The Pied Piper (4 page)

LaMoia watched him go and said with admiration, “You knew he'd take the bait, knew he hadn't read the briefings.”

“Mulwright is Special Ops—translated, he's a thrill seeker and likes working from the seat of his pants. He needs credibility to shore up support after this drinking thing. He stays around here, he looks bad. He goes off on surveillance, he's on familiar ground.”

“You hosed him.”

Pocketing Mulwright's discarded cigarette butt, Boldt said, “I offered him what he wanted: a dignified way out. The meet and greet with the parents is important; he wants to feel important. Daphne plays those head games every day. Maybe she's rubbing off on me.”

“I wouldn't mind if she rubbed off on me,” LaMoia said.

“Spare me.”

Daphne Matthews, the department's resident psychologist, was good-looking to a fault. As an interrogation team, few were better than Boldt and Matthews.

LaMoia and Boldt stood just inside the kitchen door studying the litter of the discarded gauze left behind by the medics and the unusual red confetti sprinkled across the floor. LaMoia snapped his gloves in place.

“What's with the red shit?” LaMoia asked.

“AFIDs,” Boldt answered.

“An air TASER, not a stun gun?” Air TASERs fired a projectile carrying a pair of probes that delivered the device's electrical charge via thin wires—a stun stick capable of being fired from a distance. When the projectile cartridge fired, the weapon released confettilike ID tags called AFIDs. “First I've heard of it.”

“We can assume it's Need to Know,” Boldt suggested. In repeat offenses, law enforcement never revealed every piece of evidence, so as to separate out copycat crimes. Near the litter was a tangle of thin wire and the probes.

“Yeah? Well, I Need to Know if I'm going to make the call that it's task force jurisdiction.”

“Flemming knows more about these kidnappings than we do. He's got ten children and six months on us. If their guys beat us to the evidence, if Flemming takes control, it won't be the worst thing.”

“Tell that to Hill,” LaMoia said.

“Thankfully, I don't have to. That's your job.”

“That's what I'm saying.” LaMoia added, “And don't forget: You end up with Shoswitz's desk and you'll be reporting to her as well.”

“One day at a time,” Boldt said.

To invoke task force jurisdiction was to invite national attention, internal power struggles and regular four o'clock meetings with the Feds. It was all laid out. Mulwright, by showing up, had already made the call.

LaMoia sketched the kitchen indicating the litter and the AFIDs. “She meets him at the back door, makes it about five steps and he zaps her.”

Boldt said nothing. He orbited the spot where the girl had fallen.

LaMoia wrote meaning into Boldt's silence. He studied the blue tape outline and reconsidered his opinion. “Of course it depends if he fried her from the back or the front.”

“Yes, it does.”

“If from the back, yeah: She makes it a couple steps and goes down. But if he's over here when he hits her—” he said, moving across the room.

Boldt finished for him. “She may have let him inside without panicking.”

“The girl gets the door shut, guy takes a minute to make sure they're alone, and then he zaps her. She goes down.”

Boldt stood to the side allowing his former detective to think it through.

LaMoia continued, “The doer starts his search for the infant—providing he doesn't already know which room.” He looked to Boldt for support. “You're doing a pretty good imitation of Marcel Marceau over there.”

“You don't need me for this, John. I tried to tell you that.”

“So you came along to humor me.”

“No, to compare what I've read in the briefing papers with what I might see at the actual scene. Analysis, comparison. What the Bureau has or hasn't included in their briefing material not only tells me about the suspect, but about what the Bureau wants us to know, how a guy like Flemming operates.” He added, “Where's the little boy all this time?”

“Glued to a TV?”

“Maybe,” Boldt allowed.

“Hiding in the corner?”

“More likely.”

They moved as a pair through the house slowly and carefully as they had at dozens of other crime scenes. “Thing about a death investigation,” LaMoia said, “it's over and done with. I mean, there's urgency, sure. But not like this. Nine kids.”

“Ten now,” Boldt corrected.

“Where the hell is SID?” LaMoia moaned.

They walked single file through the living room, checked the first bedroom for a crib, but found it in the second.

Approaching the crib, Boldt remaining in the doorway, LaMoia felt a crunch under his shoe. “Hold it!” he exclaimed, stepping back and away, fearing he had destroyed possible evidence. He dug into the carpet, his gloved fingers moving through the nap slowly and carefully, and came up with a piece of thick glass the size of a small pearl. He held it up toward the ceiling light so that Boldt could see it as well. “Thick. Square cut. Bluish tint maybe.”

“How thick?”

“Lead crystal maybe, or one of those Mexican drinking glasses—the blue ones. It's not window glass, not kitchenware.” He elected to bag it, which he did—marking the glassine bag with the date and location found—but wondered if he would have done so without Boldt looking over his shoulder. “Probably nothing,” he said. “Parents will know if it belongs.” He realized he worked a crime scene differently with Boldt in the room and wondered silently if that was why he had wanted so badly for the man to accompany him. “You coming in?” he asked.

“Better if I don't. Keep traffic down until Bernie arrives.”

LaMoia pocketed the glass and leaned over the crib, catching sight of an object lying where little Rhonda Shotz should have been. He felt an ache in the center of this chest beneath his ribs. “Sarge?”

“The yellow smudge?” Boldt asked. “I can see it from here—about
knee height
. We'll want Bernie to sample it for the lab.”

