Pied Piper

CHAPTER 13

A sympathetic judge prevented an overnight stay for Weinstein in city lockup, reducing the charge to reckless endangerment. His bail waived, Weinstein was released on his own recognizance and ordered to appear in two weeks’ time.

Friday morning, March 20, arrived on the back of monsoon rains and wind gusts to fifty knots. Rain pellets struck Public Safety’s fifth-floor windows sounding like handfuls of gravel, forcing those with adjacent desks to shout into their phones. Morale was low, moods sour. The task force team sagged: the further away from a kidnapping, the further away from the hope of recovering the victim.

John LaMoia slept three hours, showered, changed clothes and returned to Public Safety in a pair of unpressed blue jeans, making himself as noticeable as if he’d set himself afire. After three consecutive lattes he felt as if someone had sewn a string through his scalp and was tugging hard in poorly timed jerks. Two missing kids and a dead grandmother. The shit was well through the fan, and it was sticking to him. He had long since learned from Boldt that in police work one expected the unexpected. He thought he had had about all he could take. Again, he was proved wrong.

Detective Bobbie Gaynes marched stridently toward LaMoia’s upholstered office cubicle, her shoulders arched forward as if fighting a wind or climbing a long hill. Small and strong, Gaynes had short brown hair and hands like a man. Homicide’s first female detective-Boldt’s protegee-Gaynes was known for thoroughness, punctuality and professionalism.

LaMoia had no desire to meet with her. He had assigned her an accidental death in Fremont, a case he wanted closed and out of the way, allowing him and his squad to focus on the Pied Piper. He had assigned her the case thinking she could clear it without his involvement. He had his own dead body now-he didn’t want hers.

“I don’t want this right now,” he groaned, raising his hands like a traffic cop to stop her.

“Oh, yes you do,” she informed him obstinately, coming to a breathless stop. Like LaMoia, Gaynes took the stairs most of the time, not the elevator. She was small-chested and firm, carrying twice the strength her looks suggested. “This will have you changing your shorts it’s so good.”

“From the mouths of babes …” He unwound the string from the paper button that sealed the heavy manila envelope she delivered and withdrew the contents. “A lab prelim?” he asked incredulously. “And I was hoping for eight-by-ten glossies of First Avenue strippers.”

“This is better, believe me.”

Tossing the folder aside, he said, “You want to give me the Cliff Notes?” He caught himself using a Boldt line and wondered how much of his job he did on autopilot, and how much was he himself.

“This so-called accidental death?” she reminded. “The belly flop in the tub with the crushed windpipe? Name of Anderson. White male, mid-forties. First officer’s report had it down as an accident.”

“Don’t do this to me,” LaMoia said. “Just clear the thing, would you?”

“So I do the scene, search the guy’s crib, make the sketches, hit the neighbors. The usual dime tour. He’s neat and tidy. A woman notices that. He’s got a T-shirt folded up under his pillow for crying out loud. Everything in its place. He’s found by a neighbor, face down in the tub. The idea is he’s taking a shower, slips, and does the funky chicken: busted neck. It happens, sure-to eighty-year-olds. This guy’s mid-forties?”

“It happens,” LaMoia encouraged. “People slip in the tub.”

“Thing is, Prince Charming is wearing a rug in the shower and that’s not right.”

“Could have been a bath. A quickie at that. Keeps his wig on. Pulls the plug, stands up and gets the Blue Meanies. Goes down hard. What’s the big deal?”

“No, no, it’s not like that. The shower was running when they found him. Didn’t I say that? Neighbor in the next apartment got curious. It was a shower, not a bath. And if it’s a shower, then he should have had the hairpiece on the little Styrofoam head over by the sink. That rug being up on the chrome dome does not make sense.”

“Clear the case, Bobsie. You got nothing.” He knew the nickname bothered her. He hoped it might rid him of her.

“I’m just warming up here,” she announced. “You think I’d bother my sergeant with a toupee?” She crossed her arms. “Just be glad you sent a woman to this one.”

“I’m thrilled, can’t you see?” He forced a yawn.

“The stiff’s clothes are in a messy pile on the floor-this anally neat guy, right? Worse, six pair of laced shoes in the closet, every single one with the laces untied. But the shoes found in the bathroom, the ones he was apparently wearing prior to his shower, the laces are found tied. Tugged off the foot. That goes straight to behavior. That can be taken to the bank.”

“Shoelaces? Come on, Detective!”

“Listen, this is the circumstantial stuff. It just gets my juices going, right? Gets me looking around. The smoking gun is in the hamper where I find a pair of khakis stained yellow around the knees. Knee height, as in the Shotzes’ crib.” She leaned over him and tapped the lab report he had chosen not to read. “Yellow, as in pollen.”

LaMoia shook his head to clear it and replayed her words inside his head. She spoke deliberately slowly. “The yellow smudge on the crib-pollen-was at knee height. The Taurus carpet fibers vacuumed from the nursery also contained pollen.” She crossed her arms. “You still want me to clear this one, Sergeant?”

“Lay off.” She wasn’t the only one teasing him about his promotion. She had turned up a possible link to the Shotz kidnapping. He couldn’t ignore it, even if he wanted to.

