The Piper (CASMIRC Book 2)

by Ben Miller

The camera cut to Mario. “Justice drives us. We need justice. Justice for Stephanie, justice for Danielle…” He looked over at the Coulters. “…and justice for Adrianna.”

  “So you’re hoping that this may provide some sense of closure?” Robin paraphrased.

  While Jennifer and Amy nodded—Carl continued to abstain from offering anything resembling an opinion—Mario shook his head. “Justice,” he repeated.

  Jack turned to look at Vicki. “I get the feeling that Mr. Cugino wants justice.”

  “I’m pretty sure he has that word tattooed on his body somewhere,” Vicki agreed.

  Mario Cugino’s face reddened, reminding Jack of the condensation brightening the outside of a copper teakettle when it begins to whistle. “Randall Franklin needs to pay. Pay for his sins. We keep our eyes on that. That’s how we get through. That’s how I get through.”

  “Are you ready for Monday?” Vicki asked Jack.

  “Yeah,” he responded without hesitation. “I’m ready to get this over with. Despite what Super Mario says, we all need closure.”

  “And, uh, what was that again…?”

  “Justice, I think?”

  “Ah, yes. Justice.” Vicki smiled again, and again it lit up Jack’s day.

  Jack turned to face her fully, the interview continuing on the TV behind him. “What about you?” he asked, his smile fading to a look of earnest concern.

  “Ian said I wouldn’t testify until at least Wednesday.” Ian Dewey was the State’s Attorney trying the case for the prosecution. She and Jack had both met with him and his team on several occasions. “I’m feeling OK, actually. But maybe I will dip into that Xanax before heading to the courthouse,” she joked.

  On Good Morning, America Robin had completed her interview of the Cuginos and the Coulters. “And in an eerily similar story, we go to Lara.”

  An anchor Jack did not recognize—he seldom watched morning television—appeared on screen. “Boston police have confirmed that they have enlisted the support of the FBI and their division specializing in crimes against children for their recent rash of infant abductions. In the last month, two young infants have been kidnapped from their mothers’ arms as they left their homes. Both women were rendered helpless by Taser guns while the assailant ran off with their babies, still in their car seats. Neither infant has been found. Local media have dubbed this kidnapper the Piper, after the Pied Piper of legend who steals children away from an unsuspecting town.”

  “This is your case? The one in Boston?” Vicki asked.

  Jack nodded.

  “The Piper?”

  “First I’ve heard that nickname. Fucking media.” Jack got up and finished packing.

  13

  “The Piper.”

  Jeff Pine stood at the front of the incident room on the third floor of Boston Police Headquarters, addressing the twenty officers and other Bureau agents seated in front of him. “I don’t like it, I’m sure you don’t like it, but it’s out there, so we’ll have to deal with it. I don’t care if you use it around here, and I can’t control if journalists use it. But I don’t want to see it on any official documents, and it shouldn’t be included in any statements to the press—even brief interviews.”

  Jack sat in the middle of the front row, soaking up Jeff Pine’s atmosphere. He could imagine his Special-Agent-in-Charge at CASMIRC Dylan Harringer saying something similar—albeit peppered with expletives—but his tone would be much different. Harringer often spoke to them like a father on the brink of disappointment. Jeff’s inflection carried notes of optimism. He reminded Jack of a preacher, so steadfast in his earnest faith that it rubbed off on those around him. In these first moments after meeting him, Jack felt fortunate to know him. Jeff Pine had a natural proclivity to inspire. Jack predicted he would go far in The Bureau.

  Jeff clicked through a PowerPoint presentation outlining the particulars of the two abductions. It served as a refresher to Jack and his team, as they had all reviewed this information on the plane ride here. Jack guessed most of the other officers in the room also had prior knowledge of the scenarios. However, the exercise was not futile. Hearing the cases aloud, accompanied by visual cues, allowed for a collective consciousness. Solutions came more easily with numerous minds working together in a similar but separate fashion.

