The Pied Piper (31 page)

“Digitally enhanced,” said the computer repairman. “Nice color, good resolution.” He rocked the bottom edge of the mug in circles against the table.

The mother said mournfully, “It was adorable.”

“She was wrapped in it that night?” Boldt asked cautiously.

The woman lifted her eyes to meet Boldt's, and he saw in there a building uncertainty. “It was missing. I assumed I had her in it.”

Trying to keep the excitement out of her voice, Daphne asked, “But now?”

“It's definitely missing,” the drunken man replied.

Doris Shotz shook her head slowly side to side. She glanced back to Boldt. “This is important, isn't it?”

“It's all important to us.” He didn't want to fuel her hope unfairly, but they needed her attention focused on the blanket.

She said, “A drawer was found open.” Adding, “It wasn't us. Julie maybe—the sitter.”

Boldt nodded. He had read about the drawer in the report. It was what had focused him onto the possessions of the victims. He wrote into his notebook:
the sitter?

Boldt said to the husband, “If you could provide a way for us to reach your sister?”

“Sure.” He motioned for Boldt's pen and paper. His handwriting was more of a scrawl.

Boldt thanked him.

Doris Shotz said out of her silence, “It was a cute name. On the label. Mirror Image? I don't remember. Something cute. Does that help?”

Boldt took this down.

Daphne reached over and touched Doris Shotz's nervous hand. “Can you get a picture in your head of that label?”

She squinted. “No, not the label. The blanket, sure.”

“But not the label?”

“No.”

Boldt's sense of time had been destroyed by Sarah's abduction—everything took too long. His patience frayed. He spoke somewhat harshly to the husband. “Tell me about the dinner train again … who knew you'd be on that train?”

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” he said, eyeing his wife. “We've been over this.”

“You booked it yourself,” Boldt stated.

“Yeah. There's a number you call. All there is to it. Pick up the tickets when you get there.”

“You must have guaranteed them. What? A credit card?”

“Sure.” The man repeated, “All there is to it.”

“And you don't remember telling anyone at all—at work, a neighbor, a best friend? Maybe a friend recommended the train and you mentioned to him that you had booked an evening?”

The man ran his hand through his oily hair. “No, that isn't true. I didn't tell nobody—
anybody
,” he corrected.

“Do you have the credit card statement?” Boldt asked.

The man looked a little fuzzy.

“Think, honey,” Doris Shotz pleaded.

He screwed his face into a knot. “I probably got it, yeah, I suppose. I booked it ahead of time, you know.” He reached out for his wife's hand, but she pulled hers away.

“Get it for them,” the wife demanded.

“I can't.”

“I'd appreciate the statements from the last three months for any credit cards you have,” Boldt clarified. The husband looked crestfallen.

The wife remembered something then. She said, “We turned all that over to the other people—the FBI.”

“All your finances,” Boldt said, perfectly calmly. Inside, he boiled.

“The girl,” her husband said, “the one with the accent. She took our bank statements, credit card stuff, everything.”

Kay Kalidja, Boldt realized.

Before they left, Daphne and Boldt visited the child's nursery. He stepped into the room knowing full well what it was like to live with such emptiness. He had spent the night in Sarah's room, rocking in the rocking chair, staring into darkness, hating himself. He absorbed as much of the environment as he could, a new eye to the crime scene. The carpet was marked in three places where chips of automobile glass had been found. The glass connected the crimes to a single assailant, reminding Boldt of its importance. The dresser and the windowsills were clouded with fingerprint dust. Stuffed animals; children's books on a hand-painted bookshelf; a musical mobile of pandas with red and yellow feet; a changing table.

He visualized the Pied Piper entering the room and heading straight to the crib. Knowing what he was after. Boldt turned toward the dresser: The Pied Piper had taken time to search the dresser. Why? Did he need a change of outfits for the child? Or was he worried about leaving evidence behind? Had that silk-screened blanket been wrapped around the child, or had it been in the drawer that still remained open?

Blanket in hand, or not, he turns toward the crib. He needs to disguise or conceal the child before abducting her. He wraps her in a second blanket? He places her in a bag or toolbox?

The open drawer continued to tug at Boldt. The missing blanket had to be significant.

Daphne reminded, “He's an organized personality. If he took that particular blanket there's a reason.”

“Mrs. Shotz!” he called out. The woman stopped at the door to the room, unable to enter. Her eyes welled with tears and she crossed her arms tightly as if to ward off the cold.

“You do the laundry?”

“Paul doesn't, I can tell you that.”

“How many receiving blankets do you own?” he asked. Boldt did the laundry in his house. He grilled the meat, washed dishes and was much better with an iron than Liz. She paid for the housecleaner and they split Marina's check. Liz did their bookkeeping, cooked most of the meals—all of the vegetables—and answered the mail and phone calls. He wanted his life back.

Liz had nine bras, two that she wore more often than the others. He knew the outfits that Miles wore by heart. They had eleven burp rags and seven receiving blankets—
enchiladas
, Boldt called them, because that was how they looked as infants, swaddled tightly before sleep.

