Paying the Piper

by Simon Wood

  Reagan pointed at the Transamerica Building. The Feds dressed as cops got out of the cruiser and made a loud fuss. He was loitering. Did he want to go downtown? He played his part, pretending to be misunderstood. The Feds patted him down, put his bike in the trunk, and bundled him into the back of the cruiser.

  They drove him to his studio on the edge of Japantown. He got them to drop him off two blocks short. He didn’t want his neighbors getting the wrong idea.

  He climbed the stairs all the way to the fourth floor with his bike slung over his shoulder, then let himself into his apartment. The moment he closed the door, he smelled aftershave. He didn’t wear any. His hand went to the light switch next to the door, but he hesitated. He didn’t want to see his visitor.

  “Do we have to sit in the dark?” the voice said.

  He flicked on the light. The same man who’d offered him the two hundred bucks at the Mechanics’ Memorial sat on his sofa bed. His dark hair was now blond. An automatic rested on his lap, his fingers loosely curled around the weapon.

  “Where have you been, honey?” the man asked in a mocking tone. “I expected you home hours ago.”

  Reagan wheeled his bike into the kitchenette and stepped into the small living room. He tried to keep the desperate sound from his voice, but failed.

  “I got tied up. I’ve been waiting for you for hours at Fort Mason like you asked, but you didn’t show.”

  The man raised the gun to silence him. “Where’s the backpack?”

  Reagan felt the curse fall back on his shoulders. The Feds had taken it from him at Fort Mason.

  “You haven’t peeked inside, have you?”

  “No, no, no,” he said, fumbling for an answer. “I took it back to the locker. Returned it. I guessed you’d get back in touch with me.”

  “That was thoughtful of you.”

  Reagan shrugged. “You know, I try.”

  “I’m sure you do.” The man’s words slipped out on a thin layer of oil, sounding smooth and convincing. “Cops got in your way, did they? FBI, to be exact.”

  “What? FBI? No. What makes you think that?”

  The man aimed the gun straight at him, cutting Reagan’s babble short.

  “Please don’t insult my intelligence,” he said with restrained anger. “I am a professional. I take precautions, and you’re one of them. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Lie to me, and I’ll know.”

  Reagan wasn’t in any doubt of that. This guy knew the FBI had busted him. He knew everything.

  “Did the FBI pick you up?”

  Sorry, G-man, it’s time for me to swap sides again, he thought.

  “Yeah, the Feds picked me up. They have the money.”

  “Thank you,” the man said and shot Reagan in the face.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Friedkin pulled up in front of Alex Hammond’s home in Daly City. The house sat silent and dark pressed up against its neighbors, the neighborhood quiet now at four in the morning. Friedkin liked to think Alex was asleep inside too, with no connection to the Piper and the kidnapping of Sammy and Peter Fleetwood, but he knew it was fantasy. So what did he hope to find here? Sammy and Peter? He didn’t really know. He just hoped to find an explanation.

  He slipped out from behind the wheel of his Mercedes. After Sheils had released him, he’d caught a cab to Rebecca’s. He apologized for wrecking her car, and after giving him some grief, she’d handed him his keys back. He crossed the street, went up to Alex’s window, and peered inside. He saw and heard nothing.

  He ducked down the narrow side yard to the rear of the house. The yard was overgrown. A gas barbecue sat knee-deep in the grass and a garden hose disappeared into the dense thatch. Friedkin couldn’t count the number of times he’d been here before, and Alex’s house was always immaculate. Alex prided himself on his yard, his family, and his home.

  That had been until the trial separation. Kerry had moved out a couple of months ago, taking Jack with her. Friedkin didn’t know the details, and he should have. Not because he was Alex’s boss, but because the man was his friend. When he saw the dropoff in Alex’s work and the change in his demeanor, he should have asked questions instead of firing him.

  He tried the back door. Locked. He eyed the houses on either side of him. Nothing stirred. He counted his blessings that neither neighbor owned a dog while he brought out his picks and worked the lock.

