The Pied Piper (45 page)

“You were contacted?” Boldt nearly screamed into the receiver, furious at himself for having let down his guard. He had not thought to look for a tail the day of that ferry ride.

“You might call it more of an interrogation,” Thompson said. “I got a little door-to-door from a blue suit named Hale, Dunkin Hale. You know him?”

“I know him,” Boldt confirmed.

“Was interested in a little bird-watching.”

“As in eagles?”

“You got it.”

“You showed him the sketch?” Boldt complained into the phone.

Thompson snapped sarcastically, “No. I told him to go screw himself. I do that with all the FBI agents who come knocking.”

“If I had wanted the thing broadcast,” Boldt reminded, “I would have done it in-house.”

“Yeah? I trained every one of them kids. We both know why you made the ferry trip.” He added, “Listen, he told me not to say a word about his visit. Told me the IRS loves to audit artists working out of their houses. A real peach, this one. Meaning, you put it back onto him and I'm a screwed pooch. You got that?”

“I got it.”

“Intelligence,” Thompson mused. “What exactly does that mean, anyway?”

Boldt wondered how Hale had found out about Henry Shotz. Would Doris Shotz, reluctant to involve her son in the first place, volunteer to the FBI that she'd withheld information from them? Doubtful. Had Hale placed a tail on Boldt? Had he wiretapped Boldt, the same way Boldt had wiretapped him? Perhaps Boldt had just found him.

The idea of running one investigation inside another appealed to LaMoia in the same way as did the secrecy of having an affair.

At 11:30 that Wednesday morning he was paged to the Four Seasons Olympic, arguably the best hotel in the city. He drew attention as he passed through the elegantly appointed lobby, in part because of his cocky body language. He rode up to the fifth floor along with a Chinese woman laden with Nordstrom shopping bags. A few minutes past twelve noon, he knocked sharply on the door to room 512.

The routine nearly always the same, the room door came open for him and LaMoia stepped inside. Sheila Hill had pulled the window's gauzy inner curtain so that the noonday light bled across her skin in an induced twilight. She wore a black underwire bra that forced her breasts up invitingly and black high-cut underwear revealing her tanned flank.

She stepped toward him with her practiced hungry look in her polished eyes and LaMoia suddenly wondered what he was doing there. She allowed him a modicum of control by eagerly submitting to various fantasies, but her reason for being there was a form of addiction, whereas his was a desire for companionship: He had dated twenty-year-olds for too long.

He turned away from her, taking in the room with its glimpse of the sound's gray-green waters and shipping traffic. He wanted a conversation, something more than G-strings and the Kama Sutra. He told her, “Boldt was able to get some of the credit records from the Bureau—you don't want to ask.”

“I don't want to
talk,
” she corrected, swaying toward him, but stopping short of making contact. “Let's see what can make you stop talking.”

She slipped off a shoulder strap and sucked on her fingertip.

“We've got to talk,” he dared. “This isn't working for me.”

“How 'bout this?” she inquired, slipping off the other strap. “It certainly worked last time.” She placed her hand between her legs.

“Can't we just
talk
for a change?”

“Damn you!” she said, her act over, though her chest and cheeks flushed with anticipation. She stormed over to her pack of cigarettes, all femininity gone, and lit a smoke. Until that moment he hadn't fully allowed himself to realize how much of her was an act. “So talk.”

LaMoia said, “Not like that. I mean
talk.
”

“About?”

“Something other than work and sex,” he said.

“And the leading candidates are?”

“What if we just had dinner tonight? A bottle of wine, some pasta.”

“I hate pasta. I bloat up. What has gotten into you?”

“We shouldn't be doing this at lunch hour,” he complained, regretting his earlier line of argument. Born of guilt and concern over Sarah's abduction, he said, “Those kids need us on this 'round the clock.”

“What the hell have you been smoking?”

She sucked on the cigarette though didn't seem to notice it. She appraised him like a tailor, paying no mind whatsoever to her own partial nudity. Reaching for the table, she tossed him a key ring and said, “Make me a gin and tonic.” She indicated the minibar.

“It's lunchtime,
Captain
.”

“Yeah. Okay. Make it a double. And make one for you too.”

“I don't think so.”

“
Make one for you too
. I'm not drinking alone, cowboy.”

LaMoia obeyed her, observing himself as if watching another. He poured the drinks, a stranger to himself. From where did she extract such power over him? He even went down the hall for ice. The drinks were poured strong. The cigarette smoke annoyed him.

She circled him as she drank. “More important question,” she said. “Why would you give a shit about conversation? Hmm?” She dipped her finger into her drink and offered it to his lips, and he sucked on it. “Tongue,” she said, and he obeyed. “Are you going soft on me, so to speak?” She plopped herself down onto the bed, the drink spilling onto her hand. She licked off the excess lasciviously, making a great show of her abnormally long tongue.

