Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

Not possible , a voice inside him warned. Terror stung him.

As she spoke, as he heard that voice, all doubt was removed. Sarah screamed, “Daddy!” She rocked violently, her arms taped to the chair. “Daddy!”

The video image went black, replaced by a typewritten message in the same small box. Boldt could not read it for the tears in his eyes.

He saw her all at once as a small fragile creature, cradled between his open palm and elbow, a tiny little newborn, a treasure of expressions and sounds. A promise of life; the enormous responsibility he felt to nurture and protect her.

He wiped away his tears, returned the glasses and read the message on the screen.

Sarah is safe and unharmed. She will remain so as long as the task force’s investigation wanders. Do not allow it to focus. Do not allow any suspect to be pursued. If you are clever, your daughter lives and is returned to you happy and safe. This I promise. If you speak of this to another living soul, if the investigation should net a suspect, you will never see your sweet Sarah again. Think clearly. This is a choice you must make. Make it wisely.

Boldt reread the warning, stood from the chair and then sagged back down. He closed the file and took the CD out of the machine. Think! he demanded of himself, no thoughts able to land, his balance gone, the room spinning. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The Pied Piper might have spies anywhere. Paranoia overtook him. Boldt stood up slowly, like an invalid testing his unsure legs. Chills rushed up and down his spine. His face burned. Someone spoke to him in the hall, and again on the elevator and in the garage-he saw their mouths move, he heard the shapes of sound, but not the words. He was someplace no one could reach him. He ran several red lights on his way to the yellow house where Sarah and Miles spent their middays with fifteen other children.

He bounded the stairs two at a time and attempted to turn the doorknob. Locked! He pounded hard-too hard, too loudly, too furiously.

If you speak of this to another living soul …

Hurried footsteps approached noisily. The fish-eye peephole momentarily darkened as someone inspected him from the other side. Hurry up! he wanted to shout, but collected himself as the door came open.

Millie Wiggins stood before him, surprised. “Mr. Boldt!”

“Sarah?” he asked, his voice cracking as he stepped past the woman and into the playroom. Sight of the children playing choked him and squeezed tears close to the surface. “Sarah?” he called loudly into the room, drawing blank expressions from the children. A pair of tiny arms clutched at his leg and he looked down to see his son beaming up at him. He reached down and hoisted Miles into his arms.

“Sarah?” he pleaded to Millie Wiggins.

“You called,” she whispered, reminding him. “The police officers you sent picked her up.” She glanced at the large Mickey Mouse clock on the wall. “That was nine-thirty.”

He too glanced up at the clock. Five hours had passed. A lifetime.

He tried to speak, to contradict her, but the policeman inside him, the father, caught his tongue. He turned away and cleared his eyes as Miles tugged on his tie.

Millie Wiggins spoke in a gravel voice. An attractive woman in her mid-forties, she wore jeans and a white turtleneck. “I called you back, don’t forget. To verify, I mean.” Her hands wormed in concern. He could not afford the truth. He measured how far to push.

“Two officers, right?” he asked. She had used the plural.

She nodded. “A woman and a man. Exactly as you said. It’s okay, isn’t it?” She looked him over. “Is everything all right?” She added reluctantly, “With Mrs. Boldt?”

“Mommy?” Miles asked his father.

“Fine … fine …,” he said, avoiding sending the wrong signal. Sarah … He needed to collect himself, time to think. He needed answers. Sarah’s chance depended on the next few minutes. And for how long after that? he wondered.

He wanted desperately to take Miles with him, but if the kidnappers had wanted Miles, then the boy wouldn’t have been there. If the day care center was being watched-if Boldt was under surveillance … He mired down in uncertainty and paranoia, up to his axles in it. Poisoned with fear, faint and weak, he placed his son down and said to Millie Wiggins, “I didn’t want Miles feeling left out. Thought I should stop by,” hoping this might sound convincing. It fell short. His mind whirred. “It’s one of those mornings where I can’t tell up from down. I even forget where I was when we spoke this morning. Which line did you call?”

“I called nine-one-one, just as you told me,” she reported. “I spoke to you, hung up, and dialed nine-one-one. They put me through.”

The ECC lacked any means to relay a call to headquarters. It was technically impossible. Boldt knew this; Millie Wiggins clearly did not. Her explanation baffled him. “You sure it was nine-eleven-nine-one-one, and not-”

“You told me to call you back on nine-one-one!” she reminded him, viewing him suspiciously.

She had it wrong. It was the only explanation. Why should she remember? he wondered. It was important only to him. Memory played tricks on people.

He declined to push her any further. He felt aimless and lost.

She snapped her fingers. “I almost forgot.” She hurried into the busy room and returned as quickly. She brought her hand up for him to see. “The lady police officer wanted me to give you this. Said it was a private joke, that you’d understand.”

In her outstretched hands she held a dime-store pennywhistle.

Unaccustomed to an invitation for coffee from Boldt, Daphne Matthews found herself caught by surprise. Neither of them drank coffee, and they didn’t arrange secret meetings. Not any longer.

Du Jour, a small lunch cafe on First Avenue, offered yuppie chow and an expansive view of the bay. This choice also surprised her. Boldt leaned more toward tea and scones at the Four Seasons Olympic. He was known as a regular in the Garden Room.

He occupied a table pressed up against the huge glass window overlooking the bay and the lush green of the islands beyond. She bought herself a tea at the cafeteria-style counter, her eyes on Boldt, understanding immediately and with great certainty that something was terribly wrong. Liz, she thought.

As she approached, she noticed his slouched shoulders, the redness of his eyes and nose and his cup of tea, which was not steaming and had gone untouched. He hadn’t added the milk yet. She recognized grief when she saw it.

“Hey,” she said casually, pulling out her own chair. He didn’t stand. Not the Lou Boldt she knew.

“Ah!” he said, looking up at her woodenly, taking no time to express any kind of welcome. She felt unimportant. She sat down.

“I need a favor, Daffy, and it’s perfectly fine if you don’t want to do it, but if you’re willing to do it, to help me out, then all I ask is that you don’t ask any questions. None. Not one. It’s important for both of us, for everybody, that you not ask any questions.”

“Does that include now?”

He looked up at her and then to the door of the cafe. “That’s a question,” he informed her. He seemed to have aged a dozen years. Liz, she thought again. She felt sad. He had broken-frankly, she had expected it sooner.

“No questions at all?”

“Better that way,” he answered. “Safer.” A furtive check toward the front of the restaurant. Grief could cause strange behavior in the strongest of people.

“You can’t go back to the office looking like this,” she warned. “And that is not a question.”