by Steven James
“I think I might know who John is. I’m going to—”
A rush of adrenaline. “Who?”
“First, I must try to prove myself wrong.”
“You have to tell me.” My voice had become urgent. Intense.
“I’m sorry, Patrick, but I’m afraid I no longer have the confidence in our system of justice that I used to. Quite frankly—”
“No, Calvin, wait. I’ll be back later today. Wait for me. You have to—”
“Hopefully, this case will be resolved by then.”
“Listen to me—”
He hung up.
Immediately, I punched in the number for cybercrime to have them trace the call, even though I expected that Calvin would be too careful to let us find him.
But they did find him, or at least the location of the phone he’d used.
The call had come from police headquarters in downtown Denver.
92
I speed-dialed Kurt and told him what was going on. “Calvin’s there, right now, at HQ. He just called me from one of your phones.”
“Hang on. I’ll be back in a sec.” As I waited, I thought of what Calvin had told me: one of the victims in England had been the country’s leading Chaucer expert.
John told you he was updating Boccaccio’s story for our culture . . . An idea.
I snapped my laptop open, cruised to my media files. Then, while Kurt spoke on another line with the officers at the headquarters’ front desk, I clicked to the video I’d taken of the interior of Elwin Daniels’s ranch house.
A media player appeared on my screen.
On the phone, I heard Kurt assigning officers to each of the building’s exits. Finally, he said to me, “What do you want us to do if we find Dr. Werjonic?”
“Hold him for questioning.” I was dragging the cursor along the video. I knew what I was looking for; it would be somewhere in the middle of the footage. “I have reason to believe that Calvin has criminal intent.”
A moment of hesitation. “You sure about this?”
Even though Calvin hadn’t made any specific threats on the phone, I knew what he’d been implying. “I believe a man’s life might be in danger.”
I came to the footage of the bathroom.
“All right,” Kurt said. “I’m trusting you on this one, Pat; but I can’t believe you’re telling me to hold Dr. Calvin Werjonic.”
The medicine cabinet.
The countertop beside the sink.
I pressed “pause.” Enlarged the image as much as I could and found what I was looking for—tiny, almost indistinguishable stippled marks on the four tubes of toothpaste. “And Kurt, get some officers to Dr. Adrian Bryant’s and Benjamin Rhodes’s homes immediately. Go to Bryant’s first.”
“You think one of them might be the killer?”
“No. I think they might be the next two victims.”
“What?” he exclaimed.
“I’ll explain later.” I felt helpless being in Chicago when all this was going down in Denver. “But if you find the men, get them to the hospital immediately. I think they’ve been poisoned. John put the bufotoxin in their toothpaste.”
“You’re not making any sense, Pat.”
“Just do it, Kurt. Move.” He told me he’d get back to me as soon as he had more, and I reminded him to call me on Tessa’s phone. As I ended the call I noticed the time: 7:14 a.m.
If I were going to arrive at the courthouse before the protestors and journalists descended on it, I needed to get going.
I grabbed my things and made sure I had Cheyenne’s St. Francis of Assisi pendant in my pocket, then I checked out of the hotel, hailed a taxi, and rode to the courthouse so that I could commit perjury.
93
Reggie had just stepped into the bathroom for his morning shower when Amy Lynn Greer received the text message on her Blackberry. The person who’d sent it claimed to have inside information about the Day Four Killer and included a phone number for her to call.
Which she promptly did.
“I work for the FBI,” a man told her in a hasty, whispered voice. “I’d like to discuss an opportunity with you.”
“What sort of—”
“I have access to police files. I can help you if you’ll help me. Are you interested in discussing this matter?”
Oh yes. This was good.
“Yes, of course.”
“I’ll email you an address. Come alone. We meet at noon. Don’t be late. And don’t post any other articles until we’ve spoken in person.”
“Wait, how do I know you’re really with the FBI?”
“You’ll have to trust me.”
Of course she didn’t trust him; she didn’t trust anyone. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t use him. “I’ll be there.”
And then he hung up.
She heard the water in the shower turn on. Reggie wouldn’t be out for at least ten minutes.
This was her chance.
Jayson stepped into the room, eating a handful of Cheerios.
“C’mere,” she called to her son. “You can play spelling games until Daddy gets out of the shower. Mommy has to take care of a few things.”
“Wha’ dings, Mommy?”
“I’ll just be in the other room,” she lied. “Don’t worry.”
She positioned her son in front of the computer and pulled up one of the preschool spelling games. The boy would be fine playing on the computer until his father was done showering.
After Jayson was sufficiently preoccupied, she shoved her Blackberry and digital voice recorder into her purse, grabbed her car keys, and then slipped out the back door.
Ridgeland High School lay just ahead.
Tessa hated battling rush hour traffic so she’d been thankful earlier in the morning when Martha offered to drop her off at school on her way to bridge club.
Martha still hadn’t brought up the diary or the whole deal with Paul’s letter the day before. But now as they approached the school, Tessa felt like she should probably say something about it.
