The Pied Piper

by Ridley Pearson

  They repeated the line of questions a second time and got the same answers, a detective’s dream. Boldt took more detailed notes the second pass. They left at 9:07 P.M. Boldt made note of this as well. Daphne was watching him, expecting this of him. Illusion was everything.

  On their way back to their cars, Boldt stopped Daphne and told her he would take care of arranging a sketch artist. If they got a decent sketch, he’d pass it on to LaMoia to present to the task force. Daphne accepted this—as staff psychologist she had no part in evidence collection. But it was her role to assist in artist rendition sessions where the subject’s state of mind was critical.

  She mentioned her participation as if pro forma. “You’ll let me know time and place,” she said. “I have a ten o’clock tomorrow, so anytime after eleven will work. I’d suggest the sketch be done here, by the way. A three-year-old doesn’t need any additional stimulus. Environment is everything.”

  “Good,” Boldt said. “I got all that.” He thanked her and they said good night and he walked to his car. He would arrange the interview for ten the following morning. He would use Tommy Thompson, whose studios were on Vashon Island. And if anything came of the session, no one would hear about it but him.

  Thompson was perfect: retired and reclusive. No one would ever know.

  Boldt approached the Weinsteins’ front door alone, painfully aware that the Pied Piper had walked these same steps posing as a delivery man. The eerie sensation he experienced had to do with retracing the kidnapper’s steps, with picturing his two victims: Phyllis Weinstein, and her grandson, Hayes.

  “It’s nine-thirty, Detective!” Sidney Weinstein objected. Dressed in a ratty cardigan, a wrinkled white button-down shirt and a pair of khakis that fit too loosely, Weinstein smelled of brandy.

  “It’s Lieutenant,” Boldt corrected. “Crime waits for no man,” he said.

  “My hearing has been delayed while I undergo ‘psychiatric treatment,’” he said, distastefully drawing the quotes. “Careful. I might shoot you. I suggest you leave.”

  “I need to talk to you and your wife.”

  “My attorney might have something to say about that. Are you part of my son’s investigation or mine?” He smirked. “Wonderful world, isn’t it?”

  The question put Boldt in a difficult position that, if answered directly, required he misrepresent himself. His only association with the task force, other than as an adviser, was a covert assignment to flush out an informer. His visit to Weinstein was difficult if not impossible to justify if Weinstein made a production of it and brought in his attorney. Trish Weinstein appeared behind her husband. She looked dazed and exhausted.

  Boldt spoke over Weinstein’s shoulder to the man’s wife as if absolutely certain of what he was saying. “Hayes had a blanket, a shirt, an outfit—I don’t know which—that carried a photo silk-screened image of him.” He spotted the hit of recognition in her eyes. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  The husband stepped back and regarded his wife and then Boldt with suspicion and confusion. “Don’t listen to him,” he said. “They want to put me away, Trish.”

  “No one is even thinking of putting you away, and you know it. Your attorney has certainly told you that much. You stole an officer’s sidearm. There is more paperwork involved in that one action, more internal reviews, than you can imagine. It will take us weeks, possibly months, to sort it all out. That is why your hearing has been delayed, that and because no one wants to see you face any charges, and that’s not an easy thing to swing when a person has stolen an officer’s sidearm and trained it onto half the fifth floor. You see a psychiatrist or a psychologist a couple times; we do our paperwork; a lenient judge gets assigned your case, and it’s all over. In your position, any of us might have done the same thing.” Smiling oddly, he emphasized, “Any of us!” knowing it was true.

  Having silenced Weinstein, Boldt returned to the woman. “You know the item I’m talking about.”

  She allowed a faint nod.

  “Is it here? Is it still here, or did it go missing the night of the kidnapping?”

  She shook her head. She didn’t know.

  “You can’t come barging in here!” the husband protested.

  “No,” Boldt agreed. Looking at the wife, he said, “Without a warrant, I have to be invited.”

  “Come in,” the woman said, her voice trancelike.

  “What?” Weinstein shouted in protest.

