The Pied Piper (29 page)

All went well until he glanced over and spotted Doris Shotz keeping vigil in one of Homicide's formed fiberglass chairs. Boldt stopped and stared, understanding this woman's agony for the first time. Doris Shotz looked over at him, and Boldt felt her helplessness, her frustration and anger. They briefly met eyes.

“What is it?” she asked him from across the room, suddenly agitated, her hands worming in her lap. Her eyes dropped to the folders he was carrying, searching for answers.

Boldt shifted them to the opposing arm. As he did so, the strained voice of Lt. Peter Davidson said, “Inciting the natives?”

Davidson was an ex-football type with the chest and the attitude to prove it. His beer gut and spiderweb blood vessels spoke of his favorite pastime. “Don't get her fired up,” he complained, “and don't get her hopes up either. Just leave her alone.”

“She is alone,” Boldt said, understanding perfectly well. “That's the problem.”

“What are you doing on this floor anyway?” He looked Boldt over, looked right at the files in Boldt's hands. “Spying on us? Spying on your former squad?”

Boldt kept his arm to where it covered the tabs on the files. “Of course I am,” Boldt said sarcastically, tapping the files. “Spying on all of you.”

Davidson smiled. “Right. I thought so.”

Boldt headed directly to LaMoia's desk, relieved to see Kreuter's cubicle empty once again—some cops spent all their time between the coffee lounge and the men's room. He returned both files to the drawer.

Finding his key proved more difficult. He looked where he expected it to be—beneath the desk—but didn't see it. If LaMoia found his desk unlocked … that was unacceptable.

Boldt intentionally dropped his pen, toed it under the desk, and then kneeled to retrieve it. He didn't see the key. He shoved aside the trash can, and there it was.

At the moment he retrieved the key, the door to Homicide buzzed and Boldt looked back to see a pair of ostrich cowboy boots approaching.

“While you're at it, fella', empty the trash,” LaMoia teased. “If you're planting a bug, forget it. I'm onto you.”

With mention of the bug, Boldt bumped his head on the underside of the desk.

Boldt's only chance to lock the desk was to put his body between LaMoia and the man's desk. He backed out from under, stood and feigned a sudden loss of balance. Leaning onto the desk for support, he blindly attempted to fit the key into the lock, but couldn't get it. He mumbled, “Stood a little too fast,” his fingers working furiously. The key slipped in the lock. He pocketed it.

“You okay?” a concerned LaMoia asked.

“Fine,” Boldt answered, wondering what kind of person deceived his closest friends. Wanting LaMoia's thoughts elsewhere, he asked, “How'd the four o'clock go?” He felt so cheap.
Desperate people take desperate measures,
he recalled Daphne once saying.

“Hill wants you in her office,” LaMoia advised him.

“Me?”

LaMoia nodded and teased, “You're not in trouble, are you, Sarge? Your boys been putting cameras in the girls' locker room again?”

Had Hill found out about the wiretapping? Boldt felt the color drain from his face. Too much deceit to keep the lies straight. One day into it and he couldn't keep himself together!

“Maybe you ought'a sit down,” LaMoia said.

“I'm fine,” Boldt lied.

By design, task force books did not necessarily duplicate one another. The copy of LaMoia's was packed with evidence reports, SID workups, Daphne's psychology profiles and Boldt's Intelligence summaries. It contained the most recent SID forensics sweep of Anderson's apartment and a short write-up on the backup disks. With Anderson their only palpable victim, Boldt read carefully, his tired eyes working down each sheet. LaMoia's idea of organization differed from his; he found navigating the paperwork difficult.

Finally he reached the photocopies of the crime scene photographs, including two series from Anderson's apartment. He scrutinized these. On his third pass he grinned. He picked up the phone and dialed Gaynes.

A few minutes later, they met in the lobby, his paranoia forcing him to recognize that if he could so easily eavesdrop on others, the reverse was also true.

He walked her to a nearby restaurant caught up in happy hour. Dark wood, marble and polished brass, gleaming mirrors—suits, soft wools, spike heels, cigars. The noise level was deafening. Not a cop to be seen.

Bobbie did not turn heads, though if attitude had been looks, she would have silenced the place. He found a pair of stools in the corner looking out at an avenue crowded with buses. Her legs were a little too short to reach the stool's footrest.

“Since when do you buy me a drink, Sarge?” Gaynes was always out front with him. It was part of the reason for his enormous respect for her. “Especially at digs like this.”

“Buying favors. Why else?”

“Why else indeed? Thing is, Sarge, you don't need to buy them. Know what I mean?”

“Depends on what they are.”

“No, actually it doesn't,” she said, waving the busy waitress over to them. She had an extraordinary presence, this one.

“Two things,” Boldt said, keeping his voice to a level where it reached only her ears.

“Go,” she said, studying him carefully. “You look like shit, by the way.”

He hadn't changed clothes in forty-eight hours. “True story,” he answered.