“Hey, listen, about what happened yesterday. You know in the living room when I . . .”
“We don’t need to talk about all that now.”
“OK.”
They pulled to a stop in front of the school.
“It’ll be all right.” Martha patted Tessa’s leg.
“Yeah. Thanks.” But she didn’t get out of the car. “OK, so here’s the thing: I know you’re probably thinking I shouldn’t hold it against my mom, that I should forgive her, or whatever, but I’m not going to. I just can’t.”
Martha was quiet for a long moment. At last she said, “Then you’ll hurt whenever you think of her.”
It wasn’t what Tessa had thought she would say. “I guess I will.”
“That’s a rather harsh punishment to sentence yourself to, don’t you think? For something you had no control over?”
That wasn’t what she’d expected her to say either.
Someone behind them honked, and Tessa finally stepped out of the car.
“Good luck on your exams,” Martha said. “And take care of that arm.”
“How did you—”
“I found the bandage you threw away last night. It was in your trash can. Right on top of the diary.”
“Oh, right—wait, how’d you know it was my arm?”
“I’ve seen your scars, dear.”
Then Martha gave her a smile, and Tessa closed the door and crossed the sidewalk.
After a few steps, she glanced back to see if Martha was still there, but she’d already driven away.
Then the five-minute bell rang and Tessa swung her knapsack over her shoulder and walked up the steps, but her mind wasn’t on her upcoming exams; instead she was thinking about the diary and the bloody bandage she’d dropped on top of it.
And the harsh sentence she’d handed to herself.
There are a lot of different kinds of scars.
And she had a feeling Martha had seen more than just the ones on her
arm.
94
The Cook County Criminal Courthouse
Chicago, Illinois
8:27 a.m. Central Time
I knew the media frenzy today would be even more intense than it’d been on Friday, and I really didn’t want to face any reporters, so I’d made arrangements for Ralph to meet me at the back door of the courthouse. And now as he opened the door and gestured for me to come in, I saw that his face was swollen. “What happened to you?”
“Turns out I’m allergic to raisins,” he grumbled.
“You’re almost forty years old. How could you only find that out now?”
“Don’t ask me. I guess I never ate quite so many at once before. Now, get in here.”
I joined him inside. “Maybe you’re allergic to being bald.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s sort of funny.”
“Keep it up, Mr. Profiler, see what happens.” I started toward the main lobby, but he directed me down the east hallway. “I convinced ’em to set up a secondary security screening area, so people involved in the trial don’t have to walk past the protestors. It’s this way.”
“Good call.”
“There’s a lot going on,” he said. “I need to fill you in on a few things.”
“Do you mean Calvin?”
“Calvin?”
“Yes,” I said. “I talked to him this morning. Did you know he’s in Denver?”
Ralph stopped walking. “You talked to Calvin?”
“Just before I left the hotel.”
“What did he say?”
Ralph seemed curious, but something deeper as well, and as I summarized my conversation with Calvin he listened intently, then began walking again. “He didn’t mention anything else? Calvin, I mean?”
“No.” We arrived at the security checkpoint. “Why? What’s going on?”
After the shooting last week, security was even tighter than it had been on Friday, and most of the people passing through were being patted down. Thankfully, Ralph and I didn’t have to deal with that, although we did have to hand over our weapons.
“When I couldn’t find him yesterday,” Ralph said, “I did some checking. Ran a complete background, the whole nine.” Ralph wasn’t looking at me, and I got the feeling he was avoiding eye contact on purpose. “Medical records included.”
I didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. “You found something.” He was quiet as we gathered our things from the far side of the X-ray conveyor belt. “What is it?”
Ralph eyed the hallway in both directions, then motioned for me to join him in an out-of-the-way alcove at the end of the hall.
“Tell me, Ralph. What’s going on?”
After we were alone, he said, “I think there’s a reason Calvin has become so interested in seeing justice carried out promptly.”
My thoughts leapt ahead to the most obvious conclusion, one that I didn’t want to be true. One that couldn’t possibly be true. “You’re not saying . . . ?”
Ralph didn’t answer. I waited. He looked conflicted. Torn. At last he put a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”
“No.” I shook my head. “It can’t be. He would have told me.”
“I talked to a couple of his family members. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t even told them.”
A crushing sadness overwhelmed me. “I need to get back to Denver, Ralph. I need to find him.”
“You need to testify first.”
“No, Ralph. I have to—”
“You just told me Kurt was looking for him,” Ralph said firmly. “He’ll find Calvin. You’ll see him when you get back tonight, it’ll all work out. Right now you need to be here at this trial.” He tapped my head. “All of you needs to be here.”
He was right, of course, but I needed to take a couple seconds to think things through.
“You all right?”
Grant Sikora’s dying request flashed through my mind.
“Promise me you won’t let him do it again.”
“I promise.”
“All right,” I told Ralph. “I’m good. Let’s go.”
95
“So, you know what you’re going to say up there?” It was Emilio Vandez, and the beginning of the trial was only minutes away.
