The Pied Piper

by Ridley Pearson

  “You ought to think about what you’re doing.” He struggled with the cuffs.

  “You were on the phone just now. With whom? Flemming or the Pied Piper?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  LaMoia leaned in from behind and whispered hotly, “Don’t jack us around.”

  “You are interfering with a federal investigation,” Hale warned. “Undo the cuffs. I’m outta here. All is forgotten.”

  “I don’t think so,” LaMoia said.

  Boldt asked, “Why would a federal agent not check in with his local field office?”

  “You are interfering with a federal investigation,” Hale repeated, this time more calmly.

  “Tommy Thompson tells you about the tattoo,” Boldt told him, winning a look of surprise. “You do a little quick footwork. If we’ve got the tattoo, then maybe we can run down your boy. The tattoo leads to New Orleans—of course, you already know that.”

  “So you get your ass down here,” LaMoia filled in, “to see if anyone can follow the tattoo anywhere. Damage assessment. You decide it doesn’t look so bad, but it’s bad enough that someone—”

  “You’ve got this way wrong,” Hale bleated. “Don’t screw this up, Goddamn it!”

  “Enlighten us,” Boldt repeated.

  Hale wrestled with the handcuffs again, working himself into a frenzy. LaMoia and Boldt simply stood back and waited.

  “Time’s a wasting,” LaMoia said, when the man calmed. He and Boldt moved toward the door.

  Boldt said, “Enjoy New Orleans.”

  LaMoia added, “What little you’ll see of it.”

  “Okay, okay!” The man shouted in disgust. “I came aboard in Portland.”

  “We know that,” Boldt told him.

  “Yeah? Well did you know that I was working the Vegas field office? The AFIDs at the crime scenes identified TASER cartridges that were purchased by a valid credit card. The purchase was made in Vegas, so indirectly I had an active involvement with the investigation from the very start. Flemming and I were in nearly constant contact. The credit card led nowhere. We tore the residence of the cardholder to pieces—lived in Kansas. Nothing. But there were no other fraudulent charges on the card. None. So why’s somebody bother to steal a credit card and only charge one item? Right? So we work this cardholder into the ground: known associates, business relationships, family. We had an army looking into him. And it’s my lead on account of the Vegas connection to start with, and because Flemming asks me to take it for him. Then the Pied Piper moves his act to LA out of the blue, and I get a call from the Hoover Building telling me—ordering me—to maintain contact with Flemming. His girlfriend has vanished. There are some inappropriate deposits in his account.”

  “Flemming?” Boldt barked.

  “That’s what I’m saying. Same reaction I had. Gary Flemming? You gotta be kidding me! But an order’s an order.”

  “Flemming?” Boldt repeated.

  “By San Francisco, things are going really bad with the case. And when they suddenly look a little better, Flemming fires the whole team, claiming incompetence. Maybe he asks for me, maybe the Hoover Building helped the decision, but suddenly I’m on the team. I get to see things firsthand. Evidence that goes east to the lab and seems never to come back. Little stuff, but important. He’s not returning some calls. He’s not paying attention to certain witnesses, certain evidence. The local cops in Portland do some good police work. I pass it along. Suddenly the Pied Piper’s on the run again. Then you guys, even better police work I might add. The holes are a little more apparent. And then Andy Anderson. Flemming is fixated on Anderson, can’t let it go. Has the place under surveillance. Has us pulling evidence without warrants—messing up everything—and I’m getting nervous.”

  “You’re reporting back to Washington this whole time?”

  “I’m supposed to be. But Gary Flemming? Am I going to sink a career like that based on a bunch of nothing? It’s all little stuff. A lot of it doesn’t add up. Mostly because I get this feeling—it’s a feeling, right?—that Flemming wants this asshole more than me, more than anybody.”

  “I’ve felt that too,” LaMoia confessed.

  “Right? And then this tattoo you guys surfaced—and come to find out the task force knows squat about some tattoo, and now I’m really scratching my head. I gotta get down here and see for myself.”

  “The phone?” Boldt asked. “Just now? You got through?”

  He nodded. “To Hill. You know Captain Hill,” he told LaMoia, “better than the rest of us.”

