Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

He struggled up the stairs, one heavy foot after another, his gun hanging lifelessly at his side, walked into the living room to the front door and trained the gun at Crowley’s head. “Where’s my daughter?” he asked, his voice breaking, his eyes stinging.

Crowley cowered under the threat of the gun.

“Boldt,” he said dryly. “I’m Boldt. Sarah’s my daughter.” He glanced up into the room, the gun still aimed at the man’s head. “She sat in that chair,” he said, “while your wife shot the video.”

“We can make a deal,” Crowley offered. “A trade,” he proposed.

“A trade?” Flemming shouted in a bloodcurdling tirade.

“My wife … Our freedom for the girls.”

“Your wife?” Flemming bellowed. “I’ll give you a fucking trade.” He let go of her hair, stepped in close to his hostage, trained the gun at her head and pulled the trigger. Lisa Crowley slumped back and fell into the grass.

“Nooo!” Crowley shouted, raising up onto his arms and met there by Flemming’s weapon. His body shook as he wept, bawling on the floor.

It wasn’t enough for Boldt, to see this man grovel. He squeezed the trigger, putting a round into the floor inches from the man’s head. “Where … is … my … daughter?”

Flemming occupied the entire door, a gargantuan, his weapon aimed directly at Crowley’s head. “You want a trade? Your life for our daughters. But time’s up, fella.” He hesitated. “You got a god, you better say good-bye-or hello-whichever it is.”

“A home!” Crowley shouted. “Jesus Christ, you killed her!”

“Home?” Boldt and Flemming said nearly in unison.

Flemming added, “Say good night, motherfucker.” He stepped closer to the downed man.

“Yours,” he said to Flemming, “is in San Diego!” he sniveled. “A home for abandoned children.” He met eyes with Boldt. “Yours is in Seattle. Capitol Hill. Homeless children. We put them into the system- your system. We knew you’d never look.”

Boldt raised the gun to where the bead settled on the man’s right ear. His weak arm began trembling, the bead dancing across the man’s head-temple, ear, cranium. Sarah had been available to him all along, a few blocks from Public Safety. The Crowleys had used the very system that had refused them an adoption.

“You had better kill me too,” Crowley said to Flemming, suddenly much calmer, “because so help me God, I’ll testify you did that in cold blood.”

Boldt laughed aloud and Flemming followed, the two men with their guns still aimed at the Pied Piper’s head. They laughed and suddenly sobered nearly at the same moment.

“You stupid shit,” Flemming said to the man. “I’m a cop,” he looked up at Boldt, “I’m not allowed to go around killing people, much as I’d like to sometimes.”

Crowley’s face contorted.

“I stunned her-left-handed, I might add. Aimed the piece clear of her head. She’ll be awake in twenty minutes.”

Crowley muttered, finally making sense of it. “You conned me?”

“Takes one to know one,” Lou Boldt said.

Daphne circled the interrogation table in Room A-the Box-like a hawk after a snake. Boldt had brokered a deal with Hale, who won Chevalier’s arrest in New Orleans as an FBI collar in return for his silence concerning his overnight in an airport drunk tank.

With Chevalier under federal lockup, Crowley had been appointed a little pencil of an attorney, a man who looked about eighteen years old, a man who did not know how to handle a woman like Daphne, intimidated by both her looks and her powerful sense of control. Crowley dismissed him, electing to take Daphne on alone. He chose to do this in front of her, to make a statement about control. She continued to circle, changing strategies, attempting to find a jumping-off point. She lived for such moments.

Her concentration ever intense, she nonetheless found herself required to push away thought of Owen Adler’s invitation to dinner in the Georgian Room at the Four Seasons Olympic. He had said it was a celebration dinner, but she intuitively expected more. The Presidential Suite perhaps. A ring on her left hand-the same ring she had returned to him a year earlier. Her life moved in arcs, and she felt certain that arc was to rejoin her with Owen. But not now , she willed, finding her way back to the dismal room and the sad excuse of a man handcuffed at the table.

“If you are pacing out of nerves,” Crowley said calmly, “pray continue. When you feel up to it, we’ll have ourselves a talk. If you are trying to make a statement-you’re free to move around, I have my ankles shackled-save it. Been there, done that. I know where I’m going, do you? You’re good-looking but you’re single. You have a body and a face that men fall for, but something keeps you out of serious relationships, and I bet that something is you. You are your own worst enemy, aren’t you? They are never good enough for you, are they? Never quite live up to dear old dad, do they? Afraid to take them home, are we?”

She should have expected this from a con artist of his accomplishments-he could see into his marks and knew which nerve to strike without second thought; it was an instinct with him. She had prepared herself for a kidnapper, not the man Crowley turned out to be. She chastised herself for this. She wanted a confession; she didn’t want the trial left only to evidence, some of which had been compromised through the behavior of the Gang of Five.

She said, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin was caught. You knew in advance that you and your wife would be caught if you continued. You could have stopped, but you didn’t. That fascinates me.”

“Of course I fascinate you. You’re what, the staff shrink? Not a detective, are we? You don’t have the attitude, you see? You’re curious. The detectives think they know it all. Of course I’m fascinating to you. We both make our living by looking inside people. Hmm? The only difference is that I see what’s really there. You? You’re a phony.”

She grinned at him, though it didn’t come naturally. She guessed at people’s secrets; this man seemed to know them in advance. He made no reference to the kidnappings or his crimes, steering the topic back to Daphne. She wanted that confession. “You put Lieutenant Boldt’s child into a home. What made you think that would work?”

“I see you more as a mistress, someone’s mistress. It leaves the door open, doesn’t it? Always open, easy to walk out. Get your jollies-you’re a hell of a ride, aren’t you? — but sleep in your own bed, thank you very much.”

The attack struck home, and Daphne’s only defense was an immediate rebuttal-focus his attention away from her. She had played the role of mistress with Owen Adler; she owed him more than that. She countered, “I think I would pose as a social worker. Your wife too; a team is more effective, more believable. I deliver little Sarah to the institution saying that her parents are dead, a cop and his wife-what? a car accident? — that the child hasn’t been told yet, that I’m looking for closest living relatives. I need her taken care of for a week or two, maybe a month or more. Something like that. If the child is capable of communicating her surname or that her father is a cop or an FBI agent, her comments will not draw reactions from her keepers because they know she hasn’t been told about her parents-that’s the key to the deception I would think: the child is still in the dark about all this. They will placate her, patronize her, but ultimately she’s a victim of the system, which was just what you wanted. She’ll be looked after, treated well, and in the case of Bowler in Portland, and who knows how many others like him, when all is said and done, once you’ve packed your bags, you can return as the same pair of social workers, pick up the child and deliver him or her back to the parents. Nice and clean. How am I doing?” She saw perfectly well that she had guessed accurately. Crowley’s complexion went the milky white of the acoustical tiles overhead.