The Pied Piper

by Ridley Pearson

  The profound silence he encountered told him he had hit the mark. “This is good.”

  “We should have been on this a long time ago,” he suggested.

  “You mean we should have been. Point taken. This is very good, Lieutenant.”

  “You, the Bureau, would have quicker access to those mailing lists. The publishers will be out-of-state.” He added, “You didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Are you telling me this is ours?” the disbelief in her voice unmistakable.

  “As far as I’m concerned, you thought of it, Ms. Kalidja, not me. It’s all yours.”

  “I do not know what to say. This kind of cooperation … well, it has not been the norm.”

  Boldt asked, “Quid pro quo?”

  “Ah … so that’s it! You know, Lieutenant, I think you would get along well with my S-A-C. Perhaps you would like to bring this up with him.”

  “I didn’t ask for Flemming, I asked for you.”

  “Exactly,” she replied.

  “That’s because Flemming has locked down all credit information on past victims. I can’t get access to any of it. I figure he put you up to that.”

  Another prolonged silence. Boldt didn’t want a story from her; he hoped she wasn’t dreaming one up for him.

  She said, “A precaution is all. Keep the media from disseminating information ahead of time.”

  “Or to keep local investigators from looking at it?” he asked.

  “Lieutenant …”

  “I need the financial records—credit history, bank accounts, credit card activity—of every family the Pied Piper targeted. You can understand that, I’m sure. It’s where an investigation like this starts. I put that request in to you personally, long before there ever was a Shotz or a Weinstein. When it failed to arrive, after numerous subsequent requests, I attempted to obtain those records myself and discovered they are stonewalled. Blocked. Now, since you’re Flemming’s Intelligence officer, you must have done this. I’ve got to tell you that I didn’t even know such a thing could be done. It must have been one hell of a Herculean effort to pull this off. But now that you’ve done it—and so successfully—I respectfully request that all such information be delivered to me by this afternoon.”

  “But—”

  “Or,” he added quickly, “Flemming’s little end run will find its way to both local and national media, and all the efforts in the world won’t keep at least some of it from going public. It’s going to come apart on you.”

  “You’re threatening me?”

  “I’m an information gatherer, Ms. Kalidja. I leave the threatening to others. But if I were to threaten anyone, it would be Flemming, not you. From what I know about him, Flemming is a man who gets the job done. Nothing wrong with that. He’s known to like things his way. I’ve been there myself. But I wouldn’t threaten a man like Flemming; I’d just expose him and let him deal with it. No, what I’m offering is a trade. I’m trading you a damn good lead for information I should have had in my hands two weeks ago. Who’s getting the better end of this one?”

  “I don’t have the information you request, Lieutenant.” Her voice held a note of apology.

  “You’re the Intelligence officer. Any such information would have gone through your office.”

  “It may have passed through,” she conceded, “but it did … not … stick.”

  She was giving him something, revealing something. Boldt could hear the tentative reluctance in her silky voice.

  At SPD such information would have been copied, filed and disseminated to those with a Need to Know. The Bureau couldn’t be much different, and yet what she was telling him was that she had either failed to make copies or had been ordered not to do so. Either explanation was insufficient and yet intriguing. What the hell was going on over there? Local FBI against the nationals? Perhaps the lockdown had little to do with keeping local police away from it and everything to do with preventing their own FBI field office investigators from running with it.

  He asked, “What office received that information, Special Agent?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “We’re doing each other favors here.”

  “And I am afraid mine have run out. If you are dissatisfied and would like to take back—”

  “No,” he said, “it’s yours. I don’t go back on a trade, even when I get the short shrift.”

  “I will see what I can do. That is the best I can offer.”

  “That is as much as any of us can offer,” he said gratefully, “and I thank you for that.”

