The Pied Piper

by Ridley Pearson

  She suggested, “Maybe if you drove them to day care instead of Marina.”

  “I’ll bring them by to see you tomorrow night after dinner.” He drove them to day care three days a week. Argument had no place here. He and his wife had fallen deeply in love again. If only he might be given a second chance. ...

  “Can I read to you?” he asked.

  “Please.”

  He dug around on her cluttered end table looking for the Mahfouz novel she had been reading.

  “Not there. Here.” She strained to her right, fingers searching. Her nightgown fell open and he saw the broad freckled skin of her back. Her ribs showed. He didn’t know that back. It belonged to a different woman.

  He subscribed to the belief that two could solve their individual problems better than one person alone. He felt terrified by the thought he might lose her.

  “Read this,” Liz said, handing him a leather-bound Bible that Boldt had never seen. Numbered metal tabs marked sections. “Start at seven. The text is marked in chalk.”

  Sight of the Bible sent a shiver through him. Did she sense the end? Had she spoken with her doctor? Panic flooded through him.

  “Anything you want to tell me?” he asked, his voice breaking, the Bible shaking slightly in his hands.

  “Number seven,” she said. “It’s marked.”

  He fumbled with the book. He had ridden this roller coaster for months; he wasn’t sure how much longer he could endure it.

  He cleared his throat and read aloud, his voice warm and resonant. She loved his reading voice.

  Liz closed her eyes and smiled.

  Some things were worth the wait.

  CHAPTER

  The Town Car stuck out, black and gleaming, showroom fresh. It was parked out front of Boldt’s home, beneath a street light, ostentatious and isolated, as if none of the other neighborhood cars, unwaxed and dull from a winter of rain, wanted to socialize with it. Boldt slowed the Chevy as he drove past, turned into his drive and pulled to a stop.

  Gary Flemming sat at the kitchen table with Miles on his lap, speaking Spanish to Marina who was doing dishes. Sarah, in an outrigger high chair, had a cherub face smeared in pulverized pears. Caught in the midst of a euphoric laugh, Marina glanced toward Boldt, registering disappointment as if he’d spoiled the party.

  Flemming put down Sarah’s baby spoon—it was Boldt’s joy to feed his daughter in the evenings—and met eyes with Boldt, who immediately felt uncomfortable in his own home. He wished Miles would get off the man’s lap. Sensing this, Flemming eased the boy down to the floor. Miles ran for Boldt’s leg and attached himself. Flemming wiped Sarah’s chin with her bib.

  “Mr. Flemming with FBI,” Marina explained, eyes to the dishwater.

  “Yes, we’ve met,” Boldt said.

  “A handshake at a crime scene is hardly what I would call an introduction,” Flemming said. “You’ll pardon my intrusion, but I’ve seen nothing but hotel rooms and offices for the past six months. I thought we should meet.”

  Boldt motioned reluctantly toward the living room. There was something not right about Flemming coming here. Marina stole another glance toward her employer. Miles clawed to be held. Boldt hoisted him into his arms, stopped at the high chair and took Sarah as well.

  Standing, Flemming made the chair look small and the kitchen table like something from a kid’s set. The two men sat across from each other, Boldt on a couch. Miles bailed out and went running back to the kitchen. Boldt held Sarah in his arms and cleaned her up with his handkerchief.

  Flemming’s voice resonated in the small space. “You know, when we looked toward Seattle, we were quite convinced that you would be behind the wheel of this one.”

  “It’s good to be wrong once in a while.”

  “I’ve offended you by coming into your home. I apologize. Your housekeeper offered. I shouldn’t have accepted. As I said, the hotels. ...”

  “Surprised is all.”

  “Fresh start?”

  “Sure,” Boldt agreed, but he didn’t like the individual attention. He didn’t like this man being in his house at all.

  “Ten kids, six months and few leads. You’ve worked some big cases here. Worked them successfully, I might add. That’s why we were so convinced this would be yours.”

  “But it’s not.”

  “On paper at least.”

  “It’s not my case.”

  “An intelligence officer at crime scenes?”

  “I was asked to have a look around, that’s all.”

  “My point exactly,” Flemming said. “And I like to know the players.”

