The Pied Piper (38 page)

LaMoia clutched his chest. “Oh! You're killing me here!” He glanced over. “You don't want to talk sports, you don't want to talk legs.” He shook his head. “You know, we don't talk all that much, Sarge, I mean aside from business.”

It wasn't true and both men knew it. LaMoia was close to Boldt's family, especially the kids. A long silence overcame them as Boldt negotiated several severe turns. LaMoia, one of the best drivers on the force, said, “I should have been wheel man.”

The road climbed out of the developments and into thick woods, winding through sharp turns. Cabins had been tucked up into the hill; many went unseen, marked only by numbered mailboxes. The air smelled thickly of pine sap. The bows of the towering firs hung heavy with age, like a ballerina's upturned arms, her fingers drooping.

Boldt slowed and negotiated the turns carefully. The street numbers indicated they were close.

“We work these people as a team. Who knows if they're connected or not.”

LaMoia sat up. “Providing the Weinsteins haven't killed them.”

“Maybe no one's here. Maybe they are the Pied Piper. Maybe they know nothing about it.”

“I'm hip,” LaMoia said.

“If we need to role-play,” Boldt said, “I'm sweet, you're sour.”

“How else could we play it?”

Boldt passed the mailbox, backed up and pulled the car into the driveway.

The sign out front read Tiny Tots—Home Schooling. Hanging from this shingle was another smaller one: Spitting Image Designs. A cottage industry, literally. It was a small log house tucked up into and surrounded by tall evergreens. No lawn to speak of, just forest floor. A walkway of chainsawed slices of tree trunks led from the drive to the front door, past a six-year-old Chevy four-wheel-drive with body rust behind the rear wheels. Everything in these woods—living and inanimate—was in a constant state of rot.

A woman answered the door with a welcoming smile. Nearly six feet tall and sporting an imposing nose, she reminded Boldt of a high school phys. ed. teacher. She wore a faded blue sweatshirt and gray sweatpants, suede Birkenstocks with yellow socks. Her hair was pulled back into a black fuzzy band. “Hi,” she said, studying them as a pair. “If you've come about enrollment, we're all filled up. But I can put you on the waiting—”

“Us?” LaMoia gasped, believing she was mistaking them as a married gay couple.

Displaying the badge, he said, “Sergeant John LaMoia, Lieutenant Lou Boldt.” He put the badge away quickly before she identified them as Seattle. “We'd like to talk to you, if you don't mind?”

She nodded limply, displaying none of the defensiveness Boldt would have expected of the Pied Piper or an associate. He said, “And you are?”

“Donna Stonebeck,” she answered him.

The woman showed them in to a small pine table. The house smelled vaguely of paint, although there was no silk-screen equipment in sight. The small living room had been converted into a preschool classroom.

Boldt opened his briefcase and handed her a stack of photos. “Look carefully,” he said. “Do you know any of these children?”

Studying them, she looked a little frightened, understanding this was no social call. She shook her head at each photo, looked through them a second time more quickly and passed them back to Boldt. “They weren't students here. We have never had a single complaint.”

“It's not that,” LaMoia surprised her by saying. “It's a kidnapping case. A serial kidnapper.”

The horror on her face appeared genuine. Disappointment stung Boldt.

“Kidnapping?” she whispered. If an act, it was a damn good one.

Boldt heard small footsteps racing downstairs followed by three children who appeared around the corner and stopped abruptly. One was Asian, one Caucasian, and one a beautiful cream skin. They all seemed the same age, around five or six. Stonebeck, still stunned, told them, “I'll be up in a minute.”

The kids ran back upstairs at the same frantic speed.

Stonebeck apparently felt compelled to explain. “I take up to five boarders. I have those three at the moment. Children of violent divorces, orphans whose extended family can't take them in yet but who can afford private care—we offer a better environment than the public institutions.”

“A regular Florence Nightingale,” LaMoia quipped.

“It's not entirely benevolent. I'm paid quite well for my boarders.” Without flinching, the woman offered, “Tea or coffee for either of you?”

Boldt asked for tea with milk and sugar. LaMoia took coffee.

Donna Stonebeck asked from the kitchen, “Are you interested in the preschool or Spitting Image?”

“Spitting Image is located here?” LaMoia asked.

“I've got a basement full of it,” she told him, setting the water on to boil.

“You do much business?” LaMoia asked.

“I have two people downstairs full time while I'm up here with the kids,” the woman said proudly. “It keeps growing like this, and I'm going to need more space. We created a Web page—oh, about a year ago now—and our orders have doubled in the last three months. We're shipping all over the world now. Japan is big for some reason. Korea. Germany. Finland. We've got five orders for Japan right now.”

“The T-shirts mostly?” Boldt inquired.

The woman stood waiting for the pot to boil. She didn't appear nervous in the least. Boldt wanted her nervous, he wanted her a part of it. “We don't do T-shirts, per se. Too crowded a field. We do infant clothing, but it's our crib products that are zooming: the blankets, quilts, duvet covers and pillows. We're doing twenty, thirty baby blankets a week. At fifty bucks a blanket,” she added. “We've got a new velvet product. Comes out like velvet art, you know? Elvis? Only it's your kid's face. Hundred bucks per unit. Can't keep up with orders.”

