The Pied Piper (28 page)

Daphne sat up and took notice.

At a few minutes before four that same afternoon, a rainstorm relenting to the east, Lou Boldt crossed an internal threshold and, like an ex-drunk sitting in front of a bottle of whiskey, reached out and took his first sip. He simply couldn't sit there staring at it. If the two who had abducted his daughter had believed him capable of passivity, they had guessed wrong. The cop in him won out. The only way he would ever see his daughter alive again was to beat his own people to the Pied Piper, locate his daughter and do whatever had to be done to take her back. He ruled out nothing. The plan was a simple one—eat or be eaten. His choice was made.

Tech Services was to provide him twice daily with cassettes of conversations that contained the key words he'd specified: “kidnap,” “kidnapping,” “abduction,” “babies,” “infants,” “task force,” and the names of every player, including the victims and Andy Anderson. The tapes were delivered in an interdepartmental envelope that had to be signed for by Boldt himself. Just another day in Intelligence, but this time Boldt was eavesdropping on his own people.

He listened to most of the conversations with the tape speed doubled. Voices like chipmunks, but the spoken words understandable. A two-minute phone call became one. Life in half time.

As he listened, he thought that he had failed as a father, husband and cop. A dozen should-have-dones presented themselves, but all in hindsight.

He recalled bottle-feeding Sarah in the living room as the morning sun warmed a darkened sky, the smell of the top of her head, the delicious sounds she made while eating. He recalled the softness of her feet and the strong grip of her toes. He ached beyond anything he had ever experienced. A knot of pain seized his chest, unrelenting. Adding to this anguish was the solitude of his secret. He could not face people. He shut and locked his office door and turned off his phone. But he locked himself in another room as well.

The father in him—the failure—wouldn't let him out of the dark room of his guilt and grief. A glimpse of a family photo, Sarah's crayon art, the tiny baby shoes on the bookshelf. These were the personal reminders he could not live with, and yet could not bear to remove.

From this point of utter desperation, he struggled back, reaching the most difficult decision of his life: The Pied Piper was not going to dictate his actions. He would turn on his own people if necessary, but Sarah would not be used to allow other children to be kidnapped.

As lead, LaMoia had both the Anderson file and the task force “book” on the Pied Piper in his possession.

Boldt could have submitted official requests for any such reports and files—he considered doing that—but then a more ominous question presented itself: Did the Pied Piper have a way of monitoring Boldt's activities? Was there a second insider? Had a second cop been compromised? Was someone monitoring his every move?

Boldt had to conduct his own investigation while hindering the efforts of the task force, to be seen obeying the ransom demands while secretly working to locate Sarah and get her back. Any sudden interest on his part in evidence records and case files might send the wrong signal.

If he couldn't request them, he had to steal them.

Flemming glanced over at his subordinate Dunkin Hale in what Daphne realized was a signal.

Addressing Mulwright, Hale said, “Lieutenant, if you agree, we would like to suggest SPD canvass pawnshops for Anderson's camera.”

Mulwright countered in a sharply sarcastic tone, “It would help if we knew what kind of camera we're looking for, Special Agent.”

Hill caught on and said, “Are you suggesting that Anderson was a heist gone bad, not a murder associated with the kidnappings?”

“It's possible,” Hale replied. He then informed the group, “The camera is a Kodak DC-40, a digital camera that Anderson's credit card records show he purchased in November of last year.”

Hill's face went scarlet. “We want the camera, yes. But for the record, Anderson connects via the pollen,” she protested.

Flemming said calmly, “Anderson's computer may contain digitally stored photographs. It has been sent to Washington for analysis.”

“You shipped it east without so much as telling us?” LaMoia complained. What he did not divulge was that the SID technicians had discovered a number of backup disks in Anderson's bookshelf that were currently being analyzed. If the disks contained digital photographs, SPD would have them ahead of Flemming.

“I'm telling you now,” Flemming said. “We use the four o'clocks to share information.”

Not all of us
, LaMoia thought. He smiled and said, “Thanks for sharing.”

The clock clicked into place: 4:20
P.M.
LaMoia would still be at the four o'clock, his office cubicle unattended.

