The Piper (CASMIRC Book 2) Read online

  THE PIPER

  A Novel

  By Ben Miller

  The Piper

  by Ben Miller

  ISBN: 978-1540470911

  © Copyright 2017, by Ben Miller

  www.benmillerbooks.com

  All rights reserved

  Published by Krac Publishing

  Mars, PA

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover art by Beyond Book Covers

  www.beyondbookcovers.com

  © Copyright 2017, Ben Miller

  All rights reserved

  also by Ben Miller

  A BUSTLE IN THE HEDGEROW

  Praise for A Bustle in the Hedgerow

  “This nail-biter teems with suspense… An unrelenting debut thriller that reads like the work of a pro.”

  - Kirkus Reviews

  “[A] twisty cat-and-mouse thriller…Sections from the perspective of the murderer ratchet up the tension en route to a nail-biting climax.”

  - Booklife

  “I was riveted. If you’re looking for a new series to fill that Patricia Cornwell / Jeffrey Deaver / Tana French chamber of your sick heart, jump on this train now and you can say you were there from the beginning!”

  - Aaron Cooley, author of Shaken not Stirred and Four Seats

  “Lots of twists and turns, manipulation and red herrings mean this is a book that will stay with you long after you finish it. You many also want to give your children a tighter hug this evening.”

  - Julie Ryan, author of Jenna’s

  Journey, allthingsbookie.com

  INTRODUCTION:

  THE STORY OF THE PIED PIPER

  Sometime in the early 14th Century in the town of Hamelin, Germany, artisans assembled a stained-glass window in the Church of Hamelin. Though the window was destroyed in 1660, historical accounts assert that it depicted the earliest representation of the Pied Piper of Hamelin: a musician playing a flute, dressed in multi-colored clothing, and followed by numerous young children clad all in white.

  Most historians believe the window represented an actual event that occurred in the year 1284, based on an entry in the Hamelin town chronicles dated 1384, claiming “it is 100 years since our children left.” What caused the children to leave has been the source of debate and conjecture for the last seven centuries.

  Legend tells of a rat infestation in the then-affluent city of Hamelin. One day a man dressed in colorful clothing arrived in town, promising the mayor he could rid the city of its rat problem. The mayor agreed to pay an exorbitant fee if the man could deliver on his promise. The next day the man played music on his pipe, luring all of the rats out of town. The rats obliviously followed his lilting tune west into the Weser River, where they drowned.

  When the Piper returned to town, the mayor refused to pay him, despite his fulfillment of their contract. Vowing revenge on the mayor, the Piper returned on the Holy Day of Saint John and Paul. While all of the adults attended church, the Piper again played his pipe, this time to attract the town’s children. Enchanted by his music, the children followed the Piper out of town and were never seen again. Only the few children left behind—those who could not follow due to disability—remained to tell the townsfolk what had occurred.

  This story became widely known after The Brothers Grimm published their account in 1816, and even more popular following the publication of Robert Browning’s more family-friendly poem in 1842. Both served, among other things, as a cautionary tale about repaying one’s debts.

  Over the years three theories have prevailed to explain the disappearance of Hamelin’s children. The first surmises that the children died in a plague, though the timing doesn’t fit well with the documented plagues of the Middle Ages. It also would not explain why only the children were afflicted and not the adults. Another hypothesizes the children’s departure coincided with The Children’s Crusade, which occurred much earlier in the 13th Century, circa 1212. The Piper perhaps acted as a recruiter for the Church to bring children to war. This would imply that the town chronicle in 1384 might have contained some inaccuracies. Finally, one of the most widely accepted recent theories suggests the children were part of a mass pilgrimage to colonize lands father east. Though the most peaceful of the theories, it is opposed by those who question why this historical occurrence would need to be disguised as a more fanciful tale.

  A small subset of philosophical historians believes something else entirely: the tale of the Pied Piper has no actual historical analog. Rather, it serves as an allegory, a metaphor about society’s loss of innocence in the setting of a dreadful 14th Century marred by war, a well-documented schism with the papacy, and the horrific Black Death.

  Whatever the true historical context—if any—the Pied Piper continues to appear in multiple cultural references on every continent, stealing away children to be lost forever.

  DAY ONE:

  WEDNESDAY

  1

  Sara Gardner yawned. She knew why her eyelids felt coated in lead, but that knowledge didn’t make them any less heavy. Theodore spent nearly the entire night crying—his third night in a row. The sweet little angel she brought home from the hospital four weeks ago had turned into a screaming banshee in the span of a few days. She couldn’t figure out what the little bastard was so upset about or why he had turned on her: his belly was full, his diaper dry, and he had a clean binky at the ready all the time. She imagined she shouldn’t take it personally, but since it was just the two of them in this one-bedroom apartment, she couldn’t help it. There was no one else for him to be pissed at.

  She felt like going to the WIC office about as much as she felt like jamming a hot poker down her throat. But she was low on formula, and, if she didn’t show, those assholes at WIC would be calling her with threats of Child Protective Services. She’d heard that story too many times from her friends. Granted, she wouldn't trust those deadbeat friends to watch Theodore alone for five minutes, but she still didn’t want to take any chances.

