Pied Piper

CHAPTER 32

Boldt had put off telling Liz for two days. He had a decision to make regarding the most recent evidence-the FedEx truck in Sarah’s ransom-and he needed Liz’s involvement, illness or not. He elected the hospital stairs over the elevator, to buy him time to compose his thoughts.

He found her in bed reading a small pamphlet. Her roommate’s bed was lived in but empty. Her face had its natural color back, not makeup. Her eyes had lost their dullness. She looked tired and older than the woman he knew, but far better than the Liz Boldt who had been admitted some weeks earlier.

“You look great,” he said, kissing her on the lips.

“Wish I could say the same. Not that it isn’t good to see you. We’ve been playing phone tag. I’ve missed you.” She waited for him to say something. When he failed to do so, she asked carefully, “Is it her?” The face behind the question twisted as she sized him up. She drew in a sharp breath. “It is, isn’t it?” She gasped, drained of color.

Boldt choked on his attempts to speak, implying acknowledgment. She meant Daphne; she had it all wrong.

“We can work through anything,” she said bravely.

Boldt teared up, confused and sorry and angry.

Her eyes held a softness, seen for the first time in months. Her pain was gone, he realized.

“Where is she?” he asked, indicating the roommate’s empty bed.

Liz pointed to the bathroom door.

“Feel like a walk?” he asked, offering his hand.

She swung her legs out of the raised bed. “I’ll need my robe,” she said. “Home tomorrow. I need the practice.” Believing her husband in the midst of an affair, she nonetheless held her composure. He stood there in awe of her, feeling small and pitiful. There was a girl involved, but he couldn’t bring himself to explain it. He handed her the robe and fished her slippers out from under the bed. Her bottom showed as he helped her into the robe. It was different than the one he remembered. She needed twenty pounds. He ached, praying for her health.

He walked alongside of her down a corridor void of character to an empty waiting room called the Solarium. He turned down the TV and they sat in a far corner. “It’s not that, Liz. Not even close. My love for you … it’s stronger, more clear to me than it’s ever been. My admiration for what you’ve been through … for the strength … the courage-”

“It’s not me, love. It’s much bigger than me. But thank you.” Studying him she said, “We can get through anything, you know.”

Did she mean money? The banker in her had a way of neatly tracing most problems back to money, of seeing most solutions in financial management.

“I’m not so sure,” he said, thinking aloud.

She smiled warmly. “Whatever it is, we’re in it together.”

He burst out crying, so suddenly, unexpectedly, that he buried his face first in his arm, and then on her shoulder. She held him and rubbed him. “We’re almost out of this, love.”

He wasn’t going to tell her with his eyes buried. He leaned back, frozen by her expression. There was no good time. All his rehearsal failed him-paralyzed by her soft eyes.

“It’s Sarah,” he blurted out.

Her face went blank, her words caught in her throat. Tears spurted from her eyes, raining onto him. Her face collapsed and she struggled to swallow.

“An accident?” she mumbled.

He shook his head, no. “They took her … kidnapped her out of day care.”

Her face pale, her chin trembling, she offered only a blank stare. He had lost her to anger, as palpable as the bones in her back.

“Alive?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Kidnapped?”

“Yes.”

“You were looking after them. You said … You said you could handle it!” Her eyes pleaded him to tell her it wasn’t so. He couldn’t think what to say.

“They need her alive,” he said stupidly.

She pushed away and crossed her arms. She glanced around as if looking for a place to hide. “You did this? You let them take my baby?” She fired at him quickly, “Miles?”

“With Kathy.”

“You bastard! That’s why you vanished. You coward.”

“We had some leads,” he exaggerated. He caught himself worming his hands, just like Doris Shotz. He understood suicide then. A place for everything.

“Get out,” she ordered through blurred eyes. She repeated herself until it became a mantra.

“Liz,” he pleaded.

She curled up on herself like a crab retreating into its shell. Speaking wetly into her knees, she said, “You get out, and you bring me back my daughter.”

“I need you, Liz. I need you to help me with this.”

“This is your world, not mine,” she fired back. “I wanted none of this.”

She had asked him to quit the department too many times to count. He had nothing to say. It was a point she could hold to and that he could not argue.

He said, “She needs us both, Elizabeth.”

“You bastard!” She pulled in on herself even more tightly. “You bring me my baby!”

“I’m going to find her,” he said, his decision made, but his policeman’s logic countering everything he said. “I’m going to get her back.” He felt small and cowardly.

She pointed, her bone-thin ashen arm aimed stridently toward the door.

Boldt reached out to touch her, but she jerked away, revolted. “Liz, I …” He could not think what to say. Her arm trembled, still holding point. Wiping back tears, he moved reluctantly toward the door. A sense of nothingness overwhelmed him, a feeling of being horribly alone. He left without another word. He knew what had to be done.