“Is it your wife?”

“You can sign off on Anderson's file,” he said, not wanting any more of that.

“I had better be able to. I'm lead on Anderson,” she reminded proudly.

“That's what I'm saying.”

“Go.”

“So you'll do that—you'll get the file back from LaMoia.”

“Understood.” A Scotch was delivered, neat. She sampled it and approved.

“You'll go through the SID crime scene photos. The more recent ones, not the March twenty group. Something is going to occur to you.”

She placed down the Scotch, studied him and nodded grimly. “Go,” she said, though less enthusiastically.

“You found Anderson's clothes on the bathroom floor, including shoes that were still tied. That was good work. In an abstract way we can match those clothes with those shoes. So, what are we missing when it comes to the clothes in the hamper?”

“Shoes.”

“You're a peach, Bobbie, you know that?” He waited for her.

“I'm looking for shoes in the SID photos,” she stated.

“Shoes or …”

“Boots,” she answered.

“I want the lab report on those boots twenty-four hours before anyone else sees it.”

Her eyes revealed her shock. Boldt did not make end runs.

“Sarge?”

He pulled out a five-dollar bill and placed it on the counter that fronted the window. Outside a homeless man was trolling for rush-hour philanthropy. He had a three-legged dog with mangy fur.

Gaynes took out her notebook and neatly wrote out several reminders.

This time, she waited for him. “Sarge, whatever it is—and I don't to want to know, thank you very much—you're not alone, okay?”

His eyes stung with encroaching tears. If there was one thing he felt, it was alone. “Thanks,” he said.

She drank the Scotch in two swigs and banged the glass down. She cleared her throat, burned by the drink. Without looking at him, she added, “You need a shoulder, I'm here.”

“What about Anderson's front door video? Any progress?”

“I'll be through it by tonight, promise.”

“Didn't you say that last time?” He checked his own notes. “And the earwax?” he asked. “Anderson's earwax?”

“I put in the request with the Doc. He should a sent it over to SID.”

“Follow it up,” he instructed.

“Can I ask something?” she asked.

“No,” he answered bluntly, surprising her. He tempered it by saying, “No, I'd rather you didn't.”

He had hurt her. “Fine,” she said, toying with the empty Scotch glass. She slipped off the stool. “I'll let you know what I find out.”

“Bobbie!” he called out, wishing he'd handled her differently.

Some guy in red suspenders turned his head. He looked about twelve years old and was smoking an illegal cigar. “What?” he said. “I'm Bobby. What the hell you want?”

Boldt walked past him, too annoyed to think what to say.

Sheila Hill's office lacked any feminine touches. Cluttered with paperwork, newspapers and stacks of files, it nonetheless had an image of control. She motioned Boldt into one of the two straight-backed gunmetal gray chairs and clicked a shoe off unseen under her desk. “You mind?” she asked, lighting up a cigarette. It was illegal in a public building. “First things first,” she said. “Anderson's computer. How we let the Feds get hold of it is beyond me. It's obvious we need to know whatever they know the minute they know it.”

“I can try,” Boldt said, thinking of Kalidja, “but it's not as if I have ears over there.”

“Yeah? Well get some. Get a line on them—this is Need to Know, this is no bullshit.”

“They sent it to Washington,” Boldt reminded. “Bernie knows a couple civilians in the lab.”

“Whatever it takes. Which brings me to my more important point.”

He felt it coming: She knew about the wiretap and she was about to cut him off at the knees.

She stood and checked her door. She locked it. She took the smoke over to the window, sat down, turned toward Boldt and faced him with her stockinged feet up on the desk. She spoke unusually softly for her. “This goes no further than us.” Boldt felt a chill up his spine. He was busted; he felt certain of it. “Okay. Are you with me?”

Boldt nodded tentatively. Hill had an imposing femininity about her. Sitting so close to her, Boldt felt drawn into her. Captivated.

“We're all thinking adoption ring at this point. Okay? So if we're right then there's some serious money in play. Market price for an illegal is anywhere from twenty to seventy thousand. White babies on the high side. That's a million bucks and counting.”

Boldt wondered why Hill had waited to weigh in behind the adoption theory. Where was she leading?

“Plenty of spare change for a few favors.” She met eyes with Boldt. “You see what I'm driving at?”

“Maybe I do,” he said.

“You look at these reports, and you realize that in each and every city the Pied Piper blows town only days ahead of a major attempt to collar him. San Francisco. Portland. It's fairly obvious, isn't it?” she asked.

“Fairly,” he answered.

“And
you
,” she said strongly. “You're in the perfect position.”

“Me?”

“Of course.”

He had never understood the idea of a person's world collapsing in an instant—worlds took time to collapse—but all at once that was how he felt, as if the walls, furniture, the ceiling and floor began to suck in toward him, crushing air out of the room and him along with it. She knew! She had found out. Next came his confession about Sarah, and then what?