The Pied Piper

by Ridley Pearson

  “Shut up!” Boldt barked nervously, his stomach a knot.

  “Tunnel,” Griswold said, as the limousine slowed for the short tunnel further separating them.

  “This is not good,” Boldt said, “not good.” The Country Squire flowed with traffic into the tunnel.

  Boldt caught a faint glimpse of taillights.

  “Exit!” Boldt shouted at the driver.

  Griswold jerked the wheel and negotiated a sharp right immediately at the tunnel’s end. He slammed on the brakes. Every street, every intersection, was jammed with bumper-to-bumper traffic.

  Griswold said, “I told you we should’a listened to the Sonics game. At least we would’a known when it was getting out. Who needs this shit?”

  “She does,” Boldt answered. “She knows exactly what she’s doing.”

  CHAPTER

  Boldt took off on foot through the drizzle, slamming the car door while telling Griswold to park somewhere within a few blocks and pointing to a corner where he wanted Griswold to wait for him.

  Boldt now believed that the Crowleys had timed Lisa’s flight for an arrival to coincide with the end of the basketball game and the guaranteed mass confusion that always resulted around the Seattle Center. Slip a car into any one of dozens of emptying parking garages, and it would not be spotted for hours, perhaps days. Grab a bus, or go on foot with the thousands of people crowding the sidewalks; it was a place and time of night to get lost.

  Crowley had been less than a hundred yards in front of the Country Squire when it had entered the tunnel. Boldt knew that if he had any chance of locating her, it was now—immediately—while she, like them, was still crushed and hemmed in by the traffic. With traffic barely moving, she couldn’t have made it far—on one of three or four streets, or inside one of the two parking garages that were in plain sight.

  The rain fell as a cold mist, a gray swirling curtain that seemed to go unnoticed by all but a few of the hundreds of pedestrians.

  Boldt cut across the moving traffic, horns firing off at him in volleys of protest. He wished like hell that they had never plugged up that drilled taillight; it would have stuck out like a searchlight. He looked left, right: endless lines of cars. Every possible direction. But with eastbound traffic the worst—the traffic moving toward I-5—and with westbound traffic aimed directly at the Seattle Center, into the lion’s mouth, Boldt chose straight ahead.

  The sidewalks were more packed with pedestrians than the streets with cars. He threaded his way through and around groups, couples, families, all gabbing about the game and a great shot at the buzzer that had won it for the Sonics. The mood of the crowd was festive, even carnival-like. Although he was polite at first, Boldt’s patience wore thin quickly, and he began to bump and claw his way through the melee, his efforts unappreciated. He craned over shoulders, stole his way to the curb, hoping for sight of the Taurus. Whereas the teeming horde walked, Boldt ran, faster and faster, driven at first by curiosity and finally out of desperation; he would not see Sarah’s chances swallowed by a crowd, would not write her off. He charged through the elbows, the bumps and the complaints, a man driven by love and a fear of the future. He had spent over twenty years in the company of victims—he knew their fate. He would not become one.

  At the intersection, he looked right, straight, left, and then started the process again; right, straight ahead, left, searching shapes and colors. The cars all looked the same, he realized. In shape and styling, so little difference existed. LaMoia, a gearhead, might have spotted the Taurus, might have singled it out from the Lexus, the Toyota, the Nissan, but to Boldt they blended homogeneously into a moving parking lot of identical vehicles. The light changed and, driven at the front of the pack, Boldt found himself caught in the current of pedestrians, carried across the street like a pile of snow in front of a plow.

  He would later think that prayers are often answered in strange ways. There is no voice from heaven, no finger pointing the way, only unexplained coincidences that, coincidentally, happen to follow moments of prayer. Pushed across the street by the throng, Boldt stepped up onto the curb and saw the Taurus in traffic, five cars away. He could even make out a small black blob, Raymond’s patch of chewing gum on the taillight. Crowley.

  Behind him and to his left he heard a car door open and shut. A group of teenagers formed a knot in the sidewalk in front of him.

