The Piper (CASMIRC Book 2)

by Ben Miller

  “I think you and I are a lot alike, Jackson Byrne.”

  Jeff Pine didn’t drink. He didn’t swear. He did yoga for thirty minutes every morning. Jack would place a sizable wager that Jeff had never cheated on his wife. While the two of them may have some similarities in their approach to their job, Jack doubted they had much else in common. “Maybe,” was all he said in return.

  Several minutes later they parked in a cul-de-sac in the middle of a low-income housing development. A couple of school-aged children emerged from a gap between two buildings and ran into the street in front of their car, the girl chasing the boy and both laughing wildly. The three FBI agents got out of their SUV and shut their doors, but the kids never paid them any attention. Jeff pointed to a building at twelve o’clock on the cul-de-sac. They entered the front door and walked up two flights to the third floor.

  Jeff knocked firmly but not loudly. After about thirty seconds, he made eye contact with Jack before knocking again, this time doubling the volume. He looked at his watch, waiting another thirty seconds before rapping again.

  “Coming, man,” they could hear from the other side of the door. No less audibly he added, “What the fuck?”

  Without the sound of any chains or deadbolts disengaging, the door opened to reveal a squinty-eyed young man with mussed hair wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts. He brought his hands up to his face, exposing a large tattoo of some abstract design along his left torso. His biceps bulged and pecs wriggled as he tried to massage the sleep from his eyes. Jack surmised one could scrub laundry on this guy’s abs.

  “Are you Aiden Dolan?” Jeff asked.

  The man dropped his hands from his face but couldn’t stop squinting. He yawned and his arms extended outward almost involuntarily in a stretching motion. Finally, he nodded.

  “I’m Special Agent Jeff Pine from the Boston office of the FBI, and these are Special Agents Jackson Byrne and Camilla Vanderbilt from a specialized branch in Virginia. May we come in?”

  “Shit,” Dolan said. “What’s this about?”

  “You’re not in any trouble, Mr. Dolan. We have some things we need to discuss with you, and we would much prefer to come inside.”

  “Alright,” Aiden said, sounding more like “Aye-eet,” as he turned and walked down the hall. The three agents followed behind him, all of them noticing a smattering of tattoos decorating his back.

  The short hall opened into a small living room with a couch against one wall facing a TV and two chairs on another wall. None of the furniture matched. From a doorway on their right, presumably leading into the bedroom, came a shorthaired young woman wearing nothing but a T-shirt. She could open her eyes no more fully than Aiden.

  “What the—?” she began to ask Aiden before noticing their guests. “Who are these guys?”

  “FBI,” Aiden answered as he plopped down on one of the chairs.

  “Huh,” she muttered as she crossed the room and collapsed into the other chair.

  Jack found her response odd. He surreptitiously studied her face. The muscles of her eyelids twitched. Jack wondered if she were forcing her eyes into narrow slits, trying to make herself seem sleepier than she really was.

  Jeff began the interview. “Aiden—can I call you Aiden?”

  Aiden shrugged.

  “And do you mind if I sit down?”

  Aiden elevated his massive shoulders again as he extended two fingers toward the couch.

  “Thanks.” Jeff hoisted the front of his slacks an inch as he sat down. “Do you know Fiona Evans?”

  Aiden paused, then yawned again. He nodded. “Yeah.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “Saw her?” Aiden asked. “Umm, I saw her a couple months ago.”

  “Can you be a little more specific? Where and when?”

  “May? I saw her a couple weeks after my baby was born. We talked since then, but I ain’t seen her since the hospital. She go missin’ or something?”

  “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, Aiden, but she was murdered this morning.” While he tried to convey empathy with his expression and his tone, Jeff didn’t break eye contact with Aiden.

  Aiden’s eyebrows rose in shock. “Murdered?”

  “Holy shit!” The young woman sat straight up in her chair.

  “What happened?” Aiden asked.

  “I’m sorry, we didn’t catch your name,” Jack said to the girl, ignoring Aiden’s question.

  “Wendy,” she said.

  “Wendy…?” Much like Jeff’s focus on Aiden, Jack never took his eyes from the young woman.