  LaMoia bristled.

  “Flemming knew you were dicking her. Had me follow you more than once. Nice hotels.”

  Boldt called out sharply to LaMoia, preventing him from delivering the blow he intended.

  “He’s been saving it as his ace. Push comes to shove, the task force is his. All his. And he would’a played that ace, believe me. Was all set to. Only now you’ve gone and gotten yourself suspended, and that messed up everything. He doesn’t have the leverage he might have had.”

  LaMoia’s face flamed red.

  “Hill?” Boldt asked.

  “Gave her the flight number. Described the suspect.” He said, “There’s a nonstop from DFW to Seattle, arrives early tonight.”

  “Hill?” Boldt asked.

  “Better than giving the suspect over to Flemming,” Hale complained. “He’d screw up the surveillance. He’d do it intentionally.”

  “He’ll find out,” Boldt said. “Once Hill deploys Special Ops—Mulwright and that mouth of his—everyone in law enforcement in that town will know.”

  Boldt said, “If it checks out, we’ll call down and free you. As it is, we’ve got to know before we risk the Kittridge girl. Maybe you understand that, maybe you don’t.”

  “Get back here!” Dunkin Hale demanded loudly.

  LaMoia pulled the door shut with a thud. The two security guards stood sentry.

  “Nothing rough,” Boldt demanded. “Just give us overnight.”

  “We got you covered.” Surfer added, “Pleased to help out.”

  Lisa Crowley was about to get caught in a squeeze play between SPD and FBI surveillance. Sarah required that Boldt prevent that from happening, even to the point that he come to Lisa Crowley’s rescue. Crowley remained his only chance of locating his daughter.

  Big & Easy Charter wanted seven thousand dollars to charter a private jet to Seattle. Boldt split it between three credit cards, maxing out two of them.

  Daphne and Trudy Kittridge headed to Houston and on to Seattle as planned, scheduled for a late-night arrival.

  Within the hour, Boldt and LaMoia were airborne, with crab and avocado salads and every drink on the face of the earth available to them. An Airphone. A choice of fifteen videos. LaMoia watched Jurassic Park.

  Boldt made calls.

  CHAPTER

  “Listen up, people!” Sheila Hill shouted over the heads of the crew assembled in the Public Safety Building’s second-floor squad room. Boldt stood leaning against the back wall. “The suspect, traveling under an assumed alias of Julie DeChamps, is scheduled to arrive at Sea-Tac airport in less than an hour from now—at 7:07 P.M.” She stood balanced precariously on a chair in front of a large white board that carried team names in a variety of colors. Of the twenty people collected in the room, only a few were qualified for surveillance, the rest were patrol personnel dressed in civvies. To her benefit, the group included Patrick Mulwright and a six-man Special Ops unit—highly trained in both surveillance and hostage situations—already on their way to Sea-Tac, along with one of the department’s three mobile command vehicles. Hill noted that Bobbie Gaynes was not in attendance.

  She shouted to be heard. The excitement had infected the group, rumor running rampant. “Listen up!” she repeated. “Remember, we don’t have much of a description. She’s traveling alone as Julie DeChamps. Dark hair. Five feet six. We know the Bureau has established surveillance at the airport, but that’s about all we know.
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  “Flemming wants this collar for the Bureau and federal prosecution. Obviously, that does not perfectly match our picture of things.”

  A few derisive boos rose from the gathering.

  “We suspect the FBI will move to arrest the suspect once she has made contact—either physically or through communications—with her male accomplice. We’ve established that the Feds have trap-and-traced all pay phones at Sea-Tac. We assume they will apprehend and arrest the suspect somewhere outside of baggage claim once she is either picked up by her accomplice or makes for public transportation—sooner, if she makes a phone call.

  “Teams Bravo, Charlie and Zulu, you have your respective assignments. The Bureau is, without a doubt, able to monitor our open communications. Possibly even our secure frequencies. We will not have their radio traffic, but they may have ours. That means we use our radios as little as possible. Remember this: They may have the gear, but we know the city.

  “We are following a plan conceived by Lieutenant Boldt,” she said, pointing.

