Paying The Piper (17 page)

“I’m going to make it easy for you. I’m not an FBI agent anymore. If I break that wall down, that’s vandalism. A misdemeanor. If you break it down, it’s inadmissible in a court of law. So I suggest you go buy your low-fat latte and come back looking suitably shocked.”

The young cop looked
uncertain.

“What’s it going to be?” Jones asked.

“I think I’ll stop to get a biscotti to go with that latte.”

A ranch
, Annabel thought. It completed the part of the puzzle that had been missing all these years. She remembered the road. Saw the road sign. She’d driven that road so many times in search of him. In search of Brian. But she never knew what to look for before now.

She roared along CA-128 in her BMW 5 Series. She’d been driving with her foot firmly planted since she’d hit the road. At first, anger had fueled her racecar speeds. Jane Fleetwood thought she knew everything, just like the FBI. The Piper was a villain. The Piper was evil. They were out for blood—only looking out for themselves.

If they’d only seen him with her, seen his compassion and his concern. She played through those days she’d spent with him in her head. She remembered the fear when he first took her from her school recital. She didn’t know what was going on: one second, she was going to the bathroom; the next, powerful arms were restraining her. She’d screamed in the van, but he’d stilled her with his voice. He never barked orders or threatened violence. He just spoke to her in that way of his. The one that said he could be trusted. When he’d said, “I’m not going to hurt you. It’s going to be okay, Annabel,” she had believed him.

Unconsciously, she touched her arm where the bones had speared her flesh. The break had been a serious one but had healed completely, except for the scars around the wound from so long ago. The scars left her self-conscious, and she never wore short sleeves out in public. She wouldn’t mind showing him, though. She knew he wouldn’t mind.

She remembered how he’d panicked when he fell down
the steps with her in his arms. He drew her into him to protect her from the fall. It had been an instinctive reaction. A loving thing to do when she was really to blame. She’d fought him, panicked by the fall. She’d gotten her arm free, and when they hit the ground, his weight had broken it.

“Oh, Christ, oh, Christ,” he’d repeated and lifted her mangled arm.

Strangely, his panic had calmed her. The pain knifed through her when she made the smallest of movements and the tears flowed from her without cessation, but she wasn’t scared. She watched him with fascination as he hurried to repair her arm. He fed her that drug that left her drowsy and numb, but the soft touch of his hand wiping the tears from her cheeks as he set and bandaged her arm did more for her than any tranquilizer.

He stopped wearing his mask after he moved her from the basement to the bedroom. He came to her after he’d given her antibiotics. He probably thought she’d be asleep. He leaned in to check her temperature by placing his hand on her forehead. She opened her eyes, and he jerked away from her.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I won’t tell.”

Things changed after that. He didn’t bother with the mask. He sat with her most of the time, instead of simply locking her in the room. He read stories to her.

When he told her he was returning her to her parents, she’d asked, “What’s your name?”

He’d hesitated before answering. “Brian. My name is Brian.”

If Jane had heard the tenderness in his voice when he said his name, then she wouldn’t believe he was evil.

Recalling all this took the sting out of her anger, and excitement filled the void. Her foot remained pressed on the gas pedal. She knew where to find him. Fifteen years after he took her, she was on the verge of meeting Brian again.

She stopped the BMW at the
road sign she’d spied all those years ago. When Brian had returned her, he hadn’t bound her up. He’d just told her to stay still in the back of the van, but she had gotten up and peeled back the drapes to see out the window. When she’d murmured the street names aloud, he’d whirled on her.

“Get away from there! What did I tell you about moving?”

It was the only time he’d ever raised his voice to her. She slipped from her car and went over to the crossed road signs of McKinley and Walnut, thinking of her view from the back of Brian’s car. Not much had changed in fifteen years. It was an intersection flanked by fields and trees and little else to define it. She oriented herself with her position when she’d peeked out the window. Brian had turned off McKinley onto Walnut. She hurried back to the BMW and sped away, kicking up dirt.

She’d driven down this road a dozen times, maybe two dozen, each time driven by the slim hope that Brian would emerge from his driveway or happen to be strolling to the mailbox.

Annabel scanned the properties on both sides of the road. Unwittingly, Jane had bridged the gap in her memories for her. Annabel had no idea where Brian had kept her. Even when he loaded her into his car to take her home, he’d covered her head with a blanket. But it had been the mention of horses that had done it. She’d never seen the horses, but she’d heard them. A ranch made sense. That explained the hay in the cellar and the wet-grass smell that permeated the air.

She knew what she was looking for this time.

A ranch house loomed on a hill on a sizeable section of land to her left. She didn’t see any horses, but it was Brian’s place. There was no doubt in her mind. She stomped on the brake and the BMW came to an untidy stop on the narrow road.

A pickup with an enclosed flatbed sat out front. His car. He was home.

Anxiety set in. Her hands shook and she felt hot
within the car’s air-conditioned cool. Her foot remained on the brake.

This is crazy
, she thought.
Why am I doing this?
She’d wanted this moment for years, and now she wanted to flee.

