The Pied Piper (69 page)

Flemming explained loudly, “She's white, Boldt—my woman. We never married, no. We thought it a bad idea for both of us. Our daughter was two-and-a-half when this monster took her.” He said clearly, “I know about Sarah. That is, I suspected. I didn't exactly know until right now.”

Boldt's knees felt weak. He sagged.
Sarah
… Flemming knew. “Not possible,” he mumbled to himself, the Taurus slipping away. The ransom demands were violated. He felt comfortable with Flemming as a traitor; Flemming the victim was all too unreal for him. Six months of abduction? Impossible to survive such a thing. Flemming? he wondered. Had Hale lied to protect his own interests? Or was this a smoke screen to allow Crowley to escape?

“Kiss and make up,” some punk kid with green hair shouted at them.

Flemming said, “They sent you a video clip on CD-ROM. Hell, I didn't even know how to work with one of those things. Saw it for the first time in a computer store.” He insisted, “How would I know that? Think about it!”

An insider would know this as well as a victim. By posing as a victim, Flemming had frozen Boldt—exactly what he would want to do. The Taurus eased ahead in traffic. Boldt's hand found the butt of his sidearm, his index finger pried loose the Velcro tab that secured the weapon. He glanced over his shoulder.

“Do you know her name?” Flemming asked. “The driver? Who is she?”

Nice try, Boldt thought. Convincing as all hell. The powerful man with a small federal army assigned to him playing the naive victim.

Flemming stepped closer. Boldt looked around for the man's agents then, late in doing so, expecting they might be closing in on him. Too many people to tell. Flemming said, “You want to follow her, I'm with you. But you know the rules: No suspects in custody, or I never see my daughter again.”

“I know the rules,” Boldt answered, out of energy, out of time. He could still reach the Taurus if he ran. “I even played by them for a few days.” It seemed like a month ago.

“We follow and we see if our kids are there,” Flemming proposed. “Follow only.”

For the first time, Boldt heard the man's calm, penetrating baritone break, riddled with grief and uncertainty. For a moment he actually allowed himself to believe the man, which was, no doubt, exactly what Flemming wanted.

Flemming said, “My team is chasing the car you substituted, same as your people. But you? I followed you and that piece of shit Ford.”

Boldt searched the area again. Still no sign of agents. Could Flemming possibly be telling the truth?

Boldt said confidently, “I have one stop to make, and I'll know where she's going. Some paperwork was left with my wife. I can find the place.”

“Bullshit.” The man was unnerved.

“No bullshit. Anderson could have told you, if you hadn't killed him.”

Flemming's jaw quivered, his eyes hardened and went cold. He looked into the stream of pedestrians as if debating to shoot Boldt right there and then. His eyes flashed darkly toward Boldt, who explained, “The choke hold you put on Weinstein. Left-handed. Same thing killed Anderson. I should have made the connection right then.”

“I … It …”

Boldt wished the man's hand out from inside the coat, but it remained. He said, “You want to shoot a cop in the back in front of a couple hundred witnesses, that's your choice.” He turned and ran for the Taurus—for Lisa Crowley, stuck in traffic—the rain beginning in earnest.

Flemming caught up to Boldt a few yards from the Taurus, both men at a run. “I'll take the driver's door. You take the passenger,” Flemming said.

“We need her alive.”

“I know that.”

As the traffic surged forward again, the two split up. Boldt cut behind the Taurus and hurried to the passenger door. “Locked!” he called out to Flemming just prior to the agent presenting his gun and shield to the driver's window.

“FBI! Open the door!” The car lurched forward, but only a matter of feet before slamming bumpers with a Mazda. Flemming shot the rear tire. Screams errupted from the sidewalk.

Boldt stayed with the passenger door. He pounded on the side window with the butt of his gun. The safety glass cracked, but held.

An enraged Flemming reached across the front windshield and aimed his weapon directly at the driver's head.

“No!” Boldt shouted, understanding the temptation. “We
need
her!”

“Out!” Flemming shouted to the driver.

Lisa Crowley popped open the door.

“Hands where I can see 'em,” Flemming hollered. He said to Boldt, “I'll cover. You cuff. We'll take my car.”

Boldt came around the vehicle. He tugged the woman's arms behind her with more force than was necessary. He squeezed the metal around her wrists, an incredible anger burning through him. It felt incredibly good to feel the metal click into metal. “Lisa Crowley, you are under arrest for the kidnapping of Trudy Kittridge, Stephanie Flemming and Sarah Boldt. You have the right—” The words caught in his throat. Tears stung his eyes.

“—to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney—” Flemming ran through the Miranda effortlessly. Together the two men led the handcuffed woman down the sidewalk, against the flow of pedestrians. Horns sounded behind them, frustrated at the parked Taurus. Flemming finished the rehearsed piece and then said, “Now let me tell you something, Crowley: Where you're going those rights won't do you a damn bit of good, because you're going with us.” He met eyes with Boldt, and the two men understood each other perfectly.