  “Lack of motive seems to be our major sticking point right now.” Jeff clicked his remote and a blank slide popped up behind him. “We have found no connection between the two victims. Kidnapping for ransom seems unlikely—we have received no information from the kidnapper about the Stiles baby, which was a month ago. Trafficking is a possibility, but all public transportation outlets have been informed from very early on and have reported nothing.

  “So let’s open it up.” The lights in the room came up to a normal intensity from their previous dim state. Jeff grabbed what looked like a marker and wrote across the top of the screen, “MOTIVE.” Jack realized it was not a screen, but a SmartBoard that could communicate with the laptop to which it was linked. Jeff’s impeccable penmanship did not surprise Jack in the least.

  “No hypothesis is too out there. You don’t need to provide in-depth rationale. Let’s just brainstorm here. Throw some theories at me.”

  No one spoke for the first twenty seconds. Quietness in that setting always seemed twice as long, but somehow Jeff’s welcoming manner kept the silence from becoming uncomfortable. Finally, a young officer standing behind the last row said, “Organ harvesting.”

  Jeff Pine raised his eyebrows. “OK, good. Creepy, but good. It's a start.” A few chuckled at this response, but not the initial offering. “Good, what else?”

  From the end of Jack’s row, a gravelly voice offered, “A cult.” Jeff wrote this on the board as Jack leaned forward to get a visual on who said that: Rita Ferroni from the Boston PD Family Justice Division. Jack and his team had met her soon after arriving this morning. She continued, “We have several factions in the area believed to be prone to such deviant behavior.”

  “Good,” Jeff affirmed. “We have been looking into this a little thus far, but we have probably just scratched the surface.”

  Camilla, sitting to Jack’s right, raised her hand. Jeff gestured to her excitedly. “Yes, Special Agent Vanderbilt.”

  “It’s about the women, not about the babies. It’s some sort of revenge against them. Or maybe against women in general and not these two girls in particular.”

  Camilla historically brought a unique perspective to cases. She had the ability to focus on both minute details and the big picture. She could see the forest and the trees simultaneously, a skill possessed by few investigators. In Jack’s honest opinion, CC—Jack’s nickname for her, using her initials after replacing her last name with “Commodore,” the mascot of Vanderbilt University—was second only to him as the most valuable member of all of CASMIRC.

  “Excellent. We have not yet entertained this kind of theory. Fantastic.” Jeff turned to the board and paused, unsure of how to sum this up in a bullet point. He waved the pen around in the air for a moment before writing, “Revenge against females.”

  After another thirty seconds of silence, Jeff decided he had probably squeezed all the juice out of this audience for the time being. “OK, this is a great start. You’ve been given your assignments for the day—which, frankly, may well take each of you into the weekend. We are going to meet again here at 5 pm on Sunday to bring things together. Don’t hesitate to come back to me or Rita sooner with something you think is important. You have our cell numbers.” He smiled widely, a genuine, heartening beam. “Let’s work hard, let’s work together, and let’s put an end to this awful thing in our world.”

  Jack smiled. He had always considered himself a natural leader, which perhaps enabled him to see that quality in others. He decided he would follow Jeff Pine just about anywhere.

  14

  Victor Upshall is a stinking fucking asshole.

  Corinne O’Loughlin glared at the screen in front her. She kne
w she would have to rewrite that last sentence—her editor would not care much for the verbiage. But it felt so good to write it.

  Last spring, right when the Playground Predator murders swelled into the public consciousness, Corinne had been following the hit and run incident of a Georgetown student named Allison Branford. Though the Predator case had drawn much of her attention since then, including her work on the collaborative book with Jackson Byrne, Corinne had reported on the Allison Branford investigation religiously throughout the summer. Even after Allison’s death from her injuries, Corinne had stayed in touch with her parents, Eleanor and Dean, via e-mails, calls, and texts. Eleanor especially leaned on Corinne, seeing her as the savior of this case, the one who would tenaciously dog the Georgetown Police until they found the culprit.