  Even if Alex’s life was going down the tubes, it didn’t explain why he was in Vallejo watching the FBI work a crime scene. Alex wasn’t the Piper, so what was he doing there? That one question created a drift of other equally difficult questions. How did he know to be in Vallejo at the exact same time as Scott Fleetwood? Was he working for someone else? Friedkin didn’t like where his thoughts were taking him. The lock clicked and he was in.

  The kitchen stank. He snapped on his flashlight and shone it over the countertops. Rancid takeout containers sat in piles. The top of a delivery slip taped to a pizza box had yesterday’s date on it. Alex would be back.

  He went into the living room. His flashlight beam swept over papers covering the dining table. He flicked on the light switch and groaned. Photographs of the Fleetwood family were pinned to the walls. One wall featured individual shots of Scott, Jane, Sammy, and Peter. A sheet of paper with their names hung above their respective candid photos. A character profile hung below their shots. It consisted of a bullet-point list of information written at different times in different inks. Their habits. Their likes. Their dislikes. What in the hell was this?

  Four files sat on the dining table with the names Scott, Jane, Sammy, and Peter written on each cover. Inside, he found daily logs dating back months detailing the Fleetwoods’ movements. Friedkin struggled to believe his friend had any involvement with the Piper, but the wealth of evidence before him was impossible to ignore.

  How had this happened? How had he let this happen? He flicked off the lights.

  He returned to the kitchen and checked the answering machine. The new-message light blinked, and he pressed play.

  The machine’s mechanical voice time-stamped the first message a week ago last Tuesday.

  “Alex, it’s Kerry. Why aren’t you returning my calls? I know you’re going through a tough time right now. I’m not trying to punish you. Call me. Please.”

  The second message came three days later, again from Kerry.

  “Alex, please call. I’m worried. You missed our appointment. I understand if you don’t want to see me, but don’t shut Jack out. Please call, just let me know you’re doing okay.”

  Kerry’s third message came yesterday. Concern filled her previous two messages. Fear contaminated the last one.

  “Alex, I came by the house today. You’ve changed the locks. No one has heard from you in days. I called your office. They said they let you go. What’s going on? Call me, even if it’s just to say I’m a rotten bitch. It’ll tell me you’re alive.” Kerry ended her call with a sob.

  Friedkin wiped his hand across his mouth. His friend was in serious trouble. He felt very old and very tired.

  His cell phone rang in his pocket. Alex’s name appeared on the display.

  “Why are you in my house, John?” Alex asked.

  Friedkin went to the kitchen window. He didn’t see Alex. “What makes you think I’m in your house?”

  “Your car’s parked out front.”

  Friedkin cursed his stupidity.

  Alex continued. “If I were to enter my home to find you there, skulking in the dark, I would be within my rights to shoot you, thinking you were an intruder—which you are.”

  Friedkin took the threat seriously. “If you were to shoot me, you’d be shooting a friend.”

  “Friends don’t break into friends’ houses in the middle of the night, John.”

  “It was with the best of intentions. Kerry and I are worried about you.”

  “Have you two been talking behind my back?”

  �
��No. I just know she’s worried.”

  He cut through the house back to the kitchen. He pocketed the flashlight and tugged out a paring knife from a knife block. There were bigger knifes, but they were unwieldy in a fight. The paring knife came as close to a street weapon as he could get.

  “Why were you watching the FBI in Vallejo, Alex?”

  “I was working.”

  The house wasn’t a safe place. It was going to be Friedkin’s tomb if he didn’t get out. He opened the back door, then sped through the house and unlocked the front door. He cracked the door an inch. If he needed to escape through the front door, just a quick tug and he was out.

  “Are you the Piper?”

  Alex exploded into laughter. “No, I’m not the Piper. Damn, John, I thought you were better than this.”

  Friedkin moved to a point midway between the front and rear door. No matter which door Alex entered, he had a head start.