  “Am I a player?” Boldt asked rhetorically, finishing with Sarah’s hands. “I suppose so. But on the bench. I doubt I’m worth your time.”

  “In the bullpen is more like it,” Flemming corrected. “Third base coach, maybe. I can see you standing out there waving LaMoia toward home.”

  “He’s good. You’ll find that out if you give him a chance.”

  “You see me as a control freak.”

  “You are a control freak,” Boldt corrected. “You made that point at the four o’clock, from what I’m told.”

  “As Intelligence officer, you’ve run background checks on me and Hale and Kalidja. Anything I can clarify?”

  “As Intelligence officer, I’ve waited for crime scene reports that have never arrived. Interviews with the parents. Local cop reports. You want to do this alone, in a vacuum, that’s your business, Special Agent. You want to look down your nose at us, that’s your business. A pitcher can’t win a game all by himself.”

  “Then you like baseball.”

  “Hate it. But my CAP lieutenant loved the game. Lived for it. Softball. PAL league, some city intramural stuff. The analogies kind of wear off on you.”

  “It’s a great game. And your point is taken. I have no intention of fighting this battle alone.” He hesitated before saying, “I just like to make it clear where I stand.”

  “And that is where? In the corner? At the head of the table? Where?”

  “I had hoped that you would be lead. The Cross Killer, that product tampering thing—you know this kind of pressure. There’s a difference that you and I understand between being a good cop and doing good work under unusual circumstances. Between a real-time case and working a dead body.”

  Boldt didn’t want to be grouped with Flemming. The man was far too sure of himself, far too in control for someone with ten kids on his mind. He said, “Maybe you’re good with that kind of pressure, but it crushes the life out of me. Makes me crazy. Honestly it does. I can’t sit around with that kind of pressure on me, so I act. That’s just the way it works with me.”

  “And me.” Flemming said, “If you had connected a kidnapping here to one in a small town in the middle of the state, what would you have said at the four o’clock?”

  Boldt nodded. “Yeah, but I wouldn’t stonewall reports. If the catcher isn’t sending the pitcher signals, he can’t expect to catch every pitch.”

  Flemming smiled. Huge white teeth. Dark black skin with peach-colored lips. It was slightly too friendly for Boldt, an unwanted intimacy. “Stonewalling? You think?”

  “I think. And I have to wonder why. We know about the penny flute now. The AFIDs. What’s to hide?”

  He nodded. “Let me talk to Kay Kalidja.” He smiled again. “You see, you are a part of this one. I took that for granted, LaMoia having been on your squad all those years. You have much more influence on this case than you give yourself credit for. Will you support me?”

  Sarah arched her back and struggled for a new position. Boldt held her facing out. He leaned and kissed the top of her head. He loved the smell of the very top of her head. She kicked, enjoying the kiss. He gave her another.

  “I understand you,” Boldt said, “perhaps better than the others. I understand that kind of pressure. And I don’t envy it.”

  Flemming stared at him.

  Boldt said, “You came for my advice, I think.” />
  Flemming grinned.

  “And my advice is to avoid Mulwright, work with LaMoia and trust that we want this as badly as you do. Sheila Hill will be consumed with whose collar it is. Maybe you are too, for all I know, but I doubt it. And they don’t know that about you. They think that by trying to control it all, you want it all for yourself, rather than understanding you just want it done right.”

  “Perhaps you could explain that to them,” Flemming said. This was what he had come for—Boldt’s support in the trenches.

  “It wouldn’t do any good. You’ll have to convince them, not me. We don’t have to love each other; we just have to work together. What you may not know is that this is not some town in the middle of the state. This is a good team you’ve got to work with. What you do with it is your decision.”

  Flemming pulled his substantial weight out of the couch. “They should have made you lead in spite of your transfer.”

  “I’m okay with the way things are,” Boldt said, hugging Sarah a little tighter.

  “Sorry about your wife,” Flemming said. “Hope she’s better.”

  “She is,” Boldt said.

  He watched the Town Car pull away from the curb and drive off. He wanted to see it for himself. Wanted to make sure Flemming was gone. He checked the kitchen for bugs. Checked the phone as well. He trusted Gary Flemming about as far as he could throw him.

