Knight, The

by Steven James

  Calvin lay still. Silent.

  A few moments later the doctor returned and told me that he’d just spoken with Calvin’s internal medicine doctor in Chicago.

  “And?”

  “And I’m sorry, but it’s the family’s wish that his condition remain confidential. You’ll have to take it up with them.”

  Not the news I wanted to hear, but this wasn’t the time to argue. I figured I could contact Calvin’s family tomorrow. “I have to go,” I said, “but I need you to call me if his condition changes. You can do that much. That’s not breaking any kind of confidentiality.”

  The doctor nodded. I gave him my office number, quietly told Calvin that I would see him again soon, and then left the room to regroup with Tessa and my mother.

  I checked the time: 10:02 p.m.

  So, unless Ralph had been able to pull a few strings with Internal Affairs, I was officially on administrative leave from the FBI.

  117

  One week later

  A dirt road

  52 miles west of Riverton, Wyoming

  2:51 p.m. Mountain Time

  Our flight had landed two hours ago, and while I drove the rental car toward Paul Lansing’s remote cabin in the mountains, Tessa sat beside me, her eyes closed, trying to solve the Rubik’s Cube that her friend had given her.

  All around us, sunlight cascaded across the Wind River Range, but clouds were moving in.

  We were less than ten minutes from the cabin.

  Over the last week, Angela hadn’t found out anything negative about Paul Lansing. No red flags. And in a strange way, that bothered me. I’d promised Tessa that she could meet him and Angela hadn’t uncovered anything that gave me a reason to break that promise.

  So here we were.

  However, there was no way I was going to leave Tessa alone with Lansing. Not for an instant.

  I watched the clouds gather in the west, and Tessa, with her eyes still closed, said, “Have you heard any more about Dr. Werjonic? Since this morning?”

  She twisted the cube.

  Click. Click.

  “Still no change,” I said.

  Calvin’s family had chosen to keep his illness confidential, and even though I could have gone through some back channels to find out the details, I’d respected their wishes and let that information remain between them and his doctors. The family was furious enough that Ralph had discovered Calvin’s health issues before they had and I didn’t want to disturb the waters any more. Calvin was stable, he was being treated, and they were keeping me informed about his condition. That was enough for now.

  I’d placed a call in to Professor Renée Lebreau to see what H814b Patricia E. might mean, but hadn’t yet heard back from her.

  So, nothing on that front either.

  “Almost there . . . almost there . . .” Tessa mumbled, twisting the cube’s sides in quick succession.

  A bit of good news, though: Ralph had managed to expedite the Internal Affairs review and since I hadn’t been with the FBI when I physically assaulted Basque, I’d only ended up with an official reprimand. My first students for the summer arrived in two days.

  “Got it!” Tessa held up the cube. Opened her eyes.

  None of the sides were solved.

  She groaned. “Ugh!” She threw the cube over her shoulder and into the backseat. “It’s impossible! I’m never gonna get that thing!”

  “Don’t feel bad,” I said. “This morning on our flight while I was watching you work on it, I thought about those people on YouTube who solve it blindfolded. I think there might be a secret to it. It’s so obvious that I didn’t even consider it at first.”

  “What secret?”

  “Just start with a solved cube, film someone blindfolding you, then mix up the sides, remove the blindfold, and then play the video backward.”

  A pause. “You’re kidding me.”

  I shrugged. “We can check it out later, but I’ll bet we’ll be able to tell if we watch the videos closely enough.”

  She let her hands drop to her lap. “Oh, that so sucks. I spent all week on that stupid thing.”

  “Well, Raven,” I said. “Sometimes the process of solving a problem is more valuable than coming up with a solution.”

  She stared at me.

  I glanced at her. “What?”

  “Dr. Phil?”

  “What? No. I don’t watch Dr. Phil.”

  “That was so from Dr. Phil.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Oprah then.”

  I looked back at the road. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You just averted eye contact. Ha, it was Oprah. I knew it.”

  I drove for a few moments. “I was channel surfing once. I stumbled across it. I only saw a couple minutes.”

  “Yeah, right.” She tried to say the words sarcastically, but I heard a smile underneath them.

  “It’s still good advice.”

  “It’s not advice. It’s an aphorism.”

  “Right.”

