The Pied Piper Read Online Free PDF

child molester to an illegal adoption ring.
    Glancing at her watch, Hill said, “How long has he had?”
    â€œTwo-hour lead,” LaMoia answered.
    â€œThat’s an eternity.” Her ice blue eyes flickered with worry.
    LaMoia reminded, “Dispatch has already notified the airlines, rail and bus carriers. Canadian Immigration. Sheriff’s Department. The ferries—”
    â€œTwo hours? Shit.” She filled her chest with a deep breath and exhaled slowly, shaking her head. “Shit.” She glanced around as if the press might be overhearing them. She ordered LaMoia, “Get in that house and find me a picture I can use. If we don’t fax that image around, we haven’t got a chance of saving this baby.”
    LaMoia returned inside and searched. In the living room he found a stack of photos showing a tiny baby in the arms and on the breast of her mother. Any of three close-ups in the pile would fax well enough: a tiny glowing face with bulging cheeks and clear blue eyes. He suddenly felt unbearably cold.
    As he rejoined Boldt and Hill, SID’s black panel truck pulled up into the space cleared for them. Hill took the packet of photos from LaMoia and leafed through them. She said, “God, I hate this job sometimes.”
    As a group, the three caught up to Bernie Lofgrin heading toward them. The Scientific Identification Division’s director, a small man with a beer belly, wore thick glasses that grossly enlarged his eyes. He walked quickly with stiff legs, carrying a large red toolbox at his side that weighed him down and tilted him to his right. As a group they spun around and matched pace with him.
    â€œWe need it quick but we need it right, Bernie,” she told him.
    â€œThis time of night and you hit me with clichés? Tell me something new, Captain,” Lofgrin quipped. “I was in the middle of dinner.”
    â€œI stepped on this,” LaMoia interrupted, reaching out to hand Lofgrin the evidence bag. “May be nothing.”
    Hill snatched it up for herself, held it up closely to her eyes and passed it on to Lofgrin. “I didn’t hear about this,” she complained.
    Lofgrin stopped, as did LaMoia, Boldt and Hill. His team of technicians raced past the four of them.
    â€œAFIDs where the body fell,” Boldt added, “and a calling card in the—”
    The cry of tire squelches cut him off as a Town Car and a black van blocked the narrow residential street. Boldt had seen the FBI’s evidence van enough times to recognize it. The Town Car produced two men and a woman.
    â€œGet your people to work, Bernie,” Hill ordered. “I’ve got this,” she announced, peeling away and cutting to intercept the Feds.
    As LaMoia followed Hill with his eyes he saw beyond her to a set of six balloons waving in the wind up the street.
    Lofgrin asked, “You coming, John?”
    â€œFlemming, Hale and Kalidja,” Boldt told his former detective. At Hill’s request, Boldt had done background checks on all three. “This is the wrong place, the wrong situation for me,” he said. “Hill is going to squirrel the moment. I need to be able to work with these people. We’ll talk later, John.”
    â€œSure,” LaMoia confirmed, still intrigued with what he saw across the street. “Later,” he called out to Lofgrin, who hurried on.
    Boldt headed to his car. He stopped and shook hands with the FBI agents on his way.
    LaMoia followed, but steered clear of Hill and the FBI agents. As he approached the officers responsible for crowd control, they all noticed him; another of those effects of being a sergeant that bothered him. As a detective, the uniforms had rarely noticed. Two of the officers, anticipating him, lifted the yellow police tape and cleared a hole in the gawkers—neighbors and police-scanner junkies who had nothing better to do—and helped him through. LaMoia walked straight to