by Steven James
The Pawn
“There is nothing not to like.”
—The Suspense Zone
“An exceptional psychological thriller.”
—Bookshelf Review
“Riveting.”
—Publishers Weekly
“An exhilarating thriller.”
—Mysterious Reviews
“Brilliant.”
—Ann Tatlock, Christy award–winning author
“Seriously intense.”
—Pop Culture Tuesday
The Rook
“It’s a wild ride with a shocking conclusion.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Readers will be on the edge of their seats.”
—Romantic Times, top pick
“Steven James has mastered the thriller . . . Best story of the year. Perfectly executed.”
—The Suspense Zone
“Suspense thriller writing at its highest level.”
—TitleTrakk.com
“Steven James hooked me with his debut, The Pawn. Now in his explosive sequel he has absolutely blown me away.”
—The Christian Manifesto
THE KNIGHT
THE BOWERS FILES # 3
STEVEN JAMES
© 2009 by Steven James
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
E-book edition created 2009
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-0443-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to real people, either factual or historical, is purely coincidental.
For Jen and Kristin
Thanks for being patient
Don’t you know how the tiger trainer goes about it? He doesn’t dare give the tiger any living thing to eat for fear it will learn the taste of fury by killing it. He doesn’t dare give it any whole thing to eat for fear it will learn the taste of fury by tearing it apart.
He gauges the state of the tiger’s appetite and thoroughly understands its fierce disposition. Tigers are a different breed from men . . . the men who get killed are the ones who go against them.
—Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu, 351 BC
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1
Thursday, May 15
Bearcroft Mine
The Rocky Mountains, 40 miles west of Denver
5:19 p.m.
The sad, ripe odor of death seeped from the entrance to the abandoned mine.
Some FBI agents get used to this smell, to this moment, and after awhile it just becomes another part of the daily routine.
That’s never happened with me.
My flashlight cut a narrow seam through the darkness but gave me enough light to see that the woman was still clothed, no sign of sexual assault. Ten sturdy candles surrounded her, their flames wisping and licking at the dusty air, giving the tunnel a ghostly, otherworldly feel.
She was about ten meters away and lay as if asleep, hands on her chest. And in her hands was the reason I’d been called in.
A slowly decomposing human heart.
No sign of the second victim.
And the candles flickered around her in the dark.
Part of my duties at the FBI’s Denver field office include working with the Denver Police Department on a joint task force that investigates the most violent criminal offenders in the Denver metroplex, helping to evaluate evidence and suggest investigative strategies. Since this crime appeared to be linked to another double homicide the day before in Littleton, Lieutenant Kurt Mason had asked for my help.
But some local law enforcement officers tend to be territorial, and from the moment I’d stepped off the task force helicopter I’d seen how excited the four men from the crime scene unit were that I was here. It probably didn’t help matters that Kurt wanted me to survey the scene with him before they processed the tunnel.
The mine was barely high enough for me to stand in, and narrow enough for me to touch both sides at once. Every five to ten meters, thick beams buttressed the walls and ceiling, supporting against cave-ins.
A rusted track that had been used by miners to roll ore carts throu
gh the mine ran along the ground and disappeared into the darkness somewhere beyond the woman’s body.
As I took a few steps into the tunnel, I checked to see if my Nikes left an imprint but saw that the ground was too hard. So, it was unlikely we would have shoe impressions from the killer either.
With each step, the temperature dropped, dipping into the low forties. The time of death was still unknown, but the cool air would have slowed decomposition and helped preserve the body. The woman might have been dead for two or three days already.
One of the candles winked out.
Why did you bring her here? Why today? Why this mine?
Whose heart is that in her hands?
The voice of one of the crime scene unit members cut through the dim silence. “Yeah, Special Agent Bowers is inside. He’s taking his time.”
“I should hope so.” It was Lieutenant Mason, and I was glad he was here. He’d been on the phone since I arrived, and now I paused and waited for him to join me.