Brian was only a few hundred yards away. It would be stupid not to drive up to his door—if not for herself, then for him. The FBI was closing in. He needed to be warned—and helped. She would help him if he asked.

She turned into his drive.

“Okay, what have you got?” Sheils asked.

Scott sat in Sheils’s car parked across from the field office on Golden Gate Avenue with his cell phone plugged into a hands-free unit. Jones’s voice came through a tinny speaker mounted in the top corner of the windshield. It had been Sheils’s suggestion; he didn’t want to conduct this covert business in front of his agents, even behind closed doors.

“It’s a series of paparazzi-style black-and-white eight-by-tens featuring the Piper, or someone who I assume is the Piper. He’s wearing a ski mask. Redfern must have been on top of the guy to take these. Shit, the Piper is supposed to be uncatchable, but this crackpot got these without the son of a bitch even knowing.”

“Christ,” Sheils murmured.

“Are the pictures dated?” Sheils asked.

“You bet. He wrote the dates on the back of each shot. The date corresponds with Ryan Rodgers’s kidnapping.”

In that moment, Scott lost all sympathy for Redfern. When he’d caught up with him in Oregon, he was a pathetic figure, broken by his own stupidity. It was hard to despise someone like that. Not now, though. Redfern had gotten within arm’s reach of the Piper before Nicholas Rooker’s murder. He could have prevented the boy’s death if he’d just come clean and not gotten carried away with his damn
fantasy. If he’d gone to the cops, the Piper wouldn’t have put a bullet in his face. Karma.

“I hope that fucker is burning in hell,” Sheils said.

“Ditto,” Jones said. “Now, the photos don’t help us a whole bunch. They show the Piper walking through a park. We don’t see a vehicle or anything incriminating. We have a physical description, but no clear shot of his face.”

“So the pictures are useless,” Sheils said.

“Not so fast, quick draw. The Piper must have been feeling pretty cocky at the time.”

“Why?”

“He’s not wearing gloves, and I can see a ring. Right hand. Pinky.”

Sheils smiled. “School ring? College ring? Super Bowl ring? Something-we-can-trace kind of ring?”

“Don’t have to. I have the ring.”

Sheils exchanged a look with Scott. “Tell me you’re not joking.”

“No joke. Christ only knows how Redfern got a hold of it.”

“Sure it’s not a replica?” Scott asked. “Redfern was all for copying the Piper. Taking secret pictures of him and buying a ring just like his wouldn’t be outside the realms of fantasy.”

Scott hoped he was wrong. He wanted it to lead them all the way to his boys. He wanted to jam the damned ring down the Piper’s throat and choke the fucker on it, but he had to be sure they weren’t chasing after ghosts.

“I don’t think so,” Jones said. “He walled this thing up with the pictures. The ring was stored in a nice case. This was special.”

“What kind of ring is it, Walter?”

“Signet ring. Black onyx with the letters
BG
stamped in it. Now, I know BG could stand for anything, but I’m betting it’s his initials. It looks like something a proud parent would give as a gift.”

“Shame they didn’t shell out for an
inscription,” Sheils said.

“Them being cheap is the last thing they need to worry about when it comes to their parenting skills. Their little boy grew up to be the Piper,” Jones said. “Look, I want to try something here. I’d like to run a property search for someone with the initials BG within a three-hour driving radius of the Bay Area.”

“That’s going to generate a lot of names,” Sheils said. “Let’s cross-reference with people who also own homes in the Bay Area counties. This guy will be local.”

“Cool,” Jones said. “But I want to stick around here. There’s still a bunch of notes I want to go through.”

“No problem,” Sheils said. “Don’t touch the ring. We might get lucky on prints or get DNA off of it.”

“Amen to that,” Jones said. “Say, I need you to take care of something else. I have a babysitter, courtesy of the sheriff’s department.”

“You want to lose him?”

“No, he doesn’t know dick about coffee, but he knows right from wrong. Now, the shit’s going to hit the fan when you explain how I just happened to punch a hole through Redfern’s wall to find his stash. I just don’t want any spray hitting the kid.”

“I’ll take care of it. Hang tight. I’ll call back in fifteen.” Sheils hung up and turned to Scott. “I need to follow up on this. Can you disappear for an hour?”

“Sure. I need something to eat. I’ve got my cell. Call me when you’re finished.”

They both got out of the car. Scott watched Sheils race across the street. Scott headed toward Market Street.

Jones’s breakthrough excited Scott. It brought them a step closer the Piper, and not in the way the Piper expected. The son of bitch wouldn’t even know he was losing at his own game. But Scott tried not to get too cocky; the Piper wouldn’t go down without a fight. Regardless, things were breaking Scott’s way. For once, he felt optimistic. That was until Jane called him.

“Scott,” she said, her voice filled with
concern, “I think I wrecked things with Annabel.”

When Brian opened the door, Annabel’s heart fluttered in her chest and she lost the ability to breathe. She’d guessed right. Surely, that had to be a sign, didn’t it? Out of all the homes on this road, she’d picked right the first time.