  “I’m in your living room, Alex. What am I supposed to think? You know if I take this to the FBI, they’ll come after you.”

  “But you won’t. You’ve got the reputation of the agency to consider.”

  “Reputations can be rebuilt.”

  “Friendships can’t.”

  Alex was right. The reason he’d lied when Sheils showed him Alex’s composite was out of friendship. He wanted his friend to explain himself and have a chance to give himself up if he’d had any part in the Fleetwood kidnappings.

  “Maybe our friendship isn’t supposed to last.”

  “Maybe,” Alex said with resignation. “I’m hanging up now. I have an intruder to stop.”

  This was it. Alex was coming for him. His breathing quickened as he listened hard for footsteps. Front or rear? Front or rear? Which way would Alex come? The front door shifted a fraction and Friedkin bolted for the rear. He hurtled through the kitchen and out the back door. He charged down the side yard for the front. He wanted to turn the tables and trap Alex in the house.

  He rounded the front of the house, expecting to see Alex bursting inside, but Alex wasn’t there. He slowed and approached the door with caution. The wind had nudged the door. Not Alex.

  He looked up and down the street for Alex or his car. Neither was anywhere to be seen.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Sheils sat at the Fleetwoods’ kitchen table eating the breakfast Scott and Jane had made for his team. He’d yet to go to bed, but he’d gone home for a shower, a change of clothes, and the opportunity to hug his family. It went a long way to recharging his sleep-deprived batteries.

  The same couldn’t be said of Scott and Jane. They had no one else to turn to for solace. They needed good news, and soon.

  Sheils wasn’t sure how he was going to get it for them. The ransom drop had left them no leads. His team was working the places where Scott had stopped the night before, but he didn’t bank on them finding anything. Baz Reagan had looked to be their best chance of catching the Piper, and that turned out to be a bust. The license plate Friedkin got off the rental car was their remaining lead. It would turn up an identity and an address. He expected it to be a bogus identity, but it would start a trail leading to the real one. Proactively, that was all he had going for him. Reactively, he expected a call from the Piper. It had to come soon, and it would be bad.

  He finished the last of his eggs and pulled out his cell phone to check his voice mail. Jones dominated the voice mails. He left a message before and after he approached each BG suspect on the list. Jones added his own flavor to each report, waxing lyrical about each BG as he eliminated him. He added how much his butt hurt from sitting in his car all day. Sheils smiled at the extraneous commentary, but his smile slipped when he listened to the messages for Brian Givens.

  “Tom, I’ve just left the property for this Brian Givens character. I don’t like him. He left me feeling queer, and you know how I hate feeling queer. I’m not saying Givens is our guy, but he didn’t want me on the premises. Now, he might just not be a fan of the black man, or he could be a country hermit who likes his privacy, but he’s hinky. He needs a second look. There’s a house, barn, and a paddock for horses. I’m going to stake this place out and search it when he leaves. If you have any friendlies up here, I’d appreciate extra help. Call me. I’ll call you with progress reports.”

  But Jones hadn’t called again. He left his last message just after four p.m. That was seventeen hours ago. Even if his cell had crapped out on him, Jones would have gotten to a pay phone. Sheils punched in Jones’s cell number, and the call went to voice mail.

  “Jones, call me.”

  Panic edged his words, drawing Scott and Jane’s attention.

  “What’s wrong?” Jane asked.

  “It’s Jones. He didn’t call in after checking out one of the BG properties yesterday.”

  He went to his briefcase and yanked out the short list of nine property owner names and addresses. He yanked out Brian Givens’s details from the mix.

  “Dunham, in here,” he yelled.

  Dunham entered the kitchen.

  “You got anything back from the rental place?”

  “Yeah. Just now. A Douglas Ritchie rented the car with a MasterCard using an Ohio driver’s license. Both bogus. He’s our guy, though.” Dunham held out a printout of the driver’s license.