  About six weeks ago, the authorities received a tip from a body shop repairman, which led to their first suspect: Howard Keevil, a 20-year-old trust fund brat, also a student at Georgetown. The body shop guy had done some work on the front grill and bumper of Keevil’s Mercedes in May. Initially the repairman suspected something odd about the story—he didn’t think a kid like Keevil would spend a lot of time on back roads where he might encounter a deer—but he didn’t say anything. When Keevil continued to call the shop every day for a week after paying his bill, obnoxiously demanding to have the ruined car parts returned to him, the repairman’s uneasiness prompted a call to the authorities.

  Unfortunately, the body shop did not keep the old parts, having sold them with all of their other junk to a scrap yard, so they were not available for any forensic evaluation. However, video surveillance could place Keevil’s car near the scene of Allison’s accident that night. His credit card statement showed charges at three different bars that night and, more incriminatingly, at a car wash located less than a mile from the accident, just thirteen minutes after the call for Allison came into 9-1-1. More evidence built a very strong circumstantial case. As a result, the District of Columbia Attorney General arrested Keevil five weeks ago, charging him with vehicular homicide.

  Within hours, Keevil’s oil baron father posted bail and hired Victor Upshall as his lawyer. Upshall peacocked for the camera crews as he and Keevil’s family led Howard from the courthouse to their awaiting limo.

  Corinne, watching in person from the base of the courthouse steps, instantly despised Upshall. She had seen him before and developed a burgeoning distaste for him, but this sighting pushed her over the edge. Keevil was guilty, she knew it, yet she felt in some instinctual recess that Upshall might somehow find a way to get him off.

  Sure enough, yesterday the DC Attorney General announced they had struck a deal with Keevil: twenty-four months on house arrest, plus a large fine and community service. As an additional dick-in-the-face, Keevil received special dispensation to complete his house arrest in his parents’ home in Texas. His community service wouldn’t necessarily have to better the neighborhoods in which he committed his crime.

  Eleanor Branford had called Corinne sobbing. “How? How can they do this?”

  “I don’t know, Eleanor.” Corinne had said calmly. She could completely empathize with Eleanor, and she felt terrible for this poor family. But she had a lot on her plate right now, and, frankly, she didn’t feel like fueling the fire and ending up spending thirty minutes on the phone with this distraught mother.

  “Aren’t the prosecutors supposed to ask us—the victim’s family—before striking a deal?”

  “I don’t think they have to, but it seems like the decent ones usually do. I’m so sorry.”

  “This was our chance for peace. For justice. Howard Keevil needs to be punished. And that goddamned lawyer too. How are we supposed to get justice now?” Eleanor’s voice had risen in volume and pitch such that Corinne had to hold the phone a few inches from her ear.

  Corinne had wanted to tell her, let her in on their scheme. But she knew she couldn’t. The exact right timing was crucial to the plan, and, though she doubted Eleanor Branford had too many significant other resources, she couldn’t risk having Eleanor spill the story to anyone else. “Be patient. This all may not be over yet,” she had said.

  Eleanor then paused. “What do you mean? The deal is signed. The DA told us himself.”

  “I know. And it may not amount to the justice you’re looking for, but I promise there is a little more coming down the pike that may provide some satisfaction. I know it will for me.”

  She had signed off a few minutes later, surely leaving Eleanor quite confused. But she sincerely hoped that, in just a few days, the Branfords could watch the news and take away some sense of justice.

  Corinne reread the sentence in front of her one more time with self-satisfaction, and then she deleted it. It took her less than an hour to finish her piece—in a much more professional manner—before sending it off to her editor, planning for a Monday release in The Washington Post. She spent the next hour in her cubicle performing some genealogy and family research before she departed for the airport. She left plenty of time to make her flight to Boston comfortably.

  15

  Within minutes of meeting Tina Langenbahn, Jackson Byrne was struck by the dichotomy between the polar-opposite personalities of the two mothers who had lost their babies to the Piper. Sara Gardner, whom he and Camilla had interviewed earlier this morning, had trouble completing sentences amidst her sobbing. Grief clung to her like a wedding veil to a bride whose outdoor ceremony had been ruined by a rainstorm. Granted Tina had a few more weeks to deal with the crisis, but she seemed so disaffected. Jack had met people like her before, who wore a façade of apathy to convey toughness. He always imagined these people must have suffered some pretty horrific tragedies early in their lives, leading to the development of this defense mechanism that often permeated all of their interactions. He had learned that, more often than not, the words they use to express emotion actually represent the opposite feeling.

