Pied Piper

CHAPTER 14

Anderson’s apartment occupied the left half of a 1930s clapboard that had been converted to a duplex. Situated behind a video store, it shared space with a JC Penney catalog outlet. The potholed alley leading into it was partially buried in fast-food litter and soggy newsprint and smelled of cats.

Reaching the mouth of the alley, Boldt grabbed the elbow of Bobbie Gaynes and stopped her. He listened hard and then looked around, studying every crack and crevice. The sun would be up for another few hours, but wedged between two towering brick walls the alley was in the midst of an artificial twilight. Boldt looked around, his unease contagious.

“Okay,” he said, though unsure. He’d been out of the field too long.

They walked on. Anderson’s banged-up door had three keyholes at varying heights and a Day-Glo police sticker laid across the doorjamb, sealing it. They both donned latex gloves. Boldt felt a rush of satisfaction: a crime scene. At the same time, he experienced a pang for the two missing kids. If anything ever happened to Miles and Sarah … he didn’t blame Weinstein for breaking. No one could.

Gaynes slit the police sticker and keyed the top and bottom locks as she told him, “It’s a walk-up to the kitchen and living room. Another flight up to the bedroom and bath.”

Boldt noticed the home security panel immediately. “You said the neighbor found him.”

She shut the door behind them, locked one of the dead bolts and switched on the light. The walls needed paint, the stairs some new treads. A bare bulb hung high over the stairwell, too bright for the small space. It obscured the top of the stairs.

Climbing, she said, “Neighbor hears the shower running, pounds on the wall. Gives up. Goes to the front door.”

“Locked?”

She stopped on the stairs and looked back at him quizzically, or maybe impressed. She turned and continued up. “Right.”

“Tried the fire escape next,” Boldt guessed.

“Right. Bathroom window. Saw him in the tub. Called nine-eleven.”

There was another door at the top of the stairs that could be dead-bolted.

Anticipating him, she said, “This one was not locked when the first officer arrived.”

“Front door was opened by?”

“The landlord tried it. The neighbor called him at the request of the nine-eleven operator,” she explained. “Landlord couldn’t get in. New locks, and more of them. Locksmith did the work.”

“The security alarm?” Boldt asked, entering a small room that shared the kitchen.

Gaynes pushed past him. “Is there one? Hadn’t noticed, to be truthful.”

“And the bathroom shade?”

“Neighbor explained that one. It was pulled down. But with an eye to one edge, you can pick up a reflection of the tub in the mirror. I tried it. It’s legit.”

“But the alarm was off.”

“I guess so. Must have been.” She considered this as Boldt walked slowly around the crowded sitting room. Television, rack of electronics, desk, computer, telephone, printer, two yard-sale chairs, two metal file cabinets, different makes and colors. “But he was home.”

Boldt studied the room’s ceiling and walls. A motion sensor high in the far corner; shades and extra thick curtains on the windows; a heat alarm in the kitchen. “Installed the security stuff himself, I bet.” He bent over and yanked up a cheap throw rug. Put it back down and pulled up another by the top of the stairs.

“What’s that?” she asked, seeing what he had discovered.

“Pressure switch. You step on the rug and it trips the alarm, same as a motion detector.” He moved on, checking the interior of a small pantry.

“What’s up?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. It wasn’t what he was looking for. “An upstairs closet?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He stopped at the bottom of the stairway, which was a tight turn to the left. He stooped and eyed it carefully. Again the overhead stairway light was twice the wattage it needed to be. Again, it obscured one’s vision of the top of the stairs. Another motion detector directly overhead. “The guy was careful,” Boldt allowed. “A guy like this probably made more than a few people mad. Or broke. Or both. You think about it,” he considered aloud, “no shortage of enemies.”

“I know it doesn’t help our case any,” she said, discouraged.

“Pressure pads under his carpets. I tell you what, I arm that security system whenever I’m home. Anyone tries to sneak in on me, I know about it.”

Boldt asked her to walk on the outer edges of the carpeted stairs. They ascended awkwardly.

