The Knight

by Steven James

  But maybe not.

  Then a thought.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have to wait for them.

  I wrote a few more notes on my pad, then rolled the pen through my fingers. “All right,” I said to Professor Bryant. “You’re proposing that, to Boccaccio, the relationship between the reader and the text, between the person and the story, was an illicit affair?”

  “Yes.”

  I surveyed the bookshelves again, laid the notepad and pen on his desk. “And Boccaccio was the one bringing them together, playing the role of the knight, Galeotto.” I still hadn’t seen any 853 commentaries, but the professor had thousands of books.

  “That is correct.”

  Yesterday, Jake had suggested that all of the killer’s stories were about the tragic consequences of love: “Cruel, fatal tales of love and loss.”

  Is John acting as a matchmaker between lovers and death? Is that his game?

  Professor Bryant looked impatiently at Cheyenne and me. “Now, if that’s all, I really need to—”

  My phone rang. “Excuse me.” I stepped into the hallway. Through the door I could hear Cheyenne asking the professor about the specific literary significance of the stories told on day four.

  As I answered the phone I walked softly to the kitchen to check on something. “Yes?”

  “It’s me,” Ralph said. “I had an agent watching Calvin. She said he was at home, but he wasn’t returning my calls so I swung over to invite him to lunch. He’s not there.”

  “What?” I was silently looking over Dr. Bryant’s countertops, then I quickly searched his cabinets.

  “Somehow he slipped past us.”

  “He’s nearly eighty years old.” Quickly, quietly, I checked the contents of the professor’s dishwasher.

  “I know. I’m looking into it.”

  “We need to find—”

  “I said I know.” He turned his words into hammer blows. “I’m looking into it.”

  “OK,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He ended the call abruptly. I didn’t find what I was looking for in Dr. Bryant’s kitchen, and, discouraged on both counts, I returned to the study.

  74

  As I entered the room, I heard Professor Bryant wrapping up his explanation to Cheyenne: “You see, while the ten pilgrims were trying to escape the Black Plague, death was only one step behind them, but of course it would eventually catch up with them, just as it catches up with us all. So, in all of the stories told on this fourth day of the journey, we find the underlying, unstated theme that love itself is a plague, a sickness, that tracks us down and ends unhappily, that love inevitably leads to misery.”

  Based on what we knew about the killer and his crimes up until that point, Bryant’s analysis seemed right on target.

  I caught Cheyenne looking at me. I guessed that she was just checking to see if I had any follow-up questions. I shook my head.

  She handed Dr. Bryant her card. “Well, thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful. Please call us if you think of any students who’ve shown particular interest in The Decameron.”

  “I will.” But by the look on his face I suspected he’d throw the card away as soon as we were out the door.

  “And if we have any more questions,” Cheyenne said, “we’ll be in touch.”

  “Yes.” He led us to the front door. “All right.”

  “Oh, wait.” I patted my pockets. “I forgot my notepad and pen in your office. I’ll be right back.”

  A few seconds later I was in Professor Bryant’s office again, this time, alone. I went around the desk to his keyboard and tapped the spacebar to still the fish swimming across the screen and wake up his iMac.

  Sometimes you have to poke around for evidence to find out if there’s enough reason to even bother getting a search warrant.

  At the end of the hall I heard Cheyenne say, “So, when does the semester finish up?”

  The desktop screen appeared. I quickly clicked on the apple on the upper left-hand corner, scrolled to System Preferences—

  “Two weeks,” Bryant told Cheyenne.

  I clicked the “Sharing” icon. Turned on “Remote Login” and “File Sharing.”

  Dr. Bryant’s voice drifted down the hall. “If you would excuse me.”

  I memorized his IP address so I could remotely log into his computer. Heard footsteps. Grabbed my notepad and pen.

  Closed his System Preferences.

  Turned.

  He was standing in the doorway. “All set?” he asked.

  I held up the notepad and pen I’d purposely left on his desk a few minutes earlier. “Mission accomplished.”

