Pied Piper

CHAPTER 40

Dr. Ronald Dixon’s home was an impressive three-story Victorian, on the west side of 16th East, near Volunteer Park. Appointed with marble and antiques, Heriz rugs and a Steinway Concert grand, the living room had at its center two couches that faced each other across a low walnut coffee table and were perpendicular to the fireplace, its mantel painted an eggshell enamel white and holding a glass-encased clock whose pendulum issued a steady click, click, click.

Boldt knew the living room well, having spent many hours there exchanging jazz favorites with Dixie, who opened the front door admitting Boldt. Dixie thanked him for coming over.

“You made it sound so urgent,” Boldt said of the request for a lunchtime meeting. Their friendship went back decades, not years. Dixie rarely, if ever, asked favors.

His host motioned Boldt toward the living room. The lieutenant rounded the corner and stopped cold, glancing back at his trusted friend and then into the room again and the people assembled there. A trap! Boldt realized, his first instinct to run. Run and never trust anyone again.

Daphne Matthews stood admiring one of the antiques, a hammered brass lamp and mica lamp shade.

LaMoia also stood, though with his back pressed firmly against the mantel, his bloodshot eyes trained on his mentor. SID’s Bernie Lofgrin was on the couch working a beer. Bobbie Gaynes occupied the end of the piano bench. She straddled it, legs spread, leaning on her hands planted together in front of her. A group that knew each other well, a working family. Boldt did not like the looks, nor the silence. He had been found out! By whom? LaMoia? Daphne?

But one other person appeared to his right, stepping out of the sunroom. Liz said, “This is an intervention.”

It was not Boldt’s life that passed before his eyes, but the image of Sarah on the video clip: the pleading eyes, the frightened voice, “Daddy!” It wasn’t these people to whom she was calling out, but to him, her father. He wanted no part of an intervention, whatever the hell that meant; he wasn’t an alcoholic, he was a cop who wanted his daughter back.

Liz said, “You can’t do this alone, love. No matter how badly you want to, and God knows I love you for it-” She was crying now, “You can’t. We can’t. We made the decision to save her. These are our closest friends. They can help.”

“Liz!” he protested.

“If we’re careful-” Daphne began, immediately interrupted.

“No one asked you!” Boldt shouted, his skin numb and tingling. Liz had killed their child …, “or you, or you,” he said to the others.

“Your wife asked me,” Daphne contradicted in the voice of a friend, not a psychologist.

“You could have told us,” an angry LaMoia delivered. “What’d you think I’d do, rat on you?”

Daphne said, “This isn’t about you, it’s about Sarah-”

“Don’t lecture me on what this is about.” To his wife he complained bitterly, “We talked about this. No one was to know.”

“And no one does,” Dixie pointed out in his resonant baritone. “Only we know, Lou. Only those of us in this room. It isn’t a conspiracy with only one person. You need us.”

LaMoia jumped in. “You want to find her, we’ll find her. You want to screw up the task force, brother we’ll fuck it up but good!” He smiled a patented LaMoia smile. Overconfident to the point of cocky.

Lofgrin said, “We can misplace some evidence if necessary.”

Bobbie Gaynes stood from the piano bench. “Sarge, I got to get back to the Park and Ride surveillance. What you got to know-we’re with you on this. We all love little Sarah. We all love you. So stop being so ungrateful and figure out a way to put us all to work. John, you’ll catch me up?”

“Got you covered.”

Gaynes walked to Boldt, leaned forward on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. She had never done this before and it brought a frog to his throat. “You got your own secret little task force now, Sarge. Take advantage of it.” She left, the large front door thumping shut behind her.

LaMoia checked his watch. “We got about two hours to debrief you and get a game plan before we raise suspicion by being away from the office.”

Dixie said, “There’s tea water on. And sandwiches.”

“Have a seat, Sarge,” LaMoia said, patting the couch.

Boldt sat down, not by his detective but by his wife. The meeting began in earnest a few minutes later.