She explained, “Lofgrin worked the Shotz evidence. Samantha Hiller worked Anderson’s. Two different techs, same result: yellow pollen. We’ve got to pursue it.” Her eyes sparkled. LaMoia missed that feeling.

He pushed back his chair, faced her, and said reluctantly, “Who is he?”

She was pretty when she smiled. “He has a pretty long sheet: trespass, couple counts of invasion of privacy-tapping phone lines, snapping Polaroids.”

“A private dick,” LaMoia guessed.

“But without the license. I checked.”

“Boldt might know,” LaMoia suggested. Intelligence had files on everyone.

“I thought you weren’t interested in Anderson,” she crowed.

“Put a sock in it. We’re going upstairs.”

“He’s a camera for hire,” Boldt informed them, studying his computer screen. “Or he was. Low-rent surveillance: the husband doing the secretary, the wife doing the tennis pro. Maybe run some drug or gambling money if he’s desperate for rent. Maybe use a baseball bat if the pay’s good enough, and I’m not talking softball. He’s small change. A troublemaker. A bottom feeder.”

“Good riddance,” LaMoia said.

“Is he, was he, the Pied Piper?” Gaynes inquired. “Is that possible?”

She had briefed Boldt on the pollen connection. He scowled. “He’s trash, Bobbie. A sucker fish. A local. Room temperature IQ. He’s not capable of something like this.”

“The pollen is a coincidence?” Gaynes asked, knowing Boldt hated the word.

LaMoia tossed out, “What if the Pied Piper hires low-rent guys to do his legwork? Once it’s done, he clips ’em.”

The suggestion won Boldt’s interest. “Not the actual abduction,” Boldt protested. “Some of the advance work maybe. We’ve seen stranger things, I suppose.”

Gaynes suggested, “They arrange a meeting and both come away carrying pollen. The Pied Piper carries it to the crib, Anderson leaves it in the hamper. Why not? Circumstantial, but it’s still a direct link between the Shotz kidnapping and this vic. One of those coincidences my former sergeant told me never to accept.” She glared at Boldt.

“And one we must pursue,” Boldt agreed. “We need the source of that pollen,” he reminded LaMoia. “A garden near the Shotzes? A commercial nursery? A rendezvous between the Pied Piper and Anderson, as Bobbie suggested? Maybe this pollen gives us the Piper’s location.” He continued, “No matter what, it’s worth pursuing.” He asked her, “Autopsy?”

“When they can get to it,” she answered. “Several days at least.”

“I’ll push Dixie,” Boldt said. Dr. Ronald Dixon was one of Boldt’s few close friends. “You two have a minute to brainstorm this?” They nodded. “Okay. Bobbie’s right about not taking the hairpiece into the shower-”

LaMoia jumped in. “So the doer smokes him, missed the hairpiece, strips him naked and leaves him in the tub for us to find.”

Gaynes said, “In stripping him, he leaves the shoes tied. Doesn’t notice that Anderson is the neat and tidy type. He leaves the clothes in a pile.”

LaMoia spoke excitedly, “Let’s say they didn’t meet until Anderson’s crib. It’s Anderson with this pollen on him. The Piper does Anderson, gets the pollen all over himself, and the rule of mutual exchange leaves it on the crib and the floor mat of his Taurus.”

Boldt cautioned, “Possible. But the pollen is on the knees of Anderson’s pants in the hamper,” he said, checking with Gaynes, who nodded, “and the smudge on the crib is at knee height. Could mutual exchange explain that? More likely Anderson and the Piper were in the same garden, or nursery, or field. But, no matter what, we-”

“-Need a second look at Anderson’s apartment,” Gaynes interrupted.

LaMoia didn’t want Boldt running his investigation. Advice was one thing, taking control another. He spoke quickly. “Sarge checks his snitches for any word about Anderson on the street. You,” he said to Gaynes, “sit in on Dixie’s autopsy. Cause of death is critical here.” LaMoia ignored her attempt to interrupt. “I chat up Bernie Lofgrin and ask for some comparison microscopy on the pollen, hoping pollen A matches pollen B. SID returns to Anderson’s for a more thorough pass. You know why I love this shit, Sarge?” he asked Boldt rhetorically, not pausing. “We’ve got ourselves some lunch meat. A bag in the fridge. A toe-tagger. A good old naked stiff, hairpiece and all. A body!” He felt elated. “So shoot me,” he said, catching Gaynes’s disapproving expression. “I love dead bodies. I’ll take a bloody crime scene over a missing baby any day of the week.”

“You’ve still got two missing babies,” Boldt reminded. “The dead body is Bobbie’s. She’s lead on it. And I happen to be free at the moment.” He stood and offered Gaynes an expression that asked if she were ready to go. She nodded. “SID can do Anderson’s again, but it needs a detective’s eye first.”

“Foul ball,” LaMoia complained, searching for some support.

Boldt said slowly, “Your job is to deliver all this to the task force. Our job is to keep you from making a fool of yourself and make sure it’s worth it.”

“We’ll get back to you,” Gaynes said, proud as a peacock.

LaMoia grimaced at her. He felt as if his head were in a vice. He checked his watch: Hayes Weinstein had been missing for twenty-two hours. Rhonda Shotz, for ten days.

“Shit,” LaMoia said.