The Pied Piper

by Ridley Pearson

  “More theories. Enough theories. We’re running out of time here, you know that. You pissed off Dunkin and he’s going to fuck this up for all of us without knowing it. There’s no more time.”

  He jabbed the map, his index finger nearly poking a hole through it. “It’s within this six-mile stretch. Has to be. How long for you to walk her out to that barn and get down to it? Why bother?”

  He slammed the trunk, handed Boldt the car keys and said, “You don’t get it, do you? It’s no bother.” He wore an armored vest, neck to groin. He looked like a killer there in the moonlight, pockets bulging, the shotgun in his right hand. “Happy hunting,” he said. “First man to find Crowley and the kids wins.”

  Boldt toyed with the keys between his fingers. “Think this through.”

  “I have.” The low sonorous voice carried so much authority it was difficult for Boldt to argue.

  “When I find it?” Boldt asked.

  “If you find it, you know where to find me.” He looked out across the expanse of harvested flowers toward the distant barn. “I’m not a monster, Boldt,” he said, reading his thoughts. “I’m not after her.” He indicated the backseat. “I’m after my kid. But unlike you, I’m not afraid of how to get there.” He pushed past Boldt and opened the door to the backseat, took Lisa Crowley by the hair and dragged her from the car, standing her up.

  Her injuries lent her a defeated look. Her empty eyes found Boldt and he warned Flemming, “You push her too hard in that condition and you’ll kill her.”

  “More’s the pity,” Flemming said. He took Lisa Crowley by the arm and led her into the field. She offered no resistance, willing to sacrifice herself for her husband. Boldt stood there frozen by the sight of the two ghostly figures shrinking into the enormous field of black that gladly swallowed them.

  A moment later, the Town Car sped away.

  His imagination impossible to contain, Boldt spent the drive envisioning the activity in the barn, knowing full well that Flemming had every intention of following through with his threats, and that the man would enjoy it far more than he had been willing to admit perhaps even to himself. Flemming would kill her without meaning to. He would be left with a second murder—this one with a witness and too much evidence to overcome. How he would then choose to deal with Boldt remained uncertain to all concerned.

  The enormous number of cars parked along the roads gave the night an eerie feeling, as if scores of people had deserted the area in a mass exodus. Boldt took a dirt road shortcut, saving himself five minutes and coming up to his suspect stretch of road from the backside. As he approached the paved intersection, another dark field of headless flowers enveloped the landscape to his left, several feet of which had not been harvested. He slowed and rolled down his window. Drooping dead daffodils, their heads slumped toward the pungent earth in silent prayer, kept vigil by the side of the road. It told Boldt that the entire forty-acre parcel had, quite recently, been a sea of daffodils in bloom. Yellow daffodils, he thought. Yellow, with yellow pollen. Knee height.

  In the distance, a cluster of small sheds and the western slant of a metal farmhouse roof glowed a wet pale gray in the moonlight. The dead field rose slowly toward the outbuildings, and Boldt recognized immediately that the rise would elevate the farmhouse above the paved road.

  Boldt steered the Town Car through a left turn and drove at a decent speed to avoid arousing suspicion. A large sycamore standing surprisingly close to the upcoming farmhouse spread its branches luxuriously over and down the small knoll toward the paved roadbed. Still a hundred yards off, Boldt knew intuitively that a large window would exist immediately behind that tree, that the living room walls inside would be painted a cream yellow. He knew the positioning of the furniture inside and the name of the man who had locked and now guarded its door, and that this same man ached to see a brown Taurus pull into the driveway and a woman climb from behind the wheel. He was to be disappointed that night, this man who stood sentry. The Taurus was never to come.

  Boldt drove past, the dash lights dimmed, his eyes fixed on the road, not allowed to wander or stray toward the farmhouse to his left. He had seen all there was to see from the outside.

  He needed inside now, and he needed Lisa Crowley in one piece.