  “Lieutenant, I am certain you did background checks on us coming into this, and of course we did the same—or rather, I did. Let me just say that from everything I have read, I have great respect for you, both as a person and your service record. Quite frankly, as Intelligence officer, it was my job to speculate on who would head SPD’s task force, and I suggested to my superiors it would be you. I am aware of your wife’s illness, and I offer my sympathies and those of this agency. I have to think that given other circumstances it would have been you running the show over there, and I think they could use you. I value greatly the information you have just given me, and I hope to earn your respect as well, as the investigation continues.”

  “I’d be happier,” Boldt confided in her, “if it didn’t continue, if it stopped today.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Boldt thanked her, hung up and spun around in his chair with the sounding of the beep that signaled his E-mail. On his computer screen, a menu appeared with a full list of the waiting mail. This most recent arrival was a reminder—a second message—from the mail room that Boldt had received a package marked “urgent.”

  As Intelligence officer, with snitches and informants spread around the city like traffic lights, Boldt could ill afford to leave any urgent package gathering dust. Some informants used the phones, others—politicians and white collars mostly—abhorred them, preferring the written word, always “anonymous.”

  By the time Boldt picked up his package, it had been X-rayed, electronically sniffed for explosives and run through a magnetometer for metal density—as safe as modern technology could make it for opening.

  Ronnie Lyte ran mail room security. “It’s a CD maybe.”

  Boldt realized he had hurried down to the basement mail room for nothing. The ME, Doc Dixon, and he exchanged favorite jazz works all the time. Along with SID’s Bernie Lofgrin, they had something of a jazz enthusiasts’ club. Boldt’s love leaned to keyboards and tenor. Until Liz’s illness, Boldt had occasionally held a happy hour piano gig at Bear Berenson’s comedy club. Doc Dixon leaned toward trumpet players, though he also had a keen ear for tenor sax. Lofgrin was drummers and bass players: He considered the rhythm section of any group the most important. Boldt immediately mistook this CD as a gift from Dixon, whose offices were a mile away in the basement of Harbor View Medical Center.

  The padded envelope had been stapled three times at the fold. The package bore no stamps, no postage meter label, no stamp or sticker from one of the city’s many messenger services. This offered Boldt the first twinge of unease. His name and the address had been printed by computer on regular paper, and the paper taped to the package using two pieces of wide, clear packing tape. Boldt studied all this. “How’d we get it?”

  “No clue,” Ronnie Lyte said.

  The mail room was run by three Asian civilians, administered by Sue Lu. Boldt shouted across to Lu, “Someone sign for this?”

  “Don’t remember it.”

  “Black kid delivered it,” one of her assistants answered. “No signature required, except from you that is.”

  “A messenger?”

  “Not someone I’m familiar with,” the young man answered. “Not a regular.”

  “A cold drop? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “A delivery, Lieutenant,” the young man replied. “Guy said it was urgent.”

  “But what guy?” Boldt said, exasperated.

  �
�We get a couple dozen couriers in here a day,” Lu explained to Boldt, defending her assistant and herself.

  “Was it logged?” Boldt asked.

  “Every arrival is logged,” the assistant confirmed, checking a computer terminal. “Arrived twenty minutes ago. We sent you an E-mail.”

  “I don’t care about the E-mail! I care about how it arrived, who delivered it.” He felt a growing sense of anxiety in his chest; a part of him did not want to open it, another part could not wait. But he wanted the details straight first. The label and the lack of postage had triggered a series of internal alarms. If the envelope contained cash, and not a CD, Boldt wanted witnesses to its being opened. Intelligence officers regularly faced attempts to compromise them; the smarter people behind such attempts left all details off the delivery of the bribe, waiting to make later contact. The CD might be a ruse, the true contents a roll of a couple hundred, a couple thousand, dollars in cash. Boldt needed witnesses.

  “I’m opening it here,” he announced. He marked the time aloud. This won the attention of Sue Lu, who joined him knowing he was requesting a witness. She checked her own watch and confirmed the time.

