Boldt rocked his head to the side, affording her a better view, and Millie Wiggins stared long and hard, unknowingly in the act of determining Boldt’s future. She blinked repeatedly, nervous and under the strain of his requirement to be definite. He appreciated the difficulty of her task, having been through countless lineups himself.
“You’ve taped her mouth shut.”
“She was a little noisy,” Boldt said.
“It isn’t easy without the mouth.”
“Do your best.”
“The hair’s a different color,” Wiggins said, close enough to Boldt that he could smell wine on her breath.
He said nothing, waiting patiently for her to remember the rules. Flemming had yet to speak.
“Yes,” she said strongly, delivering Boldt a jolt to his system. He hadn’t realized how good it could feel, how different for the father than the cop.
“You’re positive?”
“She was in her uniform, of course,” Wiggins said, assuming Boldt’s passenger to be a cop. “But that’s her.” She looked directly into Boldt’s eyes. “That’s the woman who picked up Sarah. That’s her.” She asked, “What has she done?”
Crowley protested from behind the duct tape. She squirmed and writhed and then settled down.
“Do you always tape their mouths?”
“You won’t see that on TV,” Flemming said. He popped off the brake and put the car in reverse. He had not wanted this stop, had agreed to it only in negotiation for Boldt’s sharing the contents of the FedEx delivery manifests.
Boldt leaned his head out as the car backed up and addressed a stunned Millie Wiggins, standing in her driveway beneath an umbrella with rain cascading from its rim. “Only our most difficult suspects,” he informed her. He thanked her and got the window up. The headlights spilled over her, throwing an enormous shadow against the garage door.
“You see? We didn’t need her,” Flemming protested, repeating an argument he had beaten to death. “You knew you had the right woman.”
Flemming’s silent rage terrified Boldt; he was glad to have the man talking. By his own admission, for six months Flemming had attempted to piece together any evidence that might lead him to the Pied Piper, while at the same time continually compromising the public investigation. Now that Boldt had done his job for him, the man seemed hell-bent on handling the Crowleys in the same manner he had handled Anderson. The end justified the means. Boldt, who understood such reactions, who empathized with them, found himself defending the suspect’s rights and wondering how far Flemming might go-if he too might end up a victim if he crossed the man.
In the name of probable cause, Boldt had just tricked Flemming into buying himself a second witness, and both men knew it, perhaps Flemming even understood it, though he was difficult to judge. Millie Wiggins, and Liz along with her, could place Crowley and Boldt in that car. Both women had taken good long looks at Flemming.
“Cross over to I-5 on 145th,” Boldt said. “There’s an on-ramp off Fifth Avenue.”
“It doesn’t change anything,” Flemming warned, letting Boldt know that he understood everything. “If you fuck this up, if you can’t find this place, I’ll pull her eyelids off and drip battery acid in them until she talks, until she tells me where I can find my daughter. And if you even think about trying to stop me-” He didn’t bother finishing the threat. Flemming was played out, any ability to reason in him long since exhausted. He had waited for this day for six months, and Boldt or no Boldt, he knew what had to be done. Boldt had tried to use Anderson as a bargaining chip, reminding Flemming that no evidence linked him to the man’s murder-implying Boldt would not make a case of it if Flemming playe
d this right. But Flemming was numb from the neck up, lacking any concept of prison terms or punishment. He simply didn’t care. He wanted his daughter back. Nothing-no one-would come between him and that end.
Pressured into an alliance of which he wanted no part, Boldt found himself an unwilling passenger. He might as well have been handcuffed and in the backseat himself.
The interminable drive north on I-5 left Boldt referencing the FedEx manifests and plotting delivery routes for March 25 on or about twelve noon, creating small boxes on the map with arrows to the appropriate location. Darkness outside, darkness inside, the rain obscuring the windshield, his own fears obscuring his efforts.
Boldt decided to speak directly to the issue. There were questions to answer and he had no way of knowing if he might be around to hear them later. Without backup, anything could happen. He said to the driver, “According to Hale, the Hoover Building thinks you may be working for the Pied Piper.”
“Hale knows?”
“He’s been spying on you ever since your girlfriend disappeared and your bank account grew.”
The big man nodded, a man defeated. “The money-cash-was deposited in five-thousand-dollar amounts into my account. She,” he said, pointing toward the backseat and their prisoner, “knew it would appear that I had misplaced loyalties, that I wouldn’t be able to explain the deposits. And of course I wouldn’t have been able to. So they had my child, and my career. I sent Gwen away the minute they got our child. Told her not to surface. Believe me,” he added, “she’s under so deep no one will ever find her unless I’m involved.”
“She could support your story. You just might get yourself out of this.”
“It’s Stephanie I care about, not me. Stephanie first. The rest comes later. The rest hardly matters.”
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