The Pied Piper

by Ridley Pearson

  The upstairs landing came into view. The clarity of such moments astounded him. He could make out the dust particles like beach sand on the upstairs floor planks. They swirled in the air like a curtain of mist in a silent and slow dance. The pounding blood in his ears was deafening—ba-bump … ba-bump … ba-bump. He understood that fear corrupted such moments, caused poor decisions and overreactions. He stood away from it as he stepped onto the upper landing and faced a hallway with four doors—all closed.

  He threw open the first, shielding himself behind the jamb. He searched the room and its closet, but found no one and nothing of interest.

  The second room was the same, no one, the smell of old age and medicines in the air.

  He cleared the next two as well, one a bedroom, the other a guest bath. He returned his weapon to its holster. He examined the three bedrooms more carefully. The street-facing bedroom had a wooden rocker that faced a window, the curtains to which were pulled partially shut, unlike the other curtains in the room. The placement of this rocker reminded him of that of the chair in the sewing room at the makeshift drug lab—an unmistakable similarity.

  He could visualize the Pied Piper sitting in the chair, rocking and watching, the gap in the curtains framing his target. Boldt sat down into the rocking chair, its frame creaking beneath his weight, his fingers held away from its frame.

  He looked out across the geometric landscape of a hundred houses or more. Leaning back, he saw the curtains restricted this to thirty or so houses over six to ten blocks. Somewhere in this limited field of view was the Pied Piper’s next target.

  Boldt combed the landscape and the houses presented him. It was said one couldn’t see the forest for the trees, and no one knew this better than a cop.

  His eyes searched each roof, each tree, each street. Suddenly, among all the houses, driveways, porches, windows and roofs, Boldt’s eye caught something indelibly familiar. He strained to see more clearly at such a distance. Could it be? And then, all at once: yes! He was looking directly at his own house.

  Boldt left the place at a sprint, found himself inside the Chevy, foot to the floor.

  Some cops attracted trouble, the way a good-looking girl incited catcalls. Paroled cons stalked them, threatened them, assaulted them; attorneys filed lawsuits against them. Boldt had only once been such a target. The thought that his children, not him, might be the true target hurried him blindly through intersections, through traffic and down quiet residential streets.

  He skidded to a stop in his own driveway, the left door open, the engine running, and ran to the back door, charging inside and startling his housekeeper so that she dropped an armful of clean laundry onto the kitchen floor and ran screaming from the room.

  “Marina!” he called out. “The kids?”

  She returned sheepishly. “Day care,” she answered in her thick Mexican accent, her face flushed.

  “You took them yourself?”

  “Who else?”

  Marina had a temper. He had to watch himself. He settled down: The kids were not going to be kidnapped from day care. Nonetheless, he called Millie Wiggins and confirmed. Could coincidence explain his seeing his own house from that window? He hated the word. There was no case history to support his fears. Cops’ children had not been targeted in any of the previous cities.

  Nonetheless, coincidence was not in his detective’s vocabulary. In police work, things happened for reasons.

  The Pied Piper hunted white children under ten months old. Sarah was two, Miles, four.

  “I take the children. I always take the children. What you mean coming in here like that? You scar-ed me half to death like that. Look at this laundry! On the floor. A mess. I have to wash it over.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It is not fine. You scar-ed me half to death like that … coming in that way like that. Shouting! Of course I take them to day care. What do you think? Mother of Jesus—you scar-ed me half to death!”

  “Have you seen anyone around the house, Marina? Think! An extermina—… a man spraying for the bugs?”

  “No such man.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Her nostrils flared. Trouble. He asked, “Am I picking them up, or you?” His heart rate settled back down. Without Liz around, Boldt deferred to the woman’s decisions. Convinced that when it came to raising the children, any woman knew better than any man, Boldt kept his mouth shut. If he made Marina mad, Liz would have his head.

  “You picking them up,” she informed him. She shook her head in disgust, her rich brown eyes trained on him in disapproval. “After work. What are you doing here, anyway? It is too early.”

  “I was in the neighborhood,” he confessed.

  “Yes? Well, I am not through the cleaning. And you know how I am about people being in this house when I am to do the cleaning.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Yes, and you are picking up the children.”

  “I’m picking them up.”

  “Mother of Jesus, the t’ings I put up with around here!”

  Boldt returned to the vacant house and relocked the door. Back at the office he avoided making a report to LaMoia ahead of the four o’clock, so that LaMoia would not have to share the information. SPD would keep the vacant houses under surveillance through the night, Boldt’s discovery at the top of their list. To this end he chased down Gaynes, who was noisily eating biscotti in the coffee lounge.

  “Any luck?” she asked, her mouth full.

  “A home west of Green Lake. Neighbor saw an exterminator casing the place.”

  She stopped chewing and stared at him. Then, through the biscotti, she said, “Better than what I got.” She formed her fingers into a zero. “You check it out?”

  “Promising. Chair aimed at a window on the second floor. I want to get back over there.”

  “You mean you want me to get back over there,” she corrected, understanding him. “You? You’ve got kids and a wife to worry about.” She said quickly, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  He asked her, “What about Anderson’s security tape?”