  Boldt opened the padded envelope and disgorged its contents: a single gold-colored CD in a clear jeweler’s box. The words OPTICAL MEDIA were printed on the disk along with some manufacturing information. No letter or note. No explanation. Everything about this bothered him. He handed the padded envelope to Lu, who looked it over.

  “Empty,” she said.

  “Just the CD,” he agreed.

  “It’s a CD-R,” she informed him, pointing out the initials on the disk. “It’s marked data, not music. For use with a computer CD-ROM.”

  “I need a computer with a CD-ROM player?” Boldt asked her, both testing that he had it right and asking her for advice where he might find one.

  “Tech Services’ media lab,” she informed him. Adding, “They have everything in there.”

  Tech Services occupied two glorified basement closets that communicated by a doorway cut through a cement block wall. An array of electronic gear, predominantly audio/video and computer, occupied black rack mounts that in some instances ran floor to ceiling—linoleum to acoustic tile. Twice the rooms had experienced water damage due to errant plumbing, damaging gear and blowing circuit breakers. As a precaution against such accidents, a clear plastic canopy had been installed as a kind of shortstop. The sheets of plastic were taped together with silver duct tape, in places partially obscuring the overhead fluorescent tube. Boldt was shown to a computer terminal in the corner of the back room.

  “We’re working on some audio tapes in the other room,” the technician explained, offering Boldt a set of headphones that were in bad condition. He plugged them into one of the rack-mounted devices.

  “I don’t think it’s music,” Boldt said, not understanding the offer of headphones. “I’ve got a CD player in my office.”

  “It’s CD-R,” the tech explained. “Recordable CD-ROM. Multimedia, probably, or why not just send a disk? These babies hold six hundred and forty megs of data, that’s why. With compression? Shit, it’s damn near bottomless.”

  “What do I do?”

  The man set up the disk in the machine. “Double click this baby when you’re ready,” he said, pointing to the screen. “It should do the rest.” He reminded, “Don’t forget the disk when you’re done. People are always forgetting their disks.” He tapped his earlobe.

  “You go through this a lot, do you?” Boldt asked sarcastically.

  “Headphones,” the man reminded.

  Boldt slipped the headphones on as the tech left him. He double clicked the CD icon and sat back, watching the screen, his anxiety still with him. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble. The average snitch liked things simple: money for information. This felt more white collar, more upmarket, and that generally meant power and influence—entities that Intelligence ran up against from time to time.

  The computer took a moment to access the CD-ROM. The word WAIT flashed in the message bar, as if he had a choice. The screen suddenly changed to a light gray background, and a credit card–sized box appeared in the center of the screen. Ambient room sound hissed in his ear, reminding Boldt of interrogation tapes. But there was something else in the sound: a radio or TV.

  The small box in the center of the screen showed a small child—a girl—in a chair. He scrambled for his reading glasses. The girl appeared bound to the chair. Worse, she looked alarmingly like his own Sarah, although the room was unfamiliar to him: a pale yellow wall behind her, grandmother curtains on a window behind her and to her right. To the child’s left, a television set played CNN, the voices of the news anchors distant and vague.

  All at once the image animated. The girl looked left in a movement all too familiar to Boldt. The reading glasses found their way to Boldt’s eyes, and he leaned in for a better look.

  Not possible, a voice inside him warned. Terror stung him.

  As she spoke, as he heard that voice, all doubt was removed. Sarah screamed, “Daddy!” She rocked violently, her arms taped to the chair. “Daddy!”

  The video image went black, replaced by a typewritten message in the same small box. Boldt could not read it for the tears in his eyes.

  He saw her all at once as a small fragile creature, cradled between his open palm and elbow, a tiny little newborn, a treasure of expressions and sounds. A promise of life; the enormous responsibility he felt to nurture and protect her.

  He wiped away his tears, returned the glasses and read the message on the screen.

