The Pied Piper (7 page)

She stood at an angle facing the Shotz residence, down the street. He could sense her searching her memory.

He asked, “Can you remember standing here?” She gave him a faint nod. “Can you glance over the shoulder of those people and see the street beyond?”

“I've never done anything like this.”

“That's okay,” he coached. “Are my hands bothering you?”

“No, not at all.”

“You can close your eyes. It helps sometimes.”

He leaned around her to steal a peek; her eyes were pinched tightly shut.

“The house was all lit up over there. I remember that.”

Remember more
, he silently encouraged. The baby sitter had confirmed the lights. She had turned on as many as she could find. She hadn't remembered much else: a man wearing goggles at the back door—an exterminator.

Daech pointed, “An old-model Wagoneer, a white minivan, a black STS, my Hummer, an ancient pickup, kinda blue-gray. Driveway. Blue Toyota Camry. The STS and the Camry were mine—the open house.”

“You know your rides,” he said, somewhat disbelieving. They could check her recollections against vehicles owned by the residents of the other houses.

“Honestly? Listen, this may sound crude, sweetheart, but you are what you drive. When I see someone pull up to an open house, first thing I do is look at the car. You can judge one hell of a lot by that.” She added, “A couple getting out of a foreign car? That's got good strong legs for me. I pay attention. The STS fits that: Cadillac, you know. A guy, alone, climbing out of something American and a couple years old: probably just killing time. Free glass of wine and someone to talk to. I get a lot of that. Maybe he's got enough for the down, but I'm not betting on it. If it's during a weekday, and it's a woman, maybe a young kid or two in tow, a Volvo, an Audi, out-of-state plates, I'm thinking the wife is out shopping for a home while the hubby's at the office.”

“You check the tags?”

“I'm telling you, out-of-state plates means they're in a hurry—they're looking to buy. Usually a little less concerned about price, more concerned about contents. Kitchen, if it's a woman. Men are interested in the living room and the master bedroom. Women think about closets and tubs.”

The pickup truck or the minivan made sense to him for a person posing as an exterminator. “A minivan or a panel van?” LaMoia asked, trying to keep excitement out of his voice. The woman clearly studied her clients and applied her own skewed science to what she observed. She was a good witness—someone a jury would find believable. He couldn't help but jump ahead. Hope was a detective's only fuel.

“White minivan. A mommy-mobile. You know. Pretty new. Might have been something printed on the driver's door.”

“What? A name? A business?” LaMoia encouraged.

“Listen, I'm not sure about any of this.”

“Parked where?” He didn't want to lose her.

“Just down the street there.” She pointed again, though this time hesitantly. “Maybe two cars ahead of where you're parked. I was just about where you are.”

“But not in front of the house, the Shotz house,” he clarified.

She grimaced. “Pretty damn close. Parking wasn't easy last night. A lot easier this time of day.”

LaMoia took notes. “The driver?”

“Was the driver the kidnapper?” she blurted out quickly. “I don't know about any of this.”

He removed his hands from her shoulders. “Take your time.”

She turned around and faced him. “Maybe it wasn't last night. Hell, I see a lot of cars, you know?”

“The driver. You were watching to see who got out,” he reminded.

“A worker bee. I wasn't interested.”

“Worker bee?”

“Overalls. Coveralls. You know? A worker bee. He wasn't there for me. I tuned him out.”

LaMoia asked her. “Can you describe him?”

“I tuned him out,” she repeated, seeming confused whether to answer or not. “I don't know,” she said, searching his face for the right answer. “Maybe that wasn't last night.” A quick retreat. LaMoia had seen it dozens of times, almost always in the suburbs. People tended to be excited at first by the idea of having witnessed a crime; they felt important, listened to, wanted. Then it slowly dawned on them that, like jury duty, police involvement meant a commitment of time and energy.

LaMoia decided to try an end run, to play on her apparent tendency to make a show of herself. “Listen, if it's the publicity you're worried about: the TV, the papers—they're likely to swarm a possible witness—there are precautions we can take. We can keep you off the front page.” He left it hanging there as a carrot.

Her face brightened. Her finger wormed that curl of hair again. “No, no … it isn't
that
.”

“You sounded as if you weren't sure about the minivan.”

“Oh, no,” she corrected. “I'm pretty damn sure about that minivan, Detective.”

“And the driver?”

“Just a worker bee in overalls.”

“Overalls,” LaMoia repeated, jotting it down. “Color? Description?”