  Boldt was working not one plan, but two. He had no intention of either the FBI or SPD arresting Crowley, although his role at the moment was to convince otherwise. He said, “We’ve worked closely with Matthews as to the psychology of both the suspect and the FBI. We aim to give the Bureau a decoy while we stay with the real suspect. It’s going to get confusing, so stay alert; team leaders will brief you on your assignments.” He looked them over and reminded, “At the troop level, the Bureau’s people are just doing their jobs. We don’t begrudge them that. If any of you are put into a position to put your life on the line, you can trust that their agents will be there to back us up. Likewise for us. Copy that? This woman is the only bad guy out there. Questions? No? Good.” His voice cracked as he said, “There are children counting on us.” It took him a moment to collect himself.

  He looked over at Sheila Hill, who cleared her throat and said loudly, “Let’s go.”

  Gary Flemming used his considerable clout to delay American Airlines flight #199, buying his surveillance team twenty-seven minutes. By that hour, Flemming had over two dozen FBI field operatives stationed at key locations inside Sea-Tac airport’s concourse B. Eleven of these agents—an elite FBI Hostage Rescue Unit—had been flown up from Sacramento that same evening, accounting for Flemming’s delay of the aircraft.

  Eleven minutes before the delayed flight 199 was scheduled to touch down, Boldt and a woman named Teibold from Special Ops met with Peter Kramer, a former SPD sergeant who had retired and taken an executive security post with Field Security Corporation, which held the contract for Sea-Tac. Kramer had survived a triple bypass ten months earlier, and had the fresh look of a man in full appreciation of life. He had lost nearly forty pounds since the operation, with another twenty to go. The cigarettes that had forever been a fixture in his jovial face were nowhere to be seen.

  By agreement, the three met in the recovered baggage office of concourse C.

  Boldt introduced Teibold. She wore blue jeans and a cream-colored T-shirt and carried a large handbag. She had brown hair down to her shoulders. Inside the handbag was a multicolored scarf and a pair of large sunglasses. “We need Teibold in the jetway for American one-nine-nine as the plane lands,” Boldt stated.

  “One-nine-nine?”

  “Gate 11. B concourse.”

  “I know the concourse. But there’s the small problem of an FBI team working this same flight.”

  Boldt explained, “Task force is crumbling, Krames. We’re here to protect SPD’s interests.”

  “Special Agent in Charge is the name of Flemming.”

  “That’s the guy.”

  Kramer winced. “How’d I end up on the wrong side of this? He’s in our control room hooked up to a mobile command unit parked outside. You know what you’re up against?”

  Boldt checked his watch. Nine minutes. “We need to get Teibold in that jetway.”

  “No problemo,” Kramer replied. “Door code on B concourse is three-five-one-three. I’ll see to it that none of my people stop her.”

  “Can’t use the concourse,” Boldt explained. “Flemming’s people will be all over it.” He asked, “Have they put any of their people field side?” He checked his watch again.

  “One on each field gate. Nothing near the jetways. I got one of my people at the bottom of the jetway stairs. And you’re right about the concourse. It’s sewn up like a gnat’s ass. How many people in your show?”

  Avoiding an answer, avoiding any chance that Flemming might get the information, Boldt told the man, “We need to hurry, Krames. Let’s get Teibold into the jetway from the field side. All she’s going to do is exit the jetway with the other passengers.”

  “Unarmed?”

  “Unarmed, you bet,” Boldt answered.

  “What the hell are you up to, Boldt?” the man asked, eyeing Teibold in the process. “What kind of angle you working?”

  “We’ve only got seven minutes, Krames.”

  “Seven ’til they land. At least another five on the ramp. Okay,” he said, glaring at Boldt for not answering his question. Addressing Teibold, he instructed her, “You come with me. We’ll cross over to B, field side, beneath the restaurant.” Anticipating Boldt’s objection, he added, “There are no field side cameras in that location. Flemming is monitoring the cameras. It’s the best way.” Handing a business card to Boldt, he said, “My pager and cellular are on there. You guys on radios or cellulars?”

