The Pied Piper (44 page)

Connie said softly, “Penny's fine. Not a scratch on her. No sign of … you know … nothing. He'd done nothing bad to her.”

“He?”

The question puzzled her. “The kidnapper. A woman couldn't possibly put a child through this.”

Playing his cards closely, Boldt said nothing to contradict her. “Did Tom make contact with him?”

She shook her head. “No. He would have told me.” She teared up again. “We heard nothing for over three weeks.”

Sarah had been missing six days; he could not fathom the concept of three weeks.

“She was found in the Clackamas Town Center. It's a mall. Her name, our address and phone number were found on a card in her pocket. Left there like a lost package.” She sprouted more tears and mumbled, repeating, “Nothing was wrong with her. She was fine. Just a little scared was all.”

“The card. Handwritten or typed?”

“On a computer, Tom said.” She forced a smile. “It's funny that that would matter to both of you, isn't it? I remember he mentioned it was a computer. It struck me as so strange that he would care about that.”

Boldt's speech came out hoarse and dry. “I will need to talk with Tom about his case.”

“I told him he had to talk to you, that we couldn't allow it to continue, but he said that Penny came first, that he had gone to the devil to save Penny and keep her safe and that he wasn't going to throw that all away now.”

Boldt wasn't sure he had the courage to do what Connie Bowler had done—to get Sarah back safely and then risk it all over again.

“What we went through … what we've gone through … well, you know, don't you.” She made it a statement. “You of all people would understand. That's what I tried to tell Tom. If we can tell anyone …” She teared up again and spoke to Boldt the father, the parent, her voice earnest and strong. “No one should ever have to go through what we went through. It has to stop.” Holding his gaze, she silently pleaded with him. Then she stood, wiping away her tears, and indicated the thick manila envelope. “I put our address on top. Mail it back to me, please. He still looks at it occasionally.”

Boldt offered to copy the file while she waited. This appealed to her, and Boldt left her in his office while he copied it, the action reminding him of copying LaMoia's task force book only days earlier.

If he did not act, if he allowed the Pied Piper to continue the abductions, in all likelihood Sarah would be returned unharmed. This possibility tugged at him but was quickly replaced by an image of Bowler cradling the glass of Scotch. The child had been saved but the father lost—the family broken.

The FBI's Washington State Field Office, located in Seattle's new Federal Building, smelled of perfumed disinfectant that Daphne Matthews associated with a doctor's waiting room. She was repulsed by the smell because it reminded her of a particular car deodorizer that came in the shape of a small green pine tree and hung from the rearview mirror or inside the trunk, the smell of which was seared into her memory where it would remain forever. Just the smell of it made her want to run. She was supposed to trick an FBI agent into supplying information the Bureau had yet to release to SPD. No small task. The intervention had gone well. Boldt—and Sarah with him—was now supported by a team of competent and fiercely loyal individuals bent on the girl's rescue.

As Flemming's Intelligence officer, Kay Kalidja had unrestricted access to Bureau resources, making her an invaluable ally. By not making an appointment, Daphne denied Kalidja any preparation for her visit. She was kept waiting for ten minutes in a small reception area. Behind the receptionist hung a photo of the president, another of the FBI chief and a third of WSFO's special agent in charge. Kalidja appeared at the secured door and greeted Daphne, apologizing for keeping her waiting. Daphne followed her inside. “The digs here aren't much for those of us from out-of-town. I'm sharing an office with two others.”

She showed Daphne into the cramped and cluttered office and closed the door. “They resent us, of course—the local agents. They don't want Washington coming in and dictating procedure. On the surface, it's business as usual, but the resentment is there. Have a seat, if you can find one.” The office walls held bookshelves crowded with loose-leaf binders bearing the FBI logo.

They faced each other from opposite sides of the desk.

Daphne lied for the sake of her efforts. “They assign me all the no-brainers, assignments they wouldn't dare ask a male officer to do.”

“Same thing here, I promise,” Kalidja said, sympathetically.

“They assume we're incapable of using our brains,” Daphne said, hoping to strike a common chord.

“And it's not our brains they're thinking about,” Kalidja said. She laughed. Her neck was long and elegant. She might have made it as a model had she tried.

Daphne met eyes with the woman and said, “Have you ever noticed how quickly your ideas become someone else's? Suddenly all the credit is going down the table?”

Special Agent Kay Kalidja did not break the eye contact, understanding perfectly well that Daphne had come for a favor. Daphne placed Thompson's rendition of the tattoo in front of Kalidja and let it sit there. She said, “VICAP and your other databases keep track of body markings, don't they?”

Kalidja fingered the photocopy.

“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.