  After Cheyenne and I were in the car, I promptly started the engine and pulled into the street.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “He was lying.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The coffee.”

  “The coffee?”

  “It smelled like Geisha beans from Hacienda la Esmeralda’s farms in Panama, one of the world’s rarest and most expensive coffees.” “You identified the coffee by its smell?”

  “Well, that and the fact that I saw the bag while I was on the phone looking around the kitchen, but that’s not the point. The point is: he doesn’t own a thermos.”

  She blinked. “He doesn’t own a thermos?”

  “Nope. Or a travel mug—or if he does, he’s hiding them really well. And he made twelve cups. OK, now this is just my gut reaction, but I doubt that someone who buys one hundred dollar per pound coffee would brew that many cups at once unless he was expecting someone. A coffee connoisseur brews small pots to keep his cups fresh. And it was percolating when I walked in, so I don’t think he was about to go mountain biking.”

  “Did you just say your gut reaction? And here I was, thinking you were the guy who doesn’t trust his instincts.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “That’s why we’re circling around the block.”

  “So he lied about going mountain biking,” she said. “Do you think that matters?”

  “Everything matters.”

  Cheyenne cleared her throat, ever so slightly, but I noticed. “You know, this is the seventh case I’ve worked with you, and you’ve said that at some point in every one of those investigations.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Must be a quirk.” I parked behind a minivan near the intersecting street closest to Dr. Adrian Bryant’s house. “Let’s see who he’s meeting.”

  A few moments later, Bryant left the house, looked up and down the street, then slipped into his BMW and backed out of the driveway. He didn’t take his mountain bike with him. “Hmm,” I said. “A slight change of plans for the professor. No visitors, and I guess the biking trip can wait.”

  “What do you think?” Cheyenne asked. “Follow him or let him go?”

  I looked at my watch: 12:32.

  In twenty-eight minutes Jake Vanderveld would begin sharing his psychological profile of the killer. “Follow him. That way we’ll have an excuse for missing Jake’s briefing.”

  She took a moment to evaluate my comment. “You’re kidding.”

  “Yes. Maybe.”

  “Well, you’re the one in the driver’s seat this time. You can take me wherever you like.”

  Man, this woman loved her double entendres.

  And I didn’t mind them so much either.

  Maybe if we were lucky, Bryant would do something illegal so we could arrest him and Cheyenne and I would have a good excuse for missing the briefing.

  Bryant entered the tangled web of subdivision streets that surrounded his house, and I followed him, staying far enough back so that he wouldn’t see me.

  And I memorized the route he took as we drove.

  75

  Tessa heard Patrick’s mother return from church and start setting plates on the table for lunch.

  The diary didn’t include entries every day, and sometimes Tessa’s mom would skip a week or
even a month just like most bloggers do. And often, instead of writing, she would paste in a letter or a photograph, but still, Tessa walked with her mother like a friend, like a sister, through her first year of college and into the beginning of the summer that followed.

  Her mother had just started writing about a guy named Brad who was one year ahead of her in school when Tessa heard Martha’s thin, wispy voice float up the stairs. “What can I make you for lunch, dear?”

  “I’m not hungry,” she called back.

  Tessa liked Martha. Patrick had told her one time that his mother had grown up in Georgia, learning to be a proper Southern lady, so Tessa realized she probably wasn’t too thrilled about her step-granddaughter’s eyebrow ring, black fingernail polish, tattoo, and love of death metal, but still, Tessa had never felt judged by her and had always respected her for that. Despite their differences, they got along surprisingly well.

  Tessa heard footsteps on the stairs.

  Martha wasn’t exactly spry, and Tessa didn’t like the idea that she was making her come up the stairs just to convince her to eat something, so she left the diary on the bed, walked down the hallway, and plopped on the top stair. “Seriously,” she told her. “I’m good.”

  Martha was halfway up the stairs. “Tessa, dear, you need to eat.” Martha was a frail, delicate woman with snow-white hair, yet some one whom Tessa had noticed possessed the kind of strength that’s hard to measure.