  He took avoidance maneuvers and ran smack into another man, like hitting a brick wall. He apologized, but the brick wall remained firmly in his way. He stepped back to untangle himself and looked up into the eyes—they were dead eyes—of Special Agent in Charge Gary Flemming.

  They wrestled briefly, locking forearms with matched grips, Flemming the larger, more powerful man. The crowds flowed around them, barely paying them any mind.

  “Fight!” a kid shouted.

  “Forget about it,” Boldt said, struggling, glancing around furiously through the mist for Flemming’s backup.

  “It’s my investigation now,” Flemming announced, shaking him like an angry parent. “It’s my task force, not Hill’s. I took over in Boise.”

  “It’s irrelevant,” Boldt conceded. He wondered about what Hale had told him. If true, he was looking into the eyes of the Pied Piper’s insider, his accomplice, a traitor.

  Hundreds of people streamed past, most oblivious to the weather. The Taurus inched forward in gridlocked traffic, the rain in the headlights swirling like oil in water.

  “You’re within my jurisdiction,” Boldt reminded. “This is my city.” It seemed possible that Flemming might have gained control of the task force, and if so the investigation was indeed his, its outcome his to bend, break or detour. But Boldt remained proud of Seattle and his own place within it.

  “You’ll follow orders, Lieutenant. You’ve run investigations. You know the importance of—”

  Boldt managed to yank his right arm free, reached in for his ID wallet and pressed it into Flemming’s huge open hand. “Wrong.”

  Flemming glanced down at the ID wallet. “Nice try.” He attempted to pass it back.

  Boldt threw his arms in the air and said, “No harm, no foul. The investigation is all yours.” He inched his way to Flemming’s left and into an area of clear sidewalk that had formed around them like an eddy behind a rock in a stream. He turned his back on the man and took a tentative step forward.

  Flemming roared over the noise of the passing crowd, “She celebrated her birthday in captivity.”

  The words froze Boldt. He turned, and said, “Not yet she hasn’t.”

  “Stephanie,” Flemming told him, eyes shifting nervously among the passers-by. “I’m talking about my daughter.”

  “You aren’t married,” Boldt said. “Have never been married,” he corrected. Drawn to the Taurus, he couldn’t keep his eyes off it. Flemming was not one to look away from. Following Sarah’s abduction Boldt had looked into the private lives of the various members of the FBI team; only Hale was married and a father, only Hale had made sense as a candidate for the Pied Piper’s insider. Everything was turned around. He backed off, taking another step toward the Taurus, which had crept even further down the street. He wasn’t going to lose that car. Again, he threw his hands in the air and said, “You’ve got to shoot me, Flemming, you want to stop me.”

  That comment won him some extra room from the pedestrians.

  “Gun!” a shrill voice called out. The pace of the crowd picked up, but it did not scatter as Boldt expected.

  Flemming’s hand was indeed stuck inside his sport coat.

  Flemming explained loudly, “She’s white, Boldt—my woman. We never married, no. We thought it a bad idea for both of us. Our daughter was two-and-a-half when this monster took her.” He said clearly, “I know about Sarah. That is, I suspected. I didn’t exactly know until right now.”

  Boldt’s knees felt weak. He sagged. Sarah … Flemming knew. “Not possible,” he mumbled to himself, the Taurus slipping away. The ransom demands were violated. He fel
t comfortable with Flemming as a traitor; Flemming the victim was all too unreal for him. Six months of abduction? Impossible to survive such a thing. Flemming? he wondered. Had Hale lied to protect his own interests? Or was this a smoke screen to allow Crowley to escape?

  “Kiss and make up,” some punk kid with green hair shouted at them.

  Flemming said, “They sent you a video clip on CD-ROM. Hell, I didn’t even know how to work with one of those things. Saw it for the first time in a computer store.” He insisted, “How would I know that? Think about it!”

  An insider would know this as well as a victim. By posing as a victim, Flemming had frozen Boldt—exactly what he would want to do. The Taurus eased ahead in traffic. Boldt’s hand found the butt of his sidearm, his index finger pried loose the Velcro tab that secured the weapon. He glanced over his shoulder.

  “Do you know her name?” Flemming asked. “The driver? Who is she?”

