Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

One by one these separated reports stacked up. He had been reviewing documents for over three hours when the first hint emerged. Establishing a pattern-any pattern-was reason for excitement.

Human behavior could be broken down into a series of learned patterns. In the shower, a person soaped his or her body parts in the same order, day after day. A man shaved in the same sequence. The cop’s job was to identify as many of these patterns as possible in his suspect’s behavior or his crimes. Patterns proved predictable. Predictability meant arrests.

At first there was nothing to tie one broken car window to another-a truck, a car, a minivan; the parking lot of a mall, a Sonics game, a supermarket. But when the fourth property damage report indicating window damage cited a northbound I-5 Park and Ride, the similarity jumped out at LaMoia. Two of the four dates were the same, but two others were not, meaning the Park and Ride had been hit a minimum of three times on different dates, which in turn meant that an individual or gang had targeted the Park and Ride as a good place to pick up car stereos. The Pied Piper might have picked up the broken glass anywhere-from his own garage, to an auto shop, to any of the locations listed on the reports he was collecting into a stack-but police work meant playing percentages, and the area of highest percentage was this Park and Ride. LaMoia saw one clear way to narrow the field. He picked up the phone and called Bernie Lofgrin at home despite the late hour.

LaMoia spent five minutes describing his discoveries to Lofgrin, the head of SPD’s Scientific Identification Division. Lofgrin, a civilian, did not work weekends unless on call and attending a crime scene, neither of which was the case, but he took to LaMoia’s discoveries like a bloodhound on a scent. The detective pointed out the increasing importance of determining the make and model of the vehicle or vehicles from which the chips had come. Whatever pressure Lofgrin could apply to the FBI’s Washington, D.C., forensics lab would be appreciated.

At the same time, LaMoia elected to place the Park and Ride under twenty-four-hour surveillance, hoping to use a combination of detectives under the direction of Bobbie Gaynes. In a political nod to Sheila Hill and the politics of the task force, he took his recommendations to Patrick Mulwright, whose Special Operations unit was the department’s premiere surveillance squad. Mulwright, who had undergone a suspension ten months earlier for boozing on the job, was caught drunk as a sailor by LaMoia’s midnight call. After a rambling attempt to sound coherent, the lieutenant assigned the surveillance back to LaMoia, mistakenly assuming LaMoia was currently on call. LaMoia awakened Gaynes and told her to organize a rotation. Reminding him that with over a dozen vacant houses under surveillance and Hill squawking about overtime pay, the manpower was not there, she suggested he rethink the assignment. “So work the uni’s,” LaMoia told her. Uniformed patrol officers would, on occasion, work plainclothes detail gratis for the chance to be noticed and recommended for advancement.

“Do it yourself if you have to, just get that Park and Ride covered.”

Boldt sensed someone behind him, spun in his chair in time to see a woman at his office door, emaciated and pale. His wife.

Her release had been postponed twenty-four hours because of a scheduling conflict. He did not expect her, and so for a moment simply stared.

“Forgive me,” she said calmly. She stepped inside and closed the door.

Forgive you? he thought, a bubble of painful guilt overwhelming him. No words came out. He stood and approached her.

“I’ve acted foolishly,” she said, “unchristian in every way, and I-”

Boldt hugged her unfamiliar body, once soft but now sharp with bone. “No. You have every right-”

“Nonsense. I was horrible to you. I apologize. Please forgive me.”

They spoke, simultaneously, their apologies blurred.

“We’ll get her back,” the wife said.

“We’ll get her back,” the husband echoed.

“The two of us.”

“I never thought-”

“Tell me,” she said, gently breaking the embrace and holding him at a distance. “Tell me everything. Time is against us, isn’t it? I know it is. And yet I also know that God will not allow this. God will see her safely returned. But not without you, love. You’re the best cop there is.”

Words he had lived to hear spoken; words she had never said, instead voicing resentment, anger and frustration at the demands and risks of his job. Words he would have gladly given back in a heartbeat for Sarah’s safe return.

Sensing his every emotion, she said, “We aren’t alone in this.”

His enormous emptiness waned. A state of mind, he realized, not reality, for what else could explain it passing so quickly and completely? With Liz in the picture, everything changed.

“Together,” he said, his lips gracing her ear, her cheek hot against his neck.

His wife gave in to her tears like a tree uprooted by the wind, begrudgingly and with much protest. “Together,” she agreed. “Bring her home.” She wept openly.

For a moment Boldt thought she meant him, but then she whispered so closely that he felt it clear through to his soul, “Please God, bring her home.”

“Together,” Boldt repeated, a single word as healing as any he had known.

Boldt awakened Liz at four in the morning from a deep sleep. She came awake, arms flailing, from either the clutches of a nightmare or reaching out for a husband who had not slept by her side for far too long.

There had been no lovemaking between them-Liz needed more strength-but the loving had been intense and more intimate than many other nights shared physically. Boldt had found a brief piece of the sleep that for days had eluded him.

“Something you said,” he told her.

“Love? What is it,” she said, using her private name for him.

“You said we aren’t alone-”

“I meant that God-”

“Yes, I know. But it’s more than that, you see? I think I know now why we have never received the Portland file. The same for San Francisco. What if it wasn’t the Bureau dragging its feet, but the police departments themselves, someone in our exact situation?”

“Wouldn’t you know that by now?”

“Would I? Does anyone know about us? About Sarah?” He switched on the room light and she flinched. He said, “I let myself believe that. But why should anyone know? Hill’s wrong about a reporter working an insider. It’s not one, but a string of insiders, a string of cops, city to city, in the same situation as we are.”

“And what if it is?” she questioned, confused and even frightened by his excitement.

“Then there’s evidence that has been withheld. Victims we don’t know about, some of whom may have information they’ve never disclosed.”

“Like you with this clothes company,” she said.

“Exactly. I don’t know anyone on the San Francisco force, but in Portland a CAP sergeant named Tom Bowler-a guy I know pretty well-was lead on the kidnapping, and the Serious Crimes committee, their version of a task force. Bowler has two kids.”

“It’s four in the morning, love.”

“I’m going down there, to Portland.”

He spun his legs out of bed and sat up.

“Now?”

“Be there by morning.” He asked, “Okay with you? It’s a Sunday. It’s the only day I could get away with this, without somebody questioning it.”

“You need sleep. Rest. You need to be thinking clearly.”

“I’m going down there.”

“Love, has it occurred to you that you can’t do this alone? If we’re going to obey the ransom, it’s one thing. But we aren’t, are we?”