by Steven James
I was sorting through the possible implications when the gate agent announced that the flight was now boarding, and that because of the delay, they were expediting the boarding process and welcoming passengers in all seats, all rows, to board.
So we boarded. And I let my thoughts flip through the facts of the case.
And less than twenty minutes later we were in the air and I was on my way back to Basque’s trial in Chicago.
Giovanni had placed the poison earlier in the afternoon and then driven to Bearcroft Mine.
Now, he turned on his headlamp and entered the tunnel on the west side of the mountain.
This entrance didn’t appear on any of the maps still in circulation. And, while it was possible someone had heard about it, Giovanni believed it was far more likely that, now that Thomas Bennett, the mine’s former owner, was dead, he was the only person alive who knew it was there.
It took him nearly half an hour to maneuver through the network of tunnels and arrive at the mine’s second-lowest passageway.
He lit a lantern and hung it from a hook on one of the wooden beams buttressing the ceiling.
The tunnel ended just a few feet to his right, and beside him was the six-foot-by-six-foot platform that the miners in the 1800s had used to lower the ore carts into the tunnel thirty feet further down. The platform hung from a rope looped through a double pulley attached to the beam above Giovanni’s head. He’d replaced the aging hemp rope with a new static nylon one last month. The pulleys reduced the force needed to raise and lower the platform so that a single person could manage it by himself.
A single miner.
A single murderer.
A single storyteller.
He stepped onto the platform, held one end of the rope, and then released the lever on the beam above him. A crude cam device next to the pulleys pressed against the rope, controlling the rate of the platform’s descent.
Slowly, he began to lower himself down the shaft.
The tunnel he was heading toward had never been completed when the mine was abandoned in the early 1900s. It spanned only forty feet, and was less than six feet high, which meant that once Patrick Bowers was sealed inside, he wouldn’t be able to stand up for the rest of his life.
As he descended, Giovanni inspected the line of plastic explosives he’d threaded down the walls of the shaft. Even though he had no formal explosive ordnance training, with his professional contacts it hadn’t been difficult to acquire the C-4 and learn enough rudimentary skills to rig the shaft to blow. He’d practiced in other abandoned mines over the last few months and had become relatively proficient at sealing shut mine shafts.
When he reached the bottom, he tied off the rope, synched his handheld detonator with the four wireless receivers attached to the C-4, and then looked around.
Months ago when he’d first begun investigating this mine, apart from a few pieces of rusting mining equipment, this tunnel had been completely empty, but now it was stocked with enough food and bottled water to keep one person alive for ten to twelve weeks.
After all, it wouldn’t have been nearly as satisfying of a climax if Agent Bowers died too quickly after being buried alive.
If the access shaft had been located in the middle of the tunnel, Giovanni might have been concerned about the entire tunnel collapsing when the shaft blew, but since it was on the end and he’d reinforced the tunnel’s ceiling braces, he was confident that the tunnel would withstand the explosion.
One more thing to check.
He pulled out the Matheson Analyzer.
When air moves through space it acts like a fluid, so using the Matheson, he tested the computational fluid dynamics of the oxygen level coming from the air flow of a two-inch wide rift in the wall, taking into account that the access shaft would be sealed. It took the mechanism only a few moments to make the calculations.
Yes, the oxygen would be adequate. Bowers would survive until he either starved to death or eventually went insane.
Early in his planning, Giovanni had decided that it would be more frightening for Bowers to see his tomb for himself, to search the walls, the ceiling, the ground for some possible way out, but to find none. And then, to have his light slowly fade. Slowly die as his small, enclosed world was swallowed in darkness forever. So, when the time came, Giovanni would let his captive have a flashlight.
It would make for a much better ending.
Giovanni clicked off his light and let the thick, living darkness sweep over him. He opened and closed his eyes. No visible difference.
This is what it would be like for Bowers in the end.
He listened to his heartbeat, to the steady, even sound of his breathing.
At last, light back on, he checked his watch.
He still had a forty-five-minute drive to Denver.
Tomorrow, before taking care of Bowers, he would be placing two people in his storage unit, and he needed to make sure all the preparations were in place for their stay. So he took one last look around the tunnel that Bowers would die in at the climax of his tale, then Giovanni left Bearcroft Mine and drove through the softly falling snow to Denver.
89
Although I could think of a thousand things I’d rather have been doing, I spent the flight to Chicago typing up my report about the courthouse incident on Friday for FBI Assistant Executive Director Margaret Wellington, detailing the circumstances involving Grant Sikora’s death.
When we arrived at O’Hare, I took a moment to email it to her before leaving the airport.
With my email program open, I noticed there weren’t any messages from Calvin. But there was one from Angela Knight, my friend in the FBI’s cybercrime division:
Pat,
About those 911 calls.