  To her husband she said, “He knows what clothes Hayes owns. How could he know such a thing unless it’s important? He’s here to help us get our child back, Sidney. Are you going to prevent that?”

  Sidney Weinstein stepped clear of the door. “Come in,” he said to Boldt, motioning him inside.

  “It might have been in the wash at the time,” Trish Weinstein explained minutes later, rummaging through drawers. “I can’t say for sure.”

  “But to your knowledge, the drawers, the closets weren’t searched?”

  “Your people were all over this place,” Sidney Weinstein reminded. “They went through everything. Everything was searched,” he emphasized. “How can we know who went through what? A drawer here, a closet there. What’s to see?”

  “Here!” the wife said, hoisting a small outfit from the third drawer. She looked at it, drew away and dropped it to the floor, her open hands raised to cover her face and hide her tears.

  “See?” Weinstein barked. “See what you do to her?”

  Boldt picked up the garment. It was a baby’s onesie with three snaps at the crotch. On the chest was a square color photograph of the baby, slightly faded from washing; the mother had chosen this garment often for her child. The baby’s face was adorable, reminding Boldt once again of an infant’s profound innocence. Of Sarah.

  Boldt checked for the label. There was none. It clearly had been cut out. He questioned Trish about this, and she nodded. “I snip all the labels. They’re so big these days with all the washing instructions. They’re horrible.”

  “You cut it out yourself,” Boldt said, disappointed.

  “I do it to everything. I hate those labels.”

  “And the company’s name?” he asked, hoisting the garment.

  She shook her head, reflecting. “Mirror Image … Double Image … something like that.”

  “A gift?” Boldt asked.

  “Yes,” Trish replied. “We sent out photos—that photo—to our close friends and all our family.”

  “One of them gave us the outfit,” Weinstein said.

  “Do you remember who?” Boldt asked.

  “No chance,” Weinstein replied.

  Boldt focused on Trish.

  The wife said, “No. Neither do I.”

  Boldt felt the failure weigh down his fatigue; he hadn’t slept in two days. Investigations could drag out forever and never be cleared. Perhaps in this case it was a good thing, he thought. It was one case he didn’t want solved. He just needed to make sure no one else could solve it either.

  “But I don’t have to,” Trish Weinstein continued, coming more alive. “I kept a thank you book, a diary of all the gifts. It’s got to be in there.”

  Moments later, she was busy flipping pages in a hand-bound diary with a Florentine cover. “Daniel!” she said, looking up at her husband.

  “My cousin Danny,” the husband told Boldt. “Wouldn’t you know it! You get Danny on the phone, you never get off.”

  Daniel Weinstein lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he managed a chain bookstore. He spoke to Boldt on the phone for over ten minutes, the upshot of which was a few bursts of hard information. He’d placed the order for the custom garment over the Internet. He remembered this distinctly, because he had scanned the baby’s photo and sent it electronically. He did not remember the company’s name, did not remember how he had found the company on the Internet, and promised to go back online and try to find it again. “It was over six months ago,” he complained. “I surf every night, two or three hours a night. I
bookmark about one out of every hundred sites I visit. I did not bookmark a baby clothes retailer, I promise you that.”

  “But you paid for the garment,” Boldt suggested.

  After a pause the man agreed, saying, “I guess that’s why you’re the detective.” He laughed nervously.

  “By credit card?”

  “Of course. Would have to be. I buy all sorts of shit off the net. All by plastic.”

  “Then it would be on a statement,” Boldt informed him. “And that statement would be a great deal of help to me and your nephew.”

  “I’m all over that.”

  Boldt gave him his direct fax number and reiterated the importance of the information. He added, “If you find it on the Internet, I’d appreciate that address.”

  “Hey, give me a good excuse and I’ll spend all night on-line.”

  “You want motivation?” Boldt asked. “A dozen children like Hayes, Mr. Weinstein. There’s your motivation.”