“No, in the crib,” LaMoia said, leaning back and seeing the smudge of a fine yellow powder on the crib's frame. “It's a penny flute I think. One of those dime-store-variety penny flutes.”

“Well, at least that explains how they named him,” Boldt said. “Another convenient detail the Feds neglected to share.”

“A fucking calling card? We wouldn't have shared it either, John.” He added, “You know, just because Hill feels competition with the Bureau—”

“Doesn't mean I have to,” LaMoia completed. “I know that. It gets a little contagious though.”

“Daphne can help you with the penny flute. His leaving a calling card presents an entirely different profile. Baiting. Taunting. It helps explain some of Flemming's reticence to share: the AFIDs and the penny flute. If they're this guy's signatures, they're certainly the angles he's working.”

“I'd wondered how they came up with that handle,” LaMoia said, again referring to the FBI's nickname. His job to make the call, LaMoia spoke the words that would set into motion one of the highest profile cases in the city's history, involving three states and nine missing babies. Ten, LaMoia corrected himself, staring back into the crib. The words came out of his throat stubbornly. “It's the Pied Piper,” he said.

“If I'm not mistaken,” Boldt advised, “we have visitors.”

Captain Sheila Hill's yelling at the media filtered through the walls. LaMoia confirmed her presence through the window.

Over the long haul, police work typically hardened many of its women—language toughened, even a woman's walk became more angular, less gracious. But Sheila Hill was the exception. At forty-two she looked thirty-five. She wore her blonde hair shoulder length, and today wore a navy blue sport jacket, khaki shirt and a pair of brown corduroy pants. Her Italian loafers gleamed.

Divorced with an eight-year-old son named Tommy, Sheila Hill still managed to work twelve-hour days, six, sometimes seven, days a week. No one on the force, including LaMoia, expected her to stop at captain.

She carried a knowing self-importance in her posture, transforming her five feet six inches into a much taller figure. Her voice, strident and defiant, carried through the walls as she addressed the press. “We have confirmed an apparent kidnapping, a missing infant by the name of Rhonda Shotz. The relation of this crime to the nine earlier kidnappings in California and Oregon, currently being investigated by the FBI, is
not known at this time
, so please spare me any such questions; you're wasting your breath. You can help the parents of this girl, and all of us in law enforcement, by getting an image or a description of that child in front of the public just as quickly as possible. We should have an image for you shortly. Beyond that, it's far too early to comment. Please, allow us the room to do our jobs efficiently, and I promise you a full press conference in the next six to nine hours. That's all, people. Thank you.”

She walked away from the shouting as if unable to hear it, sensuous and fluid, right toward LaMoia.

“Sergeant.” She looked LaMoia up and down.

“Captain.” He locked eyes with her.

“Lou,” she addressed Boldt, while continuing to look at LaMoia.

“I asked the lieutenant to join me, Captain.”

“We paged you,” Hill reminded Boldt, as if it had been her idea, not LaMoia's, to include Boldt. Ever the politician.

“I was on private time,” he explained. One of the luxuries of Intelligence was its lack of being on-call. “John chased me down.”

“I see,” she said, weighing Boldt's presence. As long as Boldt was around, LaMoia would listen to him, regardless of assignments, and Hill wanted full control. “You heard me just now,” she said. “How much of what I just told that horde is bullshit?”

LaMoia knew that Boldt would leave it to him to answer. “The Bureau withheld a couple signatures. From all of us,” he added.

She glanced at Boldt—Intelligence was expected to know everything about anything, even FBI investigations. “We can assume they've withheld some of those crime scene reports to protect the Need to Know. Not all of them,” he cautioned, “but some of them.” He reminded, “We would have done the same.”

“If the FBI had asked?” she countered. “No, we wouldn't have. It's a one-way street, Lieutenant. We both know that.” She pursed her lips. LaMoia considered them full and luscious lips—kissable lips surprisingly void of any age lines.

“AFIDs,” LaMoia said. “An air TASER, not a stun stick.” He carried his own stun stick under the Camaro's front seat. “And a penny flute left behind in the crib.”

“He's leaving a calling card?” she exclaimed. “He's proud of these kidnappings? What kind of creature are we dealing with?”

“Matthews can help there,” Boldt contributed.

“One of those dime-store flutes,” LaMoia said.

Perplexed, Hill asked incredulously, “He
wants
us to connect these kidnappings? What the hell is that about?” She nodded, thinking to herself, her expression grim. “Shit,” she mumbled.

LaMoia explained, “We'll get the parents' permission to trap-and-trace the phone. Get Tech Services over here to put a tape recorder on the line. Until Flemming confirms the signatures we'll still hope it's not him and that there might be a ransom call.” The Pied Piper had yet to request a ransom. The suspicions ranged from a child molester to an illegal adoption ring.

Glancing at her watch, Hill said, “How long has he had?”

“Two-hour lead,” LaMoia answered.

“That's an eternity.” Her ice blue eyes flickered with worry.

LaMoia reminded, “Dispatch has already notified the airlines, rail and bus carriers. Canadian Immigration. Sheriff's Department. The ferries—”

“Two hours? Shit.” She filled her chest with a deep breath and exhaled slowly, shaking her head. “Shit.” She glanced around as if the press might be overhearing them. She ordered LaMoia, “Get in that house and find me a picture I can use. If we don't fax that image around, we haven't got a chance of saving this baby.”