Paying the Piper

by Simon Wood

  He pulled up in front of Redfern’s house and carried in the coffee and pastries. His young cop looked less than impressed when he plunked down a cup of scalding-hot black coffee and something sweet and sticky.

  “Get that down, son. Put some fat on those bones. It’ll help slow down a bullet.”

  Jones carried his coffee around the house and poked about. Redfern lived a meager existence that depressed the shit out of Jones. The second bedroom was an office, Redfern’s nerve center for Piper operations. Five years of prison hadn’t managed to rehabilitate him. Jones knew that Redfern had taken a few beatings during his stretch, and still the guy kept a hold of this junk. Suddenly, Jones’s coffee tasted bitter, and he set it down on the desk.

  He looked around the room, taking it in. It was unimpressively decorated and painted the color of two-day-old snow. The paint looked somewhat fresher where the maps and note boards had hung. Dirt rings outlined their positions. The place needed a home makeover.

  Then again, maybe it had gotten one already.

  His gaze fell on the wall where the map had hung. He went over to the wall and ran his hand over the surface. The shades of paint differed, not because of exposure to dirt or light, but because that section of wall had been painted at a different time than the rest of the room.

  He stood back from the wall and the answer presented itself. A new section of drywall had been installed.

  The reason could easily be termites or dry rot. The climate here made either a possibility.

  But Jones had dealt with enough compulsives to know they held onto their prized possessions like a drowning man does a life preserver. Redfern would be no different. When Redfern was busted, he’d let Sheils find what he wanted him to find. He wouldn’t have given up the good stuff. In fact, if he had something precious, he might just wall it up and never look at it again. Jones thumped the wall.

  “Come in here, quick,” he yelled out.

  The kid ran in. “What?”

  “There’s evidence behind this wall.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Twenty-seven years chasing scumbags like Redfern.”

  “I’ll call it in.”

  Jones raised a hand. “That’s where we have a problem. I don’t have time for you to call it in. I don’t have time for a warrant. I have until tonight to find something on the Piper.”

  The kid looked nervous, and understandably so. His future career hung in the balance. “I don’t know about that.”

  “I’m going to make it easy for you. I’m not an FBI agent anymore. If I break that wall down, that’s vandalism. A misdemeanor. If you break it down, it’s inadmissible in a court of law. So I suggest you go buy your low-fat latte and come back looking suitably shocked.”

  The young cop looked uncertain.

  “What’s it going to be?” Jones asked.

  “I think I’ll stop to get a biscotti to go with that latte.”

  A ranch, Annabel thought. It completed the part of the puzzle that had been missing all these years. She remembered the road. Saw the road sign. She’d driven that road so many times in search of him. In search of Brian. But she never knew what to look for before now.

  She roared along CA-128 in her BMW 5 Series. She’d been driving with her foot firmly planted since she’d hit the road. At first, anger had fueled her racecar speeds. Jane Fleetwood thought she knew everything, just like the FBI. The Piper was a villain. The Piper was evil. They were out for blood—only looking out for themselves.

  If they’d only seen him with her, seen his compassion and his concern. She played through those days she’d spent with him in her head. She remembered the fear when he first took her from her school recital. She didn’t know what was going on: one second, she was going to the bathroom; the next, powerful arms were restraining her. She’d screamed in the van, but he’d stilled her with his voice. He never barked orders or threatened violence. He just spoke to her in that way of his. The one that said he could be trusted. When he’d said, “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s going to be okay, Annabel,” she had believed him.

  Unconsciously, she touched her arm where the bones had speared her flesh. The break had been a serious one but had healed completely, except for the scars around the wound from so long ago. The scars left her self-conscious, and she never wore short sleeves out in public. She wouldn’t mind showing him, though. She knew he wouldn’t mind.

  She remembered how he’d panicked when he fell down the steps with her in his arms. He drew her into him to protect her from the fall. It had been an instinctive reaction. A loving thing to do when she was really to blame. She’d fought him, panicked by the fall. She’d gotten her arm free, and when they hit the ground, his weight had broken it.

  “Oh, Christ, oh, Christ,” he’d repeated and lifted her mangled arm.

  Strangely, his panic had calmed her. The pain knifed through her when she made the smallest of movements and the tears flowed from her without cessation, but she wasn’t scared. She watched him with fascination as he hurried to repair her arm. He fed her that drug that left her drowsy and numb, but the soft touch of his hand wiping the tears from her cheeks as he set and bandaged her arm did more for her than any tranquilizer.

  He stopped wearing his mask after he moved her from the basement to the bedroom. He came to her after he’d given her antibiotics. He probably thought she’d be asleep. He leaned in to check her temperature by placing his hand on her forehead. She opened her eyes, and he jerked away from her.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I won’t tell.”

  Things changed after that. He didn’t bother with the mask. He sat with her most of the time, instead of simply locking her in the room. He read stories to her.

  When he told her he was returning her to her parents, she’d asked, “What’s your name?”

  He’d hesitated before answering. “Brian. My name is Brian.”

  If Jane had heard the tenderness in his voice when he said his name, then she wouldn’t believe he was evil.