The upstairs floor plan nearly mirrored the second story, the bathroom over the kitchen, the bedroom over the living room, the closet space stacked vertically. Boldt headed directly to the closet while Gaynes called out to him that the bathroom was the other room. He didn’t answer. He opened the closet door and studied what he saw.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“You checked this?”

“Sure.”

“And what did you find?”

“A cedar-lined closet,” she answered. “Clothes, shoes, sweaters.”

“Telephone?”

“What are you talking about?”

He pushed some hanging clothes out of the way and pointed down the rear wall of the closet, showing her the phone.

“What the hell, Sarge?”

His promotion clearly didn’t register with anyone but the bookkeeper. None of those who had served under him were going to call him Lieutenant.

“You notice the closet door?” He pointed. “Two interior dead bolts, top and bottom. A telephone. Behind the cedar you’ll find sheet metal at the very least, plate steel, if he had the bucks. And somewhere in here …” Boldt pushed the clothes around, but didn’t see what he was looking for. He dropped to his knees and clawed at the carpet. The far corner came up. Beneath it, a piece of particleboard had been cut out of the subfloor. He hooked a finger into the joint and lifted.

“My God!” Gaynes said, on her knees alongside him.

Inside was a Glock 21 10mm and three loaded magazines, headlamp, batteries and a variety of ugly-looking grenades.

“Grenades?”

“Probably phosphorus and stun grenades. It’s his safe room. A phone line to the outside, hardened walls, lots of weapons. A place to hide if the boogeyman shows up. We’ll want to catalog it all, get it down to property.”

“Sorry I missed this,” she apologized.

Back in the bedroom, Boldt explained, “I know his type. That’s why I say the security would have been armed once he was inside. He gave people trouble. At his level that could mean some vicious reprisals.”

“The alarm should have been armed?”

“It was at some point.”

“I don’t get it.”

“By the time we responded, the alarm was off,” he reminded, testing her.

Her face knotted in concentration.

“Front door was found locked,” Boldt added. With Gaynes as his shadow they moved over to the door to the bathroom and Boldt leaned his head in, not stepping inside. “The clothes you found on the floor here, did he have possessions in his pockets? Change? Pens? Wallet?”

“Yes.” She spoke as a student to the teacher, “But we don’t necessarily accept that the dead guy put them there.”

“No we don’t,” Boldt agreed, still not venturing inside the small room. “Where’s his stuff? Personal possessions?”

“The contents of his pants were bagged along with the clothes themselves.”

“Keys?”

“I could call in,” she offered. “Have somebody check for me.”

“Call it in,” Boldt advised. “Number of keys and make. Especially Yale. How many Yale keys?”

“What’s up anyway?”

Boldt looked around the bathroom once more and then met eyes with Gaynes. “Mr. Anderson had a visitor. A very smart, very careful visitor.”

Boldt ate a piece of cheddar cheese he found in Anderson’s refrigerator. Was just going to go to waste. Dead man’s cheese, eaten wearing latex gloves. He followed it with some Triscuits from an overhead cabinet and a warm 7-UP. He sat at the kitchen counter snacking while Gaynes watched him, her ear to the phone, awaiting an answer.

“You could use the weight,” she said.

“Grief diet,” he told her. That made him check his watch and think about his son, his daughter and his wife lying in that hospital bed.

The crackers helped ease the pain in his belly. He’d had ulcers. There wasn’t anything new under the sun.

Gaynes mumbled thanks into the phone and hung up. “Eleven keys. Two were Yale.”

“Two,” Boldt stated. He nodded. “Okay, then that’s it.”

“Sarge, I don’t mean to be-”

“The front door,” he told her. “Just to make sure, you’d better check it.” He grabbed another handful of Triscuits. “I’ll finish my lunch, if you don’t mind.”

Gaynes maintained her curious expression. She had a pleasant, boyish face. They had built a history together. She had worked undercover for him on the Cross Killer case and had impressed him with her nerve and good instincts. She didn’t demand the spotlight. She reminded him of himself: a cop who wanted the challenge of difficult work, the lure of Homicide. She headed back down to check the locks. When she returned, hurrying, she announced, “All three are Yale. Top of the stairs is an Omni. You caught that on the way in, didn’t you?”

“Had to make sure,” he said, and thanked her for the legwork. He put the crackers away, washed off his gloved fingers.