We couldn’t backtrace either of them. Nothing on the call to your landline either. Whoever made them knew how to cover his tracks.
Not much on the voice spectrograph of the 911 tapes either, but I can tell you it was the same person on each call.
The background noise on the first call is internal feedback from the dispatch office. The sound on the second tape is rain falling on the windshield of a car. And no, I can’t tell you the make and year—although I am working on it.
That’s it. More later. Be well.
—AK
So, Cowler had been right about the background sounds on the first tape, and while the rain on the second audio didn’t prove that John was in Chicago when the call was made, since a storm had been blowing through the city that morning, it did corroborate the hypothesis that he was.
I checked my voicemail.
Nothing.
Then I grabbed my bags, flagged a cab, and rode to my hotel.
Reggie was several hours late getting home from work, but when he finally arrived, Amy Lynn met him with a kiss, told him how good it was to see him, and then pointed out the window to the pair of agents sitting in a car beside the curb. “Let those guys go. I’ll be safe with you. You can protect me.”
“All right,” Reggie said gallantly, “I’ll take care of them.”
He stepped outside.
Yes, Amy Lynn would spend the night laughing at Reggie’s jokes, responding to his touch, pleasing him, so that tomorrow when she needed some time by herself, he would be more trusting, less wary, and it would be easier for her to slip away.
Dr. Bryant, the journalism professor who’d taught her so much about how to use people to get a big story, would have been proud of her approach.
A few moments later, Reggie returned and smiled. “All taken care of.”
She gave him a sly grin. “Now, it’s just the two of us.”
“And Jayson.”
“Right,” she clarified. “And Jayson.”
“But, we can tuck him in early.”
“Perfect.”
She took Reggie’s hand.
Yes, tonight she would be his. And then tomorrow she would be free.
90
The Hyatt Regency Hotel
10:10 p.m. Central Time
I took a few minutes to unpack, and then, since my body was still on Denver time and I wasn’t ready for bed, I decided to put in a little time on the case. I set my laptop on the desk, and, to make room for my notes, I started clearing off the notepad, hotel directory, and local travel guides when I noticed the Gideon Bible beside the room phone.
I paused.
And I remembered.
At the conclusion of my video chat with Richard Basque earlier in the day, he’d referenced a biblical passage, one that I hadn’t yet taken the time to read.
I thought I remembered the reference, but I wanted to confirm that I was right, so I accessed the video file of our conversation and played the final seconds.
“I’ll take my chances. Good-bye, Richard,” I’d said.
“I’ll be praying for you. Remember, Exodus 1:15–21. Remem-ber—”
And that’s when I’d hung up.
I paged through the Bible until I came to the first chapter of Exodus.
The story was about Moses’s birth, and I recognized it from my childhood days when my mother had taken me to church.
In the story, the Hebrews were living in Egypt where the king of the land, Pharaoh, became concerned about how numerous their population was becoming. Fearing that they might side with his enemies in a war, he ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill all the boys born to the Hebrew women.
Then I came to verses seventeen through twenty:
But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.
And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, “Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive?”
And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.”
Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty.
The next verse reiterated that since the midwives had feared God, he blessed them and gave them families of their own.
I gazed at the verses for a few moments, thinking through the story. The message of the section seemed clear to me: the midwives had broken the law and then lied to protect innocent lives, and as a result, God had blessed them.
I had to let that sink in.
I read and reread the verses and then began thumbing through the Bible, remembering other stories, other examples of the same principle that protecting the innocent is more important than telling the truth.
Rahab lied to protect the Hebrew spies and was honored by God for her choice.
Jonathan lied to his father about David’s location to save him from being murdered.
Even Jesus’s disciples didn’t tell the authorities “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” about his whereabouts because they knew it would mean his certain death. The only one who told the whole truth about his location was Judas—the world’s most infamous betrayer.
In fact, as I flipped through the Bible and reviewed the stories that I was familiar with, I couldn’t find a single example of God being displeased with someone who lied to protect innocent life.
I’ve always believed God values truth. I’d never doubted that.
But it looked like he valued something else even more.
During the interview Basque had asked me to lie about assaulting him, then told me to remember these Bible verses . . .
A thought.
A shocking thought: maybe Basque did turn to the Lord, after all.
I could hardly believe I was even considering the possibility.
But what if it were true? maybe Richard Basque realized that if I confessed to assaulting him, he would quite possibly be set free. And, despite his newfound spiritual convictions, he might be drawn into his old habits, his old hungers. Maybe he knew that for justice to be done, he needed to remain incarcerated—
Stop it, Pat. Too much speculation. Too many ifs and maybes. That’s not how you work. Stick to the facts. Stick to what you know.
No, Basque’s motives weren’t at issue here, my testimony was.