  Boldt ran through the moonswept field toward the distant barn, the cut stems of the headless flowers slapping at his pants legs, his shoes engorged with wet, sticky mud so that his legs weighed ten times their normal. The faster he tried to run, the heavier the mud, the slower he moved. He stopped and scraped the rich-smelling earth from his shoes, soiling his hands in the process.

  As he came upon the barn, he listened into the stillness for her voice, hoping for any such sound at all. Greeted only by the silence, he sank into a pit of despair, confident that the only card they held was the life of Lisa Crowley, that her husband would cut any bargain to save his accomplice from torture and death. Flemming had jumped the gun.

  Boldt checked the three doors he could find and finally knocked on the huge barn’s wood door, gray from decades of weather. Flemming must have had a peephole, for he removed the wooden bar and opened the door without a word spoken. Boldt stepped inside and stopped cold.

  A pale flashlight beam stretched from a tractor’s tire across the barn’s aisle to a large square post that helped support the hayloft above. Lisa Crowley’s bare back and naked buttocks caught the light looking like a side of beef hung in a freezer. Her clothes were strewn in the dust and dirt of the aisle. Flemming had looped the cuffs over a rusty spike pounded into the cedar post well above head height, stretching her so that her toes just barely touched the dirt floor. Her head sideways, Boldt could see the left side of her face, smashed and swollen from the car accident. He walked toward her slowly. Flemming had removed the tape from her mouth and had stuffed her underwear there so she could make noise if she so chose, and he could evaluate her information by simply removing the underwear, restuffing her, if he went unsatisfied. The bright red blotches from the stun stick glowed violently red near her breasts and across her buttocks and the backs of her thighs. A dozen or more.

  “Dress her,” Boldt said, disgusted with the man.

  “We’re just getting warmed up.”

  “I’ll do it then,” Boldt said, approaching her. “I found the house. It was exactly as I said. The driver took his lunch hour in La Conner. He drove past the farmhouse shortly after noon, on no particular route, unlisted on the manifest.”

  Removing the woman’s underwear from her mouth, he told her, “I’m going to help you get dressed. I’m going to lift you now.” He stepped behind her and reached his hands up under her sweating armpits.

  “Leave her.” Flemming had hold of the shotgun in his right hand, its barrel hanging toward the dirt floor, but its presence very much felt by all. His eyes revealed a man void of thought or reason. Revenge had sunk its teeth into him, and he had tasted its blood. He wanted more.

  “I found the farmhouse,” Boldt repeated.

  “Then we don’t need her,” Flemming said. “Step away.”

  Her damp back pressed to his face, Boldt still supported her. “I’m taking her down,” he said.

  Flemming engaged the shotgun in a sound all too familiar to the cop he faced.

  Boldt gave another heave and Crowley’s bound hands came free of the spike. She crossed her arms in front of her bare chest in modesty, her breasts riddled with stun gun burns, and sagged to the dirt, cowering under the threat of the shotgun. Boldt pushed the underwear into her hands, crouched close to her, placing himself between her and Flemming and said gently, “Dress yourself. Hurry.”

  She struggled with the underwear. Boldt snagged the purple dress. Flemming had torn the arms out to get it off her. Boldt helped her into it, the black hole at the end of the shotgun barrel boring down on him, and tied a ripped length of fabric behind her neck to cover her chest.

  He turned to Flemming and said, “We’re going. The three of us. We’re going to get our daught
ers.”

  “No.”

  “She’s our bargaining chip. If you’re going to kill her, at least wait until we’ve used her to get our girls back. Don’t throw them away for the sake of some score that can never be settled.” Boldt wondered how Daphne would have handled the situation. She understood the Flemmings of this world, he thought. And then Boldt realized that with Flemming being a cop, he understood him as well. Knowing the answer, Boldt asked, “How many years do you have?”

  Flemming looked confused.

  “With the Bureau. How long?”

  The man’s expression sobered.

  “How many agents, black or white, look up to you? Model themselves after you?”

  “Save it and the violins. Let her go, and step away.”

