Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

“Yes.” She spoke as a student to the teacher, “But we don’t necessarily accept that the dead guy put them there.”

“No we don’t,” Boldt agreed, still not venturing inside the small room. “Where’s his stuff? Personal possessions?”

“The contents of his pants were bagged along with the clothes themselves.”

“Keys?”

“I could call in,” she offered. “Have somebody check for me.”

“Call it in,” Boldt advised. “Number of keys and make. Especially Yale. How many Yale keys?”

“What’s up anyway?”

Boldt looked around the bathroom once more and then met eyes with Gaynes. “Mr. Anderson had a visitor. A very smart, very careful visitor.”

Boldt ate a piece of cheddar cheese he found in Anderson’s refrigerator. Was just going to go to waste. Dead man’s cheese, eaten wearing latex gloves. He followed it with some Triscuits from an overhead cabinet and a warm 7-UP. He sat at the kitchen counter snacking while Gaynes watched him, her ear to the phone, awaiting an answer.

“You could use the weight,” she said.

“Grief diet,” he told her. That made him check his watch and think about his son, his daughter and his wife lying in that hospital bed.

The crackers helped ease the pain in his belly. He’d had ulcers. There wasn’t anything new under the sun.

Gaynes mumbled thanks into the phone and hung up. “Eleven keys. Two were Yale.”

“Two,” Boldt stated. He nodded. “Okay, then that’s it.”

“Sarge, I don’t mean to be-”

“The front door,” he told her. “Just to make sure, you’d better check it.” He grabbed another handful of Triscuits. “I’ll finish my lunch, if you don’t mind.”

Gaynes maintained her curious expression. She had a pleasant, boyish face. They had built a history together. She had worked undercover for him on the Cross Killer case and had impressed him with her nerve and good instincts. She didn’t demand the spotlight. She reminded him of himself: a cop who wanted the challenge of difficult work, the lure of Homicide. She headed back down to check the locks. When she returned, hurrying, she announced, “All three are Yale. Top of the stairs is an Omni. You caught that on the way in, didn’t you?”

“Had to make sure,” he said, and thanked her for the legwork. He put the crackers away, washed off his gloved fingers.

“So!” she announced loudly, nervously, after a long silence.

“So someone comes to the front door,” Boldt said, moving from the kitchen toward the stairs. “Our boy checks it out.” He walked over to the television remote, turned on the TV and began to surf the channels. Gaynes looked confused and anxious. After thirty-four channels he hit gray sparkles and continued on into the sixties, mumbling, “It’s here somewhere. Got to be.” He then keyed in 99. The TV screen showed a fish-eye black-and-white image of the area outside Anderson’s door.

“No way,” Gaynes groaned, impressed.

Boldt said, “He concealed it behind that row of mirrors over the front door. Did you catch those?”

“I feel like I should go back to the academy.”

“Just lucky.”

“Right,” she replied sarcastically.

He continued with his theory. “Presumably he liked what he saw, approved of whomever was standing there.” He asked her, “Do you know home electronics?”

“A little.”

“Check that mess for an extra VCR. If I’m James Bond Anderson I run a twenty-four-hour video loop of all the action at my front door.” She was on it immediately, checking the gear.

“Two VCRs,” she confirmed, glancing back at him as if he were some kind of specter. “One’s running.”

“I’m telling you: just lucky. I know these guys.”

“You’re freaking me out here, Sarge.”

“The tape’s long erased itself by now. No use to us. But still, let’s log it as evidence and you take it home with you and play with your fast forward button. Watch it all the way through, just to cover our bases.”

She turned off the machine and popped the tape. She made a note in her spiral notebook, and Boldt signed alongside as a witness.

“He goes down to answer the door.” Boldt walked down the stairs, followed by Gaynes close on his heels. “Turns off the security and greets the person at the door. He locks back up but does not arm the system, and the two go upstairs.” He turned, and motioned Gaynes upstairs. “Guests first. He’s not going to give anyone his back.”

Gaynes preceded him up. In the sitting area, Boldt motioned her into a chair. He said, “Maybe this guy accepts the chair, maybe not. Probably they know each other well enough for Anderson to be relaxed. I wonder. Big mistake, as it turns out. What you look for when you and Dixie have got him on the butcher block is lividity consistent with some kind of choke hold or strangulation. Toxins. Poisons. And make sure Dixie works the earwax; that is extremely important.”

“Earwax,” she mumbled.

He turned his back on her. “At some point he made the mistake of offering his back.”

She looked down at the floor as if seeing the body there. She returned to the carpeted stairs and squatted as Boldt had earlier. She said, “Dragged up the stairs. You can see it in the nap of the carpet.”

“The visitor is strong enough to haul him up the stairs.”

“If I hadn’t worked with you before …”

“Hold the compliments. This is all smoke, no real proof.”

“This is amazing is what it is,” she said. “You saw that earlier,” she said, pointing up the stairs. “The nap of the carpet.”

“Yes, I did.”

“I didn’t even look.”

He shrugged. “Victims talk if you listen.”

“Undresses him, stages the shower …” She thought a minute. “I’ll be damned!” she exclaimed, when she understood. “Takes one of the three keys off Anderson’s key chain and locks the front door.”

Boldt agreed, nodding. “Basic to the ruse. The place has to be locked up tight, and Anderson found alone, dead from a nasty slip. Who’s going to investigate that?”

“But the security is not on. That’s what tipped you.” She showed Boldt to the clothes hamper. “This is where I found the pants. You’ll want to see ’em. Covered in that yellow pollen, Sarge-at the knees, I’m talking about. They’re lousy with the stuff.”

He said, “It makes Anderson important to us. It’s good work, Bobbie. We can only make an extremely circumstantial case. That’s all. If we’re right, then we’re up against someone who’s thinking. He assumed we would not check for the door key. He understood that the door being locked was crucial. That kind of guy scares me. We certainly have enough to investigate this. We need to bring in SID again, photograph everything. Maybe Bernie and his Boy Wonders can turn up something useful. Carpets. Phone records and finances if we find them. We give it a shakedown. Something falls out, we run with it.” Boldt nodded, unanswered questions all around him. A part of him hadn’t felt this good in ages, but he ached for those missing babies, and their parents who had to endure another night without them.

Several hours later, Boldt was paged by LaMoia while on his way to the University Hospital, making the visit with Liz brief but memorable. She had natural color in her cheeks, light in her eyes, and warm hands. She called him over to sit on her bed and announced proudly, “I’m coming home.”

He felt a pang of hope. Tears. “You can go back to being an outpatient?”

“The doctors will tell you it’s the drugs. But I know better.” She looked over at the Bible, and next to it a copy of a religious textbook.

He gasped, “Liz-”