Boldt - 05 - Pied Piper, page 18
But now at the hospital room door, tears were stealing his vision for the umpteenth time, because nothing was in control. In one moment his life had become a runaway train. Nurses passing by took him as a grieving husband. Here on the C ward beds emptied quickly and forever; images like the one of Boldt weeping at his wife’s door were not at all uncommon.
Despite his rehearsal on the way over, what did he hope to say to her? How would he explain the loss of their child? What effect might it have on her health? Could he live with the responsibility of knocking her out of remission and back into the hell of her disease?
Racked by ill conscience, he allowed himself the lie that he might recover Sarah in a matter of a day or two. He had every key player in the task force under wire surveillance. He had Kay Kalidja working on the victims’ financials. He had Millie Wiggins’ statement from the day care center about calling 911 and being put through to Boldt: an impossibility that required further investigation. Leads, the cop in him convinced the father and husband. Somewhere, something would break. And when it did, Sarah would be home again, the incident in past tense, an acceptable scenario.
“Lou?” her voice called out from the other side of the door. “Honey?”
Had she recognized the sound of her husband’s tears or had her uncanny prescience of late detected his presence there?
He stepped back and away and into the center of the hall, afraid.
“Honey?” he heard her voice again.
He turned and walked as fast as his feet would carry him, tempted toward an all-out run. He might have been paged; he might have been called or summoned back to the office. It happened all the time. What of it? A dozen excuses hung there in the offering, awaiting him, memorized from decades of use. But useless because he knew the truth.
“Lies,” his own voice echoed in his head. A voice unfamiliar to him. A voice he was learning to live with.
Once begun, there was no turning back. The infection was rampant. Of the two of them, Liz was no longer the terminally ill, he was.
CHAPTER
Daphne approached the regular four o’clock agonized over her assignment. Hill had requested a snapshot evaluation of every member of the task force—all of whom would be in attendance. Hill had offered no explanation for the unusual request, leaving Daphne anxious.
Hill had her own grand entrance planned for a few minutes into the meeting. She wanted Daphne’s attention paid to this moment. “Reactions and attitude changes,” she had explained. Sheila Hill remained a nut Daphne found hard to crack.
More photographs had been added to the situation room’s walls. Death and abduction. Children’s faces everywhere.
In attendance were Mulwright, LaMoia, Hale, Flemming, Kalidja and herself. SID’s Lofgrin had delivered a report and was available as necessary. Boldt was two floors away.
Mulwright kicked things off by complaining to Flemming about the FBI lab’s failure to report back on the automotive glass found at several of the crime scenes. The lab had been asked to help ID the product number found on one of the pieces. SPD had heard nothing. Flemming defended the delay, citing recent political and media pressure that had adversely affected the FBI lab.
Daphne studied tone of voice, eye movement and body language of each and every participant. State of mind was more difficult.
The group worked well together when dealing with specifics. They anxiously awaited the analysis of the pollen, the lab work on the glass chips, and put great hope in the surveillance of the vacant houses. The proposed direction for the investigation segregated down departmental lines: SPD put faith in Anderson’s killing and a possible connection to the abductions; Flemming wanted little to do with Anderson, insisting that Kay Kalidja’s suggestion to pursue catalog and magazine subscriptions offered the greatest chance for a breakthrough.
Mulwright proposed concentrating all manpower on surveillance of families with infant children that lived within sight of the abandoned house Boldt had discovered. Flemming argued against this, citing manpower demands. He suggested they notify all parents in the area, reminding, “No child has been taken from a parent—only from baby sitters and relatives of the family.”
In the two weeks since the Shotz abduction, this was the first mention of this, and for Daphne it went to the psychology of the Pied Piper. She blurted out, “He doesn’t want the confrontation a parent would offer. He’s afraid of violence.” All heads turned to face her.
“My point is,” Flemming said, “that if a parent stays with that child there will be no kidnapping.”
Daphne said, “He’s punishing the parent for leaving the child in someone else’s care.” Silence overtook the room. She said, “He’s giving those children to parents desperate for their own; parents who care. Parents who won’t leave that child for anything.”
“Mumbo jumbo,” Hale quipped.
Flemming reprimanded his agent with a stern look. To the others he said, “The point is, if we alert the public now, we may save some children.”
Sheila Hill came through the door without knocking. She won the immediate attention of nearly every man in the room, drawn like moths to light. She wore a plain gray suit, white shirt and black flats. A simple silver necklace hung over her collarbone. Her lipstick was flesh-toned, her hair brushed smooth and held with a clip. Nothing showy. The SPD officers stood for her. The FBI followed reluctantly. In that instant, the mood changed. Authority walked through that door. Even Flemming seemed to understand this.
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.
All went well until he glanced over and spotted Doris Shotz keeping vigil in one of Homicide’s formed fiberglass chairs. Boldt stopped and stared, understanding this woman’s agony for the first time. Doris Shotz looked over at him, and Boldt felt her helplessness, her frustration and anger. They briefly met eyes.
“What is it?” she asked him from across the room, suddenly agitated, her hands worming in her lap. Her eyes dropped to the folders he was carrying, searching for answers.
Boldt shifted them to the opposing arm. As he did so, the strained voice of Lt. Peter Davidson said, “Inciting the natives?”
Davidson was an ex-football type with the chest and the attitude to prove it. His beer gut and spiderweb blood vessels spoke of his favorite pastime. “Don’t get her fired up,” he complained, “and don’t get her hopes up either. Just leave her alone.”
“She is alone,” Boldt said, understanding perfectly well. “That’s the problem.”
“What are you doing on this floor anyway?” He looked Boldt over, looked right at the files in Boldt’s hands. “Spying on us? Spying on your former squad?”
Boldt kept his arm to where it covered the tabs on the files. “Of course I am,” Boldt said sarcastically, tapping the files. “Spying on all of you.”
Davidson smiled. “Right. I thought so.”
Boldt headed directly to LaMoia’s desk, relieved to see Kreuter’s cubicle empty once again—some cops spent all their time between the coffee lounge and the men’s room. He returned both files to the drawer.
Finding his key proved more difficult. He looked where he expected it to be—beneath the desk—but didn’t see it. If LaMoia found his desk unlocked … that was unacceptable.
Boldt intentionally dropped his pen, toed it under the desk, and then kneeled to retrieve it. He didn’t see the key. He shoved aside the trash can, and there it was.
At the moment he retrieved the key, the door to Homicide buzzed and Boldt looked back to see a pair of ostrich cowboy boots approaching.
“While you’re at it, fella’, empty the trash,” LaMoia teased. “If you’re planting a bug, forget it. I’m onto you.”
With mention of the bug, Boldt bumped his head on the underside of the desk.
Boldt’s only chance to lock the desk was to put his body between LaMoia and the man’s desk. He backed out from under, stood and feigned a sudden loss of balance. Leaning onto the desk for support, he blindly attempted to fit the key into the lock, but couldn’t get it. He mumbled, “Stood a little too fast,” his fingers working furiously. The key slipped in the lock. He pocketed it.
“You okay?” a concerned LaMoia asked.
“Fine,” Boldt answered, wondering what kind of person deceived his closest friends. Wanting LaMoia’s thoughts elsewhere, he asked, “How’d the four o’clock go?” He felt so cheap. Desperate people take desperate measures, he recalled Daphne once saying.