  Of course, Theodore lay fast asleep in his bassinette. She had splashed water on her face, gotten dressed in relatively clean clothes—no visible spit-up, a near miracle—and packed everything she would need in the diaper bag. She couldn’t kill any more time. She knew they had to leave now to make it to the appointment on time, but she relished this precious silence so much that she didn’t think she could bear to wake him. Could she make the magical transfer? Gently slip her arms underneath him, lift him lightly, and place him securely but softly into his car seat? It seemed like a long shot, the stuff of legend, but she knew she had to try.

  She tiptoed to the crib along the carpeted floor. She put the backs of her hands on the small mattress, depressing it to slip under his back more easily. She bent at the waist and slowly inched her hands under her sleeping baby. He didn’t stir. She nimbly raised him out of the bassinette and put him in the car seat on the floor. He barely moved a muscle. He must have completely wiped himself out with the wailing all night. She encircled his arms in the straps and clicked home the buckle, which he miraculously tolerated without opening his eyes. She breathed for the first time in what seemed like minutes. She scooped up the car seat and the diaper bag and left the apartment.

  Her piece-of-shit 1997 Accord was parked only two spaces from the door to her apartment building. The temperature had already reached 80 even though the clock hadn’t hit 10:00 yet—pretty unusual for late September in Boston. Indian summer must have arrived. Still tiptoeing, she moved from the building’s entryway door to the car and put the car seat on
the pavement while she put the key in the lock on the door. She never knew if her car was made before automatic door locks, or if hers had been just too cheap to have them.

  “Hey,” she heard from behind her. She didn’t recognize the man’s voice. Even though she hadn’t seen anyone else out here in the parking lot, she assumed he must have been talking to someone other than her. Besides, she didn’t have the time or the interest to talk to anyone right now. She opened the passenger door and began to pull the front seat forward, preparing to lock Theodore’s car seat into its base in the back seat.

  “Hey.” The voice was much closer this time. She put Theodore’s car seat back down on the ground and began to turn around. She didn’t want to be a bitch, but she was going to tell this guy to get lost.

  As she pivoted, she could see the guy walking toward her. Fast.

  “What the hell?” she wanted to say, but she never got a chance. As she opened her mouth, the guy pulled his right hand out of his jacket pocket and thrust it into her left side. An intense tingling exploded from her torso throughout her entire body. She stiffened and fell to the ground, every muscle fiber in her body firing at once. She landed on her back, looking straight up at the sky. The guy leaned over her. Sunglasses, a baseball cap, and a fake mustache obscured his features. He blackened her world with a black silk hood over her head. Though she still couldn’t move, he hit her again with the Taser, this time in the neck. Her body jerked again and the pain surged. She tried to scream, to speak, to gasp, anything; all that came out was a pathetic gurgle.

  She heard the bottom of the car seat scrape against the concrete as the man lifted it up. She heard his rapid footsteps as he hustled away. But she never heard Theodore.

  He slept through the whole thing.

  2

  Jackson Byrne’s ass hurt. He shifted in the chair, gave it a few seconds, and concluded that his predicament had not improved. He spread his legs a little as he looked down at the chair. The dull gray hue, the glossy surface, and its composition—not quite ceramic, not quite plastic, but some bastardized amalgam of the two—reminded him of the chairs in his high school classrooms. He understood why those chairs had to be so uncomfortable: to keep students awake during the day. (God forbid the teachers should bear that responsibility.) But why here? Sure, it was prison, but did things have to be so dreadful even for the visitors?

  Before he let his mind wander too far, Jack focused on why he was here. He came because he had made a deal, one witnessed by over 60 million people on national TV. Even though the deal was made under duress, and with a madman, he had held up his end of the bargain. But integrity wasn’t the reason for his presence here today. He sat in this ass-agonizing chair because of his indiscretions, and he showed up every month to keep his infidelity from reaching the masses.

  Not that he cared about the masses necessarily. He once had, and his father’s dear friend Philip Prince certainly would, even now. Jack cared about his family.

  Every time he sat in one of these chairs, Jack thought about his wonderful wife Vicki and his adorable son Jonah. Coming here was his penance for protecting them from the truth. He conjured further justification by preserving the incarceration of the pedophilic murderer Melvin Young, as a news release of Jack’s previous affair would bring Young’s conviction into question. Jack had just enough insight to know that his efforts served to protect himself just as much—if not more—than anyone else, but thinking about his family and the innocent children he protected made it easier to tolerate these visits to Coffeewood Correctional.

  Jack yawned, his mouth agape like a capuchin monkey fending off an enemy. He really needed a good night’s sleep, but deep slumber had evaded him for weeks now.

  On the other side of the thick glass in front of Jack, a large metal door opened at the opposite end of a narrow room. With a guard at his flank, Randall Franklin shuffled through the door. Surely he knew that Jack was today’s visitor—Jack was one of only three people to visit since his incarceration, and his lawyer was not due to come back until tomorrow— yet he looked pleasantly surprised when he saw Jack. The corner of the left side of his mouth lifted in a half-smirk. It turned Jack’s stomach.