“I want more than nooners,” he blurted out.

“Not from me you don't.” She leaned back and poured a stream from her drink so that a silver line of liquid jumped through the delicate white hairs on her belly and vanished into the underwear's black elastic. “Ready or not,” she said again, rocking her legs open and closed. She giggled girlishly. He knew that was part of it as well—she was someone else in these hotel rooms.

LaMoia upended the drink. She liked his long neck and its angular Adam's apple. He did this for her, again not understanding why.

Her thighs slapped softly.

She poured another stream down her belly to where it disappeared. “Come and get it!” She waved the cigarette at him.

LaMoia slipped it from her fingers and extinguished it, suddenly boiling mad. With the reactions of a snake, he knocked the drink from her hand, snagged her wrist, and pulled her so hard and so quickly toward the head of the bed that he pulled her out of her underwear. It rolled into a lump between her knees.

“Whee!” she squealed, possibly appreciating that he had mixed her drink as a triple and his own as a single.

“Take a few minutes to think about us,” he said, cuffing her left wrist to the headboard. She made an exaggerated expression of concern and said, “Oh, you're scaring me!”

The liquor glass rolled to a stop.

LaMoia hurried to the closet and returned with two terry cloth bathrobe belts. A moment later the underwear was on the floor and her ankles bound to the bed.

“Something new!” she said excitedly. “Have we done handcuffs?”

“You've been rude to me, Sheila. Demeaning.”

“Rank has its privileges,” she fired back at him, waiting for him to undress. “Once you're captain, I'll make the drinks. But you'll still come when I call. And you know why? The twenty-year-olds gratify the ego all right, but not the loin.”

LaMoia tugged the comforter off the bed, then the blanket out from under her and the flat sheet. Hill, naked and writhing, legs bound, one hand in the cuffs, didn't know what to make of this. She forced a smile, beginning to question his actions. He reached beneath her, and she cooperated, arching her back. He freed the corner of the fitted sheet and also stripped this from the bed, pulling a mattress pad with it. Nothing left with which to cover herself.

“What the hell?” she said.

He showed her the handcuff key as he carefully set it down in plain sight next to the television.

She looked around searchingly, suddenly understanding the game. “No way,” she said, believing it a joke.

“Phone's in reach,” he said, pointing.

“You will not do this,” she shouted. “I am stark naked!”

He nodded. “And you know something? You'll call me again—”

“You're
dead
you do this!” She squirmed but wasn't getting loose. Her free arm could not reach her ankle.

He moved toward the door. “And you know why? Because you've never had it like this. Those fifty-year-olds just don't do it for you.” LaMoia pulled the door shut, her insults filling the hall. He wondered how long until she made the phone call to room service.

With the volleyball tossed and hanging in the air, awaiting her open palm, Carlie Kittridge suddenly worried over having left Trudy with a sitter. She knew this stemmed from the pregame discussion about the kidnapper called the Pied Piper that had focused on news stories warning parents not to leave their children in the care of others until the kidnapper was captured.

Carlie caught the ball rather than serve it. Her husband shouted back at her, “Let's go! Serve 'em up a beauty.”

Instead, Carlie bounced the ball toward Jenny, their weakest player but the only woman on the bench. Conference rules required gender-balanced teams.

Her husband chastised, “What the hell?”

She felt no need to have to explain herself. A mother's prerogative. She searched for the car keys in the pocket of David's warm-ups. Possession of those keys lent her a great sense of freedom and relief. “Have Danny drop you off,” she told him.

Her husband's expression conveyed a sense of treason. “Danny?” he croaked incredulously.

Jenny stepped up to the service line, having little sense of her own inability to play the game. A member of the opposing team complained loudly about the substitution taking too long and demanded a serve.

“At least serve out the game,” David pleaded.

Jenny called out the score and served a lofting floater to the opponent's backcourt. The resulting bump was a perfect set for the front line. The spike came right at David, who failed to block it. Side out.

Carlie hurried out of the gym.

A stunned and defeated David Kittridge shouted after his wife, far too late to be heard, “Don't forget it's damn near out of gas.”

Carlie Kittridge had forgotten. She ran out of gas eleven blocks from home, at the corner of 42nd and Stoneway. Blinded by her fear for her baby, she failed to pull the truck entirely off the roadway, leaving it dead, angled toward the curb and blocking traffic, the lights still on.

She came out of the truck's cab at a full sprint, already warmed up from her volleyball, came out running like a thoroughbred from the gate. Seattle traffic being what it was, she left most of it behind as if it were standing still, blowing through intersections without looking, without slowing her pace in the slightest, her hysteria feeding off her charged system. The harder she ran, the more convinced she was of the trouble that lay ahead.