Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

“You’ve still got two missing babies,” Boldt reminded. “The dead body is Bobbie’s. She’s lead on it. And I happen to be free at the moment.” He stood and offered Gaynes an expression that asked if she were ready to go. She nodded. “SID can do Anderson’s again, but it needs a detective’s eye first.”

“Foul ball,” LaMoia complained, searching for some support.

Boldt said slowly, “Your job is to deliver all this to the task force. Our job is to keep you from making a fool of yourself and make sure it’s worth it.”

“We’ll get back to you,” Gaynes said, proud as a peacock.

LaMoia grimaced at her. He felt as if his head were in a vice. He checked his watch: Hayes Weinstein had been missing for twenty-two hours. Rhonda Shotz, for ten days.

“Shit,” LaMoia said.

Anderson’s apartment occupied the left half of a 1930s clapboard that had been converted to a duplex. Situated behind a video store, it shared space with a JC Penney catalog outlet. The potholed alley leading into it was partially buried in fast-food litter and soggy newsprint and smelled of cats.

Reaching the mouth of the alley, Boldt grabbed the elbow of Bobbie Gaynes and stopped her. He listened hard and then looked around, studying every crack and crevice. The sun would be up for another few hours, but wedged between two towering brick walls the alley was in the midst of an artificial twilight. Boldt looked around, his unease contagious.

“Okay,” he said, though unsure. He’d been out of the field too long.

They walked on. Anderson’s banged-up door had three keyholes at varying heights and a Day-Glo police sticker laid across the doorjamb, sealing it. They both donned latex gloves. Boldt felt a rush of satisfaction: a crime scene. At the same time, he experienced a pang for the two missing kids. If anything ever happened to Miles and Sarah … he didn’t blame Weinstein for breaking. No one could.

Gaynes slit the police sticker and keyed the top and bottom locks as she told him, “It’s a walk-up to the kitchen and living room. Another flight up to the bedroom and bath.”

Boldt noticed the home security panel immediately. “You said the neighbor found him.”

She shut the door behind them, locked one of the dead bolts and switched on the light. The walls needed paint, the stairs some new treads. A bare bulb hung high over the stairwell, too bright for the small space. It obscured the top of the stairs.

Climbing, she said, “Neighbor hears the shower running, pounds on the wall. Gives up. Goes to the front door.”

“Locked?”

She stopped on the stairs and looked back at him quizzically, or maybe impressed. She turned and continued up. “Right.”

“Tried the fire escape next,” Boldt guessed.

“Right. Bathroom window. Saw him in the tub. Called nine-eleven.”

There was another door at the top of the stairs that could be dead-bolted.

Anticipating him, she said, “This one was not locked when the first officer arrived.”

“Front door was opened by?”

“The landlord tried it. The neighbor called him at the request of the nine-eleven operator,” she explained. “Landlord couldn’t get in. New locks, and more of them. Locksmith did the work.”

“The security alarm?” Boldt asked, entering a small room that shared the kitchen.

Gaynes pushed past him. “Is there one? Hadn’t noticed, to be truthful.”

“And the bathroom shade?”

“Neighbor explained that one. It was pulled down. But with an eye to one edge, you can pick up a reflection of the tub in the mirror. I tried it. It’s legit.”

“But the alarm was off.”

“I guess so. Must have been.” She considered this as Boldt walked slowly around the crowded sitting room. Television, rack of electronics, desk, computer, telephone, printer, two yard-sale chairs, two metal file cabinets, different makes and colors. “But he was home.”

Boldt studied the room’s ceiling and walls. A motion sensor high in the far corner; shades and extra thick curtains on the windows; a heat alarm in the kitchen. “Installed the security stuff himself, I bet.” He bent over and yanked up a cheap throw rug. Put it back down and pulled up another by the top of the stairs.

“What’s that?” she asked, seeing what he had discovered.

“Pressure switch. You step on the rug and it trips the alarm, same as a motion detector.” He moved on, checking the interior of a small pantry.

“What’s up?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. It wasn’t what he was looking for. “An upstairs closet?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He stopped at the bottom of the stairway, which was a tight turn to the left. He stooped and eyed it carefully. Again the overhead stairway light was twice the wattage it needed to be. Again, it obscured one’s vision of the top of the stairs. Another motion detector directly overhead. “The guy was careful,” Boldt allowed. “A guy like this probably made more than a few people mad. Or broke. Or both. You think about it,” he considered aloud, “no shortage of enemies.”

“I know it doesn’t help our case any,” she said, discouraged.

“Pressure pads under his carpets. I tell you what, I arm that security system whenever I’m home. Anyone tries to sneak in on me, I know about it.”

Boldt asked her to walk on the outer edges of the carpeted stairs. They ascended awkwardly.

The upstairs floor plan nearly mirrored the second story, the bathroom over the kitchen, the bedroom over the living room, the closet space stacked vertically. Boldt headed directly to the closet while Gaynes called out to him that the bathroom was the other room. He didn’t answer. He opened the closet door and studied what he saw.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You checked this?”

“Sure.”

“And what did you find?”

“A cedar-lined closet,” she answered. “Clothes, shoes, sweaters.”

“Telephone?”

“What are you talking about?”

He pushed some hanging clothes out of the way and pointed down the rear wall of the closet, showing her the phone.

“What the hell, Sarge?”

His promotion clearly didn’t register with anyone but the bookkeeper. None of those who had served under him were going to call him Lieutenant.

“You notice the closet door?” He pointed. “Two interior dead bolts, top and bottom. A telephone. Behind the cedar you’ll find sheet metal at the very least, plate steel, if he had the bucks. And somewhere in here …” Boldt pushed the clothes around, but didn’t see what he was looking for. He dropped to his knees and clawed at the carpet. The far corner came up. Beneath it, a piece of particleboard had been cut out of the subfloor. He hooked a finger into the joint and lifted.

“My God!” Gaynes said, on her knees alongside him.

Inside was a Glock 21 10mm and three loaded magazines, headlamp, batteries and a variety of ugly-looking grenades.

“Grenades?”

“Probably phosphorus and stun grenades. It’s his safe room. A phone line to the outside, hardened walls, lots of weapons. A place to hide if the boogeyman shows up. We’ll want to catalog it all, get it down to property.”

“Sorry I missed this,” she apologized.

Back in the bedroom, Boldt explained, “I know his type. That’s why I say the security would have been armed once he was inside. He gave people trouble. At his level that could mean some vicious reprisals.”

“The alarm should have been armed?”

“It was at some point.”

“I don’t get it.”

“By the time we responded, the alarm was off,” he reminded, testing her.

Her face knotted in concentration.

“Front door was found locked,” Boldt added. With Gaynes as his shadow they moved over to the door to the bathroom and Boldt leaned his head in, not stepping inside. “The clothes you found on the floor here, did he have possessions in his pockets? Change? Pens? Wallet?”