  “I’m through about half of it. It’s my late-night viewing—finger on the fast forward button. Not the best plot. I tend to fall asleep pretty quickly. And if you’re sending me out tonight …”

  “I’m not sending anybody anywhere. I work upstairs.”

  “I’m volunteering then,” she said. “The point is, I won’t be watching much tape. I’ll take the first shift. Eight to two. That okay?”

  “It’s LaMoia’s call,” he reminded.

  “You could always barge in on the four o’clock and see if Flemming’s boys would like to help out.”

  He grinned. “What about—”

  “Dixie did Anderson today,” she said, interrupting, referring to the medical examiner. Gaynes had a way of anticipating Boldt’s thoughts. It endeared her to him.

  “All done?”

  She nodded and said, “All but the pen and ink,” and continued to chew. “Guy did the rubber ducky all right. Hit his throat on the tub. But the tub didn’t do him. It was a twist to cervical vertebra number three. And that came before the rubber ducky by the Doc’s account.”

  “Before.”

  “Doc says the twist and shout came before the fall. It won’t get any better than theory. But he does have lividity and a hematoma to suggest blockage of the carotid artery—although the rubber ducky was a little too on target to be absolutely sure.”

  “The doer knows his anatomy?”

  “That rubber ducky was either done by someone hoping to intentionally muddle an autopsy or simply in a hurry trying to cover his crime, and he got lucky.”

  “Carotid artery,” Boldt repeated. “Strangled? From behind?”

  “Cervical vertebra three is what iced him,” she reminded. It was her turn to test him.

  “From behind?” he guessed. The contact between the two might have explained the pollen being found on Anderson’s clothing, although he doubted it:
The knees of Anderson’s pants had been covered with the yellow pollen.

  “Snap, crackle, pop.”

  “Anderson turned his back on his visitor—and good night. So it’s a person tall enough and strong enough to work Anderson from behind. A man as paranoid as Anderson. The two must have known each other. At the very least Anderson trusted him enough to invite him in.”

  She asked, “One of his snitches? Someone like that? You start talking about the guy’s head and you sound more like Matthews than yourself, you know that?”

  The comment stung him; he didn’t want anyone connecting them too closely. The ghost of their one night together, years earlier, still lingered. He had put it behind him, as had she.

  Gaynes consumed the rest of the biscotti greedily and wiped ashen crumbs from her pouty lips. She carried a tomboy look, much of it from her man-tailored clothing. She said, “Doc has some more tests to run before it’s welded.”

  “When it’s official, I want to know. Anderson’s important to us … to LaMoia,” he corrected.

  She eyed him amusedly, but then her expression changed gravely. “A victim,” she whispered knowingly.

  “Yes,” he conceded. If pieced together correctly, Andy Anderson could talk to him from the grave and lead him and the investigation to the Pied Piper. A victim. He prayed silently there would be no more.

  CHAPTER

  LaMoia entered the hotel lobby, anxious to see her. His pager had alerted him an hour earlier. The phone number belonged to The Inn at the Market, an upscale sixty-five-room hotel overlooking the Public Market and the churning marble green waters of Elliott Bay beyond.

  He didn’t know where she came up with the money for these rooms. The Inn was pricey and didn’t rent by the hour. He supposed that she knew the right people—veteran captains often peddled their influence. Years of fighting the fight had its perks. Or perhaps the rumors that Sheila Hill’s East Coast heritage came complete with a trust fund were accurate. He had never had the nerve to ask.

  She answered the door using it as a screen in case of any stray eyes in the hallway. Sheila Hill was careful. She wore a hotel robe and her hair pulled back, her cheeks flushed as if coming off a workout. The bathroom mirror was fogged from the shower. His heart pounded at the sight of her. He missed her company while at work, bothered that their only contact was official.

  She hung out the privacy tag and locked the door and pulled on the robe’s belt and it fell open, revealing her carefully waxed crotch and a smooth, tight stomach. “All work and no play,” she said. “It’s in the interest of the task force that you’ve come here.”

  She affected him both emotionally and physically. Something new for him. Like a thirsty animal to water, he needed to fill her, to hear her cry out for him. But he wanted her laugh as well, her ideas, her insight—she understood people so completely—her calm guidance, her company. He unbuttoned his shirt, unfastened his rodeo belt and opened his jeans. She fell to her knees.

  “Let’s wait a minute,” he complained, stunned by his own words. He always pursued the physical women, the hungry women. Since when did he want to talk? He hardly knew himself.

  She stood and turned to the wall.

  Spreading her legs, she said, “Take me. Now. Right here.”

  She leaned against the louvered mirror that served as the closet door and watched.

  LaMoia obeyed, driven frantically to please her. The smells and sounds overcame them both. “Faster, and harder,” she ordered in a tone that he found demeaning. She was not his lover, but the captain ordering this.

  “We have work to do,” he said, briefly staying with a rhythm she suggested with her hips.

  “You’re doing yours right now,” she returned. “I’ll handle the investigation.”

