Pied Piper

CHAPTER 82

Flemming took the car keys as he climbed out, and Boldt lost any hope of stealing the car and the hostage while Flemming walked back to the trunk. The FedEx truck was not theory, he reminded himself, but evidence. It had appeared on that video clip and was, as such, irrefutable evidence. The video included a piece of a noontime CNN program, and the cable carrier had been identified as serving this community. With only four trucks delivering on the twenty-fifth, two of which were down for lunch break, Boldt had set his sights on locating the safe house and recovering Sarah. By dawn Seattle time Hale would be released-if he hadn’t been already-and the Chevalier-Crowley connection exposed, and Sarah’s ransom demands failed. He glanced at his watch, then at the trunk coming open, and finally back to the FedEx manifest, at which point it hit him.

He came out of the car in a hurry.

“I knew you’d come around,” Flemming said, collecting pieces of his traveling arsenal from the trunk, including a shotgun.

“The driver took his lunch hour,” Boldt said, offering the map.

Flemming slapped the open map away. “Eliminating two of the four trucks.”

“No,” Boldt contradicted, “that’s where I had it wrong. Look at this manifest: The first drop after the lunch break is south of La Conner.” He paused. Flemming wasn’t interested. He explained, “The driver took his lunch in La Conner, not Mount Vernon.” Flemming looked up from the trunk. Now it was indeed all theory, but Boldt was loathe to admit it. “He drove from Mount Vernon to La Conner right at lunchtime. We ruled him out when we shouldn’t have: That fourth truck was on the road at the same time.”

“More theories. Enough theories. We’re running out of time here, you know that. You pissed off Dunkin and he’s going to fuck this up for all of us without knowing it. There’s no more time.”

He jabbed the map, his index finger nearly poking a hole through it. “It’s within this six-mile stretch. Has to be. How long for you to walk her out to that barn and get down to it? Why bother?”

He slammed the trunk, handed Boldt the car keys and said, “You don’t get it, do you? It’s no bother.” He wore an armored vest, neck to groin. He looked like a killer there in the moonlight, pockets bulging, the shotgun in his right hand. “Happy hunting,” he said. “First man to find Crowley and the kids wins.”

Boldt toyed with the keys between his fingers. “Think this through.”

“I have.” The low sonorous voice carried so much authority it was difficult for Boldt to argue.

“When I find it?” Boldt asked.

“If you find it, you know where to find me.” He looked out across the expanse of harvested flowers toward the distant barn. “I’m not a monster, Boldt,” he said, reading his thoughts. “I’m not after her.” He indicated the backseat. “I’m after my kid. But unlike you, I’m not afraid of how to get there.” He pushed past Boldt and opened the door to the backseat, took Lisa Crowley by the hair and dragged her from the car, standing her up.

Her injuries lent her a defeated look. Her empty eyes found Boldt and he warned Flemming, “You push her too hard in that condition and you’ll kill her.”

“More’s the pity,” Flemming said. He took Lisa Crowley by the arm and led her into the field. She offered no resistance, willing to sacrifice herself for her husband. Boldt stood there frozen by the sight of the two ghostly figures shrinking into the enormous field of black that gladly swallowed them.

A moment later, the Town Car sped away.

His imagination impossible to contain, Boldt spent the drive envisioning the activity in the barn, knowing full well that Flemming had every intention of following through with his threats, and that the man would enjoy it far more than he had been willing to admit perhaps even to himself. Flemming would kill her without meaning to. He would be left with a second murder-this one with a witness and too much evidence to overcome. How he would then choose to deal with Boldt remained uncertain to all concerned.

The enormous number of cars parked along the roads gave the night an eerie feeling, as if scores of people had deserted the area in a mass exodus. Boldt took a dirt road shortcut, saving himself five minutes and coming up to his suspect stretch of road from the backside. As he approached the paved intersection, another dark field of headless flowers enveloped the landscape to his left, several feet of which had not been harvested. He slowed and rolled down his window. Drooping dead daffodils, their heads slumped toward the pungent earth in silent prayer, kept vigil by the side of the road. It told Boldt that the entire forty-acre parcel had, quite recently, been a sea of daffodils in bloom. Yellow daffodils, he thought. Yellow, with yellow pollen. Knee height.

In the distance, a cluster of small sheds and the western slant of a metal farmhouse roof glowed a wet pale gray in the moonlight. The dead field rose slowly toward the outbuildings, and Boldt recognized immediately that the rise would elevate the farmhouse above the paved road.

Boldt steered the Town Car through a left turn and drove at a decent speed to avoid arousing suspicion. A large sycamore standing surprisingly close to the upcoming farmhouse spread its branches luxuriously over and down the small knoll toward the paved roadbed. Still a hundred yards off, Boldt knew intuitively that a large window would exist immediately behind that tree, that the living room walls inside would be painted a cream yellow. He knew the positioning of the furniture inside and the name of the man who had locked and now guarded its door, and that this same man ached to see a brown Taurus pull into the driveway and a woman climb from behind the wheel. He was to be disappointed that night, this man who stood sentry. The Taurus was never to come.