Boldt said, “It's over.” But his words fell flat. For he and Flemming, it was only just beginning.

LaMoia drove east on I-90, well over the speed limit, maintaining a decent lead on the surveillance cars that trailed behind him. He cringed as the rain lessened to sheets of gray mist, for he feared the Nissan would be seen to have taken the place of the Taurus, at which point the surveillance net was certain to collapse upon him
en force
.

Dividing his attention between the road ahead of him and the cars behind, he thought for a moment about the road of life he traveled, and how little time he spent thinking about the future. His affair with Sheila Hill had awakened him to wanting more than raw physical relations, and he considered putting some distance between that relationship and his next, to solidify his notion of John LaMoia. In the past, it had been one bed to the next, one pretty face to the next in a long chain of women that rarely went broken by more than a week or two. The damn kidnapping case was getting to him, he decided at last. He wanted children. A family. A future outside of himself. He was, for the first time in his adult life, tired of John LaMoia. He didn't like himself.

The red flashing lights appeared in his rearview mirror simultaneously, one vehicle directly behind him, the other partially blocking the highway's center lane. It felt as if they had gained on him in a matter of seconds, pedal to the floor. He stretched it out for half a mile, letting them sweat whether or not they faced a high-speed chase. Then he signaled and pulled over.

He thought the signal a nice touch.
Just wait,
he thought,
until they find out who they've pulled over
. He wanted to see their faces. He could hardly wait.

The contents of the envelope left for him by Theresa Russo lay scattered across the front seat of Flemming's Town Car along with a map of Skagit County. Liz had passed them through the passenger's window with a simple kiss to Boldt's cheek, a suspicious glance at the driver and a look of hatred aimed at Lisa Crowley, handcuffed in the backseat. They drove with the windows partially down, delivering a wet, heavy air. Little more remained to be said. They had decided on a course of action. They intended to see it through, regardless of the outcome.

Millie Wiggins' address in Haller, near Bitter Lake, proved difficult to find. After several incorrect guesses on Boldt's part, the Town Car drove into the paved driveway in the Pinnacle Point subdivision. Flemming locked the parking brake and kept the car running. A moment later the front curtains parted, an expectant face peered out into the dark and the front door opened.

The detour, while not costly in time, offered the unlikely partners substantial long-term risks that, if taken to their limit, included imprisonment. But the cop in Boldt had overruled the father for the first time in weeks, and he accepted that as progress.

In blue jeans and a green flannel shirt, Millie Wiggins looked nothing like she did while running her day care preschool. She hurried down the brick walkway carrying an umbrella open over her head and called hello from a distance. Boldt signaled her around to his side of the car.

As she stepped up to Boldt's window, she bent over and studied Flemming. Boldt said calmly, “Just a yes or no is all we need. You must be definite. There must be no doubt whatsoever. Even a hint of doubt and I'd rather you say no.” He hesitated. They needed probable cause to ever hope for criminal charges. Without the chance of criminal charges, Boldt feared it would, quite possibly, come down to killing this woman. Strangely, he felt no remorse at the idea. He told Wiggins, “You know you don't need to do this. No one is forcing you to do this.”

“I understand.”

“I'm sorry, but we can't open the back door. You'll have to look from here.”

“That's fine.”

Flemming switched on the car's interior light, illuminating the woman in the backseat. Boldt rocked his head to the side, affording her a better view, and Millie Wiggins stared long and hard, unknowingly in the act of determining Boldt's future. She blinked repeatedly, nervous and under the strain of his requirement to be definite. He appreciated the difficulty of her task, having been through countless lineups himself.

“You've taped her mouth shut.”

“She was a little noisy,” Boldt said.

“It isn't easy without the mouth.”

“Do your best.”

“The hair's a different color,” Wiggins said, close enough to Boldt that he could smell wine on her breath.

He said nothing, waiting patiently for her to remember the rules. Flemming had yet to speak.

“Yes,” she said strongly, delivering Boldt a jolt to his system. He hadn't realized how good it could feel, how different for the father than the cop.

“You're positive?”

“She was in her uniform, of course,” Wiggins said, assuming Boldt's passenger to be a cop. “But that's her.” She looked directly into Boldt's eyes. “That's the woman who picked up Sarah. That's her.” She asked, “What has she done?”

Crowley protested from behind the duct tape. She squirmed and writhed and then settled down.

“Do you always tape their mouths?”

“You won't see that on TV,” Flemming said. He popped off the brake and put the car in reverse. He had not wanted this stop, had agreed to it only in negotiation for Boldt's sharing the contents of the FedEx delivery manifests.

Boldt leaned his head out as the car backed up and addressed a stunned Millie Wiggins, standing in her driveway beneath an umbrella with rain cascading from its rim. “Only our most difficult suspects,” he informed her. He thanked her and got the window up. The headlights spilled over her, throwing an enormous shadow against the garage door.