The midwives lied to protect innocent lives.
That’s what mattered to them more than anything else.
And that’s what mattered most to me too.
All right then.
I knew what I would say when I took the stand in the morning.
91
Monday, May 19
6:54 a.m. Central Time
I was sliding my laptop into its case, getting ready to head to the lobby for breakfast when I heard my room phone ring. I answered, “Hello?”
“Sorry if I woke you, my boy.”
“Calvin! Where have you been?” Exasperation as well as anger found their way into my voice. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all weekend.”
“Yes, and I am sorry about that. I’ve been a bit occupied. Buried myself in my work, I’m afraid. But I’ve uncovered something that might affect your testimony today.” He took a breath. “No doubt you made the connection to Boccaccio’s Decameron previous to the media revelations regarding the case?”
“Yes.” I wondered if Calvin had discovered the link even before I did. “But how did you—”
“What are you calling him? Not ‘The Day Four Killer,’ I hope.”
“John.”
Calvin was quiet for a moment. “Yes, that is appropriate.” Then he added, “Patrick, I believe he’s done it before.”
I dropped onto the bed. “You have evidence he’s committed prior homicides?”
“Yes, by reenacting other stories. Specifically, ‘The Man of Law’s Tale’ in England last May. The story is from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. As you may know, more than 20 percent of the stories in The Canterbury Tales are based on—”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “I know: The Decameron.”
“Precisely. Well, in lines 428–437 of ‘The Man of Law’s Tale,’ several people are stabbed and then hacked to pieces while seated at a table. I believe your man, John, reenacted this crime and killed four people last year on May 17th at a wedding in Canterbury, and I’m certain the city of the crime was not chosen randomly.”
“No,” I said numbly, trying to let all of this register. “I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“Later in the story, a man’s throat is slit and the bloody knife is left in his lover’s bed. And this very crime occurred the next day, May 18th, in Gloucester.”
“How did you figure this out?”
“Research,” he said simply. “But there are two more. In the next section of the tale, a man is killed for lying, perhaps by God; the context leaves it open for interpretation, and he falls to the ground so forcefully that his eyes pop out of their sockets.” Then he added grimly, “After removing Dr. Roland Smith’s eyes on May 19th, John let him live. The professor committed suicide a week later. At the time of his death, he was England’s leading expert on Geoffrey Chaucer.”
I sat in stunned silence. The implications of what Calvin was saying were staggering.
“And last, in lines 687–688, a false knight is slain. And on May 20th, a man named Byron Night was killed in London, Chaucer’s hometown. That one was harder to connect, but—”
“The progression of the crime spree and the timing of the murder would have made the crime too much of a coincidence.”
“Spot on.”
“Unbelievable.”
As Calvin spoke about this last murder, I was reminded that yesterday, immediately before ending his phone call to me, John had said that dusk would arrive today, “just like it did in London.”
It’s him, Pat. He was connecting the dots for you.
Could there have been more crime sprees? More murders that we didn’t know about, perhaps based on the other authors who drew material from Boccaccio—Tennyson, Longfellow, Shakespeare, Faulkner . . . Right now, I couldn’t affor
d to think about that. It was too overwhelming.
“So, before now,” I said, “no one linked the crimes in England because each was so different.”
“Yes. A different modus operandi, signature, cause of death, as well as no evidentiary connection between the victims or similar motives for the crimes.”
“Linkage blindness.”
“Exactly.”
Even though Calvin’s information bore relevance to the killings in Colorado, he’d started the conversation by telling me that his research had uncovered something relevant to my testimony. “Calvin, a minute ago you said this had something to do with today’s trial. What did you mean by that?”
“I no longer believe Richard Basque is guilty of the crimes for which he is being tried.”
I found myself staring at the floor in shock. “What are you talking about?”
“I believe John was responsible for at least four of the murders, possibly more. I can’t go into all of my reasons at the moment. Remember the DNA discrepancies that Professor Lebreau’s students at Michigan State found which precipitated Mr. Basque’s retrial?”
I anticipated what he was about to say. “You’re kidding.”
“No, I believe it is the DNA of the man you refer to as John.”
“Do you have any proof?”
“I’m still in the process of collecting it.”
My mind raced forward and backward through the case. Sorting, analyzing. One moment, everything seemed to make sense, the next moment, nothing did.
If John, rather than Basque, had committed the crimes thirteen years ago, it would explain the DNA discrepancies, as well as the newspaper articles at the ranch: John wouldn’t have been chronicling Basque’s crimes but rather celebrating his own.
It might also explain the attempt on Basque’s life—since, if Richard Basque were dead, the case would in all likelihood go away and John would never come under suspicion.
I tried to wrap my thoughts around everything Calvin had just told me. “Where are you?”
“Denver.”
I rubbed my head. “What?”