“So!” she announced loudly, nervously, after a long silence.

“So someone comes to the front door,” Boldt said, moving from the kitchen toward the stairs. “Our boy checks it out.” He walked over to the television remote, turned on the TV and began to surf the channels. Gaynes looked confused and anxious. After thirty-four channels he hit gray sparkles and continued on into the sixties, mumbling, “It’s here somewhere. Got to be.” He then keyed in 99. The TV screen showed a fish-eye black-and-white image of the area outside Anderson’s door.

“No way,” Gaynes groaned, impressed.

Boldt said, “He concealed it behind that row of mirrors over the front door. Did you catch those?”

“I feel like I should go back to the academy.”

“Just lucky.”

“Right,” she replied sarcastically.

He continued with his theory. “Presumably he liked what he saw, approved of whomever was standing there.” He asked her, “Do you know home electronics?”

“A little.”

“Check that mess for an extra VCR. If I’m James Bond Anderson I run a twenty-four-hour video loop of all the action at my front door.” She was on it immediately, checking the gear.

“Two VCRs,” she confirmed, glancing back at him as if he were some kind of specter. “One’s running.”

“I’m telling you: just lucky. I know these guys.”

“You’re freaking me out here, Sarge.”

“The tape’s long erased itself by now. No use to us. But still, let’s log it as evidence and you take it home with you and play with your fast forward button. Watch it all the way through, just to cover our bases.”

She turned off the machine and popped the tape. She made a note in her spiral notebook, and Boldt signed alongside as a witness.

“He goes down to answer the door.” Boldt walked down the stairs, followed by Gaynes close on his heels. “Turns off the security and greets the person at the door. He locks back up but does not arm the system, and the two go upstairs.” He turned, and motioned Gaynes upstairs. “Guests first. He’s not going to give anyone his back.”

Gaynes preceded him up. In the sitting area, Boldt motioned her into a chair. He said, “Maybe this guy accepts the chair, maybe not. Probably they know each other well enough for Anderson to be relaxed. I wonder. Big mistake, as it turns out. What you look for when you and Dixie have got him on the butcher block is lividity consistent with some kind of choke hold or strangulation. Toxins. Poisons. And make sure Dixie works the earwax; that is extremely important.”

“Earwax,” she mumbled.

He turned his back on her. “At some point he made the mistake of offering his back.”

She looked down at the floor as if seeing the body there. She returned to the carpeted stairs and squatted as Boldt had earlier. She said, “Dragged up the stairs. You can see it in the nap of the carpet.”

“The visitor is strong enough to haul him up the stairs.”

“If I hadn’t worked with you before …”

“Hold the compliments. This is all smoke, no real proof.”

“This is amazing is what it is,” she said. “You saw that earlier,” she said, pointing up the stairs. “The nap of the carpet.”

“Yes, I did.”

“I didn’t even look.”

He shrugged. “Victims talk if you listen.”

“Undresses him, stages the shower …” She thought a minute. “I’ll be damned!” she exclaimed, when she understood. “Takes one of the three keys off Anderson’s key chain and locks the front door.”

Boldt agreed, nodding. “Basic to the ruse. The place has to be locked up tight, and Anderson found alone, dead from a nasty slip. Who’s going to investigate that?”

“But the security is not on. That’s what tipped you.” She showed Boldt to the clothes hamper. “This is where I found the pants. You’ll want to see ’em. Covered in that yellow pollen, Sarge-at the knees, I’m talking about. They’re lousy with the stuff.”

He said, “It makes Anderson important to us. It’s good work, Bobbie. We can only make an extremely circumstantial case. That’s all. If we’re right, then we’re up against someone who’s thinking. He assumed we would not check for the door key. He understood that the door being locked was crucial. That kind of guy scares me. We certainly have enough to investigate this. We need to bring in SID again, photograph everything. Maybe Bernie and his Boy Wonders can turn up something useful. Carpets. Phone records and finances if we find them. We give it a shakedown. Something falls out, we run with it.” Boldt nodded, unanswered questions all around him. A part of him hadn’t felt this good in ages, but he ached for those missing babies, and their parents who had to endure another night without them.