  Sarah is safe and unharmed. She will remain so as long as the task force’s investigation wanders. Do not allow it to focus. Do not allow any suspect to be pursued. If you are clever, your daughter lives and is returned to you happy and safe. This I promise. If you speak of this to another living soul, if the investigation should net a suspect, you will never see your sweet Sarah again. Think clearly. This is a choice you must make. Make it wisely.

  Boldt reread the warning, stood from the chair and then sagged back down. He closed the file and took the CD out of the machine. Think! he demanded of himself, no thoughts able to land, his balance gone, the room spinning. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The Pied Piper might have spies anywhere. Paranoia overtook him. Boldt stood up slowly, like an invalid testing his unsure legs. Chills rushed up and down his spine. His face burned. Someone spoke to him in the hall, and again on the elevator and in the garage—he saw their mouths move, he heard the shapes of sound, but not the words. He was someplace no one could reach him. He ran several red lights on his way to the yellow house where Sarah and Miles spent their middays with fifteen other children.

  He bounded the stairs two at a time and attempted to turn the doorknob. Locked! He pounded hard—too hard, too loudly, too furiously.

  If you speak of this to another living soul …

  Hurried footsteps approached noisily. The fish-eye peephole momentarily darkened as someone inspected him from the other side. Hurry up! he wanted to shout, but collected himself as the door came open.

  Millie Wiggins stood before him, surprised. “Mr. Boldt!”

  “Sarah?” he asked, his voice cracking as he stepped past the woman and into the playroom. Sight of the children playing choked him and squeezed tears close to the surface. “Sarah?” he called loudly into the room, drawing blank expressions from the children. A pair of tiny arms clutched at his leg and he looked down to see his son beaming up at him. He reached down and hoisted Miles into his arms.

  “Sarah?” he pleaded to Millie Wiggins.

  “You called,” she whispered, reminding him. “The police officers you sent picked her up.” She glanced at the large Mickey Mouse clock on the wall. “That was nine-thirty.”

  He too glanced up at the clock. Five hours had passed. A lifetime.

  He tried to speak, to contradict her, but the policeman inside him, the father, caught his tongue. He turned away and cleared his eyes as Miles tugg
ed on his tie.

  Millie Wiggins spoke in a gravel voice. An attractive woman in her mid-forties, she wore jeans and a white turtleneck. “I called you back, don’t forget. To verify, I mean.” Her hands wormed in concern. He could not afford the truth. He measured how far to push.

  “Two officers, right?” he asked. She had used the plural.

  She nodded. “A woman and a man. Exactly as you said. It’s okay, isn’t it?” She looked him over. “Is everything all right?” She added reluctantly, “With Mrs. Boldt?”

  “Mommy?” Miles asked his father.

  “Fine … fine …,” he said, avoiding sending the wrong signal. Sarah … He needed to collect himself, time to think. He needed answers. Sarah’s chance depended on the next few minutes. And for how long after that? he wondered.

  He wanted desperately to take Miles with him, but if the kidnappers had wanted Miles, then the boy wouldn’t have been there. If the day care center was being watched—if Boldt was under surveillance … He mired down in uncertainty and paranoia, up to his axles in it. Poisoned with fear, faint and weak, he placed his son down and said to Millie Wiggins, “I didn’t want Miles feeling left out. Thought I should stop by,” hoping this might sound convincing. It fell short. His mind whirred. “It’s one of those mornings where I can’t tell up from down. I even forget where I was when we spoke this morning. Which line did you call?”

  “I called nine-one-one, just as you told me,” she reported. “I spoke to you, hung up, and dialed nine-one-one. They put me through.”

  The ECC lacked any means to relay a call to headquarters. It was technically impossible. Boldt knew this; Millie Wiggins clearly did not. Her explanation baffled him. “You sure it was nine-eleven—nine-one-one, and not—”

  “You told me to call you back on nine-one-one!” she reminded him, viewing him suspiciously.

  She had it wrong. It was the only explanation. Why should she remember? he wondered. It was important only to him. Memory played tricks on people.

  He declined to push her any further. He felt aimless and lost.