A beam of light swept past me as he turned on his flashlight, and a moment later he was standing by my side.
“Thanks for coming in on this, Pat.” He spoke in a hushed voice, a small way to honor the dead. “I know you’re leaving to teach at the Academy next week. I’m hoping—”
“I’ll consult from Quantico if I need to.”
He gave me a small nod.
Forty-one, with stylish, wire-rimmed glasses and swift intelligent eyes, Kurt looked more like an investment banker than a seasoned detective, but he was one of the best homicide investigators I’d ever met.
It’d been a hard year for him, though, and it showed on his face. Five months ago while he and his wife Cheryl were on a date, their fifteen-month-old daughter Hannah drowned in the bathtub while the babysitter was in the living room texting one of her friends. Kurt and I had only known each other for a few months when his daughter died, but I’d recently lost my wife, and in a way the sense of shared tragedy had deepened our friendship.
Silently, we donned latex gloves. Began to walk toward the woman’s body.
“Her name is Heather Fain.” His voice sounded lonely and hollow in the tunnel. “I just got the word. Disappeared from her apartment in Aurora on Monday. No one’s seen her boyfriend since then either—a guy named Chris Arlington. He was a person of interest in the case . . . until . . .” He let his voice trail off. He was staring at the heart.
I looked at Heather’s body, still five meters away, and let her name roll through my mind.
Heather.
Heather Fain.
This wasn’t just a corpse, these were tragic remains of a young woman who’d had a boyfriend and dreams and a life in Aurora, Colorado. A young woman with passions and hopes and heartaches.
Until this week.
Grief stabbed at me.
Kurt’s comment led me to think he might have reason to believe this was Chris Arlington’s heart. “Do we know the identity of the second victim?” I asked. “Whether or not it’s Chris?”
“Not yet.” An edginess took over his voice. “And I know what you’re thinking, Pat: don’t assume, examine. Don’t worry. I will.”
“I know.”
“We have to start somewhere.”
I focused the beam of light on the heart. “Yes, we do.”
Together, we approached the body.
2
The candles gave off a scent of vanilla that intermingled with the smell of moldering flesh and the sharp sulfurous odor coming from deeper in the mine. I wondered if the candles were the killer’s way of trying to mask the smell of the body as it began to decay, wondered where he might have purchased them, how long they’d been burning.
Details.
Timing.
“I should tell you,” Kurt said, “Captain Terrell’s not thrilled this is going through the task force. He wants it local law enforcement all the way.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.” Even from three meters away I could see the heart’s intricate, fleshy veins. “We’ll deal with that later.”
We arrived at Heather’s body.
Caucasian. Mid-twenties, medium build, dusty brown hair. Fresh lipstick. I pictured her alive, moving, breathing, laughing. Based on the bone structure of her face, she would have had a lovely, shy smile.
Her skin was mottled and blotchy and there’d been minor insect activity, but the cool temperature had kept it to a minimum.
I studied the heart for a moment—reddish black and clutched in her hands. It looked so dark and terrible lying on her chest.
Then I let my gaze shift to the candles. Over the years I’ve found that having a clear understanding of a crime’s timing and location is the most important place to start an investigation. I looked at my watch and then blew out the five candles encircling her legs. “Jot down 5:28 p.m.”
Kurt wrote the numbers on his notepad. “Wax flow?”
“Yes.” Later, we would have Forensics burn this brand of candle at this altitude and this temperature and compare the melting rate and amount of wax flow to determine how long these candles had been burning. It would tell us when the killer was last here. I didn’t need to tell Kurt any of this; we were on the same wavelength.
I studied the position of the body in relationship to the way the tunnel curved to the left as it followed the vein of minerals winding through the mountain. It appeared that Heather’s body hadn’t been placed haphazardly in the mine. The killer had centered her between two support beams.
He wanted us to see her as soon as we stepped into the mine. He’s framing her. Like a picture.
