Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

But Lou Boldt remembered. In the darkness of a room without lights, a haunting tenor wailing from the stereo, he sat in the corner blinded by a consuming guilt that would not pass. He picked up the phone and called LaMoia to his house.

Thirty minutes later the reinstated sergeant stood in Boldt’s music room, not a wrinkle in his jeans, not a dull spot on his steel gray ostrich boots.

“You rang?” LaMoia said. He had regained some of the weight the suspension had cost him. He looked good. Nothing new there. “You hear the engagement is back on?”

“I heard.”

“Surprised?”

“Happy for her.”

“Will we lose her?” LaMoia asked, genuinely concerned-he, the man who often battled with her.

“It’s possible. But not forever. She can’t leave this forever. It’s in her, same as you and me.”

“The Anderson case is still not cleared,” LaMoia reminded. “We can’t get a confession out of him.”

“Crowley didn’t do Anderson,” Boldt informed him, “Flemming did.”

LaMoia stood perfectly still. “Jesus.”

“Crowley spotted Anderson while out on that run. He got a message to Flemming telling him Anderson was taking pictures, that something had to be done. Flemming knew that for his daughter’s sake Anderson had to be shut up. Flemming used his FBI ID to get him through the front door-I’ve got to admit that fooled me, threw me off. I thought it had to be someone who knew Anderson or had a relationship with him. He claims he went there to convince Anderson that he had it all wrong, arrest him if necessary, but that Anderson knew he was onto the Pied Piper, and that he got arrogant about it. Things went bad. Anderson’s neck ended up snapped. Flemming covered himself.”

“And he just walks?”

“It’s your investigation. Yours and Gaynes’s. You have any evidence linking Flemming to that kill? You want to prosecute it?”

“You’ve changed, Sarge.”

“Yes. I’m a lieutenant now,” Boldt said. But he was a father most of all, and he knew what Flemming had endured for those six months. The man had announced his retirement. He would go into security work somewhere, ride out the next fifteen years being bored behind a desk. How much more did society require of him?

Boldt rose out of the chair and switched some buttons on the stereo. He pushed PLAY on his cassette deck. A series of familiar tones filled the room, not quite music.

“Know what that is?” Boldt asked his former detective.

“Telephone tones.”

“Move to the front of the class.”

“So what?” LaMoia asked.

“Umm,” Boldt muttered. Guilt was a difficult cross to bear, but more difficult to break. “I needed you,” he explained. Or he thought he did. “I trusted you. I needed you.”

“You need a Valium is what you need. Word is, you’re coming back to the shop next week.”

“Tech Services wiretapped every member of the task force-their phones-for me. I ordered it.”

“When?”

“After Sarah.” He hesitated. “But before your suspension.”

Boldt rewound and replayed the telephone tones-a long string of tones with a few, equally long pauses. “It took me forever to figure out the code. I broke it when I realized the first numbers were your pager. Tech Services, actually. They’re the ones that filled in that blank.”

“You tapped Hill’s line?” LaMoia barked in astonishment, not listening clearly. “You tapped a fucking captain’s phone line?” A touch of reverence. He glanced around, embarrassed by the loose tongue. “You’re outta your gourd,” he whispered. Then the realization Boldt had awaited finally cascaded over LaMoia’s face as he added the information together. His brow tightened and his mustache and mouth sagged into concern.

“You?” the sergeant asked, incredulous.

“She told me that she was going to assign you the accident in Boise.”

“You?” Outright astonishment.

“I couldn’t allow that. I needed to short-circuit Flemming’s plan to steal the task force and preserve you for my team. For New Orleans. For Sarah.”

“You bastard.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Silence hung between them, and with it, Boldt feared their friendship as well. LaMoia’s record would forever be blemished; it was an unspoken rule that a suspension, even though cleared by review, affected an officer’s rate of advancement forever.

Miles cried out LaMoia’s name from the other room-a child’s shrill peal of pure pleasure. A moment later, Sarah’s tiny voice echoed the same delight.

John LaMoia grinned, lifted his head, shut his eyes and drank in the sounds like sweet perfume. “You bastard,” he said, offering Boldt his back and hurrying into the room to play with the kids.