  “You discharge that weapon and we’ll never make it to that farmhouse. A community like this? Forget it. Sheriff’ll be all over us before we make it to the car.” This appeared to register on the man’s face. Boldt held Crowley ever closer. Indicating the variety of weaponry that Flemming had laid out on a hay bale, Boldt said, “Collect that stuff. We may need it.” Crowley leaned her weight into him, weak, her stretched and cramping legs unable to support her. Boldt turned his back to Flemming and walked her out of the barn.

  CHAPTER

  Boldt cut through the field of headless daffodils, bent at the waist, staying as low as possible, hoping to avoid the glare of the moonlight. The investigator in him knew that he was, in some form or another, retracing footsteps taken by Andy Anderson some weeks before. Mindful of Anderson’s fate, Boldt paused randomly and sank down into a crouch, like a swimmer ducking into a wave. His decision to leave Crowley alone in the car with Flemming had come with great difficulty, but better that, he had decided, than leave it to Flemming to approach the farmhouse. Gun happy, and crazed with the thirst of revenge, Flemming felt more like a time bomb than an ally. Boldt hurried—the fuse to that time bomb was lit and burning.

  The warm night air carried the promise of summer and the faint scent of the millions of tulips that ran for mile after mile. On a different night, the two-story farmhouse would have looked picturesque to him, glazed in moonlight, clustered in a nest of outbuildings. As Boldt drew near he used those sheds as a screen, abandoning his crouch and running fully erect.

  He and Flemming held many advantages, not the least of which was Roger Crowley’s expectation and anticipation of his wife’s arrival. Although not a Taurus, the Town Car would work to that end with proper timing; it was for this reason that Boldt’s cell phone was already dialed to call Flemming, awaiting the simple touch of the SEND button.

  His chest pounding from a combination of nerves and the run up the slope, Boldt ducked around one shed and then another. He carried two stun grenades and a phosphorus bomb in his sport coat. Flemming had retained the stun stick and the shotgun.

  The downstairs of the farmhouse was lit up like the Fourth of July, every window ablaze. Boldt stood in the lee of a shed carefully studying what lay behind each window. Toward the back, a kitchen: empty. Toward the front, a living room: empty. The upstairs remained dark, and Boldt knew from his own exploration of the Pied Piper’s surveillance points that the man preferred the higher ground, the darkness and seclusion of a pair of curtains partially drawn.

  In the end it came down to a string of decisions for Boldt and Flemming, none of which held any guarantees, all of which carried tremendous risk for their two daughters. They lacked a Taurus. They lacked manpower. Time. Their one hostage was weakened to the point of near unconsciousness. Their adversary held a farmhouse, elevated for good security, no doubt fortified, and containing two of the most precious people on earth.

  Boldt considered Special Ops and SPD’s Emergency Response Team, wondering if he would have dared put Sarah’s life into their hands.

  If he attempted to sneak inside but gave himself away, Sarah would go from kidnap victim to hostage. Of primary importance was knowing Crowley’s exact location. All else was secondary, as the man’s location represented the degree of threat to their daughters. Boldt moved around the shed in shadow, reemerging on the structure’s other side with a different, and improved, view of both the kitchen’s interior and that of the living room. Both still appeared empty.

  Roger Crowley, the Pied Piper, was somewhere upstairs in the dark.

  Boldt pulled out his cell phone and pressed the SEND button, initiating the signal. He waited to hear it ring through and hung up.

  Seconds later, a pair of headlights rounded the far corner of the forty-acre field and motored slowly toward the farmhouse. Boldt pressed himself flat against the damp wood and waited.

  CHAPTER

  Flemming pulled the Town Car into the gravel driveway and quickly shut off the engine and headlights. Boldt realized an unexpected advantage they held: The sycamore’s grandeur obscured any view of the driveway from the farmhouse’s second story. For all Crowley knew, the Taurus and his injured wife had finally arrived.

