Pied Piper

CHAPTER 66

People were creatures of habit, LaMoia thought, as he watched a Ford Taurus pull into the postage-stamp parking lot behind Chevalier’s office. Such habits were a detective’s bread and butter; they offered behavioral links to the past and future alike. People chose to dress the same, eat the same food at the same places, travel in the same circle of friends, frequent the same bars-drive the same cars.

Lisa Crowley had a thing for the Ford Taurus.

She parked in the first open spot in the lot, the one immediately adjacent to the street, providing LaMoia a good look and the driver a quick exit.

As the driver’s door came open, LaMoia prepared himself for the ready, putting away the.38 Boldt had loaned him and the stun stick he routinely carried tucked into his right boot, a handheld, less powerful version of the Pied Piper’s air TASER. He confirmed the pick gun’s location in the pocket of his windbreaker. No cuffs, no ID wallet. His life had changed, no doubt about it.

He did not recognize Lisa Crowley from the mug shot provided Daphne by NOPD’s Detective Broole. Dressed in a professional style in keeping with a job of such responsibility, and yet a state employee, this woman wore a starched white cotton top and a pair of crisp, pleated khaki pants. He assumed the hair was not hers, but one of many wigs, and yet it seemed perfectly in keeping, fitting her face and complementing her looks remarkably. She wore a colorful scarf on her head and a pair of shades. She might have been anybody.

LaMoia wondered if the scarf and glasses concealed head injuries sustained in the Boise pileup. If so, there was little she could do to fully hide herself. Body markings, regardless of how small, were an investigator’s God-given gift.

Confidence artists were fully versed in identity changes. LaMoia was prepared for Lisa Crowley to enter a building with one look and, moments later, leave as an entirely different person. The woman who climbed back in the Taurus and drove it away might not be the same woman who had arrived and now climbed out. Opening the car’s rear door, Crowley leaned inside and retrieved the baby seat.

LaMoia headed for the burned-out tenement’s fire escape and the blistering heat of another hazy morning. His assignment was simple in word, difficult in practice, and yet critical to Sarah’s rescue: to place Lisa Crowley under surveillance and never lose track of her. Boldt had entrusted him with nothing less than his daughter’s life. He had no intention of letting anyone down.