intentions, wrong action. Get the kids back home.”
It was these last words that pushed Boldt to tears, and his friendship with this woman that made him look up into her eyes and reveal himself, expose his vulnerability.
She clearly took the tears to mean Liz was coming home to die. She moved even closer and cradled his head. It was this contact that triggered his pulling away. He wasn’t going to tell her, wasn’t going to give her the opportunity to coax the truth out of him-she could milk the truth from anyone; it was her expertise.
He judged the situation quickly and said, “I’m not much of a father, am I? Who would abandon their kids because his workload makes home life too difficult? This isn’t about Liz. I moved the kids before I heard Liz was coming home.” He forced out a small bark of laughter. The lies came too easily all of a sudden. With truth his only tie to sanity, he felt himself slipping away, like trying to run on ice. “Worse, I haven’t told Liz. I know you are right.”
Her eyes darted back and forth between his. Her expression changed from relief to concern. “I almost believe you. You’re good. You’re very good.”
“What’s not to believe?” he said, knowing not to break eye contact. This strength served to confuse her. She studied him.
“What the hell is going on, Lou? You’re selling me a bill of goods here.” She waited and said, “How do I account for these changes in your behavior? Professional stress? Home life?” She added, “Sheila Hill is playing politics. At yesterday’s four o’clock I was told to take measure of all those present. Today she’s dropping hints that I may want to pay you a visit, and I’m taking that to mean she wants the book on you as well. My guess?” she asked rhetorically. “A little task force housecleaning is in order. She’s not getting results and the axe is about to fall.”
“It isn’t that,” Boldt said.
“I’m on orders here,
Boldt said calmly, “Hill thinks there’s a conduit inside the task force, possibly supplying information to the Pied Piper. As Intelligence, I’m to turn him or her. She suggested I work in concert with you. Thinks we should try an inside-out: Sting him with disinformation and watch for the bubbles on the surface. It’s big and it’s complicated, and it comes at a time when I have a few other things on my mind.”
She stepped back as if he had pushed her.
“Me?” Boldt asked. “I’d like an afternoon tea at the Olympic, a lamb dinner with roasted potatoes and a video of Bogie and Bacall. The phone off; the kids asleep and Liz complaining into my ear that there isn’t enough time in the day. But I’m stuck with this, and now you are, too. I wasn’t going to drag you into it. I resisted. But she pushed and you fell for it. It’s Need to Know. It’s you and me and no one else except Hill.”
“Disinformation,” she said, still dazed. New territory for her, but with nearly as much ambition as Hill, she would jump at the chance.
“She’s thinking a tabloid reporter has compromised someone at the Bureau, that the reporter is in cahoots with the Pied Piper. Or maybe the kidnapper has compromised one of us. If it’s illegal adoption, then there’s a lot of money at play. If spread around correctly-”
“One of
“What the hell? It could be you or me,” Boldt said. “Never know.”
“Yeah, right: Lou Boldt, the Pied Piper’s insider,” she said sarcastically.
“Preposterous, isn’t it?” he said. But a thought remained: The Pied Piper had identified Boldt both as a father and as someone close enough to the investigation to influence it. He recalled Kay Kalidja explaining to him that the FBI had believed he, Boldt, would lead the task force. Who else might have guessed that?
Her eyes shined. “So what’s really going on?”
A pinprick of light stabbed through the darkness of his existence. Someone had identified him, had passed his name on to the Pied Piper. Perhaps Sheila Hill was closer to the truth than Boldt had credited her.
A knock at the door was followed by Bobbie Gaynes.
Daphne moved toward the door automatically. “Call me,” she said. “We’ll play with some ideas.”
“Draw something up,” he suggested.
“Will do.” Daphne passed Gaynes at the door and offered a friendly exchange. But Boldt could feel her mind working already, sizing up Gaynes and wondering what she was doing there.
How much did she know? he wondered. Daphne could be like an iceberg: far more lurking underneath than showed on the surface. He appreciated her as an ally, and yet feared the clarity of her insight.
Gaynes radiated an energy he envied. She stepped up to his desk and placed the lab results in front of him with authority-she liked whatever was in that file. She did not take a seat. She appeared slightly uncomfortable as she said, “You wanted to see this before anyone else.”
“Yes I did.” Boldt read from the file.
“It’s important that I get it to LaMoia right away,” she said. Answering Boldt’s look of disappointment, she added, “If I don’t tell him, the lab will.”
Without reading a line, Boldt told her, “The soil on Anderson’s boot contained a pesticide, a fertilizer, something like that. His earwax contained traces of the same pollen found at the Shotzes’ and on Anderson’s khakis.”
Astonishment opened her features, her eyes wide, her teeth showing. “Fertilizer, not a pesticide. The thing about you … sometimes I wonder why we bother with lab tests at all. Third line,” she told him. The report confirmed much of what he had just guessed. As a former student of his, she had quoted him quickly, “I know … I know …. A good detective uses the lab to confirm his suspicions, not bring him surprises.”
He said, “If pollen was discovered in his earwax, then it suggests Anderson did more than rub up against someone. It means he was standing in a garden, a greenhouse or a field, and that evidence being found at the Shotzes’ connects to the Pied Piper.” He told her, “Run it by the university’s ag-school. See if the pollen and this pesticide suggest a particular flower. Have them contact you directly, and when you hear back — ”
“Tell you first,” she interrupted. She said carefully, “What’s going on, Sarge?”
A few minutes earlier he had felt despair. Suddenly he felt awash with hope. Evidence, when interpreted correctly, painted a particular, unique story. The mud on Anderson’s boots, when combined with the pollen in his earwax and on his clothing, was certain to tell a story.
“It’s good work,” he told her. “I appreciate it.”
Still facing him, she said, “Let me know if I can help.”
He thanked her.
She said, “I liked it better when you were on the fifth floor.”
“Me too,” Boldt confessed.
His phone rang, and Gaynes understood that she should go. Boldt handed her the report and thanked her.
She turned and walked out.
He sat alone, a snitch complaining into his ear, an undigested bubble of guilt consuming him. The truth was nowhere left to be seen. Gone, and Boldt along with it. The truth, which Boldt had held as an absolute, was suddenly a product of context. One could distort it, bastardize it, destroy it as one saw fit.
The Pied Piper had not only stolen his daughter, he had stolen his life.
CHAPTER 29
Theresa Russo worked freelance out of a sprawling ranch home that overlooked Puget Sound and the white- capped Olympics. Boldt had met her through Liz, whose bank had arranged a nine-million-dollar loan for the woman to expand a multimedia software start-up. Russo had paid back the loan in eleven months, took the company public a year later and retired to entrepreneurial work, reportedly twenty million dollars richer. With Russo well outside of law enforcement, Boldt had sworn her to secrecy, making no mention of Sarah’s name or her relationship. She was a missing child. Russo probed no further.