  “Jenkins,” she answered.

  “Fiona was stabbed in a Wal-Mart parking lot this morning.” Jeff finally answered Aiden’s question.

  “Jesus,” said Aiden, while Wendy’s chosen simultaneous remark was, “Shit.”

  Jeff chose not to elaborate any further, and a silence fell over the room. Jack looked from Wendy back to Camilla. She met his eyes through a peripheral gaze. They had worked together just long enough to share some unspoken communication. Here both implicitly decided to ride out the odd silence.

  Twenty seconds passed before Jeff spoke again. “Where were you this morning, Aiden?”

  Aiden shuddered, as if being broken from a trance. “Huh?”

  Jeff paused briefly before repeating his question more deliberately.

  “I was here. With Wendy.”

  “All morning?”

  “Yeah. You guys woke us up.”

  “Wendy?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah?” she said. Jack wondered if she were stupid, not following the conversation, or trying to hide something. He thought he knew which one.

  “Where were you this morning?” Jack spoke slowly, enunciating every syllable clearly.

  “I was here. With Aiden. All morning.”

  “Aiden, do you know of anyone who would want to hurt Fiona?” Jack asked.

  “No. Like I said, I ain’t seen her in a while, but no.”

  “When was the last time you saw your son?” Jeff asked Aiden.

  “Tyler?” Aiden queried.

  “Yes. I’m sorry, do you have other sons?”

  “Not that I know of,” Aiden responded and looked over at Wendy, both of them smiling at his hackneyed response to this question. He stretched both arms out again, veins and tendons popping out in seemingly unnatural multitude. He relaxed and rested his hands on the back of his head.

  Jack tilted his head a little to the left so he could read the tattoo on the inside of Aiden’s right forearm. He tried not to show any emotion as he made a mental note of the inked inscription.

  “And when did you last see Tyler?” Jeff repeated, trying to refocus Aiden.

  Aiden scratched his head, signaling his cogitation. “I guess May, that time I seen Fiona. I called Fiona a buncha times, tryin’ to see him, but she wouldn’t let me.”

  “She wouldn’t let you? Did you ever file for custody? Or take her to family court or something?” Jeff asked.

  “Naw,” Aiden answered. “I don’t know nothin’ about that. I just kept askin’.”

  “Sorry,” Camilla interrupted. “Do you mind if I use the restroom?” she asked Aiden and Wendy.

  The two of them shared a glance, mouths agape, not sure how to respond. After about ten seconds, Wendy answered her. “Sure, but—”

  “Through here?” Camilla said, as she entered the bedroom behind him and walked toward an open door in the back corner.

  Wendy shot out of her chair and hurried beside her, bustling past her into the bedroom. “But let me clean out some stuff first. It’s my time of the month, and I wanna make sure nothin’ gross is sittin’ out.” She put an outstretched hand gently into Camilla’s shoulder as she went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Camilla waited in place, surveying the contents of the messy bedroom around her. She walked over and sat down on the bed, placing a hand on the sheets. They were cool.

  “You work, Aiden?” Jack a
sked in the other room.

  “Not today.”

  Jack stammered for a second, trying not to get frustrated by Aiden’s literal answers to their questions. “What kind of work do you do?”

  “Landscaping.”

  Wendy emerged from the bathroom. “All yours,” she said to Camilla as she walked back into the living room, taking her place back in her chair.

  Jack turned his attention back to Wendy. “How about you, Wendy? Do you work?”

  “No, not today.”

  Jack sighed. He decided these two made a perfect match. “What’s your job?”

  “I’m an environmental specialist.”

  “She’s a fuckin’ janitor,” Aiden interjected.

  “Fuck you, dick,” she retorted.

  “So you haven’t seen your son?” Jeff asked Aiden again.

  “No,” Aiden responded innocently.

  Jeff leaned in, waiting for Aiden to connect the dots. After almost twenty seconds, he finally concluded he might have to wait an eternity. “Your son is missing, Aiden. Whoever killed Fiona took him."

  “Oh,” Aiden said, his face going blank. “Fuck me.”