“Just a few more minutes,” Kurt said, jarring me out of my thoughts. “Then I need to let the CSU guys in.”
I leaned over her body.
Her eyes were closed.
No visible body art.
No ripped clothing, no sign of a struggle. Black slacks, brown leather boots, a yellow and orange flower-patterned blouse stained dark with the blood that had seeped from the heart.
I brushed away a strand of hair covering her left ear and saw that it was pierced in three places, but she wore no earrings. I checked the other ear. No jewelry. “Let’s find out if she was wearing earrings the day she was abducted. If she was, check ViCAP for other cases of killers who take earrings as trophies of their murders.”
He wrote in his notepad.
“Kurt, besides you, how many officers have been in here?”
“Just two.” He pointed his light toward an intersecting tunnel leading to the east. “I checked the tunnels before they got here. It’s clear. No more bodies.”
Water dripped out of sight somewhere deep in the mine. Wet echoes crawling toward me.
“Do we know who owns this mine?”
He shook his head. “Up here, mineral rights change hands a lot. Get inherited, resold. It’s hard to track down. Jameson’s working on it.”
I gave Heather my full attention again.
No contusions on her face, no blood in her hair, no ligature marks on her neck. How did he kill you, Heather? Press a pillow against your face? Drown you? Poison you?
“Let’s get a tox screening.”
“ME’s on his way up to get things rolling.”
The candle beside her right shoulder blinked out.
I moved my beam of light past the heart and directed it onto the slight folds and wrinkles in her clothing.
Kurt bent beside me, pointing first at her shoulders, then at her ankles. “No clumping or bunching of her clothes,” he said. “He didn’t drag her in here; he carried her.”
“Looks like it. Either way, he took time to smooth out her clothes, to brush her hair. He spent time with her. Posing her. Making sure everything was just right.”
I felt a renewed sense of sadness at her death and the death of the person whose heart now lay on her chest. Moving the beam of light across her body, I thought of how many killers return to the dump sites of their victims to violate their remains, to relive the thrill of the murder, but t
here was no sign he’d defiled her remains. And I was thankful, if for nothing more than that.
Why here? Why did you bring her here? When I’m in the middle of an investigation I have a tendency to talk to myself, and I didn’t realize I’d done more than just think my two questions until I heard a woman’s voice behind me: “He’s sending us a message.”
Then footsteps, quick, firm, purposeful. Careful to avoid shining the beam in her eyes, I tilted my flashlight toward the woman approaching us. In the corner of the light, I could see her naturally beautiful, cowgirl face and strawberry blonde hair.
“Detective Warren,” I said.
“Agent Bowers.”
At twenty-nine, Cheyenne was the youngest woman ever to be promoted to homicide detective for the Denver Police Department. She was smart, down-to-earth, dedicated, and I liked her. I’d worked six task force cases with her over the last year, and each time I’d become more impressed.
Even though I was seven years older, there was definitely chemistry between us, and she’d taken the lead and asked me out twice, but the timing hadn’t been right. However, in light of the problems I was having in my current relationship, those two instances came to mind.
Her eyes whisked past me and found the body illuminated by Kurt’s flashlight. “Ritualistic posing,” she said. “He took his time to get it just right.”
“Yes.” I focused my light on Heather again.
One of the CSU members called loudly for Kurt. I saw his jaw tense; he spent a moment in quiet deliberation, then handed Cheyenne his light, excused himself, and stepped away.
I returned my attention to Heather, and as I leaned close to her face, I noticed something in her mouth. Gently, I pressed against her lower lip to peer inside.
A black device the size of a folded-up strip of gum lay on her tongue.
Cheyenne saw it too. Knelt closely beside me. Most of my attention remained on the crime scene, but some of it shifted to her, to the soft brush of her arm against mine.
We both scrutinized the object. “What is that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll be right back.” She exited the mine while I used my cell phone to take pictures of Heather’s face and the placement of the object in her mouth.