The Pied Piper (35 page)

“We know she has a working knowledge of home computers and can read a computer manual. No big deal. I'm sorry it isn't better news.”

Boldt put his pen to work. The contrast of pen and paper to the media in front of him was inescapable.

She said, “I called you because I came across some interesting stuff early on.”

The image of Sarah moved on the screen. Her voice, amplified by surround-sound, screamed, “Daddy,” and Boldt felt his bowels loosen. “A couple of details that may be relevant. It's true that video imaging on PCs has made leaps and bounds in the last few years. The home market software is good, but not up to the capabilities of the commercial players. What we have here is strictly home market—an off-the-shelf package. The result is a fairly low-resolution image. In order to give it a palatable look, you need to box the video in a pretty small screen.”

Boldt felt a spring of tension in his neck. He couldn't lose her earlier reference to a woman. Millie Wiggins, who ran Sarah's day care, had mentioned a pair of uniformed cops, a man and a
woman
. This was a possible confirmation. He kept his mouth shut, Russo had her own way of doing things.

“The point being that I can size the screen however I like. Larger is typically less resolution, though as it happens,” she grinned, “my equipment is a little better than average.” She dragged the corner of the viewing box that contained Sarah's image so that it enlarged on her screen. “I use a res-enhancement program that we created ourselves.”

The images enlarged. Russo replayed the video several times. “Do you see it?”

Boldt saw only his little girl. Try as he might to pull his eyes away from her, it was impossible. “Tell me.”

“Here,” she indicated with the computer's small white arrow. As the image replayed, Boldt forced himself to focus away from Sarah and onto the room's window, where Russo pointed. “In the smaller format, at regular speed, all we picked up was a slight change of color. But res-enhanced and enlarged it's actually a blurred image. If we slow down the playback,” she said, working her magic, “we get an altogether different look at it.”

The video advanced slowly like a replay in a sporting event. During the first playback, Boldt, once again, could not take his eyes off his daughter: Her head swiveled in tight jerky motions; the whites of her eyes showed. For the second playback he focused on the window behind and to his daughter's right. A stream of purple bled from right to left. She glanced at him, testing him, then replayed the image for a third time. She advised, “Try squinting your eyes.” Boldt still could not make it out.

“Traffic of some sort,” Boldt guessed.

“Let me slow it some more.”

The images advanced in a series of a freeze-frames. Tiny moments of time strung together like beads on a necklace. “Orange and blue.”

“Warmer,” she said. “Let me isolate it.” She dramatically enlarged just the window, creating an abstract maze of colorful dots. “This takes some creative vision, mind you,” she warned. “This is a different kind of detective work.”

Boldt watched it several times. “If I let my imagination go, I'm not sure what that is. But logic says it's a window, and movement behind a window implies a road, and color on a road suggests a truck.”

“Exactly.”

“But I'm not actually
seeing
the truck. Not per se.”

“I understand. You're doing great. Now watch the blue and the orange you pointed out. It's coming up.” She inched the video forward frame by frame. The colors froze and then blurred together. The blue formed the letter F. The orange framed an E.

Boldt saw it. “FedEx. It's a FedEx truck!”

She beamed at him and then fixed her attention on the computer and returned the image to its original contents, though still enlarged. “Yes. A FedEx truck. Good. That is part one. Watch closely please.” She enlarged an area behind and to Sarah's left that contained the room's television. “You were given a date stamp, as I'm sure you're aware of. To confirm her condition. Intentionally or not, she gave us a time stamp as well, by nature of the program. That anchor team goes on at 10:00
A.M.
our time. I'm a CNN junkie,” she said. “CNN Atlanta will be able to tell you the precise time—down to the fraction of a second.”

Boldt's tired brain began to assimilate the information. He found the excitement in her voice contagious. “The FedEx system is computerized,” he mumbled, knowing where she was headed. “The routes and the scheduling of every truck are a matter of record.” He cautioned her, and himself as well, “There are a couple of hundred trucks on the road on any given day. Granted, we may be able to approximate the location of those hundreds of trucks at the time of the video—and it's great stuff, don't get me wrong—but it's too much for us. We don't have that kind of manpower.” He was a department of one.

“That's true, if we're talking Seattle,” she said, baiting him. She advanced the image of the television to the last few frames before the video went dark. Reducing the size, the resolution tightened, and although tiny, the result was clear: A small blue band crept across the television screen from right to left. “Did you see it?” she tested. Boldt said yes.

“Bear with me.” She enlarged the area around the television set, behind and to Sarah's left. Then she enlarged the television itself. When the blue weather warning appeared on the bottom of the screen, she told him, “Local cable carriers have the authority to superimpose weather warnings, news bulletins or natural disasters. They shrink the satellite feed and insert their own moving band of text. I haven't had the time to do the legwork, but I guarantee you each and every cable system can tell you if they posted a weather bulletin on this particular date at this particular time. Given the limited number of cable companies left anymore, it's a matter of a half dozen phone calls or so.” Sensing his impatience, Russo said, “We're not finished. I've saved the best for last.”