  “Hell,” the concerned man replied, “I’m not really sleeping anyway. Not since the kidnapping. … You tell Sid and Trish I’m all over this. My VISA statement’s in your hands by midnight. If that site still exists, I’ll have it by tomorrow morning.” He added, “Just tell me one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Did I do something wrong here? Did I set up my own cousin?”

  “We don’t know. But you’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “’Cause you’ll forgive me, Lieutenant, but if some schmo used me to get at that child, my cousin’s child … I know there’re laws against this shit, and it may be your job to enforce them, but that guy’s a dead man. That guy is dead.”

  Boldt stayed on the line, trying his best to bite his tongue, to keep from saying what a cop could not say, but what a father had to. He saw Sarah swing her face toward the camera in anguish, heard her shrill plea for help. The only help he could give her went against twenty-four years of experience and violated every friendship he had built over that time. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” Boldt said. Before cradling the phone, he added, “I’m all over that.”

  CHAPTER

  The session with sketch artist Tommy Thompson occupied all of Boldt’s Friday morning and the early hours of his afternoon. He, Doris and little Henry Shotz rode the ferry across the undulating olive skin of the sound, pursued by the white flights and cries of seagulls as the city’s skyline receded until it nearly joined the horizon. The sea air was alive with pine and cedar. A few pleasure craft split the green marble along the shores, etching a gray wake. Sight of the boats reminded him of Hill’s theory about the Pied Piper moving between coastal cities by vessel, that this might explain the kidnapper’s ability to avoid roadblocks and dragnets in San Francisco and Portland. Within fifteen minutes of their departure, Boldt’s mind was too preoccupied to remember he had missed placing a phone call to Liz and another to Miles, had forgotten to leave Marina her check, had failed to give Hill an update, and had not shaved.

  But he was not too preoccupied to remember bathing his daughter in the bathtub and the small rubber sailboat that would cause her to giggle and splash. He looked out on the water, and it was this red rubber boat he saw, not the ketch running downwind, its spinnaker full.

  He swayed with the rocking of the ferry, wind tossing his hair, his eyes unfocused and distant. He processed information as quickly as he could conceive it, working more vigorously than behind his desk.

  The artist’s rendition of an eagle, its wings wrapped like a robe around itself, traveled with Boldt back to Seattle.

  There was no one better than Thompson: The eagle tattoo looked alive on the page. That a three-year-old had guided Thompson’s hand was something that would go unsaid as long as Boldt could manage. The tattoo itself would go undiscussed and unpublished. Boldt was studying it when Daphne entered his office uninvited. He covered it quickly, not wanting her or anyone to see.

  “You’re avoiding me,” she complained. She looked flushed and awake, from another world than his.

  “Nonsense.” Boldt adjusted himself in his chair, prepared for the deceit of a lifetime. Daphne Matthews knew him intimately; she was not someone to whom he could easily lie. “We’re both very busy,” he said. As a cop he had learned when and how to stretch the truth, but outright lying came from a different, more central place inside oneself, and he found it repugnant.

  He did not offer her a cup of tea as was their custom, knowing that would send its own signal. He wanted her out of here. He was, at that moment, expecting Gaynes, who had called to tell him that the SID lab had completed several tests including the analysis of the mud from Anderson’s boots. The results were being sent upstairs to the fifth floor for her signature. She, in turn, planned to run the results up to Boldt before showing them to anyone else. He did not know if Daphne would pick up on this or not, but Gaynes had no business reporting to him, and it seemed quite possible to him that Daphne might make that connection. He needed her gone.

  “You took him to Tommy Thompson without telling me,” she said irritably.

  “Tommy only had the morning open,” Boldt explained. “You were busy.”

  “The man paints seagull art for curio shops and you’re telling me he was too busy?”

  “I can’t dictate the schedule to him,” Boldt complained. “It’s a freebie for him.”

  “Which begs the question: Why didn’t you use one of the in-house artists? Why go all the way over to Vashon?”

  “He’s the best there is. Tommy’s the best.”

  She had yet to sit down, in part because he had not asked her to, and so she stood, arms crossed indignantly, her high breasts cradled tightly. She wasn’t buying this. Boldt had a problem. She drew in a long, deep breath and exhaled slowly in an effort to settle down. “Do you want to talk?”