  And even though Tessa really wanted to get back to the diary to find out what happened between her mother and Brad, she didn’t want to be rude. “OK, sure, just whatever you’re having.”

  “Meatloaf all right, then?”

  Tessa stared at her, expecting her face to give away that she was kidding, but Martha just looked at her innocently. Finally, Tessa said, “In the Bible, weren’t Adam and Eve vegetarians? Wasn’t that the original plan—that humans wouldn’t kill to live? And Daniel the lion-den-guy too? Wasn’t he—”

  A slight finger in the air. “Point taken.” Martha gave her an I’m-proud- of-you look. “So, leafloaf, then?”

  “Sure, yeah. Leafloaf,” she said. “Thanks.” Coming from Patrick, “leafloaf” would have sounded like a lame attempt at humor, but from Martha it just seemed sweet.

  Then Martha gave her a light smile and descended the steps again, and Tessa returned to the diary to find out if her mother and Brad ever hooked up.

  Fifteen minutes after leaving his house, Dr. Bryant pulled into the parking lot of the Denver News building.

  “So,” Cheyenne said. “Bryant is an expert on Boccaccio, he owns a sword collection, was unaccounted for yesterday, the head in the pot of basil was sent to this building, he drives over here as soon as we’re done talking to him, and remember? Kurt mentioned that Bryant had Amy Lynn in class.”

  “Yes,” I said. “My interest is definitely sparked.”

  Clock check—we had twelve minutes before the briefing at HQ, and despite my reluctance to attend, I knew we needed to be there. “We have to go, but let’s get a car over here; have a couple officers keep an eye on the professor.”

  Cheyenne pulled out her cell, and I aimed the car toward police headquarters.

  76

  Jake was connecting his computer to the wall monitor when Cheyenne and I arrived at the conference room. In addition to Jake, I saw three of the officers who’d been helping us with the case, two FBI agents, and Reggie Greer. Kurt hadn’t arrived yet.

  A printed copy of Jake’s psychological profile lay on the table in front of each of the twelve chairs. As Cheyenne and I took our seats, Captain Terrell, Kurt’s boss and the fan of profiler TV shows, stepped into the room and sat beside Jake. The captain was a severe-looking man with short, choppy hair. A cloud of Old Spice cologne trailed behind him as he passed.

  Cheyenne leaned close to me, nodded toward him, and whispered, “They say it takes more muscles to frown than to smile.”

  I kept my voice low. “You’re saying his face likes a good workout?”

  She winked. “Good. You’re keeping up with me.”

  “Great minds,” I whispered.

  Then I overheard Captain Terrell ask Jake if he was ready. Jake nodded. “Good to go.”

  The captain cleared his throat, and everyone settled into their chairs. “First, I want to thank you all for coming in on a weekend,” he said. “As you know, the Denver Police Department is always looking for ways to better serve its constituents, so we’re honored and privileged to have two federal agents working closely with us on this case.” He gave me and Jake a slightly forced nod.

  Then he leaned both of his hands against the table. “So let’s cut to the bone—this psycho has got to be stopped. We have at least seven deaths on our hands, and this thing is turning into a freakin’ PR nightmare. The DPD is gonna put every available resource we have behind finding this guy.”

  He picked up one of the photocopies of Jake’s profile. Waved it at us. “And Special Agent Vanderveld is the man who’s gonna help us do it.” Then he gave him the floor. “Jake.”

  Evidently, Captain Terrell had a shade more confidence in Jake’s investigative abilities than I did. I flipped open my copy of the profile, began my obligatory perusal.

  Jake stood. “Thank you, Captain.” He pointed to the printed profiles. “I won’t read what you have in front of you, but I would like to highlight a few points.” He tapped a button on his laptop, and an FBI logo appeared on the screen.

  “We’re dealing with someone who was able to find a man on the FBI’s most wanted list, then subdue and kill him even though that man was a trained assassin.” He clicked his laptop again, and an image of Sebastian Taylor’s face appeared.