  CHAPTER

  Trish Weinstein had been in the car only fifteen minutes when she felt the first cramps. With the initial nauseating wave, she knew the gym time was out. Some months hit her hard. She didn’t even feel like shopping. More than anything, she wanted a Midol and a hot-water bottle.

  She drove faster than usual, eager to be home, the nausea worsening. A bath. Maybe Phyllis would stay and let her get a short nap in herself.

  In an act impossible for her to later understand or explain, Trish Weinstein headed to the front door, not the back. The door immediately bumped against something and caught. Trish looked down to see a pair of hairy boots—Uggs. Phyllis wore Uggs, she thought, not making the connection at first. She pushed harder against the door, only then realizing she was sliding her mother-in-law across the carpet. Her cry of terror caught in her throat with sight of the woman’s foaming mouth and convulsions. A heart attack!

  But a heart attack didn’t explain the large cardboard box torn open in the living room. Nor did it explain the door to the nursery being open. It was then that her vision collapsed, her ears rang and darkness swarmed her. She tingled with cold and reached out to steady herself, for she had lost her balance. She missed the doorknob for which she was aiming and sagged to her knees, crawling toward the nursery.

  “H … a … y … e … s,” she bellowed.

  CHAPTER

  On Thursday, March 19, a hysterical call was received by the Emergency Communications Center at 1:07 P.M. announcing that a child was missing and that an older woman needed immediate medical attention. An ambulance, dispatched from a local fire company, arrived at 1:21 P.M., followed less than ten minutes later by Daphne Matthews and John LaMoia, who intercepted the EMT crew as they loaded the stricken woman into the ambulance.

  “Convulsions,” the ambulance driver informed LaMoia as Daphne consoled the parents. “Seizure of some kind.”

  “Stun gun?”

  “Could be, I suppose, but epilepsy more like. Been lying there the better part of an hour, I’d guess. She’s lucky to be alive—real lucky.”

  “If it’s epilepsy,” LaMoia mumbled to himself, not believing it was.

  A minute later the ambulance charged off.

  “I’m going to follow them,” Daphne announced. “What I got was that the wife was out for her regular aerobics class and grocery shop. Mother-in-law watching the kid. Wife started her period and felt lousy. Came home. Finds her baby boy, Hayes, gone, mother-in-law, down by the front door in convulsions.”

  LaMoia scribbled it down.

  “I’ll be in touch,” she said, turning toward her car.

  “Later,” LaMoia called out after her. He pulled the front door shut behind him, only a few neighbors out on the sidewalk. He said to the first officer, the first uniform on the scene, “Nice job on keeping this low profile. Let’s see if we can’t keep it that way. Send the neighbors home nice and quiet—the woman had a medical problem. She’s being taken care of. No mention of any kidnapping.”

  “Got it.” The man hurried off.

  The ECC had gotten it right, using landline telephones instead of contacting SPD dispatch over the radio, keeping it away from the media and the curious. Boldt had written the suggestion up as a memo after the Shotz kidnapping. The result, not a single reporter outside and LaMoia had some breathing room.

  He sketched a rough look of the front door area in his notebook, including a large, empty cardboard box. As he did so, the crime scene came alive for him. With a patrolman shadowing him, he walked through the motions and explained, “Man arrives with a package. Large, heavy, by the look of it. Nearly empty, in fact. Convinces the mother-in-law to let him in to put it down. Does so. Turns around and zaps her with a TASER. It’s all a ruse in case of neighbors. Inside the box is a smaller one—seen entering with one box, leaving with a different one. Inside the smaller is the kid. Climbs back into his delivery truck—a white minivan, I’m thinking, with some kind of delivery name on the side—and is gone, no one the wiser.”

  “You think?” the patrolman had the stupidity to voice.

  “No!” LaMoia barked. “I’m telling stories here to entertain you. Go do something productive. There’s some phone equipment in the briefcase. Set it up.”

  Hayes Weinstein might have been kidnapped by a copycat, someone who might attempt to ransom the child, unaware the Pied Piper never did so. The convulsing mother-in-law told him differently: the TASER had struck the diaphragm or too close to the heart, jarring her nervous system and sending her into the seizures. It was the Pied Piper. A sense of failure and guilt stole through him—as lead, it was his job to stop this bastard.

