Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

“The woman,” Boldt guessed.

She smiled. “If you think you needed your imagination for the FedEx truck, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I haven’t had any time to work with this image, and I do have a few tricks still up my sleeve-some really nice high-speed res-enhancement engines and pixel predictors, some work we did for NASA-it’s graphics software that uses AI, to make best-guess image correction on degraded data. I need more time to complete that work. But I want to show you what I’ve got, so far. Watch the little girl’s legs,” she said, directing his attention to the lower section of the small video image. She replayed the video. Sarah’s knees appeared, then her feet. Boldt knew those shoes. He had helped her into them that day. His throat tightened. Russo explained, “For whatever reason, the person running the camera zooms back on the image. Presumably, to show the girl’s entire body, that she wasn’t harmed in any way. The zoom continues to the end of segment. In the process, it gives us a look over here,” she said, pointing with a pink painted fingernail to the very edge of the frame. She played the video again, and light winked from where she had pointed. “Did you see that?”

“Yes.”

“If I enlarge it,” she said, quickly doing it, “and I separate it out, I get only this.” From top to bottom, it was nothing but a band of light, followed by a band of dark. It appeared slightly curved. “Now I warned you this requires imagination, and I do want to run some enhancement and see if we can clean it up, but …” She drew her short fingernail the length of the fuzzy image. “You see this tiny square of light right here? I think we’re looking at something hanging on the wall, a painting maybe. A photograph.”

Boldt saw the square of light. “A mirror?” he asked.

“You do see.” She nodded. “Why not? Yes, the edge of a mirror, I think, and it’s reflecting back at us. Okay? I know it’s hard to see. But if it is a mirror, then what image is likely to be caught in it?” she asked rhetorically. “The camera person,” she answered. She indicated a bump, a curving shape that ran top to bottom. Boldt had focused on that same image but couldn’t identify it. She hinted, “That shape moves in the mirror, winking light at us.” She waited for him to see it, but her impatience won out and she sat up straight, heaving out her chest, and saying simultaneously, “It’s a silhouette of her chest.” Running her hand down her shirt and over her breast, she announced proudly, “This video was shot by a woman.”

There was no view from the hotel room window, only the gray concrete of an adjacent building separated by a narrow alley, home to a row of Dumpsters. Sheila Hill admitted him, using the door as a screen, so that when she shut it behind him, he turned to see her dressed in only a white lace bra and matching high-cut underwear, smooth and tight against her crotch. She maintained an indoor tan throughout winter.

He carried a plastic shopping bag about which she was immediately curious, but he held it high and away from her, not letting her have at it and forcing her to press herself against him to reach for it. As she did, he took her by the back of the head and planted a long hungry kiss across lips that held a little more red lipstick than usual. The lipstick smeared on their faces.

Physically hot to the touch, she had an appetite that penetrated through his clothes and aroused him; she enjoyed rubbing up against him-it was for her pleasure, not his-and used the excuse of the package to make contact.

“Let me see it,” she whined.

“All in due time, my pretty,” LaMoia replied. He kissed her again, drawing the breath out of her so that she cooed darkly. He loved the tease that existed between them. She thrilled him. Her fuse, once lit, was difficult to extinguish. She walked a fine line, once free of her clothing.

LaMoia dropped the bag and cupped her between the legs with his strong right hand, squeezing and lifting her off the floor to where she squealed with excitement. His tongue slipped wetly into her bra. Her breathing slow and heavy, she squinted at him playfully.

He carried her across the room this way, like a puppet held awkwardly, his teeth nibbling at her breast. He threw her onto the bed.

“Hurry,” she ordered him, slapping her knees together.

“Touch yourself,” he told her.

She viewed him curiously, actually blushing. “What?”

“Did I tell you that someone got inside my desk?” he asked her.

“We’re not talking business. Not now, anyway.”

“Then touch yourself.” He paused and informed her, “I can’t say for sure, but I’m pretty sure that whoever it was got a look at my files-my copy of the task force book.”

She slipped her hand down her underwear and blushed again. Seeing Sheila Hill blush was worth the price of admission. She giggled nervously and slipped out of her underwear.

He said, “Show me what you do when you’re alone and the shades are pulled.”

A fine sheen of perspiration shined on her skin, so that she glowed golden as if dipped in wet paint. A moment later she lay naked on the bedspread.

“I like to watch you undress,” she said.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Mmmm,” she hummed, her eyes fluctuating between tightly closed and straining for a glimpse of him pulling down his pants.

“Good?” he asked.

“Come over here,” she said, her voice breaking again.

He tore open the bag and the box that was in it. “Don’t stop,” he said, banging around the end table to the side of the bed. He found the electrical outlet, plugged in the cord and turned the device to high. “For you,” he said, switching it on.

She accepted the device and put it to use. Her face knotted in pleasure. She held her breath for a long time and then cried loudly into the room.

With LaMoia inside her, she bit his shoulder to bleeding.

She smoked two cigarettes by the open window, stark naked, her feet kicked up onto the round table that bore tented cardboard advertisers heralding pizza delivered to the room. She hadn’t spoken a word. Either mad at him, he thought, or out of gas.

He said, “Have you heard the rumor that Liz Boldt is coming home?”

“Coming home to die, I hear.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You asked,” she said, entwined with a large cloud of cigarette smoke. She stared through the gauze curtains at the cement wall across the alley. “Leave Boldt to me. Don’t you worry about Boldt. You worry about the evidence. About how long I’ll put up with a task force that isn’t delivering.”

“Meaning?”

“Read between the lines,” she said, flipping him her three middle fingers held together like a scouting hand sign. “You’re not exempt, John. Fucking me a couple times a week does not buy you exemption. It’s nice, don’t get me wrong. You are very good. But you have to prove you’re a good cop as well, one capable of running other men. I want something useful out of those glass chips, and don’t tell me about FBI delays-you sort that out. I want financials. I want some progress I can take to Mr. and Mrs. Shotz and the Weinsteins. Having their children back would do just fine, thank you very much. You’ve got a wonderful sense of timing, but that won’t cut it at the four o’clock. Don’t think you’re the teacher’s pet just because you’ve got your hand up her skirt. To the contrary-” now she chose to look back at him, “if anything that makes you more of a liability. We get caught like this and the shit is going to fly. They’ll say it could compromise the task force. Thing is, they don’t know me. It compromises nothing.”

“That’s all this is to you?” LaMoia blurted out. “Some fluids? Some sweating? What, I’m your gigolo?”