Beyond Recognition (64 page)

The small box in the center of the screen showed a small child—a girl—in a chair. He scrambled for his reading glasses. The girl appeared bound to the chair. Worse, she looked alarmingly like his own Sarah, although the room was unfamiliar to him: a pale yellow wall behind her, grandmother curtains on a window behind her and to her right. To the child's left, a television set played CNN, the voices of the news anchors distant and vague.

All at once the image animated. The girl looked left in a movement all too familiar to Boldt. The reading glasses found their way to Boldt's eyes, and he leaned in for a better look.

Not possible
, a voice inside him warned. Terror stung him.

As she spoke, as he heard that voice, all doubt was removed. Sarah screamed, “Daddy!” She rocked violently, her arms taped to the chair. “Daddy!”

The video image went black, replaced by a typewritten message in the same small box. Boldt could not read it for the tears in his eyes.

He saw her all at once as a small fragile creature, cradled between his open palm and elbow, a tiny little newborn, a treasure of expressions and sounds. A promise of life; the enormous responsibility he felt to nurture and protect her.

He wiped away his tears, returned the glasses and read the message on the screen.

Sarah is safe and unharmed. She will remain so as long as the task force's investigation wanders. Do not allow it to focus. Do not allow any suspect to be pursued. If you are clever, your daughter lives and is returned to you happy and safe. This I promise. If you speak of this to another living soul, if the investigation should net a suspect, you will never see your sweet Sarah again. Think clearly. This is a choice you must make. Make it wisely.

Boldt reread the warning, stood from the chair and then sagged back down. He closed the file and took the CD out of the machine.
Think!
he demanded of himself, no thoughts able to land, his balance gone, the room spinning. He drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. The Pied Piper might have spies anywhere. Paranoia overtook him. Boldt stood up slowly, like an invalid testing his unsure legs. Chills rushed up and down his spine. His face burned. Someone spoke to him in the hall, and again on the elevator and in the garage—he saw their mouths move, he heard the shapes of sound, but not the words. He was someplace no one could reach him. He ran several red lights on his way to the yellow house where Sarah and Miles spent their middays with fifteen other children.

He bounded the stairs two at a time and attempted to turn the doorknob. Locked! He pounded hard—too hard, too loudly, too furiously.

If you speak of this to another living soul …

Hurried footsteps approached noisily. The fish-eye peephole momentarily darkened as someone inspected him from the other side.
Hurry up!
he wanted to shout, but collected himself as the door came open.

Millie Wiggins stood before him, surprised. “Mr. Boldt!”

“Sarah?” he asked, his voice cracking as he stepped past the woman and into the playroom. Sight of the children playing choked him and squeezed tears close to the surface. “Sarah?” he called loudly into the room, drawing blank expressions from the children. A pair of tiny arms clutched at his leg and he looked down to see his son beaming up at him. He reached down and hoisted Miles into his arms.

“Sarah?” he pleaded to Millie Wiggins.

“You called,” she whispered, reminding him. “The police officers you sent picked her up.” She glanced at the large Mickey Mouse clock on the wall. “That was nine-thirty.”

He too glanced up at the clock. Five hours had passed. A lifetime.

He tried to speak, to contradict her, but the policeman inside him, the father, caught his tongue. He turned away and cleared his eyes as Miles tugged on his tie.

Millie Wiggins spoke in a gravel voice. An attractive mid-forties, she wore jeans and a white turtleneck. “I called you back, don't forget. To verify, I mean.” Her hands wormed in concern. He could not afford the truth. He measured how far to push.

“Two officers, right?” he asked. She had used the plural.

She nodded. “A woman and a man. Exactly as you said. It's okay, isn't it?” She looked him over. “Is everything all right?” She added reluctantly, “With Mrs. Boldt?”

“Mommy?” Miles asked his father.

“Fine … fine …,” he said, avoiding sending the wrong signal. Sarah … He needed to collect himself, time to think. He needed answers. Sarah's chance depended on the next few minutes.
And for how long after that?
he wondered.

He wanted desperately to take Miles with him, but if the kidnappers had wanted Miles, then the boy wouldn't have been there. If the day care center was being watched—if Boldt was under surveillance … He mired down in uncertainty and paranoia, up to his axles in it. Poisoned with fear, faint and weak, he placed his son down and said to Millie Wiggins, “I didn't want Miles feeling left out. Thought I should stop by,” hoping this might sound convincing. It fell short. His mind whirred. “It's one of those mornings where I can't tell up from down. I even forget where I was when we spoke this morning. Which line did you call?”

“I called nine-one-one, just as you told me,” she reported. “I spoke to you, hung up, and dialed nine-one-one. They put me through.”

The ECC lacked any means to relay a call to headquarters. It was technically impossible. Boldt knew this; Millie Wiggins clearly did not. Her explanation baffled him. “You sure it was nine-eleven—nine-one-one, and not—”

“You told me to call you back on nine-one-one!” she reminded him, viewing him suspiciously.

She had it wrong. It was the only explanation. Why should she remember? he wondered. It was important only to him. Memory played tricks on people.

He declined to push her any further. He felt aimless and lost.

She snapped her fingers. “I almost forgot.” She hurried into the busy room and returned as quickly. She brought her hand up for him to see. “The lady police officer wanted me to give you this. Said it was a private joke, that you'd understand.”

In her outstretched hands she held a dime-store penny whistle.

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

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red
(writing as Joyce Reardon)

Peter and the Starcatchers
(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

W
RITING AS
W
ENDELL
M
CCALL

Dead Aim

Aim for the Heart

Concerto in Dead Flat

S
HORT
S
TORIES

“All Over but the Dying” in
Diagnosis Terminal
,

edited by F. Paul Wilson

“Close Shave” in
Murder Is My Racquet
,

edited by Otto Penzler

C
OLLECTIONS

The Putt at the End of the World
,

a serial novel

T
ELEVISION

The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer

(Movie, ABC TV, May 2003)

Investigative Reports: Inside AA

(A&E Network, June 2000)

This is a work of fiction. All characters are works of the author's imagination; no similarity to persons living or dead is intended. Any factual mistakes or liberties taken are the author's responsibility—I offer my apologies, up front, for any such errors.

Copyright © 1997, 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.

The Library of Congress has catalogued the original print edition of this book as follows: Pearson, Ridley.

Beyond recognition / by Ridley Pearson. — 1st ed.

    p. cm.

ISBN 0-7868-6240-8

I. Title.

PS3566.E234B4 1997

813'.54—dc20 96-21125

                       CIP

eBook Edition ISBN: 978-1-4013-0514-7

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