Shaking her head, she confessed, “I don't know. He pulled up over there, and I was thinking housewife until he climbed out. Then I was thinking what did I care because he was a worker bee, and no worker bee is going to pay over two for a home. Not in my experience. One-eighty's the ceiling in that market and I don't even list that stuff. The only people I'm interested in at an open house are the ones with that glint in their eyes. You know. Someone shopping? Someone in a buying mood?” She looked at LaMoia. “You were shopping when I saw you. But it wasn't for a house, am I right? I understand that now. But at the time, I saw that car all buffed out like that, the boots, that hunger in your eyes, and I thought I had a live one.”

“The minivan? Windows, or a panel truck?” He thought of little Rhonda Shotz in the back of that minivan, and felt sick.

“Windows?” she winced. She wasn't sure. “Listen, it was white. Windows? No clue about the windows.” Looking around nervously she said, “Tell me about the TV people. Who do we contact about that?”

Since the birth of her son Hayes, six months earlier, Trish Weinstein had felt out of synch, as if a week or a month had been stolen from her and she had never made up that loss. At twenty-seven she was feeling tired and old. Her body had not come back the way she had hoped; her stomach still looked like a five-day-old balloon; she still couldn't get into her favorite jeans—the standard by which she measured her progress. Life as a mother was not what she'd expected, not always the maternally blissful state of joy everyone made it out to be.

Thursdays were her haven, a day she eagerly anticipated all week.

On these days, her mother-in-law, Phyllis Weinstein, arrived right on time, shortly after lunch. Same schedule every week.

“Hello, dearie,” Phyllis called out in that slightly condescending tone of hers, letting herself in through the back door without knocking first. Overbearing and protective of her son, Phyllis Weinstein seemed to view Trish as little more than a baby factory for furthering the diluted family line. As a gentile, Trish was never going to win the woman's full affections; she felt tolerated—in the worst way—but her son Hayes had gained her some unexpected points.

“Hi, Phyllis,” Trish responded belatedly, a bit wearily.

“Where's my little Hayes?” Phyllis asked, pushing past her daughter-in-law without any further attempts at niceties. She moved about the small house, Trish following. The woman just couldn't stand still, stop talking or avoid mentioning bowel movements.

“Just waking up,” Trish explained. No matter her own relationship with Phyllis, it was good for all to have a grandmother around.

In a voice that grated like bad brakes, Phyllis admonished, “Don't forget some shower scrub, will you? Sidney says the shower is growing into a rain forest.”

Phyllis then turned in time to watch Trish blush scarlet at the idea that her husband was reporting her housecleaning abilities to his mother.

“It's the climate,” Trish explained with the knowingness of a transplanted Californian. “Hang out a fresh towel, it's damp by evening.”

“Which, though it's bad for a lot of things, is good for the skin. You know, Trish, you could use a little moisturizer around the eyes.” She winked. A little harder and the entire fake lash would have fallen off.

Trish reminded, “I'm at the gym 'til two, then the market.”

“Same as always,” the older woman said. “I'm not stupid, you know.”

“Home at three,” she reminded, heading to the back door, glad to be out of there.

Throughout the crunches, the leg lifts, the treadmill, the Northwest News Station carried updates on the Pied Piper kidnapping. A blonde—it had to be dyed—realtor was said to be a possible eyewitness that police and FBI were questioning. An adorable picture of the missing child was repeatedly shown and an 800 number superimposed on the screen. Trish felt God-awful for the poor parents. The TV reporter said something about thirty thousand children going missing each year, though most were over six years old. But for Trish and the rest of Seattle, it was only one child that mattered right now, and that was Rhonda Shotz.

She didn't know what she would do if she ever lost Hayes. The kidnapper had overcome some teenage baby sitter. Thank God for Phyllis, she thought, in a rare moment of appreciation. She pitied the man who crossed Phyllis.

On Friday morning, March 13, two days after the Shotz kidnapping, Boldt pulled a chair into his former office cubicle, now occupied by LaMoia. “A lesson,” he said, opening a file. “Flemming's people loaned us a look at their report on the AFIDs found at the various crime scenes.”

“Stolen,” LaMoia guessed.

“But of course,” Boldt answered. “An entire shipment of the replacement cartridges for the air TASER went missing when an eighteen-wheeler was hijacked west of Chicago two years ago. Until the first child was kidnapped in San Diego, the FBI had lost track of it. The ATF had not. Three dozen of the cartridges were bought out of Las Vegas seven months ago using a counterfeit card—”