The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen

by Steven James

  He lowered his beer, assessed me coolly. “Is that what you came out here to do? Go through that again? That night she died?”

  “We’ve never really gone through it, Sean. Never really talked about—”

  “Right. Okay.” He moved toward the door. “Hey, what do you say we head inside, see how the women are getting along?”

  “Sean, I’m saying I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. About the deer. I know it hurt things between us.”

  For a moment I thought he might just walk away, but then he faced me and I searched his dark eyes for understanding, for some kind of reprieve, but it didn’t come and I wondered if maybe our relationship was scarred in a way that would never heal. “I made things worse,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Yes,” I protested. “I did.”

  “It was me.”

  I shook my head. “I should have—”

  “No.” He cut me off forcefully. “It was me. If we’d left that party earlier, if I’d let you drive, she never would have died. I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “You can’t blame yourself.” I saw his hand tighten around the bottle. “It was an accident. You swerved to miss that—”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I do understand. You—”

  “There was no deer that night.”

  “What?”

  He shifted his weight. “There was no deer.”

  “The ice? Is that what you’re—”

  All at once he turned from me and launched the beer bottle across the garage. It spun wickedly through the air, leaving a spray of suds in its wake until it smacked into the wall, sending an explosion of beer and glass splattering across the concrete.

  The random movement above us in the living room stopped, and a moment later I heard purposeful footfalls moving across the room toward the stairs that led to the garage.

  “I had too much to drink.” Sean was staring in the general direction of the shattered beer bottle, but he seemed to be looking beyond it to another place. “I had . . . I shouldn’t have been drinking.”

  Footsteps on the stairs.

  “You just had two. That’s not—”

  “It was more than two. It was a lot more than two.”

  Every time he reiterated his guilt, the words struck me harder. In many states there’s no statute of limitations on reckless vehicular homicide. If he really had been drunk that night, he could be—

  The door to the stairs swung open, and Amber appeared. She peered at the foamy trail of beer extending the length of the garage, saw the smashed bottle, then fixed her gaze on Sean. Rather than asking what happened, she just shook her head slowly and then turned toward the stairs again.

  “Wait,” he called.

  “No. I’m tired of your—”

  “Amber, just give me—”

  “No!” There was razor wire in her voice and I couldn’t help but think of what she’d told me last night about her and Sean having their ups and downs. I could see this quickly moving into a major down.

  “Don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you.” Sean started after her, and I followed to see if I could defuse things before they spiraled off any further in the wrong direction.

  76

  “It was my fault, Amber,” I said, entering the living room. “I brought up something that—”

  “No, Pat.” She was standing across the room from Sean and me, fiercely rooted beside Lien-hua. “You didn’t lose your temper. Sean did. You didn’t throw a beer bottle against the wall. Sean did. And this was not the first time.”

  “Okay, but the reason he was angry was—”

  “Do you know what it’s like being afraid of the person you’re supposed to feel safest being around?” The words blistered through the air, and no one moved. Immediately, I knew that this was not the right time for Amber to be confronting Sean like this, not when he was already so upset thinking about his culpability in Mrs. Everson’s death.

  Still, the idea that Amber feared for her safety around my brother struck me deeply.

  That’s why she’s leaving him. That’s why—

  “You’re afraid of me?” Sean asked her. “Since when are you afraid of me?”

  “You’ll have to forgive us,” Amber said to Lien-hua. There was a tremor in her voice. “Sean and I . . . we’ve had some . . . rough times. Lately.”

  Sean repeated more forcefully, “Since when are you afraid of me?”

  There was no hesitation in her reply, no holding back: “Since drinking became more important to you than spending time with me.” Even though her words were on fire, her eyes were beginning to glisten.

  “Oh. Really.”

  “Listen—” I began.

  Amber looked at me. “He needs to know.”

  No, please don’t . . .

  “I need to know what?” Sean exclaimed.

  “Back when you and I were engaged, when I first met Patrick. We—”

  Lien-hua put an arm out toward Amber. “Maybe we can find a better time to—”

  “We were in love,” Amber said softly but firmly. “We fell in love.”

  Oh, not good, not good at all.

  Lien-hua lowered her arm.

  “What?” Sean looked from me to Amber to me. “What do you mean you fell in love?”

  “It’s not what you think, Sean,” I said.

  “Really?” He glared at me. “Then why did my wife just say the two of you were in love?”

  “We talked,” Amber tried to explain. “But it was never—”

  Ignoring her, Sean fired another question at me. “Did you sleep with her, Pat?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “We talked and—”

  “Talked. You talked. Well, were you in bed while you were talking? Were you holding her, hugging her, kissing her? Did—”

  “That’s enough,” Lien-hua stepped in. “Let’s just—”

  “We did,” I confessed to Sean. “Kiss. Twice. Yes. While you were engaged.”

  “You son of a—”

  My phone rang.

  “We never slept together,” Amber reiterated.

  “I’m speaking to Pat,” he said gruffly.

  For the moment I ignored the phone and came to her defense. “Don’t take it out on her.” Lien-hua gave me a cautionary look: Standing up for Amber at a time like this is not going to help things!