“Business is booming,” LaMoia said.

“I won't give up the preschool,” she directed to Boldt. “I mean, one's for love, one's for money, right?”

“What kind of records do you keep?” LaMoia asked coldly.

“Are you two IRS?” She laughed as if caught. “Oh my God, I should have looked closer at that badge!”

“Police,” Boldt answered, attempting to reassure her. “Kidnapping,” he reminded.

“All of those kids, or was I supposed to recognize one of them?” Then a wave of realization crashed over her and she cried, “You don't think I have something to do with this?”

Boldt's cell phone rang. He rose and took the call in the corner.

LaMoia asked her, “How do you keep track of each order?”

“The artwork? The paperwork? What?” she asked, distracted by Boldt mumbling in the far corner.

“Artwork. Paperwork.”

“Artwork, goes back with the product. Our paperwork—”

“Invoices,” he clarified, interrupting. “Customer names. Addresses. That sort of thing. I give you a name, you pull the order.”

“Specific customers? We file by month,” Stonebeck said.

“If I give you a name?”

“A date
and
name would be better, but yeah, we could do it. We're alphabetized by month. But can I promise we'd have it? This is not Land's End,” she said. “A year ago we were doing five pieces a week. Now it's maybe twenty-five. Last year we invoiced by quarter. This year by month. Used to pay our bills by hand. Now we use Quicken.” She said sarcastically, “We're real cutting edge around here.”

“Could I check out your invoices?” LaMoia asked. “The last six months?”

“Do you have a warrant?” she said. “That's what I'm supposed to ask, isn't it?”

“No warrant,” Boldt answered, returning to the conversation. “We had hoped to keep this as informal as possible.”

“But you want to rifle my invoices? That's cute.”

LaMoia glanced at Boldt, who nodded his consent. He said, “In your estimation how secure is your Web page?”

“Meaning?”

“What precautions have you taken to secure your Web page?”

“This is a cottage industry, fellows. I keep telling you—it's not Land's End. We post the same warning everyone else does—you play at your own risk. We encourage customers to call us direct and place the order that way. You know what it costs me to file with one of these security providers? Forget it. Arm and a leg. Maybe down the road.”

“To call you is a toll call or an 800 number?”

“Do I look like I'd have an 800 number? I'm out of my basement. I do a couple dozen pieces a week.”

“So they place the orders through the Internet to save the toll charges.”

“The orders come to me as E-mail. E-mail is pretty secure, right?”

“We're interested in attempting to identify some of your customers,” LaMoia explained.

“No kidding?” she asked sarcastically. The water boiled. She poured the beverages and delivered them. “What I want to know is why?”

“We just want to check a couple of names,” Boldt said as respectfully as possible.

“Yeah, but how's it connect to these kidnappers?”

“That's police business,” LaMoia said harshly.

“I kinda figured that,” the woman fired back, “or you wouldn't be here.”

“If you wouldn't mind?” Boldt asked. “Time is our biggest enemy.”

She put down her tea and stood. “You can see whatever you like.” She asked cautiously, “Am
I
in any kind of trouble here?”

LaMoia grinned that LaMoia grin that showed his teeth and bent his mustache into a pair of wings. “Not yet,” he said, joining her.

“You single?”

To Boldt, LaMoia said, “Wait here, Lieutenant.”

As their voices descended the stairs, Boldt heard her say, “Maybe I like you after all, Mr. Smooth. Which one are you?”

“LaMoia.”

“Italian?”

“Every inch.”

“Don't go getting personal on me.”

Boldt listened in, thinking only LaMoia got away with such things. One of these days his libido would get him in trouble. Sooner than later. After twenty minutes he emerged, that same irritating self-confident smile pasted under his mustache. In his right hand he carried a number of invoices. “Bingo!” he said, waving the paperwork.

“So the doer, soon to become the Pied Piper, decides he wants to establish a little under-the-table adoption business.” LaMoia drove the curves effortlessly and at twice the speed, like water running through a pipe. “He needs product: white babies, good solid stock.”

“You have a real poetry about you,” Boldt sniped. He studied the man's use of gas and brake, marveling the car could ride so smoothly. LaMoia was the same with women: It came naturally to him. Boldt studied the Spitting Image invoices. The backseat contained a cardboard filing box going back two years. Stonebeck had cooperated. Boldt thumbed his way through December a year earlier, starting at the beginning as a cop always did, looking for San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland—looking for a paper trail. Shotz and Weinstein had both been found.

“He needs clients too. Maybe word of mouth. Maybe he simply runs credit checks on names he finds on adoption waiting lists, IDs the high rollers and makes a phone solicitation: You pay, you play. Must be plenty of those types waiting out there. Some of those lists run five, six, seven years deep, and then your name comes up and you get offered a five-month-old with learning disabilities. Fuckin' A, I'd buy from this guy.”

“You probably would,” Boldt said, but it stung his former detective.

“I'm just talking hypothetically,” LaMoia complained. “I'm brainstorming here.”

Boldt said, “He gets the bright idea to hack an Internet site devoted to children's clothing—”

“He stumbles onto Spitting Image. It's perfect for him. Some of the orders, like Daniel Weinstein's, include digitized photos, and suddenly he knows that he's getting a white kid with the right looks. What a sicko.”