  Recalling all this took the sting out of her anger, and excitement filled the void. Her foot remained pressed on the gas pedal. She knew where to find him. Fifteen years after he took her, she was on the verge of meeting Brian again.

  She stopped the BMW at the road sign she’d spied all those years ago. When Brian had returned her, he hadn’t bound her up. He’d just told her to stay still in the back of the van, but she had gotten up and peeled back the drapes to see out the window. When she’d murmured the street names aloud, he’d whirled on her.

  “Get away from there! What did I tell you about moving?”

  It was the only time he’d ever raised his voice to her. She slipped from her car and went over to the crossed road signs of McKinley and Walnut, thinking of her view from the back of Brian’s car. Not much had changed in fifteen years. It was an intersection flanked by fields and trees and little else to define it. She oriented herself with her position when she’d peeked out the window. Brian had turned off McKinley onto Walnut. She hurried back to the BMW and sped away, kicking up dirt.

  She’d driven down this road a dozen times, maybe two dozen, each time driven by the slim hope that Brian would emerge from his driveway or happen to be strolling to the mailbox.

  Annabel scanned the properties on both sides of the road. Unwittingly, Jane had bridged the gap in her memories for her. Annabel had no idea where Brian had kept her. Even when he loaded her into his car to take her home, he’d covered her head with a blanket. But it had been the mention of horses that had done it. She’d never seen the horses, but she’d heard them. A ranch made sense. That explained the hay in the cellar and the wet-grass smell that permeated the air.

  She knew what she was looking for this time.

  A ranch house loomed on a hill on a sizeable section of land to her left. She didn’t see any horses, but it was Brian’s place. There was no doubt in her mind. She stomped on the brake and the BMW came to an untidy stop on the narrow road.


  A pickup with an enclosed flatbed sat out front. His car. He was home.

  Anxiety set in. Her hands shook and she felt hot within the car’s air-conditioned cool. Her foot remained on the brake.

  This is crazy, she thought. Why am I doing this? She’d wanted this moment for years, and now she wanted to flee.

  Brian was only a few hundred yards away. It would be stupid not to drive up to his door—if not for herself, then for him. The FBI was closing in. He needed to be warned—and helped. She would help him if he asked.

  She turned into his drive.

  “Okay, what have you got?” Sheils asked.

  Scott sat in Sheils’s car parked across from the field office on Golden Gate Avenue with his cell phone plugged into a hands-free unit. Jones’s voice came through a tinny speaker mounted in the top corner of the windshield. It had been Sheils’s suggestion; he didn’t want to conduct this covert business in front of his agents, even behind closed doors.

  “It’s a series of paparazzi-style black-and-white eight-by-tens featuring the Piper, or someone who I assume is the Piper. He’s wearing a ski mask. Redfern must have been on top of the guy to take these. Shit, the Piper is supposed to be uncatchable, but this crackpot got these without the son of a bitch even knowing.”

  “Christ,” Sheils murmured.

  “Are the pictures dated?” Sheils asked.

  “You bet. He wrote the dates on the back of each shot. The date corresponds with Ryan Rodgers’s kidnapping.”

  In that moment, Scott lost all sympathy for Redfern. When he’d caught up with him in Oregon, he was a pathetic figure, broken by his own stupidity. It was hard to despise someone like that. Not now, though. Redfern had gotten within arm’s reach of the Piper before Nicholas Rooker’s murder. He could have prevented the boy’s death if he’d just come clean and not gotten carried away with his damn fantasy. If he’d gone to the cops, the Piper wouldn’t have put a bullet in his face. Karma.

  “I hope that fucker is burning in hell,” Sheils said.

  “Ditto,” Jones said. “Now, the photos don’t help us a whole bunch. They show the Piper walking through a park. We don’t see a vehicle or anything incriminating. We have a physical description, but no clear shot of his face.”

  “So the pictures are useless,” Sheils said.

  “Not so fast, quick draw. The Piper must have been feeling pretty cocky at the time.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s not wearing gloves, and I can see a ring. Right hand. Pinky.”

  Sheils smiled. “School ring? College ring? Super Bowl ring? Something-we-can-trace kind of ring?”

  “Don’t have to. I have the ring.”

  Sheils exchanged a look with Scott. “Tell me you’re not joking.”

  “No joke. Christ only knows how Redfern got a hold of it.”

  “Sure it’s not a replica?” Scott asked. “Redfern was all for copying the Piper. Taking secret pictures of him and buying a ring just like his wouldn’t be outside the realms of fantasy.”

  Scott hoped he was wrong. He wanted it to lead them all the way to his boys. He wanted to jam the damned ring down the Piper’s throat and choke the fucker on it, but he had to be sure they weren’t chasing after ghosts.

  “I don’t think so,” Jones said. “He walled this thing up with the pictures. The ring was stored in a nice case. This was special.”

  “What kind of ring is it, Walter?”

  “Signet ring. Black onyx with the letters BG stamped in it. Now, I know BG could stand for anything, but I’m betting it’s his initials. It looks like something a proud parent would give as a gift.”

  “Shame they didn’t shell out for an inscription,” Sheils said.