  25

  Jeff pulled the SUV into a parking lot between a 7-Eleven and a Wendy’s and cut the engine. He turned to face Camilla, who now sat in the front passenger seat, and Jack in the back. “What did you think?”

  “I don’t like Aiden Dolan,” Camilla replied.

  “I like him a lot, actually,” Jeff responded quickly. “For this. I like him as our guy.”

  “There was so much wrong in there,” Jack contributed. “I have such a bad feeling about Dolan too, but I’m not sure I can put it all together to say he’s the one who did this.”

  “Great move going into the bathroom, Camilla,” Jeff commended. “And getting permission first.”

  “I just wish I could have gotten in there before Wendy. I thought about trying to get something to secure DNA samples, but—”

  “No warrant,” Jeff completed the thought, nodding.

  Camilla nodded. “And either they don’t use toothbrushes, or Wendy did something with them when she went in, ‘cause they were nowhere to be found.”

  “Gross,” Jack opined. “Knowing those two as well as I think we do, I’m not sure which is more likely. I find it tough to imagine Wendy being smart enough to think of that.”

  “True,” Camilla agreed. “How long were we in there before I went into the bedroom?”

  Jeff shrugged and looked at Jack. “Ten minutes? Maybe eight?” Jack shrugged and nodded at the same time, indicating his agreement with the estimate.

  “That’s what I thought too. The bed sheets were cool. I sat down and felt them.”

  “Hmm,” Jeff pondered, “I wonder how long it takes for bed sheets to cool off after someone’s been sleeping in them all night?”

  “Ten minutes? Maybe eight?” Jack smirked as he replied. “Probably not too scientific.”

  Jeff nodded. “OK.” His eyes widened as he got to the topic he most wanted to discuss. “How could he not ask about the baby?”

  Jack answered in an obvious tone. “Because he knows where the baby is.”

  “He has to, right?” Jeff responded. “The single mother of an infant—your baby, for goodness sake—is murdered, how is that not the first place your mind goes? What other explanation is there?”

  “He’s just a plain old piece of shit?” Camilla offered. Jeff and Jack both looked at her, not expecting such a retort. “He sure seems like an asshole. He clearly had no relationship with his baby, or Fiona. Maybe he just doesn’t care.”

  “Maybe, but…” Jack shook his head from the back seat. “Did you see the tattoo on the inside of his right forearm?”

  “No,” Jeff verbalized as both he and Camilla shook their heads.

  Jack paused for a moment, to build a little suspense and let some enormity set in on his next word. He rotated his right arm to open up the inside of his forearm and used his left index finger to trace the area where Aiden’s tattoo appeared. “FIONA. All caps.”

  “Really?!” Camilla exclaimed.

  “Wow. Well, clearly Fiona Evans meant a lot more to him than he was letting on,” Jeff said.

  “Clearly,” Jack repeated. “I want to get to know a lot more about Aiden Dolan.”

  “Speaking of tattoos, Jack,” Camilla said as she pivoted in her seat to face Jack more fully. “Did you notice the one on the back of Dolan’s left shoulder?”

  Jack looked at the inside of the windshield for a moment, trying to sift through his memory. “No, I didn’t catch it.”

  “A pentagram.”

  Jack’s jaw dropped—not in a cartoonish way, but enough for a careful observer to notice. “Holy shit.”

  Camilla just nodded. “A pentagram, with some sort of figure in the middle of it.”

  “Was it a goat?” Jack asked without the least hint of facetiousness.

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t get the best look at it, but it looked like a boy.” Camilla hesitated, as if reluctant to describe it any further. Finally, a little more quietly, she said, “Like a naked boy.”

  26

  Rita Ferroni looked at the sign taped to the glass door of Figures in Black, and then she glanced down at her wristwatch. The store closed in fifteen minutes. She hoped she could catch Cole Nierling and have a meaningful conversation with him before he had somewhere else to be, like a ceremony, or ritual, or some other crazy-ass shit.