  He withdrew from her. “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “You bastard.” She spun around, a playful expression creasing her face as she decided he was simply toying with her.

  LaMoia walked slowly backward into the room, Sheila Hill pursuing him in matched steps. “What now?” she asked. “All fours?”

  “I’m not your play toy,” he complained.

  “Of course you are.” She approached, both hands suddenly busy on her own body. She knew him and his pressure points. “That’s exactly what you are. You love it. We both love it. Because it comes without baggage. But it comes, and it comes hard.” She repeated, “What now? You want to watch?”

  He did want to watch—she knew this about him—but he was too far along to stand back and do so. He stepped forward, turned her, and threw her to the bed. She laughed as she bounced. “You’re so easy,” she said. “It drives you crazy when I do that, doesn’t it?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Make me.”

  In the minutes that passed, she gasped between surges of pleasure, her back arched, her smiles twisted and pained.

  When it was over, she lay on the bed a glowing ruby, spent and exhausted. LaMoia showered. He returned to find her in the exact same position, but her eyes were open, deliriously taking in the whiteness of the ceiling and the flashing light of the smoke detector.

  “Let’s take room service,” she suggested.

  “Let’s talk about the surveillance—”

  “It can wait. You made the assignments. Everyone’s in place. We have our pagers. We do room service, and another go.”

  “I just showered,” he complained.

  “And you will again.”

  She laughed and sat up on the bed. She looked older and more worn. He wasn’t sure what he was doing there. He wasn’t sure how to leave. It was going wrong for him.

  “I’ll call it in,” she said. “What’s your pleasure?”

  But it wasn’t about his pleasure; it was about hers. Nonetheless, he answered, “A burger.”

  “They don’t do a burger, darling. This isn’t White Tower.” A disapproving, condescending voice of a disappointed mother. “New York Strip? Fillet?”

  “Whatever.”

  “A salad?”

  “What, you’re a waitress now?” he asked, trying to lessen her. But it wasn’t his game; it was hers.

  “If you want me to be. Whatever you want me to be, baby. Have I ever refused you?”

  He felt trapped, someplace he didn’t want to be, but didn’t want to leave. “I want to talk,” he complained.

  “Whatever you want, baby.” But she didn’t mean it.

  And yet he stayed. Same as always.

  CHAPTER

  The following morning began simply for Boldt, the scare of the evening before behind him. Marina’s husband, Felipe, was to accompany his wife and Boldt’s children to Millie’s Day Care, where Boldt felt they would be safe. His eyes tired from paperwork, he freed up time to pursue credit records of earlier Pied Piper victims only to discover those records “locked” by order of the FBI, an unexpected twist.

  He placed a call to Kay Kalidja for an explanation but was unable to reach her.

  Several times his computer beeped, signaling incoming E-mail. Not every cop was on the system yet, but each unit was, from accounting to Special Ops. Intelligence had been one of the first on-line.

  Boldt did not yet fully appreciate the network—the intranet—although he understood how to operate it. E-mail was a nuisance. It piled up worse than voice mail. He recognized its enormous potential but reserved the right to use his E-mail at his own convenience. Just because his computer beeped did not mean he responded.

  His focus remained on the Pied Piper investigation, and on several crime scene reports that were still being stonewalled by Flemming. Under orders from Hill, Boldt was to get those files. “No tears.” He was not to let her down.

  Boldt had homicide contacts in most major cities and was on a first-name basis with many of Portland’s finest. So he tried Portland first; if he could present Hill an early victory, she might ease up on him.

  The computer beeped at him again. More E-mail. That made six since he had sat down. It irritated
him: He didn’t want to be counting beeps while he worked. (He knew the beeping could be switched off but had yet to learn how—another bothersome aspect of computers; the simplest thing required twenty minutes of figuring out how to do it.)

  The overnight surveillance of vacant homes had failed to turn up any suspects or suspicious movements, a major disappointment. A few minutes past noon, LaMoia shared Daech’s list of vacant houses with the Bureau, along with Boldt’s discovery of the rocking chair facing a window. By early afternoon, in the first real show of a coordinated effort, the Bureau and SPD combined resources to identify any and all parental couples within visible range of the surveillance house discovered by Boldt. Ironically, it was through this effort that major progress was made in pinpointing how the Pied Piper selected his victims.

  It was also through this effort that Boldt finally connected with Kay Kalidja.

  “I received your voice mail. Sorry about the delay in getting back to you,” she apologized in her creamy island singsong. “It has been a little crazy around here this morning.”

  “Here too.”

  She said, “Your people are pursuing recently issued birth certificates—a smart angle. We have gained access to state tax filings that we can sort by ZIP code, though with April fifteenth less than a month away and the targets under a year old, they will not show up as deductions. We also have access to applications for new social security numbers. We have asked for those as well.”

  Boldt offered the information he was anxious to share with her, believing that the Bureau had the authority to make the requests and receive the information days, perhaps weeks, ahead of SPD—something unmentionable around the hallways of Public Safety. “Baby catalogs, parenting magazines. I know from experience that once you have a baby, you’re on every list there is. The offers they send you …”