“Know what that is?” Boldt asked his former detective.
“Telephone tones.”
“Move to the front of the class.”
“So what?” LaMoia asked.
“Umm,” Boldt muttered. Guilt was a difficult cross to bear, but more difficult to break. “I needed you,” he explained. Or he thought he did. “I trusted you. I needed you.”
“You need a Valium is what you need. Word is, you’re coming back to the shop next week.”
“Tech Services wiretapped every member of the task force—their phones—for me. I ordered it.”
“When?”
“After Sarah.” He hesitated. “But before your suspension.”
Boldt rewound and replayed the telephone tones—a long string of tones with a few, equally long pauses. “It took me forever to figure out the code. I broke it when I realized the first numbers were your pager. Tech Services, actually. They’re the ones that filled in that blank.”
“You tapped Hill’s line?” LaMoia barked in astonishment, not listening clearly. “You tapped a fucking captain’s phone line?” A touch of reverence. He glanced around, embarrassed by the loose tongue. “You’re outta your gourd,” he whispered. Then the realization Boldt had awaited finally cascaded over LaMoia’s face as he added the information together. His brow tightened and his mustache and mouth sagged into concern.
“You?” the sergeant asked, incredulous.
“She told me that she was going to assign you the accident in Boise.”
“You?” Outright astonishment.
“I couldn’t allow that. I needed to short-circuit Flemming’s plan to steal the task force and preserve you for my team. For New Orleans. For Sarah.”
“You bastard.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Silence hung between them, and with it, Boldt feared their friendship as well. LaMoia’s record would forever be blemished; it was an unspoken rule that a suspension, even though cleared by review, affected an officer’s rate of advancement forever.
Miles cried out LaMoia’s name from the other room—a child’s shrill peal of pure pleasure. A moment later, Sarah’s tiny voice echoed the same delight.
John LaMoia grinned, lifted his head, shut his eyes and drank in the sounds like sweet perfume. “You bastard,” he said, offering Boldt his back and hurrying into the room to play with the kids.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to thank the following for their help and time in providing background information for The Pied Piper:
Sergeant Donald Cameron—Seattle Police Department, Crimes Against Persons
Mr. Ralph Stroup, Director—Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Boys, The Waldo Burton Home, New Orleans, LA
Ms. Claudine Wilkerson—Society for the Relief of Destitute Orphan Boys
Mr. J. Thomas Lewis—Monroe & Lemann, New Orleans, LA
Mr. Thomas B. Lemann—Monroe & Lemann, New Orleans, LA
Ms. Diana Lewis—New Orleans, LA
Lexis-Nexis—Dayton, OH
Dr. Donald Reay—King County Medical Examiner, Seattle, WA
Mr. Steven Garman—Mt. Medical & Security, Ketchum, ID
C. J. Snow
Editors:
Mr. Albert Zuckerman
Mr. Brian DeFiore
Office:
Mrs. Mary K. Peterson
Ms. Nancy Litzinger
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ridley Pearson is a New York Times bestselling author of crime fiction (Probable Cause, Middle of Nowhere); suspense/horror (The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer); and children’s chapter books (coauthor of Peter and the Starcatchers). His forty-plus novels include Undercurrents, Chain of Evidence, and The Body of David Hayes. In 1991 he became the first American to be awarded the Raymond Chandler/Fulbright Fellowship in detective fiction at Oxford University. Ridley, his wife, Marcelle, and their two daughters currently divide their time between the Midwest and the Northern Rockies.
www.ridleypearson.com
OTHER WORKS
By Ridley Pearson
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red
(writing as Joyce Reardon)
(co-written with Dave Barry)
Cut and Run
The Body of David Hayes*
The Art of Deception*
Parallel Lies
Middle of Nowhere*
The First Victim*
The Pied Piper*
Beyond Recognition*
Chain of Evidence
No Witnesses*
The Angel Maker*
Hard Fall
Probable Cause
Undercurrents*
Hidden Charges
Blood of the Albatross
Never Look Back
*features Lou Boldt / Daphne Matthews
WRITING AS WENDELL MCCALL
Dead Aim
Aim for the Heart
Concerto in Dead Flat
SHORT STORIES
“All Over but the Dying” in Diagnosis Terminal, edited by F. Paul Wilson
“Close Shave” in Murder Is My Racquet, edited by Otto Penzler
COLLECTIONS
The Putt at the End of the World, a serial novel
TELEVISION
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer (Movie, ABC TV, May 2003)
Investigative Reports: Inside AA (AE Network, June 2000)
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 1999 Ridley Pearson
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0518-5
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