  Nice try, Boldt thought. Convincing as all hell. The powerful man with a small federal army assigned to him playing the naive victim.

  Flemming stepped closer. Boldt looked around for the man’s agents then, late in doing so, expecting they might be closing in on him. Too many people to tell. Flemming said, “You want to follow her, I’m with you. But you know the rules: No suspects in custody, or I never see my daughter again.”

  “I know the rules,” Boldt answered, out of energy, out of time. He could still reach the Taurus if he ran. “I even played by them for a few days.” It seemed like a month ago.

  “We follow and we see if our kids are there,” Flemming proposed. “Follow only.”

  For the first time, Boldt heard the man’s calm, penetrating baritone break, riddled with grief and uncertainty. For a moment he actually allowed himself to believe the man, which was, no doubt, exactly what Flemming wanted.

  Flemming said, “My team is chasing the car you substituted, same as your people. But you? I followed you and that piece of shit Ford.”

  Boldt searched the area again. Still no sign of agents. Could Flemming possibly be telling the truth?

  Boldt said confidently, “I have one stop to make, and I’ll know where she’s going. Some paperwork was left with my wife. I can find the place.”

  “Bullshit.” The man was unnerved.

  “No bullshit. Anderson could have told you, if you hadn’t killed him.”

  Flemming’s jaw quivered, his eyes hardened and went cold. He looked into the stream of pedestrians as if debating to shoot Boldt right there and then. His eyes flashed darkly toward Boldt, who explained, “The choke hold you put on Weinstein. Left-handed. Same thing killed Anderson. I should have made the connection right then.”

  “I … It …”

  Boldt wished the man’s hand out from inside the coat, but it remained. He said, “You want to shoot a cop in the back in front of a couple hundred witnesses, that’s your choice.” He turned and ran for the Taurus—for Lisa Crowley, stuck in traffic—the rain beginning in earnest.

  Flemming caught up to Boldt a few yards from the Taurus, both men at a run. “I’ll take the driver’s door. You take the passenger,” Flemming said.

  “We need her alive.”

  “I know that.”

  As the traffic surged forward again, the two split up. Boldt cut behind the Taurus and hurried to the passenger door. “Locked!” he called out to Flemming just prior to the agent presenting his gun and shield to the driver’s window.

  “FBI! Open the door!” The car lurched forward, but only a matter of feet before slamming bumpers with a Mazda. Flemming shot the rear tire. Screams errupted from the sidewalk.

  Boldt stayed with the passenger door. He pounded on the side window with the butt of his gun. The safety glass cracked, but held.

  An enraged Flemming reached across the front windshield and aimed his weapon directly at the driver’s head.

  “No!” Boldt shouted, understanding the temptation. “We need her!”

  “Out!” Flemming shouted to the driver.

  Lisa Crowley popped open the door.

  “Hands where I can see ’em,” Flemming hollered. He said to Boldt, “I’ll cover. You cuff. We’ll take my car.”

  Boldt came around the vehicle. He tugged the woman’s arms behind her with more force than was necessary. He squeezed the metal around her wrists, an incredible anger burning through him. It felt incredibly good to feel the metal click into metal. “Lisa Crowley, you are under arrest for the kidnapping of Trudy Kittridge, Stephanie Flemming and Sarah Boldt. You have the right—” The words caught in his throat. Tears stung his eyes.

  “—to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney—” Flemming ran through the Miranda effortlessly. Together the two men led the handcuffed woman down the sidewalk, against the flow of pedestrians. Horns sounded behind them, frustrated at the parked Taurus. Flemming finished the rehearsed piece and then said, “Now let me tell you something, Crowley: Where you’re going those rights won’t do you a damn bit of good, because you’re going with us.” He met eyes with Boldt, and the two men understood each other perfectly.

  Boldt said, “It’s over.” But his words fell flat. For he and Flemming, it was only just beginning.

  CHAPTER

  LaMoia drove east on I-90, well over the speed limit, maintaining a decent lead on the surveillance cars that trailed behind him. He cringed as the rain lessened to sheets of gray mist, for he feared the Nissan would be seen to have taken the place of the Taurus, at which point the surveillance net was certain to collapse upon him en force.

