Pied Piper

“What about ID?”

“Busy with the mess downstairs. Bernie asked us to take the carpet. What we’ve got is slightly confusing,” Boldt explained. “We think the lookout for the cookers primarily used the front room. He’s a smoker and that room reeks of it and there are butts and roaches everywhere. This room smells clean, and no butts. And yet that,” he said, pointing out a cane seat chair by the window, “seems to indicate someone spent time at the back window.”

“A different sentry. They took turns up here. One smoked, one didn’t,” LaMoia hypothesized.

Boldt had not shared Raymond’s bit about the possibility of an exterminator on the premises with anyone. If he stumbled onto supporting evidence then it was admissible, but to do what he had done-use Narcotics to assist his own needs-was an outright manipulation of the system. To inform LaMoia would make him subject to the same risks that Boldt was taking. He said, “ID found some peat moss kicked up on the sill.”

“In the rocker with his feet up,” LaMoia suggested.

“Exactly. And peat moss?”

“Flower beds.” LaMoia’s jaw dropped. “Why do I get the feeling a bunch of meth rats would not be tending the primroses?” He sagged to his knees and joined Boldt in fingering through the carpet.

Boldt said, “P.S. No peat moss was found in the front room.”

They worked methodically, using coins to mark the areas they searched.

“You know what I got to ask myself?” LaMoia said, busy with his fingers.

“What’s that?”

“What the hell a lieutenant-Intelligence, no less-is doing on carpet patrol at four in the morning on a drug bust. Or are you just a Renaissance man?”

“The same could be asked of a Homicide sergeant running a task force investigation.”

“Yeah? Except I’m here because you rudely woke me up and told me to get my butt down here.”

“Two officers were wounded. I thought you were on rotation to investigate an officer-involved shooting.”

“Sure you did,” LaMoia said sarcastically. “I’m here because you needed someone assigned to the task force, and you weren’t about to work with Mulwright even though his squad made the raid. Curiosity is what got me out of bed, Sarge. It wasn’t loyalty this time. I’m too tired for loyalty.”

“You know what Daphne says?” Boldt asked, avoiding a direct answer.

“I’m figuring you’re about to tell me.”

“That the Pied Piper is a planner.”

Mention of the Pied Piper caused LaMoia to look up and lose his spot in the carpet.

Boldt said, “An advance man. He identifies them, we don’t know how; watches them, we don’t know from where; and only then strikes. Gets his advance work out of the way before the first kidnapping because he knows the public becomes more aware after the publicity hits. He either does the advance work himself or uses chumps like Anderson.”

“Is that what I’m doing on my hands and knees?” LaMoia asked.

“It better be,” Boldt said, “or we’re going to have some rumors to live down.”

LaMoia barked a laugh. “An attempt at humor at four in the morning. I ever tell you I love this job?”

It took several minutes for them to finish. Boldt’s knees cracked loudly as he stood.

LaMoia wielded a small penlight, training its beam beneath the furniture. He ran the light up the wall and down into the window-sill.

“Sarge?” he asked expectantly.

Boldt moved to get a look at the object in the center of the light. A tiny chip of thick glass, caught against the screen’s frame. With LaMoia training the light, Boldt opened the window saying, “He opens the window for some air … kicks his feet up on the windowsill.”

Boldt placed the glass chip into a plastic evidence bag and marked it. Old times.

LaMoia said excitedly, “This guy is picking up automobile glass in shoes. Work boots. Waffle sole. That sort of thing.”

“Yes he is,” Boldt agreed, studying the chip.

Jumping to conclusions was both dangerous and foolish. The lab would have to check it against the other glass found at the Shotz and Weinstein homes. Nonetheless, Boldt was already wondering if the glass could be used to tie the Pied Piper to a location: an auto glass shop, a car dealership.

They turned the evidence over to Bernie Lofgrin, who signed for it. Twenty minutes later, the eastern horizon wore an azure blue. Boldt drove away. Marina, who had spent the night, would be awakening soon. His kids needed to be dressed and fed and taken to day care. His worlds ran together, interdependent. Where were the missing kids? Alive? Dead? Locked in a closet or a basement?

Try as he did to focus on his upcoming parental duties, he kept returning to an image of the Pied Piper, dressed as an exterminator, sitting in the rocking chair, feet kicked up out the windowsill.

The question that begged to be asked was whether or not dead Anderson had been after a possible thief stalking a neighborhood as he had represented himself to his snitches, or was somehow involved with the Pied Piper. Anyone could have killed Anderson-a client, a victim of Anderson’s prying-one of the many names on the caller-ID list. But the pollen on the knees of his laundry matched the pollen found on the Shotz crib and in the Taurus carpet fibers, evidence Boldt could not ignore. Anderson was clearly involved-up to his knees, Boldt thought. Gaynes had checked the entire block surrounding the Shotz residence and had found no beds of knee-height yellow flowers.

Boldt slowed for a red light, but ran it. At five in the morning he wasn’t about to stop.

The caller-ID list! He suddenly understood the next logical step.

He dialed LaMoia’s cellular. He had left him at the crime scene with Lofgrin.

“Yo!” the man answered.

“Anderson’s caller-ID,” Boldt said.

“Right?”

“Anderson wasn’t a guy working out of the kindness of his heart. He worked for hire.”

“I’m with you.”

“I know Gaynes is checking his caller-ID list, John. That she intends to speak with each of them. But cross- checking those calls by address and comparing those addresses with the neighborhood that the Pied Piper may have had under surveillance-”

“Addresses?” LaMoia repeated softly, allowing a long silence as he attempted to follow Boldt’s train of thought. “Gimme a second here,” he vamped. “Oh shit!” LaMoia gasped. It had obviously connected for him the same way it had for Boldt. “Weinstein’s house is in that direction. Anderson wasn’t working for the Pied Piper, he was working for Weinstein!”

“Pleasant dreams,” Boldt said, disconnecting, knowing damn well that LaMoia wouldn’t sleep a wink.

CHAPTER 17

Daphne selected the task force situation room for impact, its walls littered with photos both of the kidnapped children and of Anderson’s corpse, an arm dangling half in, half out, of the bathtub. Suspects responded to environment, and she intended to treat Weinstein as a suspect.

Kay Kalidja held the door for Flemming, not the other way around. They entered ceremonially, Flemming instinctively reaching for the chair at the head of the large oval table and then reconsidering. “Where do you want me?” he asked Daphne.

“Wherever you’re comfortable,” she replied. “The head is fine. I want the suspect here,” she pointed, “where he’s forced to look at the shots of Anderson.”

Kalidja shook hands with Daphne. “I wouldn’t want to get on your bad side.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Flemming contributed, letting Daphne know that he’d done his homework and knew about her. “‘Motivational Resources in the Criminally Disposed?’”

“I’m impressed,” Daphne said as Flemming came up with the title of one of her papers. She searched her