  Boldt heard the man’s descending footfalls through the wall of the house as Crowley hurried down a set of back stairs—he had taken the bait. He appeared fleetingly in the kitchen, then passed into the living room. Boldt stepped farther into the light, straining for a better view and winning sight of him by a far window. Then gone. Crowley reappeared at the front door, as he opened it a crack and craned his neck to get a view of a Taurus that wasn’t there.

  The kids were being kept on the second story, away from a random sighting by a curious tourist, within reach of Crowley as he played sentry in the dark. By exploding toward a reunion with his wife, he had left his flank open.

  Boldt hurried to close it.

  He cut to his left, crouched and ran across the damp, recently mowed lawn, the smell of which wafted up and overwhelmed his senses. He delicately climbed three steps at the rear of the house and slid an eye to the window: He was watching Crowley, who in turn was focused on the driveway and the car parked there. His heart beat frantically. Sarah’s face floated in his vision. He could feel Liz there with him, like a warm coat. He wanted to kick the door and run upstairs. His weapon in hand, he stayed frozen in place, one eye glued to the window’s dirty glass.

  Thump! he heard the car door shut. He switched the gun to his left hand and dried his right palm on his pants leg, returning the weapon to the proper hand. He heard another car door shut, followed by Flemming’s deep voice, and Crowley let the front door swing open as Flemming demanded. There, just beyond the front door and slightly to the left, bathed in the spread of lamplight from inside the house, Boldt saw Flemming leading Lisa Crowley up the lawn, under the tree, holding her by the hair, his sidearm aimed into her right ear.

  Boldt kicked the back door, dove to the kitchen floor and aimed his weapon onto Roger Crowley. “Hands in plain sight!” Boldt shouted. Crowley froze. Boldt repeated the command even louder, hoping the sound of his voice might call his daughter to him.

  Crowley’s arms jumped and his fingers laced on top of his head.

  “You got him?” Boldt shouted.

  “Got him,” Flemming answered. “Face down, motherfucker, arms out straight ahead.”

  Roger Crowley, the Pied Piper, collapsed to the floor.

  Boldt came to his feet and charged the man. Flemming held the sidearm aimed into the front door, the handcuffed Lisa Crowley on her knees, gripped by her hair.

  No cars coming from either direction.

  Boldt checked the man and found no weapon on him, not even a penknife. Daphne had been right about that: Con artists by trade, the Crowleys abhorred violence. “Clear!” Boldt shouted.

  “Go!”

  Boldt hurried through the ground floor of the house checking every room, every closet, every hiding place large enough to hold a two-year-old girl. “Downstairs is clear,” he reported out the door. “Basement and upstairs to go.”

  “There’s no one here,” Roger Crowley complained, his face pressed into the plank flooring. “Who are you? What do you want?” A convincing p
erformance. Ever the con man.

  “Shut up!” Flemming bellowed. “Upstairs!” he shouted to Boldt, ever the commanding officer.

  Boldt ran back into a kitchen he had already searched, located the narrow stairway and took it two treads at a time. The dormered roof held two cramped bedrooms and a shared bath. Three closets, a chest of drawers, a green metal steamer trunk. He checked the closets first, no longer breathing despite a heart attempting to rip from his chest. He held to the doorknob, unable to turn it, to open it, for fear of what he would see inside.

  “Anything?” he heard Flemming shout.

  He twisted the doorknob and pulled. Empty.

  The next room, the same.

  He stood then over the steamer trunk. He had worked crime scenes before with bodies in steamer trunks. Women usually. Folded up. Molested. Dead. He couldn’t see his daughter that way; he couldn’t find her like that. It was not something a father could live through. He kneeled and sniffed the seams of the trunk. Cedar—like a breath of fresh air. He threw the trunk open: blankets.

  “Clear,” he shouted, heading directly into the basement.

  The small cellar, lit by a single bare bulb, held a washer and dryer that had seen better days, tools, a workbench and a clutter of broken bicycles, lawn chairs and a doll collection. Boldt stopped, held in a trance by the shelves of dusty dolls. If the girls had spent much time there, the dolls would have been put to good use. His heart fluttered and he became conscious of his breathing again—slow, like a man dying.