  He made more sketches of the home’s interior and wrote notes to later remind him of what he saw. A few minutes later, at the door to the empty nursery, he announced sharply, “Carpet patrol!”

  He and the first officer took to their knees, picking at the rug, working a grid imposed by LaMoia and pictured in his notepad. He started too fast, too anxious, and had to settle himself before beginning again. They then moved with caution and no eye on the clock, carefully working deep into the nap: crumbs, pet hairs, thread, pebbles—collected into white paper sandwich bags and labeled with ink. This, before other shoes arrived contaminating the scene.

  They spent fifteen minutes in the nursery and another ten near the front door. SID’s crime scene van pulled up outside as LaMoia reached the front door’s threshold. He carefully worked the carpet there, knowing that shoes flexed as they bridged the gap between the door’s threshold and the carpet. As his fingers pinched a small, hard object, he released a grunt of excitement, his heart pounding. He lifted his find to the light beyond the uniformed officer on hands and knees and took in his prize.

  A small but thick chunk of translucent blue glass.

  Daphne used her badge and an implied sense of urgency to secure an empty office at the hospital. The hospital reminded her of Liz Boldt, who in turn reminded her of Lou, who in turn reminded her of her own lover, Owen Adler. Her hopes and fears cascaded over her as she awaited the Weinsteins. Her life pattern was to immerse herself alternately in work and then a lover, then work, then another lover. She could trace this history in the few tiny worry lines that insinuated themselves at the edges of her eyes, a history that had culminated over a year ago in her breaking off her engagement to Owen. And now he was back.

  The flowers had never stopped, although the calls had. He had given her the time and space to think things out—to feel them out—but never let her fully forget him. Irises one week, lilies the next, daffodils, peonies, never roses, which were far t
oo obvious for a man of Owen’s subtleties. She had placed the first call, and the second. She had arranged a reunion dinner. For weeks now they had dated, and he had never once pushed it past a goodnight kiss, even though lately she had wanted him to. A self-made millionaire who haunted the fund-raiser circuit, Daphne had come to accept his money, his prestige, the public’s seeking out his time and funds. She could do pearls and black velvet as easily as jeans and Birkenstocks.

  Footsteps approached, and she called herself back to her work effortlessly, though did not entirely let go of Owen Adler, and this spoke volumes to her. Would he ask again, or would it be up to her?

  While Phyllis Weinstein remained with doctors, Daphne spoke with the husband and wife, Sidney and Trish, emphasizing the importance of fresh memory to the recovery of their child.

  Over the past two weeks, Daphne had studied more than fifteen child abductions in preparation for her appointment to the Pied Piper task force. Nine were attributed to the Pied Piper. The six others all involved illegal adoption, four overseas, two in the United States. Given such short notice, she felt as prepared as she could hope to be. As it turned out, nothing prepared her for Sidney Weinstein.

  The small man had a predatory look about him. Average looking made older in appearance by a balding head, Weinstein sat hunched forward on the edge of his chair, his fingers laced together, his eyes wide, almost bulging, the vein in his forehead swollen and popped out like a long pulsing blister. Dressed in casual clothes, his button-down shirt was soaked through at the armpits, his throat and voice tight with venom.

  His wife sat curled in on herself, as close to the fetal position as an adult could achieve. Paste white, her tearstained face carried blotches of pink, like hives. Her mouth hung open in a frozen state of disbelief, and she stared at Daphne with dead, unflinching eyes.

  “Is it him?” Weinstein asked with difficulty, clearing his gravelly throat.

  Daphne felt willing to allow in him some disdain for the police and for the FBI’s failure to solve the case, but his hostility seemed more deep-seated. “What we know at this time, Mr. Weinstein, is that your son has gone missing, and that your mother—” she paused to make sure she had it correct, “has been assaulted, most likely during the abduction.” She paused, expecting something back: anger, resentment, impatience. The wife remained in shock; the husband boiled internally. “By him, I assume you’re referring to the Pied Piper.” The wife lifted her head sharply, a sleeping animal startled.