Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

“Left forearm,” Daphne said.

“ His? ” Kalidja nearly shouted. “The Pied Piper’s?”

Daphne nodded. “If it pans out, we unveil it at a four o’clock, the two of us. With two of us, one SPD, one FBI, they can’t take it away from us. Everyone’s talking up joint cooperation, but doing little if anything to make it happen.” She paused. “What do you think?”

“You mean keep it from our own people?” Kalidja was clearly afraid of the idea. Flemming ran a tight ship. “Where did you get this?”

“We keep it between us until we know if we’re going to look like fools or geniuses.” Daphne broke into a sweat.

A smile slowly crept onto Kalidja’s face, illuminating her features and lending her an attractive innocence, younger and less formal. “I could have something this afternoon. Tomorrow at the latest,” Kalidja said, eyes sparkling with excitement.

Daphne settled back in the chair and relaxed. She had her right where she wanted her.

Wednesday morning greeted Carlie Kittridge with excitement beating in her chest, her focus on the volleyball game later that evening. She climbed out of bed the moment she heard Trudy’s little coughs over the baby monitor. The coughs signaled a gagging sound followed by outright crying-hunger-and she attempted to fend off that stage whenever possible.

The house was small but the master bath oversized, and so she kept the cradle in the bathroom alongside the tub and in front of the windows, with the beige cafe curtains, that faced the Wallingford Bridge. She unwrapped and pulled away the receiving blanket, talking silly at little Trudy and planting a gentle kiss on the five-month-old’s forehead, amazed at the softness of the skin and its sweet cream smell.

Just before Trudy’s impatience built to a peal, her mother scooped her up gently and pulled her tightly against the warmth of her chest. Carlie, wearing a terry cloth robe, immediately planted her daughter onto her left breast, who suckled hungrily. She held her effortlessly there, remembering briefly how unnatural it had all felt in Evelyn’s first week on earth, how far mother, father and family had come since then. With Trudy, everything seemed second nature for Carlie, as simple as could be.

Carlie quickly glanced over her shoulder, experiencing the disquieting sensation that she was being watched. She wrote it off to the exposure of her bare breast-she still felt self-conscious about the nursing.

With Trudy gumming and nibbling at her, Carlie walked a little faster downstairs through the morning darkness and changed her girl’s diaper in the nursery. She entered the kitchen and brought a bottle of formula from the refrigerator, the automatic light spreading white over her and again instilling a sense of vulnerability.

Carlie ran some hot water to warm the bottle and switched Trudy to her right breast without a thought. Weaning was the worst, she enjoyed the breast-feeding so much, but her milk had not come in as strongly for Trudy as it had for Evelyn, and so she had been supplementing with the bottle. She was on a schedule to have Trudy completely off the breast by the time the summer sand leagues started. No sense in having engorged and painful breasts all summer long.

She tuned the stereo to a light rock station and burped Trudy to cuts from the Beatles’ White Album. With Trudy in the mechanical swing, Carlie slipped into a pair of fresh underwear, shorts, socks and a jog bra. Her sweatshirt was from the university bookstore. As the sun broke over the eastern horizon, she carried Trudy upstairs and awakened David. She held the child while David freshened up, and then, with Trudy safely in her father’s arms, Carlie broke out into the crisp moist morning air, alive and vital, but harboring that same unsettling feeling that someone was indeed watching. The evening game would be upon them before she knew it.

Lou Boldt dismissed the first call from sketch artist Tommy Thompson as a cry for payment. Thompson, a freelancer and former employee of the police department, understood he faced a four- to six-week wait for his check. Boldt believed Thompson was merely attempting to hasten the process by applying some pressure.

He reluctantly heeded the second call, however, because the word “urgent” was conveniently tacked onto the message. If Thompson was misusing their relationship, Boldt would give him a piece of his mind, but as it was he owed him the professional courtesy of a return call.

“You’re either getting sloppy, lazy or both,” Thompson began their telephone conversation.

“I put in for payment the minute I got back, Tommy. You did great work with that tattoo. If I had my way I would have paid you on the spot.”

“I’m not talking about my check, I’m talking about your lack of hindsight, that is, covering your tail end.”

Boldt understood the implication immediately-that he had been followed to Vashon Island and the session with Thompson-and felt sick to his stomach. The Pied Piper had warned him in the ransom note to derail the investigation, not work to improve their evidence. He experienced a flutter in his chest and a light-headedness that bordered on nausea. If the Pied Piper knew about Thompson, then Boldt had just sabotaged his own daughter.

“You were contacted?” Boldt nearly screamed into the receiver, furious at himself for having let down his guard. He had not thought to look for a tail the day of that ferry ride.

“You might call it more of an interrogation,” Thompson said. “I got a little door-to-door from a blue suit named Hale, Dunkin Hale. You know him?”

“I know him,” Boldt confirmed.

“Was interested in a little bird-watching.”

“As in eagles?”

“You got it.”

“You showed him the sketch?” Boldt complained into the phone.

Thompson snapped sarcastically, “No. I told him to go screw himself. I do that with all the FBI agents who come knocking.”

“If I had wanted the thing broadcast,” Boldt reminded, “I would have done it in-house.”

“Yeah? I trained every one of them kids. We both know why you made the ferry trip.” He added, “Listen, he told me not to say a word about his visit. Told me the IRS loves to audit artists working out of their houses. A real peach, this one. Meaning, you put it back onto him and I’m a screwed pooch. You got that?”

“I got it.”

“Intelligence,” Thompson mused. “What exactly does that mean, anyway?”

Boldt wondered how Hale had found out about Henry Shotz. Would Doris Shotz, reluctant to involve her son in the first place, volunteer to the FBI that she’d withheld information from them? Doubtful. Had Hale placed a tail on Boldt? Had he wiretapped Boldt, the same way Boldt had wiretapped him? Perhaps Boldt had just found him.

The idea of running one investigation inside another appealed to LaMoia in the same way as did the secrecy of having an affair.

At 11:30 that Wednesday morning he was paged to the Four Seasons Olympic, arguably the best hotel in the city. He drew attention as he passed through the elegantly appointed lobby, in part because of his cocky body language. He rode up to the fifth floor along with a Chinese woman laden with Nordstrom shopping bags. A few minutes past twelve noon, he knocked sharply on the door to room 512.

The routine nearly always the same, the room door came open for him and LaMoia stepped inside. Sheila Hill had pulled the window’s gauzy inner curtain so that the noonday light bled across her skin in an induced twilight. She wore a black underwire bra that forced her breasts up invitingly and black high-cut underwear revealing her tanned flank.

She stepped toward him with her practiced hungry look in her polished eyes and LaMoia suddenly wondered what he was doing there. She allowed him a modicum of control by eagerly submitting to various fantasies, but her reason for being there was a form of addiction, whereas his was a desire for companionship: He had dated twenty-year-olds for too long.