  Boldt gave him his cellular number and Kramer wrote it down onto his greasy palm. “What I’ll do,” Kramer told him, “is monitor what the hell they’re up to and try to keep you posted. You know they’re working with some serious radios.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “They’re scanning cellular frequencies as well.”

  “We are expecting that.”

  “They’ve got the pay phones covered.”

  “We know.”

  “You using any kind of radio code?” Kramer asked.

  “The suspect is ‘the truck.’ Tiebold here is ‘the Toyota.’ Direction is by compass, with east as baggage claim. Inside, ‘one mile’ is a hundred feet. Outside, a mile is a mile.”

  “They’ll think they’re picking up some vehicular surveillance that Special Ops is running. Pretty damn clever.”

  Boldt tapped his watch. “Krames.”

  Kramer grinned. Opening the door he confided in Teibold, “He hasn’t changed one bit, has he?”

  For Boldt, Sarah’s safety demanded he sabotage both attempts at surveillance. At the same time he had to maintain continual surveillance of Lisa Crowley if he hoped to follow her to Sarah.

  “The bird is down,” Boldt heard through his earpiece. A flesh-colored wire ran into his coat to the walkie-talkie strapped to his side. SPD’s Special Ops communication center, a black panel truck crowded with video surveillance and radio equipment—SOCC-EYE—was parked downstream from baggage claim outside concourse D. Boldt wore a Mariners’ baseball cap pulled down tightly to shield him from airport surveillance cameras, no tie, his blue blazer and badly wrinkled khakis. The concourse teemed with travelers, family and friends.

  Boldt reached for a paperback book in the newsstand rack. He spoke into a tiny microphone clipped inside his coat sleeve. “Report.” His full duplex radio was the property of Special Ops and did not require him to trip a transmission button, although a transmission button did exist; when depressed it sent an ID slug to command.

  A flurry of clicks filled his ear—other SPD operatives checking in sequentially.

  “That’s a great read,” a woman’s voice said. She stood alongside Boldt dressed in a dark blue business suit and carrying a leather briefcase. “I’ve read everything by her.”

  Boldt grimaced and returned the novel. He didn’t need a chatty-Cathy.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” the woman fired off quickly, as Boldt returned the novel to the rack.

  “No, no.” Boldt glanced around looking for a way out. The
newsstand’s layout floor plan trapped him. A suit by the newsstand caught his eye, one of Flemming’s?

  “This is a good read as well,” she said, indicating a legal thriller.

  “Is it?” Boldt said, trying to sound as uninterested as possible. The suit at the front of the store spent a little too much time studying the pedestrians. Flemming had his people checking for SPD operatives. A chess game.

  In his ear he heard, “Two minutes.”

  Again, a series of clicks filled his head as operatives acknowledged. Two minutes until the plane reached the gate and the jetway beyond where Teibold waited at the bottom of the steps. Like Boldt’s, each handheld radio transmitted a digital identification slug. Logged by computer in the command vehicle, the Incident Command Officer—Mulwright—could immediately identify who was transmitting and speaking without any name or code ever being uttered. The computer also kept a running count for the ICO, who, on that night, expected twenty hits for each acknowledgment.

  “LA,” the woman next to Boldt said, unprovoked. “Just for the night. Business. How about you?”

  “Actually, I’m meeting someone,” Boldt said.

  “Lucky her.” She added, “Is it a her?”

  He didn’t want any small talk, and yet perhaps it made him less conspicuous. He glanced over her head into a convex mirror that produced a distorted, fish-eye view of the newsstand, keeping his eye on the man out front and willing him to go away. His woman friend chose that moment to tussle her hair. In the process she exposed a tiny clear wire leading up her neck and into her hair. Boldt’s chest knotted tightly.

  Flemming’s people had IDed him.

  He took a step forward to pass by her, but she was too quick. She seized his forearm with considerable strength and in an all-business voice said, “The S-A-C would like to have a few words with you, Lieutenant.” Controlled, professional. “Now,” she added.

  Boldt needed a clear view of the concourse to run both SPD’s team and his own team. He didn’t have time for a visit.

  In his ear, “One minute.” Boldt did not acknowledge, hoping Mulwright would interpret his lack of a signal as indicating that he had problems.