Pied Piper

CHAPTER 33

Boldt drove into his driveway and then, before killing the engine, threw it into reverse, backed up and sped away. The same for the last several days: The house was Sarah. He couldn’t go in there.

He returned to the office, too sick to eat, and spent all of Friday night into the wee hours reviewing the computer printouts from Tech Services that detailed conversations caught by the electronic trickery of their AI eavesdropping software. For one who hated coincidences, Boldt was forced to live with the fact that had Seattle not been a port city used to smuggle everything from chopped autos to crack cocaine to illegals, and a reputed hub of organized Asian crime, his department’s Tech Services unit would never have had such sophisticated software. But with the current administration’s emphasis on returning law enforcement power to the state level, they did have it, and by a fluke of good salesmanship combined with Sheila Hill’s unquenched ambitions, it was Boldt’s to misuse legally.

Nonetheless, the software proved mediocre at best. Boldt spent hours listening to outtakes of conversations of little value, and additional hours to sections of tape the printout did not list at all. Of interest to him was that within SPD there was a good deal of dialogue. Between the FBI and SPD, nothing.

Several excerpts from the phone of Kay Kalidja intrigued Boldt, as she clearly attempted to gather in the victims’ financial statements as he had asked. She had left repeated voice mail for Dunkin Hale, and it was from these tapes, not his own phone system, that Boldt heard a message she left for him. The irony of picking up his voice mail by wiretapping did not escape him.

Lieutenant Boldt, Kay Kalidja. I wanted you to know that I have not forgotten your request, and although slower than I would like, I am making some progress. You will find some of the financial information you requested posted to your E-mail, which I thought more confidential than a pool fax, and I did not know if the fax number I have for you is direct or not. Sorry it has taken so long. I will try to speed things up. Call me if I can be of further assistance.

Ironically, it was Kalidja’s apparent willingness to help that insinuated Boldt’s first suspicions of her. He had encountered so much resistance from Flemming and Hale, both overt and otherwise, that an agent’s sudden readiness to give him information refused by others left him a little cold in the heart. Had someone gotten to her? He wondered if the information being forwarded was tainted and meant to throw SPD’s investigation, if Kalidja had been compromised by the Pied Piper, just as he had. Could that be it? Had she seen fear in his eyes? Did she know his child was missing? Suspicion bred suspicion the same way that lies begot lies.

He downloaded and printed Kalidja’s E-mail. She had sent him the full financial records-over thirty pages-for two of the former victims: one from Portland, the last city targeted; the other from Rancho Santa Fe, just outside San Diego, the first city struck by the Pied Piper. The gap in between was profound and impossible to miss. The stonewalling continued.

He reviewed the statements while he continued to listen in on dozens of phone calls, many of which overlapped in content and spread before him the complex tapestry of the ongoing investigation. By the sound of it, LaMoia had himself not a runaway train but a rudderless ship, meandering in a half-dozen different directions, some evidence driven, some driven by what could be described only as wild hunches. Many of the threads made sense to Boldt: the attempt to ID the pollen; the desire for lab reports on the automobile glass; the pursuit of Anderson’s missing photographs; the massive ongoing surveillance of transportation hubs and vacant structures around the city believed to be part of the Pied Piper’s MO. But woven together, these threads presented more an abstract image than a clear picture. The investigation appeared to be stumbling along well enough by itself, needing little hindrance from Boldt to fail.

He was going to find Sarah and rescue her, and he was going to do so without anyone’s knowing.

The FedEx manifests needed pursuing, as did the chemical analysis from Anderson’s boots that Gaynes had brought him. Even more promising was the possibility of the involvement-intentional or not-of an unidentified photo silk-screening company, and it was this lead he pursued arduously with the arrival, first of Kalidja’s E-mail and then, at six Saturday morning, of a fax received from Daniel Weinstein, cousin of Sidney and the giver of the silk-screened outfit.

March 27, Seattle, Washington

Dear Lieutenant Boldt:

I am pleased to include the following Internet address for the silk-screen company: HTTP//:retail.fashion.childrens.SpitIm@EMall.com

Also “enclosed” are my credit card statements. I drew an arrow by the charge for Spitting Image, which is what I think you wanted. It jumped right out at me, and helped me find them on the Web.

Assuming you are not only busy but somewhat hamstrung by your constitutional requirements, I am taking the liberty of pursuing this myself, and should have something for you by the time you read this. (This fax was intentionally delayed.) You can thank me later.

Sincerely,

Daniel Weinstein

Boldt immediately dialed the man’s number, reaching only an answering machine that said, “I’m unavailable until Wednesday, the first. Leave a message after the beep, and I’ll get back to you.”

Boldt frantically phoned the Weinstein home and reached a groggy voice that belonged to Trish. Initially she said that both Sidney and his cousin were in town. Once Boldt explained the fax he’d received and convinced her that her out-of-state husband was in violation of his bail, she confessed that they had left for northern California early Friday afternoon. He asked if Daniel was the kind of man to follow through with such threats.

“Threats?” she returned. “They think they’re doing you people a favor. They think it’ll take you two weeks to get all the warrants and get down there and do something. Threats? They’re trying to find our baby.”

“Can you reach them?”

“Only if Sid calls tonight. If they get drinking, he won’t. He knows I don’t like the drinking. And my guess is, this is more an excuse for the two to go on a tear than to save our child. Sid, and Daniel too, they’re people who have to do something. You know? There are doers and there are people who sit around, Lieutenant. Sid and his side of the family-they are definite doers.”

Around the cop shop a “doer” was a criminal. Boldt did not miss the irony. “Did they give you an address, a town, anything?”

“No. Just that name, Spitting Image. But you already know that, don’t you?”

“I want you to listen to this next question carefully, and understand that the only way I can help them is to know everything. I have no jurisdiction out of this city, much less out of this state, Mrs. Weinstein. If I help, it’s as a private citizen. As a friend. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Listen carefully: To your knowledge, does either of them own a gun?”

She gasped over the phone line, settled herself and replied, “Yes.”

“A handgun, or a rifle, or both?”

“Both,” she answered. “Daniel does some hunting.”

“Let’s hope not,” Boldt said. “If your husband calls-”

“I tell him to get his butt home,” she interrupted.

“First you find a way to get the name of the town and the place he’s calling from. That first! A motel, a bar, it doesn’t matter. Then, and only then, you try to get him home.” He read her his cell phone number and made sure she took it down correctly. “It’s on twenty-four hours a day. You call the minute you hear.”

“I’ll call,” she promised, “but he won’t.”

With the help of Theresa Russo’s computer expertise, Boldt avoided including anyone in his search for Spitting Image’s home page. Within minutes of reading her the Internet address supplied by Daniel Weinstein she was reading back to him the company’s physical address, E-mail address, and phone and fax numbers. Russo kept him on the line while she used an Internet mapping service to pinpoint the location of the company, and faxed him the resulting map. Within five minutes of phoning her, he had an address and map and was headed for the residential community of Felton, California, north of Santa Cruz.

A flight from Sea-Tac left for San Jose less than an hour later.