  “Them being cheap is the last thing they need to worry about when it comes to their parenting skills. Their little boy grew up to be the Piper,” Jones said. “Look, I want to try something here. I’d like to run a property search for someone with the initials BG within a three-hour driving radius of the Bay Area.”

  “That’s going to generate a lot of names,” Sheils said. “Let’s cross-reference with people who also own homes in the Bay Area counties. This guy will be local.”

  “Cool,” Jones said. “But I want to stick around here. There’s still a bunch of notes I want to go through.”

  “No problem,” Sheils said. “Don’t touch the ring. We might get lucky on prints or get DNA off of it.”

  “Amen to that,” Jones said. “Say, I need you to take care of something else. I have a babysitter, courtesy of the sheriff’s department.”

  “You want to lose him?”

  “No, he doesn’t know dick about coffee, but he knows right from wrong. Now, the shit’s going to hit the fan when you explain how I just happened to punch a hole through Redfern’s wall to find his stash. I just don’t want any spray hitting the kid.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Hang tight. I’ll call back in fifteen.” Sheils hung up and turned to Scott. “I need to follow up on this. Can you disappear for an hour?”

  “Sure. I need something to eat. I’ve got my cell. Call me when you’re finished.”

  They both got out of the car. Scott watched Sheils race across the street. Scott headed toward Market Street.

  Jones’s breakthrough excited Scott. It brought them a step closer the Piper, and not in the way the Piper expected. The son of bitch wouldn’t even know he was losing at his own game. But Scott tried not to get too cocky; the Piper wouldn’t go down without a fight. Regardless, things were breaking Scott’s way. For once, he felt optimistic. That was until Jane called him.

  “Scott,” she said, her voice filled with concern, “I think I wrecked things with Annabel.”

  When Brian opened the door, Annabel’s heart fluttered in her chest and she lost the ability to breathe. She’d guessed right. Surely, that had to be a sign, didn’t it? Out of all the homes on this road, she’d picked right the first time.

  The intervening years had treated him well. He’d aged, but in a good way. His hairline had crept up his forehead and silver dominated his dark hair. The lines around his mouth and forehead had deepened, giving him a distinguished look. He was still trim and fit.

  Brian eyed her with suspicion and looked over her shoulder at her BMW. “Can I help you?”

  He didn’t recognize her. There was no shame in that. She’d been eleven when he’d last seen her. She was a woman now.

  “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

  He shook his head. “No. Should I?”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have some business to attend to and I don’t have time for a sales pitch. Sorry.”

  He went to close the door.

  “Brian, it’s me. Annabel Cho.”

  It was the mention of his name, not hers, that stopped him from closing the door. His gray eyes went wide as he scanned the landscape behind her carefully.

  “It’s okay, Brian. You have nothing to fear. You’re safe with me,” she said, then pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  He closed the door after her. “What do you want?”

  “To see you. You’re in the news again. I remembered how kind you were to me.” She flushed. “I never stopped thinking about you.”

  “Let me see some ID.”

  She delved into her purse and pulled out her wallet. He snatched it from her and removed her license and credit cards. He examined the license photo, then Annabel.

  “As you can see, I’m all grown up.” She did a little pirouette for him.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I sort of always knew where you were. Remember when I peeked out the car window? I saw the road signs for McKinley and Walnut.”

  He still retained a note of caution in his voice. She put it down to shock. He wasn’t expecting her. But he would relax. He just needed a minute. She decided she would need to get things started. She wandered over to a love seat and settled into it. Room for two.


  He remained standing.

  “You didn’t just happen to find me from a couple of road signs.”

  “No, I had help.”

  “Help? From whom?” Panic edged his tone. He went to the window and stared out from behind the sheer drapes.

  “From Jane Fleetwood. You have her boys. She’s beginning to work things out.”

  He whirled. “What do you mean?”

  “She doesn’t have much, and I didn’t tell them anything,” she hastened to add, “but something she said connected the dots and I knew where to look for you. I felt I should warn you. I can help you, if you’ll let me.”

  She patted the spare seat next to her. He sat, handing her wallet back to her.

  She took his hand and placed it between hers. It was warm and dry. Hers were ice cold. All the heat in her body was in her chest trying to contain her pounding heart.

  “Why have you come here?” he asked. His tone was soft and soothing, just like it had been all those years ago.

  Her nerves melted away. “You were so kind to me during the kidnapping, especially after breaking my arm. I never felt kidnapped. I felt like I was with a friend. No one ever treated me with the tenderness you did.”

  “What about your parents?”

  Annabel frowned as she thought of her father’s treatment of her. He’d been more of a drill sergeant than a dad. And her mother had just let him berate her. She shook her head.

  “Boyfriend?”

  “Boys always wanted something. You were the only one who loved me for who I was.” She put her hand to his cheek. “You don’t know how upset I was when you gave me back. I wanted to stay here forever.”

  He smiled, took her hand, and guided it back to her lap. He let his hand rest on top of hers. His warmth radiated through her hand to warm her thigh.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said. “No one has ever expressed themselves to me quite like that before. And you’ve felt that way all these years?”

  “Yes.”