by Steven James
I couldn’t argue with that, even though distance from Lien-hua was not what I wanted.
It’ll work out, I’d told myself. We just need to get past this. Settle in. It’s going to be okay.
Now Lien-hua walked toward me, and behind her I saw four members of the Evidence Response Team, including Cassidy and Farraday, moving around the kitchen.
I couldn’t see much, but the refrigerator door was open, and Cassidy and two agents I didn’t know were gathered around it. He held up a jar. From where I stood it was impossible to make out what was inside, but the woman next to him grew pale, hurried out of my line of sight. I heard vomiting.
Splayed across the linoleum floor I saw a frenzy of blood.
Lien-hua must have seen the look of anger on my face. “Pat, I know you vowed to stop him, but this wasn’t your fault.”
“I know.”
“You couldn’t have prevented this.”
Not unless I’d killed him in Chicago last month.
The road to the unthinkable is not paved by slight departures from your heart but by tentative forays into it.
I was reminded of my somber thoughts at Calvin’s funeral: we’re born, we struggle, we endure, we die, and there’s hardly anything left to show we were ever here.
Dust to dust.
Ashes to ashes.
The grim poetry of existence.
But life is more than that.
We foray into our hearts and look for ways to rise above them.
We ache and we love, we hurt and we heal.
Human beings, being human.
The sunlight was playing strangely across the linoleum.
Death matters because life matters, and the day I stop believing that is the day I’ll no longer be any good at my job.
But for now, I still am.
I approached the refrigerator.
And peered inside.
To be continued in
The Queen
Summer 2011
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my military and law enforcement consultants, Lt. Col. Todd Huhn, Lt. Col. Greg Hebert, and Special Agent Scott Francis; my editors and first readers, Shawn Scullin, Trinity Huhn, Pam Johnson, Wayne Smith, Jen Leep, Kristin Kornoelje, and Liesl Huhn; my agent, Pamela Harty; my firearms consultants, Jim Huhn and George Hill; my ethics consultants, Dr. Bob Wetzel, Jim Kevin, and Dr. Marc Roberts.
Thanks to Congressman Dr. Phil Roe for taking the time to meet with me and giving me the inside scoop on Capitol Hill, and to Randy Vernon for his hospitality.
Thanks also to John and Lisa Bunn at the Coffee Company and Lee and Tricia Smith at the Adobe Garden Bed & Breakfast for giving me a place to work, to my students at the Blue Ridge Christian Novelist’s Retreat for introducing me to transhumanism, to Becky Malinsky and Dr. Suda-King at the National Zoo for helping me fathom primates, and to Wayne Smith and Agent Curt Crawford for arranging my tour of the FBI Academy at the Quantico Marine Corps Base.
A special thanks to J.P., Todd, Pam, Liesl, and Chris for being my faithful sounding boards.
I’m indebted to Dr. Kim Rossmo’s book Geographic Profiling and Paul and Patricia Brantingham’s Environmental Criminology for the theoretical information on the underpinnings of geospatial investigation.
I found the following resources useful in my research on primate metacognition, as well as the differing perspectives on and implications of theories regarding the evolution of morality.
The Think Tank exhibit at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park.
Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved by Frans De Waal, edited by Stephen Macedo and Josiah Ober (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). Specifically, see pages 9–10 for the references to, and inferences from, Richard Dawkins’s writings.
Hardwired Behavior: What Neuroscience Reveals about Morality by Laurence Tancredi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
A Reason for God by Timothy Keller (New York: Dutton, 2008).
There Is A God by Antony Flew (New York: HarperCollins, 2007).
Steven James is the bestselling, award-winning author of four thrillers, including The Knight, which Suspense Magazine named one of the top ten books of the year. Armed with a master’s degree in storytelling, James is a popular conference speaker and has taught writing and storytelling throughout North America, as well as in India, Kazakhstan, and South Africa.
SEE WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
. . .THE FIRST PATRICK
BOWERS THRILLER.
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“Best story of the year—
perfectly executed.”
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FROM CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED BESTSELLING AUTHOR
STEVEN JAMES
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—RT Book Review,
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