Boldt drove past, the dash lights dimmed, his eyes fixed on the road, not allowed to wander or stray toward the farmhouse to his left. He had seen all there was to see from the outside.

He needed inside now, and he needed Lisa Crowley in one piece.

Boldt ran through the moonswept field toward the distant barn, the cut stems of the headless flowers slapping at his pants legs, his shoes engorged with wet, sticky mud so that his legs weighed ten times their normal. The faster he tried to run, the heavier the mud, the slower he moved. He stopped and scraped the rich-smelling earth from his shoes, soiling his hands in the process.

As he came upon the barn, he listened into the stillness for her voice, hoping for any such sound at all. Greeted only by the silence, he sank into a pit of despair, confident that the only card they held was the life of Lisa Crowley, that her husband would cut any bargain to save his accomplice from torture and death. Flemming had jumped the gun.

Boldt checked the three doors he could find and finally knocked on the huge barn’s wood door, gray from decades of weather. Flemming must have had a peephole, for he removed the wooden bar and opened the door without a word spoken. Boldt stepped inside and stopped cold.

A pale flashlight beam stretched from a tractor’s tire across the barn’s aisle to a large square post that helped support the hayloft above. Lisa Crowley’s bare back and naked buttocks caught the light looking like a side of beef hung in a freezer. Her clothes were strewn in the dust and dirt of the aisle. Flemming had looped the cuffs over a rusty spike pounded into the cedar post well above head height, stretching her so that her toes just barely touched the dirt floor. Her head sideways, Boldt could see the left side of her face, smashed and swollen from the car accident. He walked toward her slowly. Flemming had removed the tape from her mouth and had stuffed her underwear there so she could make noise if she so chose, and he could evaluate her information by simply removing the underwear, restuffing her, if he went unsatisfied. The bright red blotches from the stun stick glowed violently red near her breasts and across her buttocks and the backs of her thighs. A dozen or more.

“Dress her,” Boldt said, disgusted with the man.

“We’re just getting warmed up.”

“I’ll do it then,” Boldt said, approaching her. “I found the house. It was exactly as I said. The driver took his lunch hour in La Conner. He drove past the farmhouse shortly after noon, on no particular route, unlisted on the manifest.”

Removing the woman’s underwear from her mouth, he told her, “I’m going to help you get dressed. I’m going to lift you now.” He stepped behind her and reached his hands up under her sweating armpits.

“Leave her.” Flemming had hold of the shotgun in his right hand, its barrel hanging toward the dirt floor, but its presence very much felt by all. His eyes revealed a man void of thought or reason. Revenge had sunk its teeth into him, and he had tasted its blood. He wanted more.

“I found the farmhouse,” Boldt repeated.

“Then we don’t need her,” Flemming said. “Step away.”

Her damp back pressed to his face, Boldt still supported her. “I’m taking her down,” he said.

Flemming engaged the shotgun in a sound all too familiar to the cop he faced.

Boldt gave another heave and Crowley’s bound hands came free of the spike. She crossed her arms in front of her bare chest in modesty, her breasts riddled with stun gun burns, and sagged to the dirt, cowering under the threat of the shotgun. Boldt pushed the underwear into her hands, crouched close to her, placing himself between her and Flemming and said gently, “Dress yourself. Hurry.”

She struggled with the underwear. Boldt snagged the purple dress. Flemming had torn the arms out to get it off her. Boldt helped her into it, the black hole at the end of the shotgun barrel boring down on him, and tied a ripped length of fabric behind her neck to cover her chest.

He turned to Flemming and said, “We’re going. The three of us. We’re going to get our daughters.”

“No.”

“She’s our bargaining chip. If you’re going to kill her, at least wait until we’ve used her to get our girls back. Don’t throw them away for the sake of some score that can never be settled.” Boldt wondered how Daphne would have handled the situation. She understood the Flemmings of this world, he thought. And then Boldt realized that with Flemming being a cop, he understood him as well. Knowing the answer, Boldt asked, “How many years do you have?”

Flemming looked confused.

“With the Bureau. How long?”

The man’s expression sobered.

“How many agents, black or white, look up to you? Model themselves after you?”

“Save it and the violins. Let her go, and step away.”

“You discharge that weapon and we’ll never make it to that farmhouse. A community like this? Forget it. Sheriff’ll be all over us before we make it to the car.” This appeared to register on the man’s face. Boldt held Crowley ever closer. Indicating the variety of weaponry that Flemming had laid out on a hay bale, Boldt said, “Collect that stuff. We may need it.” Crowley leaned her weight into him, weak, her stretched and cramping legs unable to support her. Boldt turned his back to Flemming and walked her out of the barn.