I thought of the story about the midwives, about how they’d lied to protect innocent lives and God had honored them for it. And, despite Calvin’s misgivings about his guilt, I was still convinced that Basque was responsible for the murders—and that he would kill again if he were set free.
“Yes,” I told Emilio. “I think I know what I’m going to say.”
“All right.” He chugged my shoulder good-naturedly. “Then let’s do this thing.”
I slipped out Tessa’s cell phone and found no messages from Kurt about whether or not they’d found Calvin, or if Adrian Bryant and Benjamin Rhodes were still alive. Then the bailiff rose, I shut off the phone, and the trial began.
The opening trial procedures seemed to take forever, but finally, I swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and then I took my seat on the witness stand—an act that Tessa had pointed out to me one time was an oxymoronic thing to do—and surveyed the courtroom.
Emilio Vandez looked anxious.
Judge Craddock, annoyed.
The jury, exhausted.
Richard Basque, confident.
And Priscilla Eldridge-Gorman looked pleased to be on center stage once again.
She spent a few minutes reviewing the previous week’s proceedings, being careful to avoid drawing too much attention to the attempt on her client’s life. I suspected she was concerned that bringing up the attempted murder might cause the jurors to become convinced that Basque really was guilty—after all, why would Grant Sikora have tried to kill him if he were innocent?
But she was taking longer than she needed to, and five minutes after I thought he should have objected, Emilio finally did, saying that if she wasn’t going to ask me any questions, why had she called me back to the stand in the first place?
Judge Craddock told Ms. Eldridge-Gorman to get on with it already.
“Of course, Your Honor.” She plucked up a file folder.
“Just to remind the jurors, immediately prior to the terrible incident on Friday, I had asked Dr. Bowers if he assaulted my client after arresting him thirteen years ago in the slaughterhouse. I would like to resume my questioning there, but, if it pleases Your Honor, may I request that the court reporter read the transcripts of the final moments of Friday’s testimony so that the jury can have an accurate accounting of the line of questioning?”
Judge Craddock nodded toward the court reporter, who took a moment to shuffle through a stack of papers and then read: “Coun-sel: ‘Did you break Richard Basque’s jaw with your fist? Did you attack him after he was handcuffed?’” He paused and asked Priscilla, “Is that where you want me to start?”
“Yes. That’s fine.”
The court reporter went on, “Counsel: ‘Dr. Bowers. Are you having trouble remembering that night at the slaughterhouse? I’ll ask you one last time. Did you or did you not physically assault Richard Devin Basque after he was in your custody in the slaughterhouse? Judge Craddock, please direct the witness to answer the question.’ Judge Craddock: ‘Dr. Bowers, I advise you to answer the counselor’s question. Will you answer the counselor’s question?’ Witness: ‘No.’ Judge Craddock: ‘No?’” The court reporter paused. “And then . . .”
“Yes,” Priscilla said. “That’ll be fine.” She gazed at me. “Dr. Bowers, you answered no. Was that in response to my question, or to the honorable Judge Craddock’s question?”
I hadn’t realized I’d actually said no aloud. “I was responding to Sikora’s movement toward the gun,” I said, “not to your question or Judge Craddock’s.”
She might have pounced, arguing that I must have been answering either her or the judge, but she didn’t go there. I assumed that
once again she was avoiding that line of questioning so she could stay clear of what she’d referred to a few moments ago as “the terrible incident.”
Instead, she opened the manila folder.
“I have here the original case files from thirteen years ago in Milwaukee. Just to refresh your memory, Dr. Bowers, here’s what you wrote concerning the arrest: ‘There was an altercation. Later it was discovered that the suspect’s jaw was broken sometime in the midst of his apprehension.’ Are those your words?”
“Yes, they are, and—”
“I checked the case files.” She cut me off, and though it annoyed me, I decided to let her be the rude one. I would bide my time. “And your description of the events fits the one given by my client during his interrogation—that he broke his jaw when you swung a meat hook at his face. But in preparation for this trial when I asked him about his injury, he told me that he was afraid of you and that’s why he didn’t tell the truth during his interrogation.”
She took a moment to gesture toward Basque.
“My client claims that after you pulled your gun on him and he tried to run, you tackled him, handcuffed him, and then beat him. Of course, he might be lying. He might just be saying that to get set free. You could clarify everything right now, and certainly the jury will believe you, Special Agent Bowers, PhD.”
Oh, she was good. She was really good.
The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
I waited, but her question didn’t come.
And as I waited, I remembered that night in the slaughterhouse, the desperate, terrified look on Sylvia Padilla’s face as she died . . .
Cheyenne’s pendant pressed against me through my pants pocket, and I recalled her comment that dying alone was the worst way to die.
“So, let me get back to my original question,” Priscilla said, “the one that I asked you on Friday.”
I remembered my conversation with Calvin about justice. And I remembered the midwives protecting those babies.
“Did you or did you not physically assault Richard Devin Basque . . .”
And arresting Basque.
And the satisfying crunch of my fist against his jaw.
“. . . after he was in your custody in the slaughterhouse?”