  She pushed through the door and maneuvered her way to the counter in the back. In contrast to her previous visit, and much to her surprise, several patrons inhabited the store. Each quietly perused a book by a shelf or fingered through clothing on one of the racks. Given the number of people here on a late Saturday afternoon, perhaps a ceremony was indeed imminent.

  As she approached the counter, she recognized Cole sitting behind it on a stool, almost in an identical position as they had found him yesterday. He looked up from his tome as she approached. She saw no trace of the smarmy smile he brandished through much of their conversation previously.

  “Hello, Mr. Nierling,” she said.

  “Detective Ferroni.” Cole did not try to hide the annoyance in his voice.

  “You’re very good with names,” Rita replied, her best—and only—effort at buttering him up.

  His eyebrows twitched and he looked away, unimpressed. “What can I do for you today?” he said as he sighed.

  Rita reached into her breast pocket of her wrinkled blouse and pulled out a photograph. She looked at it quickly to confirm she had the right one before she held it out for Cole to review. “Do you know this man?”

  Cole leaned forward and studied the driver’s license photo of Aiden Dolan for a solid fifteen seconds. He settled back comfortably on his stool. “No.”

  “You’ve never seen him here in your store? Or at one of your ‘ceremonies?’” She did not need to produce air quotes with her fingers, as her tone on that last word sufficed.

  Cole sighed again, his way of acknowledging her disdainful tone without commenting on it verbally. “I have not.”

  Rita nodded. “You sure?”

  Cole produced his bald-faced, trademarked stare at her for several seconds, well beyond the point of unsettling. Rita had the irrational thought that he was trying to pierce her soul with some sort of evil mind bullet. After what seemed like sufficient time to give her at least one nightmare, Cole finally answered her question. “I’m nearly positive. I can’t guarantee that this man never came into my store. Most of my customers are regulars, but not all. I occasionally turn people away if they come seeking something I do not provide, as I mentioned yesterday. But I honestly do not remember ever seeing him.”

  “Fair enough,” Rita said as she returned the photo to her pocket. “Do you have any idea who would?”

  His eyes narrowed as his head tilted. Rita remembered this expression from yesterday. The uniqueness—and entertainment value—of his mannerisms made her think
he really should have his own TV show. Or at least a video blog. “Pardon me, Detective Ferroni, but that’s a ridiculous question. How am I supposed to guess who might know a man that I myself do not know?”

  “Well, he had a tattoo of a pentagram on his shoulder…” she began, and found herself not knowing how to continue.

  It didn’t matter, because Cole cut her off with another audible sigh. “I’m sorry, Detective, but I sincerely think that you are, to coin a phrase, barking up the wrong tree.” He folded his book, cradled it in his hand, and got up off his stool. “I can’t help you,” he said as he turned and walked through a black curtain into the backroom of his store.

  Rita glared at the curtain separating the front of the store from the back. Her legs tensed, dying to run after him. Her gut wrenched in resentment of his dismissal of her. Slowly she began to relax, however, when she realized he had posited good points. She did not have anything else meaningful to ask of him.

  27

  The door to the incident room opened quietly, and Rita Ferroni slipped in. Jack looked down at his watch: 5:01 pm. He knew first-hand what a fast—and reckless—driver Rita was, but he still thought her trip to interview Cole Nierling at Figures in Black didn’t take nearly as long as he guessed it would. He deduced that she ran into a dead end with him. He offered her a knowing nod, and she returned it with a shrug of her shoulders accompanied by a shake of her head.

  “Good timing, Rita,” Jeff Pine said from the front of the room. “OK, let’s get started.”

  They had a much smaller crowd than they had for their meeting yesterday morning. Only Rita and another middle-aged plain-clothed detective represented the local police. Jack had seen the guy at the meeting yesterday but had not yet met him. One of Jeff’s agents from the Boston branch, a small, thirty-something man with an obvious Wisconsin accent named Brett Valente, sat beside Amanda Lundquist near the front of the room. Jack, Camilla, and Reilly rounded out the room’s occupants.

  “Amanda, Brett, why don’t you walk us through what you have so far?” Jeff motioned for the two of them to take the floor as he sat down in a chair in the front.