Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

“He’s never coming back. Not one of those kids has been found.”

“Are you giving up?” Daphne asked. “Do you want us to give up?”

Weinstein strained to make a decision. “My mother,” he moaned.

“Put down the weapon, Sidney,” Daphne advised. “Right now.” The man continued to wave the gun. “What if Hayes, right this minute, has a weapon aimed at him, the same way you’re aiming it at us? Are you going to condone that?”

The weapon bobbed in Weinstein’s grip, his finger dangerously on the trigger. Daphne took another step forward.

“No,” Boldt hissed at her.

She motioned Boldt away. She had spotted Flemming and wanted to prevent a violent solution.

Boldt knew that her ambitions could blind her. She carried an ugly scar on her neck from an encounter with the Cross Killer and wore turtlenecks and scarves to cover her mistake.

She asked Weinstein, “How do you think these people feel with a gun trained at them?”

Weinstein swept the crowd with the barrel of the weapon. To Boldt, he looked unpredictable and crazed.

Flemming, unseen on hands and knees, reappeared briefly at the door nearest Weinstein. He needed Boldt to move Weinstein closer.

Boldt edged right, threw his hands over his head, and said loudly, “Most of us in this room have children, Mr. Weinstein. I have two. Miles and Sarah.”

Weinstein tracked Boldt with the gun and in the process shifted slightly closer to Flemming. “You stay where you are.”

Daphne glared at Boldt, angry that he would assist a violent solution. “Yes,” she said, “you stay where you are.”

Keeping his hands over his head, Boldt continued to his right, maintaining Weinstein’s attention.

“You see this man?” Daphne asked Weinstein, gesturing at Boldt. “He has been working around the clock on these kidnappings, and now here he is having to deal with you instead. Is that fair to Hayes, Sidney? Think about it. Put the gun down!”

Flemming, still on all fours, again appeared in the doorway to Weinstein’s left. Everyone saw him but Weinstein, whose back remained pressed against the wall.

“You’re incompetent! All of you!” the man shouted. “Stop!” he ordered Boldt, taking yet another step closer to the door.

Boldt moved with him, one final step. Weinstein tracked him, nervously pulled in the same direction. Flemming looked prepared to spring.

“Put the gun down!” Daphne begged, not wanting the risk of a physical intervention. “Please, Sidney. For Trish, for Hayes. Put … the gun … down … now !”

Weinstein’s face bunched in grief and his shoulders shook. He could no longer support the weight of the weapon. Its barrel sagged toward the floor.

Flemming sprang like a cat, chopped the man’s arm to the floor, dislodging the gun, yanked an arm back hard and threw a choke hold onto the man, all in one fluid movement. He kneed the back of the man’s legs, dropped him to the floor face down and fell atop him. Boldt reached them, fished under Flemming and cuffed Weinstein’s wrists. “Got him,” Boldt announced.

“Check it,” Flemming demanded, not letting up the pressure, charged with anger.

A uniformed cop toed the fallen weapon away and retrieved it.

Boldt tugged. “Okay. He’s cuffed.” He overheard Flemming whisper menacingly into Weinstein’s ear, “You’re a son-of-a-bitch. You know how hard these people are working for you?” Flemming smacked the man’s forehead to the floor and then climbed off, panting.

As he stood, the room exploded into applause.

Weinstein was hauled off to booking, Daphne by his side. Boldt, Hale and Flemming gathered in the coffee lounge. Hale shook Flemming’s hand like a player to the coach. Flemming’s black face shined bright with sweat as he met eyes with Boldt and said, “You’re thinking I was a little rough with him.”

“I’m thinking you’re fast for your size, and I’m grateful for it.”

“He’d lost control of himself. That’s something I abhor. Emotion and reason-it’s a delicate balance. Got the better of me for a moment.”

“He’d flipped out,” Hale said, eager to be part of the conversation.

“Not that I don’t empathize,” Flemming added. “I can imagine the loss he’s suffered, a parent’s grief, the guilt. Who wants to sit on the sidelines? I wouldn’t. And given his history-having called nine-one-one but to no good-one can hardly blame him for the anger, the frustration. The rage.”

Boldt said, “You don’t settle it with a gun.”

“You have children,” Flemming said. “How would you feel if the situation were reversed?”

“How I would feel, and what I would do about it are separate matters,” Boldt said.

“Are they? Only if you have reason and emotion balanced and in check,” Flemming explained. “Weinstein didn’t. Once a person loses that balance, there’s no telling what’s going to happen, what he’ll do. I’ve seen it firsthand, maybe you have too. I even feel that way myself sometimes,” he said more quietly, “on the edge like that.”

“I’ve been there.” Hale sounded proud of himself.

“We all have our breaking points,” Boldt agreed. “Weinstein certainly found his.” Boldt realized he and Flemming had not broken eye contact since the start of their conversation. Flemming came off as an intense man; he took over without any apparent effort on his part. “A born leader,” men like Flemming were called. “Thanks for what you did out there.”

The two men shook hands again. “Thanks for moving him toward me. We made a pretty good team out there.”

Boldt didn’t want to think of himself as part of Flemming’s team. He took the stairs back to his own floor, considering the line between emotion and reason, wondering what it had felt like inside Weinstein’s mind at that moment of uncontrollable rage, and knowing it was not a place he ever wanted to be.

A sympathetic judge prevented an overnight stay for Weinstein in city lockup, reducing the charge to reckless endangerment. His bail waived, Weinstein was released on his own recognizance and ordered to appear in two weeks’ time.

Friday morning, March 20, arrived on the back of monsoon rains and wind gusts to fifty knots. Rain pellets struck Public Safety’s fifth-floor windows sounding like handfuls of gravel, forcing those with adjacent desks to shout into their phones. Morale was low, moods sour. The task force team sagged: the further away from a kidnapping, the further away from the hope of recovering the victim.

John LaMoia slept three hours, showered, changed clothes and returned to Public Safety in a pair of unpressed blue jeans, making himself as noticeable as if he’d set himself afire. After three consecutive lattes he felt as if someone had sewn a string through his scalp and was tugging hard in poorly timed jerks. Two missing kids and a dead grandmother. The shit was well through the fan, and it was sticking to him. He had long since learned from Boldt that in police work one expected the unexpected. He thought he had had about all he could take. Again, he was proved wrong.

Detective Bobbie Gaynes marched stridently toward LaMoia’s upholstered office cubicle, her shoulders arched forward as if fighting a wind or climbing a long hill. Small and strong, Gaynes had short brown hair and hands like a man. Homicide’s first female detective-Boldt’s protegee-Gaynes was known for thoroughness, punctuality and professionalism.

LaMoia had no desire to meet with her. He had assigned her an accidental death in Fremont, a case he wanted closed and out of the way, allowing him and his squad to focus on the Pied Piper. He had assigned her the case thinking she could clear it without his involvement. He had his own dead body now-he didn’t want hers.