Boldt did not miss the irony of approaching an office cubicle and desk that had once been his own. At 4:00
P.M.
the duty rotation had occurred and LaMoia's squad had technically gone off their day shift. Because of the caseload demands of the Pied Piper investigation, most of his team kept right on working, logging coveted overtime. Combining the two squads could have meant a chaotic fifth floor, but it didn't work out that way because of the surveillance duty. Adding to the floor's peace and quiet was that the civilian employees—the secretaries, clerks, receptionists—had gone home.

As Boldt entered Homicide, he glanced first toward the lieutenant's office, a large room with two desks shared by Shoswitz and Davidson. The lights were on. Boldt kept his head down and moved quickly. It was rare that both lieutenants occupied the room at the same time—they handled separate rotations—but the chaos of the task force had added hours to both men's watch. If either lieutenant spotted him he would need to come up with an excuse for roaming around Homicide. Head down, he slipped past and headed directly to LaMoia's desk, where a deerskin jacket hung on the back of the chair. The adjacent desk belonged to Leon Kreuter, a detective on Davidson's squad, another of the middle-aged Homicide detectives who felt that Boldt's prolonged years as sergeant had hurt their promotions—an argument Boldt didn't buy. Kreuter was a talker. He would make a point of nosing into Boldt's affairs. LaMoia's desk would not be safe for long.

His heart pounding heavily, Boldt hurried to LaMoia's cubicle and sat down. Twice the size of any other file, the task force book was easy to spot. Anderson's was more elusive. He ran through the paperwork in plain sight but struck out. He pulled on the desk drawer and found it locked. At the same instant, two voices boomed from down the hall, the louder of which belonged to Leon Kreuter.

Sitting at his former desk, he suddenly realized that in the course of transition, he had handed the desk key over to LaMoia but not the duplicate key he had always kept in his wallet. He didn't remember having ever disposed of the key. He dug into his wallet's warm sticky leather and came up with it.

Kreuter's voice moved toward him all of a sudden; the topic not cop talk but the performance of four-wheel-drive utility vehicles versus pickup trucks.

A detective's desk area was off-limits. Chain of custody rules for active files required the signatures of both officers. Searching the contents of another officer's desk—even a friend's—was simply not done.

Worse, an Intelligence officer caught snooping around Homicide would sound alarms. As much as Boldt felt a part of this floor, his new posting cast him as an outsider even to members of his former squad.

While considering all this, he unlocked the desk.

Kreuter's laughing voice drew closer.

Boldt slid the center drawer open: no files. Next drawer.

Anderson's file had been placed on top of a Kleenex box. Boldt grabbed it and slid the drawer shut. He tried to turn the small key but it slipped out of his fingers and fell to the carpet.

Kreuter said clearly, “And she handles turns like a dream. You can't believe the thing is four-wheel.”

Forced to leave the desk unlocked, Boldt fled toward the copy room, both files clutched tightly under his arm, his heart painful in his chest, his face stinging hot.

Homicide's copy room looked like a paper warehouse, its walls adorned with dozens of Far Side cartoons, its shelves stacked with reams of paper products. The copier itself was the size of a freezer locker; it hummed loudly, green display lights lit up like a Christmas tree. The room was always a good fifteen degrees warmer than any other, making it a sweatshop. It smelled of paper, bleach and body odor. The door did not lock; nor was it
ever
seen closed, so Boldt left it open, feeling vulnerable. His back to the hall. He had never worked undercover. He didn't know how people did it. A greater offense than lifting the files was to be caught copying them—cause for immediate internal review. Knowledge remained the key to Sarah's chances.

He fed the copier groups of pages and it devoured them. The Anderson file took less than two minutes. He started in on the task force book, a formidable job.

A pair of voices approached from down the hallway. Boldt collected the paperwork in a rush of adrenaline, but then the voices faded past him, and again he returned to copying. He checked his watch as he fed another stack into the machine. Twenty minutes had lapsed since his entering Homicide. He bundled the photocopies into a stack and tucked it up under his shirt against his spine, held snug by the waist of his pants. His sport coat further hid it from view. He clamped the original folders under his arm and marched with purpose back down the hall.