Pied Piper

CHAPTER 84

Flemming pulled the Town Car into the gravel driveway and quickly shut off the engine and headlights. Boldt realized an unexpected advantage they held: The sycamore’s grandeur obscured any view of the driveway from the farmhouse’s second story. For all Crowley knew, the Taurus and his injured wife had finally arrived.

Boldt heard the man’s descending footfalls through the wall of the house as Crowley hurried down a set of back stairs-he had taken the bait. He appeared fleetingly in the kitchen, then passed into the living room. Boldt stepped farther into the light, straining for a better view and winning sight of him by a far window. Then gone. Crowley reappeared at the front door, as he opened it a crack and craned his neck to get a view of a Taurus that wasn’t there.

The kids were being kept on the second story, away from a random sighting by a curious tourist, within reach of Crowley as he played sentry in the dark. By exploding toward a reunion with his wife, he had left his flank open.

Boldt hurried to close it.

He cut to his left, crouched and ran across the damp, recently mowed lawn, the smell of which wafted up and overwhelmed his senses. He delicately climbed three steps at the rear of the house and slid an eye to the window: He was watching Crowley, who in turn was focused on the driveway and the car parked there. His heart beat frantically. Sarah’s face floated in his vision. He could feel Liz there with him, like a warm coat. He wanted to kick the door and run upstairs. His weapon in hand, he stayed frozen in place, one eye glued to the window’s dirty glass.

Thump! he heard the car door shut. He switched the gun to his left hand and dried his right palm on his pants leg, returning the weapon to the proper hand. He heard another car door shut, followed by Flemming’s deep voice, and Crowley let the front door swing open as Flemming demanded. There, just beyond the front door and slightly to the left, bathed in the spread of lamplight from inside the house, Boldt saw Flemming leading Lisa Crowley up the lawn, under the tree, holding her by the hair, his sidearm aimed into her right ear.

Boldt kicked the back door, dove to the kitchen floor and aimed his weapon onto Roger Crowley. “Hands in plain sight!” Boldt shouted. Crowley froze. Boldt repeated the command even louder, hoping the sound of his voice might call his daughter to him.

Crowley’s arms jumped and his fingers laced on top of his head.

“You got him?” Boldt shouted.

“Got him,” Flemming answered. “Face down, motherfucker, arms out straight ahead.”

Roger Crowley, the Pied Piper, collapsed to the floor.

Boldt came to his feet and charged the man. Flemming held the sidearm aimed into the front door, the handcuffed Lisa Crowley on her knees, gripped by her hair.

No cars coming from either direction.

Boldt checked the man and found no weapon on him, not even a penknife. Daphne had been right about that: Con artists by trade, the Crowleys abhorred violence. “Clear!” Boldt shouted.

“Go!”

Boldt hurried through the ground floor of the house checking every room, every closet, every hiding place large enough to hold a two-year-old girl. “Downstairs is clear,” he reported out the door. “Basement and upstairs to go.”

“There’s no one here,” Roger Crowley complained, his face pressed into the plank flooring. “Who are you? What do you want?” A convincing performance. Ever the con man.

“Shut up!” Flemming bellowed. “Upstairs!” he shouted to Boldt, ever the commanding officer.

Boldt ran back into a kitchen he had already searched, located the narrow stairway and took it two treads at a time. The dormered roof held two cramped bedrooms and a shared bath. Three closets, a chest of drawers, a green metal steamer trunk. He checked the closets first, no longer breathing despite a heart attempting to rip from his chest. He held to the doorknob, unable to turn it, to open it, for fear of what he would see inside.

“Anything?” he heard Flemming shout.

He twisted the doorknob and pulled. Empty.

The next room, the same.

He stood then over the steamer trunk. He had worked crime scenes before with bodies in steamer trunks. Women usually. Folded up. Molested. Dead. He couldn’t see his daughter that way; he couldn’t find her like that. It was not something a father could live through. He kneeled and sniffed the seams of the trunk. Cedar-like a breath of fresh air. He threw the trunk open: blankets.

“Clear,” he shouted, heading directly into the basement.

The small cellar, lit by a single bare bulb, held a washer and dryer that had seen better days, tools, a workbench and a clutter of broken bicycles, lawn chairs and a doll collection. Boldt stopped, held in a trance by the shelves of dusty dolls. If the girls had spent much time there, the dolls would have been put to good use. His heart fluttered and he became conscious of his breathing again-slow, like a man dying.

He struggled up the stairs, one heavy foot after another, his gun hanging lifelessly at his side, walked into the living room to the front door and trained the gun at Crowley’s head. “Where’s my daughter?” he asked, his voice breaking, his eyes stinging.

Crowley cowered under the threat of the gun.

“Boldt,” he said dryly. “I’m Boldt. Sarah’s my daughter.” He glanced up into the room, the gun still aimed at the man’s head. “She sat in that chair,” he said, “while your wife shot the video.”

“We can make a deal,” Crowley offered. “A trade,” he proposed.

“A trade?” Flemming shouted in a bloodcurdling tirade.

“My wife … Our freedom for the girls.”

“Your wife?” Flemming bellowed. “I’ll give you a fucking trade.” He let go of her hair, stepped in close to his hostage, trained the gun at her head and pulled the trigger. Lisa Crowley slumped back and fell into the grass.

“Nooo!” Crowley shouted, raising up onto his arms and met there by Flemming’s weapon. His body shook as he wept, bawling on the floor.

It wasn’t enough for Boldt, to see this man grovel. He squeezed the trigger, putting a round into the floor inches from the man’s head. “Where … is … my … daughter?”

Flemming occupied the entire door, a gargantuan, his weapon aimed directly at Crowley’s head. “You want a trade? Your life for our daughters. But time’s up, fella.” He hesitated. “You got a god, you better say good-bye-or hello-whichever it is.”

“A home!” Crowley shouted. “Jesus Christ, you killed her!”

“Home?” Boldt and Flemming said nearly in unison.

Flemming added, “Say good night, motherfucker.” He stepped closer to the downed man.

“Yours,” he said to Flemming, “is in San Diego!” he sniveled. “A home for abandoned children.” He met eyes with Boldt. “Yours is in Seattle. Capitol Hill. Homeless children. We put them into the system-your system. We knew you’d never look.”

Boldt raised the gun to where the bead settled on the man’s right ear. His weak arm began trembling, the bead dancing across the man’s head-temple, ear, cranium. Sarah had been available to him all along, a few blocks from Public Safety. The Crowleys had used the very system that had refused them an adoption.

“You had better kill me too,” Crowley said to Flemming, suddenly much calmer, “because so help me God, I’ll testify you did that in cold blood.”

Boldt laughed aloud and Flemming followed, the two men with their guns still aimed at the Pied Piper’s head. They laughed and suddenly sobered nearly at the same moment.

“You stupid shit,” Flemming said to the man. “I’m a cop,” he looked up at Boldt, “I’m not allowed to go around killing people, much as I’d like to sometimes.”

Crowley’s face contorted.

“I stunned her-left-handed, I might add. Aimed the piece clear of her head. She’ll be awake in twenty minutes.”

Crowley muttered, finally making sense of it. “You conned me?”

“Takes one to know one,” Lou Boldt said.