“The woman,” Boldt guessed.

She smiled. “If you think you needed your imagination for the FedEx truck, you ain't seen nothing yet. I haven't had any time to work with this image, and I do have a few tricks still up my sleeve—some really nice high-speed res-enhancement engines and pixel predictors, some work we did for NASA—it's graphics software that uses AI, to make best-guess image correction on degraded data. I need more time to complete that work. But I want to show you what I've got, so far. Watch the little girl's legs,” she said, directing his attention to the lower section of the small video image. She replayed the video. Sarah's knees appeared, then her feet. Boldt knew those shoes. He had helped her into them that day. His throat tightened. Russo explained, “For whatever reason, the person running the camera zooms back on the image. Presumably, to show the girl's entire body, that she wasn't harmed in any way. The zoom continues to the end of segment. In the process, it gives us a look over here,” she said, pointing with a pink painted fingernail to the very edge of the frame. She played the video again, and light winked from where she had pointed. “Did you see that?”

“Yes.”

“If I enlarge it,” she said, quickly doing it, “and I separate it out, I get only this.” From top to bottom, it was nothing but a band of light, followed by a band of dark. It appeared slightly curved. “Now I warned you this requires imagination, and I do want to run some enhancement and see if we can clean it up, but …” She drew her short fingernail the length of the fuzzy image. “You see this tiny square of light right here? I think we're looking at something hanging on the wall, a painting maybe. A photograph.”

Boldt saw the square of light. “A mirror?” he asked.

“You
do
see.” She nodded. “Why not? Yes, the edge of a mirror, I think, and it's reflecting back at us. Okay? I know it's hard to see. But if it is a mirror, then what image is likely to be caught in it?” she asked rhetorically. “The camera person,” she answered. She indicated a bump, a curving shape that ran top to bottom. Boldt had focused on that same image but couldn't identify it. She hinted, “That shape moves in the mirror, winking light at us.” She waited for him to see it, but her impatience won out and she sat up straight, heaving out her chest, and saying simultaneously, “It's a silhouette of her chest.” Running her hand down her shirt and over her breast, she announced proudly, “This video was shot by a woman.”

There was no view from the hotel room window, only the gray concrete of an adjacent building separated by a narrow alley, home to a row of Dumpsters. Sheila Hill admitted him, using the door as a screen, so that when she shut it behind him, he turned to see her dressed in only a white lace bra and matching high-cut underwear, smooth and tight against her crotch. She maintained an indoor tan throughout winter.

He carried a plastic shopping bag about which she was immediately curious, but he held it high and away from her, not letting her have at it and forcing her to press herself against him to reach for it. As she did, he took her by the back of the head and planted a long hungry kiss across lips that held a little more red lipstick than usual. The lipstick smeared on their faces.

Physically hot to the touch, she had an appetite that penetrated through his clothes and aroused him; she enjoyed rubbing up against him—it was for her pleasure, not his—and used the excuse of the package to make contact.

“Let me see it,” she whined.

“All in due time, my pretty,” LaMoia replied. He kissed her again, drawing the breath out of her so that she cooed darkly. He loved the tease that existed between them. She thrilled him. Her fuse, once lit, was difficult to extinguish. She walked a fine line, once free of her clothing.

LaMoia dropped the bag and cupped her between the legs with his strong right hand, squeezing and lifting her off the floor to where she squealed with excitement. His tongue slipped wetly into her bra. Her breathing slow and heavy, she squinted at him playfully.

He carried her across the room this way, like a puppet held awkwardly, his teeth nibbling at her breast. He threw her onto the bed.

“Hurry,” she ordered him, slapping her knees together.

“Touch yourself,” he told her.

She viewed him curiously, actually blushing. “What?”

“Did I tell you that someone got inside my desk?” he asked her.

“We're
not
talking business. Not now, anyway.”

“Then touch yourself.” He paused and informed her, “I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure that whoever it was got a look at my files—my copy of the task force book.”

She slipped her hand down her underwear and blushed again. Seeing Sheila Hill blush was worth the price of admission. She giggled nervously and slipped out of her underwear.

He said, “Show me what you do when you're alone and the shades are pulled.”

A fine sheen of perspiration shined on her skin, so that she glowed golden as if dipped in wet paint. A moment later she lay naked on the bedspread.

“I like to watch you undress,” she said.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Mmmm,” she hummed, her eyes fluctuating between tightly closed and straining for a glimpse of him pulling down his pants.

“Good?” he asked.

“Come over here,” she said, her voice breaking again.

He tore open the bag and the box that was in it. “Don't stop,” he said, banging around the end table to the side of the bed. He found the electrical outlet, plugged in the cord and turned the device to high. “For you,” he said, switching it on.

She accepted the device and put it to use. Her face knotted in pleasure. She held her breath for a long time and then cried loudly into the room.

With LaMoia inside her, she bit his shoulder to bleeding.