  Sheils took the printout. Douglas Ritchie’s DMV picture matched Baz Reagan’s description in every respect except hair color.

  He handed Brian Givens’s property details to Dunham. “Get me a DMV and whatever else you can on this guy, fast.”

  “Do you think Jones found the Piper?” Scott asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you’re worried he did,” Jane said.

  “Yes,” he admitted reluctantly.

  He called Jones’s number and got voice mail again. He called Jones’s wife and asked if she’d heard from him. She hadn’t. He kept the fear from his voice when he told her he’d get Jones to call her back.

  Dunham returned with Brian Givens’s driver’s license details. The man pictured on the California driver’s license wasn’t Douglas Ritchie.

  “Who is he?” Jane asked, looking at Givens’s DMV photo.

  Sheils had an inkling. At fifty-three, Brian Givens was in the Piper’s age range. Douglas Ritchie, or whoever he really was, was on the young side for the Piper. He would have barely been out of his teens when the first victim, Camille Fairweather, had been kidnapped. The Piper came over as a well-organized loner, but his position as team leader couldn’t be ruled out.

  “The man in the city last night could be an accomplice. When Friedkin followed the rental car last night, he didn’t see either of your children with him. Considering how he had us running around last night, he would have been forced to leave Sammy and Peter behind. It’s unlikely he left them unattended.”

  “You think Brian Givens is the Piper?” Scott asked.

  “I think it’s worth investigating.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Sheils had no direct proof. He had threads, mere strands of information, but those strands wove together to construct a thick enough rope to hang the Piper.

  “Yes, I think it’s him.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?” Jane asked.

  “We aren’t.” He returned inside and called his team into the living room. “We have a new player in this game. Brian Givens. He owns property similar to that described by Ryan Rodgers. Annabel Cho and someone I sent in have disappeared in the vicinity of this property. I want to know this man inside and out, financially, criminally, and personally. I want to know if he owned any of the properties used in this case. That includes the store on South Van Ness and the sawmill in Oregon. I want this picture shown to Baz Reagan and the Piper kidnap families. Do they recognize this man?”

  The speech invigorated his flagging team. He capitalized on their newfound energy by divvying up assignments. While everyone jumped on their tasks, he called the Yolo County sheriffs and got the
m to form a half-mile perimeter around Givens’s home. They weren’t to approach or intercept, just establish his presence and make sure he stayed there. He requested a chopper to fly him and Brannon to Winters.

  Scott stopped him on his way out. “I’m coming with you.”

  “You’re staying here in case we receive a call from the Piper.”

  “Jane can take the call. I’m coming with you.”

  “I can’t allow that.”

  “If Givens has my children and you squeeze him, he’ll kill them, but he might hesitate if he knows I’m there. You’ll need a bargaining chip, and I’m it.”

  Sheils looked to Brannon. Brannon showed no signs of disagreement.

  “You know Scott’s right,” Jane said.

  “Okay,” Sheils said. “You’re coming.”

  The door opened and Kerry Hammond stepped out from her parents’ home in Concord. Her son bounded along behind her, and she opened the car door for him to get in.

  Friedkin had been both waiting for this moment and dreading it. He’d been parked outside the house for a couple of hours. Lights came on an hour ago, but he’d lacked the courage to go up to the door. How could he tell this woman her husband was tied to the Piper? He still didn’t have all the details, but he was out of time. He slipped from his car and jogged across the road.

  She was fastening the boy into his car seat when he called her name. She looked up, then smiled when she recognized him. “John, what are you doing here?”

  Her smile dropped when she took in his disheveled appearance and his grave expression.

  “Kerry, we need to talk.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to get Jack to school.”

  “It can’t wait, Kerry.”

  She pretended like she hadn’t heard him and fussed with the straps on Jack’s car seat, but couldn’t seem to snap the buckle together. He eased her aside and snapped it into place. She went to the driver’s side, but he caught her arm.

  “Can’t your mom or dad take Jack to school this morning? It’s important. It’s about Alex.”