  I added, “I take full responsibility for what happened.”

  “Yeah? And what does that mean, exactly? Full responsibility?”

  The cell buzzed again. “This probably isn’t the best time to talk about this.” I drew the phone out of my pocket, and the caller ID told me the number belonged to Hank Burlman.

  Burlman? Did they find Kayla?

  Sean came closer until he was within arm’s reach. His eyes were narrow, his jaw set.

  Amber pleaded, “Please—”

  “Quiet!” he hollered.

  “I said”—my voice was firm, resolute—“don’t take it out on her.” Regardless of whether or not it was wise to intervene, I was not going to let him yell at Amber.

  Return the call in a minute. Settle things here first.

  I silenced the phone and placed it on the end table.

  “Guys,” Lien-hua said authoritatively. “Just, everybody, take a breath and calm down.”

  But things were not just going to calm down. When men get jacked up like this, they don’t just decide the issue wasn’t such a big deal after all, give each other a big hug, and sit down to a cup of tea. Something has to happen.

  And it did.

  Sean shoved me, not hard enough to send me flying, but assertively enough to let me know he was not joking around.

  “See, this is the reason!” Amber shouted. “How you lose your—”

  That stopped him. “The reason? The reason you and my brother were—”

  “No! The reason we can’t make things work, you and me!” By now she wasn’t even
trying to hold back her tears. “Why I can’t stay with you anymore!”

  “You’re leaving?” His eyes shifted toward me. “To what? To be with Pat?”

  “No,” I said.

  Lien-hua stepped forward, valiantly, one last time. “If we could all—”

  Sean lunged at me, two hands against my chest, thudding me into the wall. With my injured ankle it was a struggle to keep from toppling to the floor. “We broke things off,” I said, “before they went too—”

  “Kissing her wasn’t going too far?”

  “No, you’re right, it—”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t mind if Lien-hua and I took a little time to—”

  I positioned myself in front of him. “That’s enough.”

  “Stop it!” Amber implored. “Both of you!”

  Sean clenched his hands into fists, and I braced myself. This was something he needed to do, and, honestly, I felt like I deserved it. I could have ducked, could have blocked the punch or stepped aside, but I didn’t. I just said, “I’m sorry that things—”

  Then it came, fierce and hard, a haymaker to the jaw. The force of impact whipped me around, and I slammed into the wall. A sailboat painting a couple feet away crashed to the floor corner-first and sent a shower of glass shards spraying across the carpet.

  A moment later I heard Tessa’s footsteps on the stairs.

  “I never meant to hurt you,” I said to Sean and I meant it. Facing him, I wiped some of the blood from my lip. He was a powerful man and he hadn’t held anything back. I felt dizzy from the blow. “I’m very sorry.”

  “You kept this from me all this time.” Now the anger in his voice had turned into something harsher, deeper—a sense of betrayal.

  It’s your fault, Pat. This is all your fault!

  Amber’s eyes were wide with tears, and she had her hand over her mouth. She took a step toward us but paused as Tessa appeared at the doorway.

  “What’s going on? I heard—” She saw my bloody, already-swollen lip. “What happened to you?” Her eyes tipped toward the shattered picture. “Oh . . .”

  Sean cut into me with his eyes. “What you did wasn’t right.” Just those five final words, and that was all. It was as if he’d forgotten that Amber was even in the room with us.

  “I wish it’d never happened. Believe me. I knew it wasn’t right.”

  “This is . . .” Tessa said, putting two and two together. “Oh man.”

  Sean brushed past me and headed for the stairs that led to the garage.

  “Where are you going?” Amber’s voice was slight and uneven.

  He didn’t reply, just snatched his truck keys from the peg board at the bottom of the steps, and then he was out the door. He could have slammed it, but instead he let the door drift closed slowly, and that seemed to accentuate his anger even more forcefully than if he’d banged it shut.

  Amber retreated to her bedroom, and even from this end of the hallway I could hear her sobbing. Lien-hua left to console her.

  You did this, Pat.

  Five years ago you set this all into motion!

  My cell phone sat on the end table beside me. I picked it up to redial Burlman.

  “Are you okay?” Tessa said.

  “Oh, I’m on the brink of perfection.”

  I tapped at the screen to get to the missed calls.

  “I mean your face.” She sounded quite concerned.

  Frankly, I felt like I’d been blindsided with a two-by-four. I touched my split lip gently. “I’m fine.”

  Sean’s truck roared to life in the driveway.

  “Well, go after him.”

  “This isn’t the time, Tessa.”

  “Are you kidding?” She pushed my arm, lowering my hand holding the phone. “This is so the time. Go make things right.”

  “Tessa, there’s nothing I could say right now that would make things right.”

  “Tell him you’ll do whatever it takes. Because you love him. Because he’s your brother. Quick, do it. Before he drives off.”

  Our conversation earlier about forgiveness and denial and guilt seemed to be fueling her admonition for me to make amends.

  She was staring at me beseechingly, waiting for my reply. “Well?”

  If there’s any way to fix this, Pat, you should at least try.