“Four,” she said, without the slightest hesitation. Boldt trusted the number.

“And how many are here?” he asked.

She looked at him, her face drained of expression. Fear stole into her eyes. “I never counted.”

“No reason to,” Daphne encouraged.

“Count them now, please,” Boldt said.

Doris Shotz headed for the drawer that had been left partially open. Exactly what Boldt had hoped for: That drawer held the blankets. She corrected herself immediately, “Four, other than the new one, the one with the picture.”

“I understand,” Boldt said. “Five total then.”

“I don't machine wash the one with Ronnie's picture. I hand wash it.”

“Fine.”

She rummaged through the drawer, glanced back sharply at Boldt and then started over, checking for a second time. “I don't know why I didn't think to count,” she said, distracted by her own guilty feelings. She went through the drawer a third time.

“Only three?” Boldt asked.

The woman hurried from the room. A moment later she returned, several shades paler. “Not in the wash,” she mumbled.

“How many?” Boldt asked her again.

“Three,” she answered. “But how did you know two would be missing?”

Ten minutes later Daphne and Boldt stood by the Chevy. Her eyes sparkled with excitement.

“What about the credit cards? What was that about?” she asked.

“We all buy tickets, we book travel, we charge our meals, our shopping, all on credit cards. If there are any patterns to our lives, the two places they show up are our checkbooks and our credit cards.”

“But Trish Weinstein was at the supermarket at the time of abduction,” she protested.

“Frequent flyer miles. People charge groceries to credit cards now. Liz does it sometimes.”

“Jesus,” she muttered.

“The Bureau gave it away without meaning to. They've locked us out of the credit histories on the earlier victims. We've been asking for them for weeks. Why hog them all to themselves unless they've spotted a pattern?”

“And the blanket?”

“We got lucky,” he said modestly. “No one picked up the pattern.”

“Next?”

“We contact Portland and see if the custom outfit mentioned in that interview had a silk-screened photo on it.”

“We need the name of that company—the silk screens,” she said.

Boldt nodded. “Might be the link we've been missing.” He moved toward the driver's door.

“We're not done here,” she stated.

“We have to move on this.”

“Look over my shoulder,” she instructed. “I'll bet you a month's salary she's watching us from the window.”

Boldt did as he was told. “Are you showing off?”

“Of course I am. Did you notice the way she kept repositioning her little boy?”

“He's a heavy little boy.” After a dismissive look from her, he said, “Okay. What'd I miss?”

“Only an eyewitness,” she said.

Boldt opened the car door and retrieved the thick task force book. He sifted through the contents until reaching the Shotz file, mumbling, “Baby sitter … mother and father … neighbor … real estate agent … neighbor … neighbor—”

She interrupted. “John and I did the parents together. Spent a long time. We never spoke one word to little Henry.”

“Little Henry was there.”

“Little Henry is three, keep in mind.”

“Miles is four. I know three very well, thank you,” Boldt said.

“Too young for a witness?”

“Maybe for a courtroom, but not for me. I broke a lamp of Liz's last year—she'd had it since college. I swept it up and threw it out, and thought I would wait for a good time to tell her. You know,” he explained sheepishly, “there are good times and bad times for that sort of thing. Well, Miles beat me to it. He reported the entire incident, point by point, the minute she got home. Three years old. He not only remembered everything I'd done but articulated it. Three years old? I'll take a three-year-old witness. Bring him on.” He asked, “Can you deliver little Henry?”

“Not if Mama has anything to say about it. I'd bet anything that Doris knows Henry saw something. Ironically, no matter how much she wants Rhonda back, she can't bring herself to involve Henry. One child lost, one child left. She won't do anything to jeopardize that. The guilt we're seeing all over her face has more to do with her withholding Henry from us than with her being on that dinner train.”

“Then why did you let me leave?”

“Because she needed to see us out here in a discussion. She needs to lose some of that protective confidence before we stand a chance with her. Henry can help Rhonda. The mother in Doris knows that. But she waited too long to tell us, she vented too much anger on us to come creeping back. But now that anger has turned inward. She has dug herself a hole.

“I can offer her a way out,” she continued, “but it will only take if she accepts responsibility for her past actions. Oddly, the way I get her there is fear. Her imagination can make this worse than we will. We need to let that stew.”

Boldt rocked his wrist as if checking his watch. “Yeah? Well, if she won't talk, I'll hold her in contempt for obstruction of justice and drag her downtown.” He started walking toward the house, the task force book still in hand.

“Since when did you become cop, judge and juror?” Daphne asked, requiring a half run to keep up with him.

“Shit happens,” he said on the fly.

She stopped abruptly as if slapped, and then hurried to catch back up to him. “Since when do you swear?”

“Same answer.” He reached the front door and knocked more loudly than necessary.

“Lou,” she said, grabbing his upper arm forcibly, “I'm serious. This isn't you.”

“So am I. Yes it is. This is me, the new me. Take it or leave it.”