Pied Piper

CHAPTER 60

Boldt toyed with LaMoia’s pick gun from the backseat of the rental. The Brehmers’ Houston, Texas, home showed no activity, as it had not for the last hour. Boldt had made a single call to it before leaving New Orleans. A woman’s southern drawl had answered, “This is Cindy.”

“Mrs. Evaston?” Boldt asked.

“This is Mrs. Brehmer speaking,” she corrected.

“Sorry, wrong number.” Boldt hung up. That was all he had needed to justify the trip, but now, from the backseat, he found himself having second thoughts. He was playing a solid hunch based on an attorney’s phone records, but the impatience of the desperate father in him, in constant conflict with the meticulous detective, refused to waste more than another fifteen minutes. He climbed out of the car and headed around the house to find the back door. He had the perfect excuse available to him if someone turned out to be home-the police shield in his coat pocket.

The house was deceptive. It reached back into the lot, framing a lap pool, and with a substantial cottage pressed up against the back fence. A great deal of care had been taken with the landscaping, hiding corners and breaking the structure’s more common lines.

Boldt walked up to the kitchen door and pounded sharply. He didn’t care if neighbors saw him; he had Sarah, Trudy and the others on his mind. He knocked again. No answer.

The security system, visible through the kitchen door, was manufactured by Brinks and was currently armed, a single red LED flashing. Boldt flipped open his cellular and called the house number again to make certain he had called the right home. The phone rang inside a moment later and also went unanswered.

The next call went to LaMoia.

“Yo!”

“It’s me.”

“Nothing here. Chevalier is a workaholic. Ordered a sandwich delivered.”

“I need every four-digit number that could possibly belong to the Brehmers, of 342 Magnolia. Cindy and Brad. Dates of birth. Cell phones. Social Security. Car registrations. Start there. Add anything else you can think of.”

“Hang on, I’m writing this down,” LaMoia said. “Cindy and Brad Brehmer.”

“How long?” Boldt asked.

“Six o’clock in Seattle? I can do this. Fifteen or twenty for the easy stuff: birthdays, cell phones, Social Security. I don’t know about the car registrations. I’ll try the local law. They might help if I press them.”

“Hurry,” Boldt said.

“You on your cellular?”

“Right here,” Boldt said. He disconnected. Boldt never questioned LaMoia’s contacts, his ability to obtain information. Some said it was all the women he had been with. Others claimed he had once held a position in Army Intelligence, something Boldt knew to be untrue. Whatever the case, he would have made a better Intelligence officer than Boldt; he had contacts everywhere and at all levels.

Twenty minutes later Boldt’s cellular vibrated at his side. LaMoia provided him with two Social Security numbers, one cellular phone number, and the vanity plates from two cars: FNDRAZN and BRADH. He also had two other phone numbers for the same address, both unpublished. Boldt took these down as well, believing them to be the office phone and data line-both decent candidates for the home code.

Boldt asked, “How many retries on a Brinks home security system?”

“We’re talking password entry?”

“Right.”

“The system times out is all. User programmed. Ten-second intervals. Default is thirty seconds on most systems.”

“That’s true for Brinks? Do you know that for a fact?”

“Doesn’t matter the make, only the commercial models limit the number of retries as far as I know. Home models use timers.” He asked, “You going inside, Sarge?”

“The last plane out is at ten. I can’t wait around if I’m wrong.”

“And if you’re right?”

“Then Matthews has a flight to book.”

Boldt wrote out the numbers he’d been given as a list on a piece of notepaper. He timed himself, and using his cellular phone’s numeric pad, practiced entering the various combinations of numbers. Within minutes, he determined he could not key in all the numbers provided him. He had to make selections. He reduced both Social Security numbers to their last four digits and he did the same to all the phone numbers. The birthdays were more troublesome, both containing six digits. He divided each into two sets of four digits: 12/24/59 became both 1224 and 2459. Boldt’s edited list amounted to ten sets of four digits. After six practice runs it became clear to Boldt he would be physically unable to enter more than eight sets of numbers in the thirty-second window. He removed the home phone number-too obvious-and the first half of the wife’s birthday, 1224; husbands were not the best at remembering their wife’s birthday.

He started the rental’s engine and left it running so that if he failed inputting the code, he would be in the car and out of there in a matter of seconds: no running lights, no stopping for the stop sign at the end of the short street, just a dark blur. He knew that the alarm signal first passed to the private security firm; then, if and when the security firm failed to reach the residents by phone, it would be handed off to the local police, who could not possibly dispatch a cruiser any sooner than five, and more likely forty, minutes from the time of notice. As long as he didn’t panic, Boldt had little to worry about in the way of being caught. As an added precaution, he donned a pair of disposable crime scene gloves, his transformation to criminal complete.

He stood at the home’s back door for several seconds mentally rehearsing his every movement, well aware that from the moment he keyed the door with LaMoia’s pick gun, the thirty-second timer would be running. He donned his reading glasses, placed the pick gun in the lock, squeezed the trigger and turned. The door unlocked, but he did not open it. His heart sounded in small explosions radiating jolts of anxiety throughout his system.

By opening the door, he would sever his ties with law enforcement, would cross boundaries that separated cop from criminal-the legendary Blue Line. He knew absolutely that such actions inevitably and irrevocably brought one down, and yet he turned the doorknob, pushed open the door and stepped inside. Once committed, forever committed. Sarah was coming home.

The security device immediately sounded a high-pitched warning tone alerting the resident to disarm it. Using his list, Boldt keyed in the first four-digit numeral. The device’s keypad light went dark and the beeping stopped, though only briefly. Then the light came back on and the beeping began anew. INVALID CODE flashed across the small display. Boldt keyed in the next number: INVALID CODE. Ten seconds. Another attempt, thirteen seconds. INVALID CODE. Fifteen seconds. Another: INVALID CODE. Eighteen seconds. The display flashed, the beeping stopped, and the red LED was replaced by one green. Boldt hesitated there, his finger outstretched. The device remained silent. He was inside.

He closed and locked the back door, briefly studying the security device in order to rearm it quickly, if necessary. Below the number 9 was printed ARM ALL; below the 0, ARM PART. He circled the fifth number on his list. Preparations complete, he began what he intended to be a thorough search in order to determine the Brehmers’ relationship to the New Orleans attorney. It took him all of five minutes to locate the empty nursery down the hall.