  “I want to find Rhonda Shotz and the Weinstein boy. I want to stop another kidnapping from happening.”

  “How did the sketch come out? Thompson’s sketch?”

  “Worthless,” Boldt answered, consumed in the lie. She was his closest female friend outside of his wife. Lying to her was the worst and yet it came so easily.

  “Tommy said a five- or six-year-old might have worked out. Henry lacked both the patience and the vocabulary.”

  “And we got to him too late,” she said, taken in. “Three-year-olds are not long on visual memory.”

  In point of fact, Henry Shotz had done a brilliant job.

  “I’d just as soon the tattoo not be mentioned at the four o’clock.”

  She tensed. “But why not?”

  “Doris Shotz. I promised her—”

  “I remember.”

  “The press will crush her.”

  “They might not be told.”

  “Then Mulwright will crush her,” he said. “The point is that the tattoo is weak or even useless until and unless we get a second witness.”

  “But who will look for collaborative evidence if no one hears about it?” she asked. “Chicken and the egg.”

  “Leave it,” Boldt said sharply, stinging her. “I made her a promise.”

  “You made me promise not to ask questions. When is that quarantine lifted?”

  “Don’t,” he said.

  “When do we talk about whatever it is you don’t want to talk about?”

  His throat constricted and he felt his jaw muscles lock.

  She said, “Did I tell you I called Marina and asked about Liz and she said she’s coming home this weekend? Because she’s better, Lou, or because she’s worse? Talk to me.”

  He coughed and turned his head away. He searched for a way to change the subject. He said, “I wanted the kids out of the house for the first few days. That’s all.” He knew what she was thinking.

  “Why doesn’t that make any sense to me? I’m getting conflicting signals. Mommy’s coming home and you send the children away? You think she’s coming home to see you?” She stepped closer and repeated, “Talk to me.”

  “Daffy!”
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  “Have you told Liz? Did you involve her in this decision? Is she coming home to live or to die, Lou? That’s important.” She moved around the desk toward him. “I know you. You take matters into your own hands. You make decisions, no matter how boneheaded. I’m a woman, Lou. Liz wants the kids home regardless of the added pressures it puts on you, regardless of what the doctors have to say about it. The kids will heal her, Lou, emotionally, sometimes even physically.” She reached out and took a firm grip on his shoulder. “You’re reacting as a controller. You want to control her environment, make it peaceful for her. Make her better. Heal her. Good intentions, wrong action. Get the kids back home.”

  It was these last words that pushed Boldt to tears, and his friendship with this woman that made him look up into her eyes and reveal himself, expose his vulnerability.

  She clearly took the tears to mean Liz was coming home to die. She moved even closer and cradled his head. It was this contact that triggered his pulling away. He wasn’t going to tell her, wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to coax the truth out of him—she could milk the truth from anyone; it was her expertise.

  He judged the situation quickly and said, “I’m not much of a father, am I? Who would abandon their kids because his workload makes home life too difficult? This isn’t about Liz. I moved the kids before I heard Liz was coming home.” He forced out a small bark of laughter. The lies came too easily all of a sudden. With truth his only tie to sanity, he felt himself slipping away, like trying to run on ice. “Worse, I haven’t told Liz. I know you are right.”

  Her eyes darted back and forth between his. Her expression changed from relief to concern. “I almost believe you. You’re good. You’re very good.”

  “What’s not to believe?” he said, knowing not to break eye contact. This strength served to confuse her. She studied him.

  “What the hell is going on, Lou? You’re selling me a bill of goods here.” She waited and said, “How do I account for these changes in your behavior? Professional stress? Home life?” She added, “Sheila Hill is playing politics. At yesterday’s four o’clock I was told to take measure of all those present. Today she’s dropping hints that I may want to pay you a visit, and I’m taking that to mean she wants the book on you as well. My guess?” she asked rhetorically. “A little task force housecleaning is in order. She’s not getting results and the axe is about to fall.”