Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

“That would be invaluable.”

“Exactly.” She stubbed out the cigarette in a water glass.

He said, “We gotta do something for the mother-Doris Shotz. Counseling? I don’t know. She sits outside the fifth-floor door all day long. Barely moves. Just sits there.”

“We find her kid. The rest will take care of itself. We’re not in the baby sitting business. She shouldn’t be spending so much time with us. It doesn’t help anyone.”

“You’re a mother,” he reminded. “Where would you spend your time?”

She rolled onto her back and put her knees up. “You want to hear something strange?” she asked rhetorically. “That child went missing, and I had an incredible urge to have another baby. You’d think just the opposite, you know? But not me. I wanted a child.”

“I could arrange that,” he said.

“Oh no, you don’t. You keep those things on.”

“I mean a family, a child of our own.”

She didn’t say anything for a long, long time.

A nude in a Rubens oil, he thought. Round in all the right ways. She cast her hair off her face and behind her ear, exaggerating her graceful neck. “Spare me. Your reputation precedes you, pal.”

“People change.”

“People maybe, but not men,” she said. “Believe me, I have a divorce to prove it.” She said, “We shouldn’t be talking about kids. Not with Rhonda Shotz out there somewhere. Probably shouldn’t be here at all, although I work better when I’m relaxed. And you do relax me. You want the shower first?”

“No,” LaMoia said, edging closer to her. “I want something else first.” He ran his hand lightly from her ankle to her pubis and watched her hair stand on end under his touch.

“Oh, Jesus. I’m going to be late for my one-thirty.” She sighed.

“You want me to stop?” he asked, his fingers gently massaging her.

“What do you think?” she asked, separating her legs for him.

“I think you’re going to be late for your one-thirty,” he answered. He no longer cared about nights with her, another half hour would have to do.

“That’s absolutely perfect,” she said, leaning her head deeply back into the pillow with a warm smile of satisfaction curling her lips. “Absolutely perfect.” She arched her back higher and sighed.

Music to his ears.

Accustomed to his wife’s bald head and lack of eyebrows, Boldt decided she looked wise, like a Buddhist monk, not sick like a cancer patient. He hated the smell of hospitals.

“It’s early,” she said.

“Priorities.”

“Progress?”

The adjacent bed lay empty and made, its surrounding tables neat and cleared of anything personal. In a ward where people went missing for good, the void pulled at Boldt. Had Rhonda Shotz gone missing for good as well?

Distracted, Boldt answered, “Five days now. Precious little to go on. We’ve lost her for the time being. Worse, we know he’ll strike again in the next few days.”

“What’s he doing with them?”

He shrugged. “Speculation.”

“You’re in a sick business.”

“With sick people. LaMoia calls the kidnapped children thumb-suckers. One of the Feds, a guy named Hale, he calls them ‘milk cartons,’ because their pictures used to be on the sides.” He saw a dying mother, not a sick woman-this happened occasionally. “You don’t need to hear this.”

“You could use some sleep,” she said kindly.

He couldn’t take sympathy coming from her.

She needed the sleep, not him, the insomnia having come with the bed rest, the bed rest with the treatment, the treatment with the disease. She refused the pills. She gladly accepted his reading to her, if and when his schedule allowed, which depended on Marina’s schedule. Lately, everything depended on something. Nothing stood alone: Even the grandest of trees anchored itself in the earth.

“Did you see the kids at all today?” she asked in a tone that bordered on accusation.

He answered with silence, for he would never lie to her. He devoted every spare minute to his two children, but to a mother in a hospital room this would seem like too little.

She suggested, “Maybe if you drove them to day care instead of Marina.”

“I’ll bring them by to see you tomorrow night after dinner.” He drove them to day care three days a week. Argument had no place here. He and his wife had fallen deeply in love again. If only he might be given a second chance. …

“Can I read to you?” he asked.

“Please.”

He dug around on her cluttered end table looking for the Mahfouz novel she had been reading.

“Not there. Here.” She strained to her right, fingers searching. Her nightgown fell open and he saw the broad freckled skin of her back. Her ribs showed. He didn’t know that back. It belonged to a different woman.

He subscribed to the belief that two could solve their individual problems better than one person alone. He felt terrified by the thought he might lose her.

“Read this,” Liz said, handing him a leather-bound Bible that Boldt had never seen. Numbered metal tabs marked sections. “Start at seven. The text is marked in chalk.”

Sight of the Bible sent a shiver through him. Did she sense the end? Had she spoken with her doctor? Panic flooded through him.

“Anything you want to tell me?” he asked, his voice breaking, the Bible shaking slightly in his hands.

“Number seven,” she said. “It’s marked.”

He fumbled with the book. He had ridden this roller coaster for months; he wasn’t sure how much longer he could endure it.

He cleared his throat and read aloud, his voice warm and resonant. She loved his reading voice.

Liz closed her eyes and smiled.

Some things were worth the wait.

The Town Car stuck out, black and gleaming, showroom fresh. It was parked out front of Boldt’s home, beneath a street light, ostentatious and isolated, as if none of the other neighborhood cars, unwaxed and dull from a winter of rain, wanted to socialize with it. Boldt slowed the Chevy as he drove past, turned into his drive and pulled to a stop.

Gary Flemming sat at the kitchen table with Miles on his lap, speaking Spanish to Marina who was doing dishes. Sarah, in an outrigger high chair, had a cherub face smeared in pulverized pears. Caught in the midst of a euphoric laugh, Marina glanced toward Boldt, registering disappointment as if he’d spoiled the party.

Flemming put down Sarah’s baby spoon-it was Boldt’s joy to feed his daughter in the evenings-and met eyes with Boldt, who immediately felt uncomfortable in his own home. He wished Miles would get off the man’s lap. Sensing this, Flemming eased the boy down to the floor. Miles ran for Boldt’s leg and attached himself. Flemming wiped Sarah’s chin with her bib.

“Mr. Flemming with FBI,” Marina explained, eyes to the dishwater.

“Yes, we’ve met,” Boldt said.

“A handshake at a crime scene is hardly what I would call an introduction,” Flemming said. “You’ll pardon my intrusion, but I’ve seen nothing but hotel rooms and offices for the past six months. I thought we should meet.”

Boldt motioned reluctantly toward the living room. There was something not right about Flemming coming here. Marina stole another glance toward her employer. Miles clawed to be held. Boldt hoisted him into his arms, stopped at the high chair and took Sarah as well.

Standing, Flemming made the chair look small and the kitchen table like something from a kid’s set. The two men sat across from each other, Boldt on a couch. Miles bailed out and went running back to the kitchen. Boldt held Sarah in his arms and cleaned her up with his handkerchief.