  They sat in Tina’s apartment, Jack and Camilla on IKEA knock-off armchairs facing Tina on her love seat. (The apartment was too small to accommodate a full-sized sofa.) Rita Ferroni had come along, mostly to broker introductions and offer a familiar face. She stood in the corner, signifying clearly that this interview belonged to the CASMIRC agents.

  Camilla had opened with a very empathetic, “How are you doing, Tina?”

  Tina had shrugged. “M’allright.”

  Camilla had asked her to recount her version of the kidnapping, which she did, after a brief protest—“I already told this story like 50 times.” Jack noticed nothing new and no discrepancies between this verbal account and the written reports he had pored over in the last few days.

  “Tell me about Portia’s father,” Jack said, his first foray into the questioning.

  “Phil? He’s OK. He pays support—better ‘n some.” Tina palmed her scalp through her short-cropped bleach-blonde hair.

  Jack decided this either represented a nervous tic, or she had an itch. He made note of it and pressed on. “Do you have any reason to suspect he could be involved in this?”

  Tina raised her eyebrows in sarcasm. “Phil? No way. He couldn’t think his way out of a wet paper bag. No way.”

  Jack had read up on Philip Stiles, as well as Theodore Gardner’s father, and he had come to the same conclusion about both of them. Nevertheless, he felt better that they both had alibis.

  “Anyone else you know that you think could have been involved?”

  Tina stopped rubbing her head to gaze at Jack. She stuck her nose out at him, an angry rooster on the attack. “No. That’s your job, isn’t it?”

  Jack nodded and forced a weak smile. “Yeah. I suppose it is.”

  “Do you know Sara Gardner?” Camilla asked as she produced a photograph and handed it to Tina.

  Tina glanced at it without much regard. “No. I already told her that,” she replied, gesturing toward Rita Ferroni.

  “Hey, Tina, listen.” Rita slowly walked over toward Tina and crouched down in front of her. She
spoke in an even voice, earnestly, not displaying annoyance or anger. “Cut the shit, OK? We’re all here to help you. The more you think about this stuff and give us honest answers, the more likely we are to maybe find Portia and maybe stop this from happening to someone else.”

  “It’s been a month. Where’s my kid?” Tina held her palms up and looked around the room. “Where’s my baby? My baby’s dead, and you don’t know shit.” She looked away from Rita and shook her head in disgust. Jack focused on the corners of Tina’s eyes, trying to discern if tears began to accumulate, if Rita had broken through that hardened veneer. He couldn’t see any, and he surmised that, even if they did, Tina would do everything within her power to not let them fall.

  As much as Jack relished conversational tension in the appropriate setting, he also knew when it could be counter-productive. He wanted to find some way to ease this situation, to settle it down enough for them to ask a few more questions. He glanced around the room, his eyes settling on the end table beside Tina. He sat up a little higher in his chair so he could see the cover of the paperback sitting there with a bookmark sticking out about two-thirds of the way through.

  “You like that book?” he asked.

  Tina blinked rapidly a few times, processing this shift in the conversation, but she still didn’t make eye contact with Jack. “Yeah, it’s good,” she shrugged.

  “I haven’t read it myself yet, but I’ve heard great things,” Jack offered congenially.

  Camilla tried to look at the book cover. “What is it?” Jack realized that Camilla recognized his tactic and wanted to participate, align herself along this new common ground.

  “The Hangman’s Gambit by Cameron Maddox,” Jack answered as Tina nodded. “Have you read it?”

  Camilla shook her head. “No. I heard they’re turning it into a movie.”

  Tina affirmed again with a nod. “Brad Pitt’s playing the Hangman. He’s a badass.”

  “Brad Pitt or the Hangman?” Camilla followed.