  Dividing his attention between the road ahead of him and the cars behind, he thought for a moment about the road of life he traveled, and how little time he spent thinking about the future. His affair with Sheila Hill had awakened him to wanting more than raw physical relations, and he considered putting some distance between that relationship and his next, to solidify his notion of John LaMoia. In the past, it had been one bed to the next, one pretty face to the next in a long chain of women that rarely went broken by more than a week or two. The damn kidnapping case was getting to him, he decided at last. He wanted children. A family. A future outside of himself. He was, for the first time in his adult life, tired of John LaMoia. He didn’t like himself.

  The red flashing lights appeared in his rearview mirror simultaneously, one vehicle directly behind him, the other partially blocking the highway’s center lane. It felt as if they had gained on him in a matter of seconds, pedal to the floor. He stretched it out for half a mile, letting them sweat whether or not they faced a high-speed chase. Then he signaled and pulled over.

  He thought the signal a nice touch. Just wait, he thought, until they find out who they’ve pulled over. He wanted to see their faces. He could hardly wait.

  CHAPTER

  The contents of the envelope left for him by Theresa Russo lay scattered across the front seat of Flemming’s Town Car along with a map of Skagit County. Liz had passed them through the passenger’s window with a simple kiss to Boldt’s cheek, a suspicious glance at the driver and a look of hatred aimed at Lisa Crowley, handcuffed in the backseat. They drove with the windows partially down, delivering a wet, heavy air. Little more remained to be said. They had decided on a course of action. They intended to see it through, regardless of the outcome.

  Millie Wiggins’ address in Haller, near Bitter Lake, proved difficult to find. After several incorrect guesses on Boldt’s part, the Town Car drove into the paved driveway in the Pinnacle Point subdivision. Flemming locked the parking brake and kept the car running. A moment later the front curtains parted, an expectant face peered out into the dark and the front door opened.

  The detour, while not costly in time, offered the unlikely partners substantial long-term risks that, if taken to their limit, included imprisonment. But the cop in Boldt had overruled the father for the first time in weeks, and he accepted that as progress.

  In blue jeans and a green flannel shirt, Millie Wiggins l
ooked nothing like she did while running her day care preschool. She hurried down the brick walkway carrying an umbrella open over her head and called hello from a distance. Boldt signaled her around to his side of the car.

  As she stepped up to Boldt’s window, she bent over and studied Flemming. Boldt said calmly, “Just a yes or no is all we need. You must be definite. There must be no doubt whatsoever. Even a hint of doubt and I’d rather you say no.” He hesitated. They needed probable cause to ever hope for criminal charges. Without the chance of criminal charges, Boldt feared it would, quite possibly, come down to killing this woman. Strangely, he felt no remorse at the idea. He told Wiggins, “You know you don’t need to do this. No one is forcing you to do this.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m sorry, but we can’t open the back door. You’ll have to look from here.”

  “That’s fine.”

  Flemming switched on the car’s interior light, illuminating the woman in the backseat. Boldt rocked his head to the side, affording her a better view, and Millie Wiggins stared long and hard, unknowingly in the act of determining Boldt’s future. She blinked repeatedly, nervous and under the strain of his requirement to be definite. He appreciated the difficulty of her task, having been through countless lineups himself.

  “You’ve taped her mouth shut.”

  “She was a little noisy,” Boldt said.

  “It isn’t easy without the mouth.”

  “Do your best.”

  “The hair’s a different color,” Wiggins said, close enough to Boldt that he could smell wine on her breath.

  He said nothing, waiting patiently for her to remember the rules. Flemming had yet to speak.

  “Yes,” she said strongly, delivering Boldt a jolt to his system. He hadn’t realized how good it could feel, how different for the father than the cop.

  “You’re positive?”

  “She was in her uniform, of course,” Wiggins said, assuming Boldt’s passenger to be a cop. “But that’s her.” She looked directly into Boldt’s eyes. “That’s the woman who picked up Sarah. That’s her.” She asked, “What has she done?”