  I looked around.

  No one else seemed to notice that what Jake had just said, although it sounded insightful, was entirely self-evident. Just a restatement of information we already knew.

  “The UNSUB is a male Caucasian, thirty to thirty-five years of age. The crime scenes show a mixture of organized and disorganized behavior.”

  Saying that behavior is a combination of organized and disorganized might be an accurate description, but it’s completely useless in zeroing in on a suspect. I could see this was going to be a very long briefing.

  “He’s not your typical sexually motivated homicidal killer. He is divorced at least once and might have lived with his mother after college.”

  With every one of Jake’s statements I could feel my temperature rise higher. This was precisely what I didn’t like about profiling—conjecture based on guesswork rather than facts. Considering solely the evidence that’d been left at the crime scenes so far, how could anyone possibly tell that the offender lived with his mother after college? It was ridiculous.

  Jake went on, “I recommend direct confrontation with the suspect during interrogation. Ask him questions such as, ‘How many other people have you killed?’ ‘Where did you stash Chris Arlington’s body?’ ‘Where did you get the idea to reenact the crimes from The Decameron?’”

  “Excuse me,” Cheyenne said.

  “Yes?”

  “Wouldn’t it be more prudent at this point to focus our energies on getting someone into custody than designing an interrogation strategy?”

  Oh yes. A woman after my own heart.

  Jake smiled, but I could tell it wasn’t really a smile. “We need to be prepared for whatever comes our way, Detective. The more we understand this killer, the better our chances of catching him and getting him to confess. My goal is to be as thorough as possible.”

  By the look on Cheyenne’s face I suspected she was about to lay into him, but I intervened. “Jake,” I said. “Cheyenne and I just spoke with the professor who teaches about The Decameron at DU. He seemed to think Boccaccio sees himself in the role of a knight bringing lovers together with loss, grief, or death. You may cover this in your written profile, but what do you make of the Boccaccio connection?”

  “Yes, I do cover it,” he said. “In depth. But I’ll sum
marize for you.”

  Gee, thanks, I thought.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “The UNSUB’s fascination with The Decameron reveals that he is smart and well-read. High IQ. He’s studied medieval literature. Probably a college graduate, maybe even did some postgrad coursework. Within Boccaccio’s stories he finds the inspiration and impetus to let his violent tendencies have free rein in his life.”

  “So,” Cheyenne said thoughtfully. “You’re saying the killer is smart and has violent tendencies?”

  Her sarcasm seemed to be lost on Jake. “Yes,” he said.

  Smart and violent.

  These insights were remarkable. Maybe I ought to be writing this stuff down.

  “He doesn’t change his signature,” Jake said, “because he can’t. He kills because he gets something out of the murder. And that grows from the specific nature of each crime. It’s more related to the why than the how. Methods get refined. Murderers learn from their mistakes. But they don’t change the why. It’s almost always for power, domination, and control. In this case, the power over fate, over life and death. To catch this guy we need to focus not on where the crimes occur but on why.”

  He was staring at me as he said the words, and I could sense that he was picking a fight, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “So, here’s what we look at: couples. Lovers. Victim selection. Why is he choosing these couples? What do they have in common? Where do their lives intersect with his?”

  He’d just told us a few seconds earlier that the where didn’t matter, and now he was suggesting we focus on where the victims’ lives intersected with the killer’s, which is what I’d suggested more than twenty-four hours ago.

  At least now we were getting somewhere.

  “The UNSUB’s preoccupation with love and death reveals a great deal of inner pain and turmoil,” Jake said. “He experienced profound grief in his formative years. Probably the loss of a caregiver. So, we should be looking for a highly educated man who experienced tragedy or betrayal as a child. He’s familiar with this region, probably grew up or studied here; and perhaps has access to confidential case files or restricted areas of the Federal Digital Database that allowed him to track down Taylor’s residence through the tire impressions that matched his Lexus.”