  Jack had seen Randall three times since his capture more than four months ago. Each time he experienced a fleeting moment of rage. He hated the man on the other side of the glass. He hated him for what Randall did to those three little girls, for what he did to his own devastated family, for making Jack come here every month. (For that Jack also loathed himself, knowing how much responsibility he took for it.) Most of all, though, he hated Randall for what he had done to Vicki and Jonah. The kidnapping had left Vicki with a near-crippling case of agoraphobia; at present she would only leave the house for her scheduled psychiatry appointments. Thankfully Jonah seemed to be better recently; he hadn’t woken up from horrible nightmares in almost two months. But even this harbinger of sustainable improvement could not quell Jack’s acrimony for Randall.

  Jack’s pride would not allow him to show his rage to Randall, however. He would not give this stack of shit the satisfaction of even a glimpse at how he had altered Jack’s life. It was bad enough that he dragged his ass—his inordinately and excruciatingly flattened ass—here every month. So he swallowed down his anger and shook his head at Randall’s smirk.

  He would never admit it aloud, but Jack had fantasized on more than one occasion about killing Randall—or hiring someone else to murder him. He replayed that night in May in his head countless times, wondering if he could have found a way to kill Randall on those swimming pool bleachers and still save his family. He had yet to come up with a viable scenario. He realized that this exercise was nothing more than mental masturbation, and that his fantasy would never become reality. This didn’t stop him from letting his imagination wander episodically.

  Randall sat down in a chair opposite Jack. The guard yelled “Ten minutes,” as he turned to walk out of the room.

  “Thanks, Boss Edgecomb,” Randall said over his shoulder. He called every guard Boss Edgecomb, after the lead character in Stephen King’s The Green Mile. The guard did not pause but shook his head as he left the room and shut the door.

  Randall brought his shackled wrists up to his chest, opened up his right palm to face Jack, and rapidly oscillated his hand left and right, giving an overly enthusiastic wave, that sick smile still stuck on his face. The gesture reminded Jack of another character (also portrayed by Tom Hanks): the simple-minded Forest Gump. Jack couldn’t be fooled, though; Randall Franklin was anything but simple-minded.

  Jack picked up the telephone from its hook to his left. Randall grabbed his too, though it required slightly more effort because of his handcuffs. Jack was pretty sure that the handcuffs were not part of protocol; he surmised that the guards cuffed Randall during these visits as a small act of retribution for what an annoying prick he was.

  “Hello, Randall,” Jack said flatly.

  Randall did not reply at first, his face frozen in that smile. He stared at Jack as a teenager ogled his classroom crush. Finally, he pursed his lips, presenting a façade of seriousness. “How’s the book coming?”

  “Slowly,” Jack answered. “But we’re making progress.”

  “Good! That’s good… good news, that. What news have you on the Whalen kidnapping?” Every so often Randall used this faux-British sentence structure. It irritated the shit out of Jack.

  Jack’s end of his deal with Randall entailed coming to these monthly meetings and bringing the details of an active case from his FBI division. Randall wanted a part in Jack’s work, a role to play in Jack’s investigations. As he had suggested during their negotiation (if one could call it that), Randall would play Hannibal Lector to Jack’s Clarice Starling.

  The last time Jack visited Randall he gave him the case of the Whalen kidnapping. Dustin Whalen, the 2-year-old son of financial planner Darren and chiropractor Elizabeth, had been taken from his home in Central California in the middle of the night. Within hour
s, Jack’s FBI division CASMIRC (the Child Abduction and Serial Murder Investigative Resource Center) had been called in at the request of the family. Less than two days later, the local authorities apprehended the culprit: Darren’s jilted lover who took Dustin in an act of revenge. The story hit the California news circuit heavily, but national coverage was scant.

  “Right again,” Jack said. “Darren, the father, was involved. In a sense. Just like you predicted.”

  “A shorted business associate?”

  “Pissed-off mistress.”

  “Ah. Yes, yes.” Randall nodded several times, soaking in this information. “Anything new for me?”

  Jack glared at him. Heretofore, Jack had not been fully honest with Randall about these cases. He had no real intention of informing Randall of the inside details of an active investigation. Instead, he had pulled files of older cases on his way out of the office. He held no reservations about spilling data to Randall from a closed case that would soon be part of public record, if it weren’t already. He had to choose relatively low-profile cases, though, to insure that Randall had not heard of them before.

  Randall’s record now stood at 3-0: his interpretation of the investigative information Jack provided had yielded a correct analysis every time. He didn’t always nail the exact culprit precisely, but his intuition pointed in the right direction. Applying Randall’s input in retrospect, Jack concluded that Randall’s contribution would have eventually led to the perpetrator, perhaps faster than the existing authorities had.

  Given this, Jack had decided to divulge some information to Randall about an active case, one that had just come into CASMIRC this morning. Now, sitting across from the target of his most fiery enmity, he second-guessed his earlier decision. Other than inflating Randall’s already unparalleled ego, sharing this intelligence with him bore no risk or downside. Yet Jack abhorred the thought of colluding with him.