  I processed everything for a second. “Okay.”

  I retrieved the keys to the cruiser and redialed the last incoming number, then grabbed my jacket and jogged as quickly as I could manage on my taped ankle down the steps.

  A man answered the phone, but it was not Hank Burlman; it was Alexei Chekov. “Agent Bowers, I’m going to tell you where Kayla Tatum is.”

  “I’m listening.” I threw open the door. “Talk to me.”

  77

  “Kayla is at the Schoenberg Inn.”

  “No.” I stepped into the frigid night. “We already looked there.”

  “There are rooms that would not have been searched.”

  “Where?”

  “The basement.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  I fought my way through the seething snow toward the police cruiser. Why is he using Burlman’s phone and not the phone from the station?

  “The Eco-Tech team paid the manager for exclusive use of certain rooms,” he told me. “I offered him substantially more than they did. When you get there, ask about the rooms in the south end of the basement.”

  Wouldn’t the officers who searched the hotel have known about them?

  Maybe, maybe not.

  Cranking open the car door to the cruiser, I climbed inside. “Is she all right?”

  “I anticipate that she should be fine.”

  Key in the ignition. “How did you get Burlman’s phone?”

  “The laces in my boots have metal-tipped ends.”

  I froze.

  He picked the cuffs, the cell’s lock. Tait didn’t listen to me. He let Burlman stand guard!

  “What did you do to him?”

  “I spent a few minutes with him. I didn’t need five.”

  My teeth clenched. “You killed him?”

  “No. But I’m not sure he’ll walk again. Both of his tibias are quite severely fractured.”

  The bone gun. He got into the evidence locker!

  I knew that Tait had left the station earlier, but the man working in the dispatch room would’ve still been there. “What about the dispatcher?”

  “He’ll be all right. The dispatch system, though, I’m afraid that will be down for a bit.”

  The taillights from Sean’s pickup were a quarter mile down the road already. Once again I thought that even if I did catch up with him, I was the last person on earth he would want to see right now.

  Unsure what to do, I let the engine idle.

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “I want you to find Kayla. I never wanted to harm her. I’m sorry we won’t have the chance to work together.”

  I could tell he was about to wrap up the call. “Alexei, what room is she—”

  “Good-bye, Agent Bowers.”

  The line went dead.

  I redialed the number.

  Nothing.

  Tried 911.

  No signal.

  I smacked the steering wheel, then punched in Tait’s cell number. “Where are you?” I said.

  “Just south of Woodborough.”

  “Alexei called me.”

  “What!”

  “We need an ambulance at the station ASAP. He’s free and there are two men down—Burlman and the dispatcher. It’s serious, but I don’t think their injuries are critical. Alexei also took out the EMS dispatch channel. And we’ll need to get some officers to the Schoenberg. Kayla’s there.”

  “We looked—”

  “No. The basement. Alexei said she’s in a room on the south end.”

  “All my men left the Schoenberg when we came up dry an hour ago. What did he do to the guys at the station?”

  “Burlman’s
legs are broken, I’m not sure what he did to the dispatcher. How long till you can get someone back out to the Schoenberg?”

  “Twenty minutes. Maybe fifteen.”

  No!

  I calculated the distance to the hotel from where I was.

  It’d be a long shot, even if I hurried, but if it took the officers twenty minutes, I might be able to beat them there.

  As long as the roads haven’t drifted shut.

  Get there, Pat.

  Now. Go.

  “I’m heading over there,” I told him. “If your officers arrive first, tell them to have the manager take ’em to those rooms in the basement. And they need to keep an eye on him; Alexei said he bribed him, but the manager might be more involved than that.”

  Bring Lien-hua. She’s better at interviewing victims and suspects than you are. Kayla might open up to her; give us an idea of where to look for Alexei.

  Hanging up with Tait, I left the car and hastened toward the house.

  Get the GPS ankle bracelet and the biometric ID card. This doesn’t end with finding Kayla.

  I burst through the door. “Lien-hua,” I called, “grab your coat.” Then I was on my way up the stairs. “We need to go.”

  78

  7:43 p.m.

  1 hour 17 minutes until the transmission

  “Why didn’t you go after him?” Tessa asked as I stepped into the living room.

  I could still hear Amber crying at the end of the hall. Even though I felt like I needed Lien-hua with me, considering how rough the week had been on both Amber and Tessa, I wasn’t excited about leaving the two of them here alone. However, at the moment it didn’t seem like I had a choice.

  “Patrick?” Tessa must have sensed my urgency. “What’s going on?”

  Time was of the essence, so I cut straight to the point. “Listen, there’s a woman who was taken, kidnapped. We might finally know where she is. Are you all right staying here with Amber?”

  She looked at me anxiously. “Who is it?”

  “Her name is Kayla. Will you and Amber be okay?”

  “Yeah, no, totally. We’re fine. We’ll be fine.” A line of worry scribbled across her face. “I didn’t know someone was kidnapped.”

  “Call me if you need to.”

  She was staring uneasily at me.

  “What?”

  “He hit you really hard.”