  We arrived at the intersection of Glory View and Eastern Timber Roads.

  To get to Paul Lansing’s house we needed to drive half a mile up Glory View, then jump onto an old logging road that terminated at his cabin. I slowed down, maybe more than I needed to, hesitated for a moment, then turned onto Glory View.

  Tessa picked up the diary from the floor. Set it on her lap. She fingered it for a moment, then said, “So, ninety minutes. That’s all it took for them to decide?”

  I was slow in replying. I knew this was going to come up, I just didn’t know when. “That’s the way it goes sometimes,” I said. “Some juries don’t need long to deliberate.” The news of this morning’s verdict had been all over the TV screens at the airport. And since my name and face were part of the Richard Basque saga, I’m sure it hadn’t even taken Tessa two seconds to connect the dots.

  “So what happens now? He just goes free? Just like that?”

  Emilio Vandez had filed for a mistrial, but for now the answer to her question was yes. “That’s the way the system works. Mr. Basque was found not guilty.”

  “But he is guilty, though, right?”

  “He was found not guilty,” I repeated, although I knew it wasn’t the answer she was looking for. “According to the law, he’s an innocent man.”

  A stretch of silence.

  “According to the law,” she said.

  We rumbled up Glory View Road.

  I didn’t reply.

  More clouds gathered overhead.

  “He’ll go after other women, won’t he?”

  “No. I won’t let him do that. I made a promise that I wouldn’t let him hurt anyone else.”

  She stared at me. “How are you going to do that?”

  I thought about it. “I’m not sure.”

  The space between us seemed to widen, and after a few moments she said, “You knew, didn’t you? All this time? That mom was going to abort me?”

  For a long time I considered how to answer her, finally opted for the truth. “Yes, I knew. It was a magazine ad. That’s what changed her mind.”

  “Of a little girl. With a jewelry box in the background.”

  I looked at her curiously.

  “The story doesn’t end in pain,” she said softly, cryptically, then added, “But you never told me because you thought it would hurt me, right?”

  This was an incredibly difficult conversation to have. “Tessa, sometimes to protect people you can’t be completely open with them . . . It’s . . . I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s hard to balance the truth with compassion.”

  “Thank you.”

  Her words caught me by surprise. “You’re glad I didn’t tell you?”

  “No,” she replied. “But I’m glad why you didn’t tell me.”

  We arrived at the entrance to the dirt road that led to Paul Lansing’s house, and I let the car idle.

  “So,” I said. “Do you still want to do this?”

  I hoped that she
would say no, that sometime during the drive she would have changed her mind and decided that all of this had been a mistake and that things would be better for everyone if we just went back home.

  But instead, she nodded and laced her fingers across the top of the diary. “Let’s go.”

  A thousand questions curled around me.

  And whether I liked it or not, the answer to the most important one lay just up the road.

  As the sun slid behind a cloud and a few lonely raindrops plopped onto the windshield, I pulled around the corner and drove toward Paul Lansing’s home.

  EPILOGUE

  Time collapsed into nothingness.

  A week might have passed. Or a month. Or more. There was no way to tell. In a darkness this deep, time meant nothing.

  But eventually, Giovanni became aware of motorized sounds high above him in the shaft that he had blown shut.

  Someone was digging him out.

  And so.

  More time slid by, hourglass sand he couldn’t measure.

  Eventually the sounds became louder, clearer, as more boulders and rubble were removed.

  At last, slivers of light began to pierce the shaft, sliding like glowing sabers through the thick, dark air.

  Like rays of summer sunlight.

  Then muffled voices.

  Indistinguishable, but they grew more distinct as the pile of debris was cleared.

  Someone called, “Hello? Are you there, sir? Are you all right down there?”

  “I’m hurt,” Giovanni replied, working on his acting once again.

  “Please, I need help.” He flicked out his straight razor and stepped to the edge of the shadows.

  Within minutes, the last three boulders were removed, and two S.W.A.T. members rappelled down the shaft, each man heavily armed and wearing body armor. But that didn’t matter to Giovanni, because he could still get to their necks.

  As soon as they dropped into view he introduced them to his blade.

  Sunlight spilled and sprayed around him.

  Wet screams echoed through the tunnel.

  And the Knight began to tell a brand-new story to the curious, waiting world.

  Look for the next Patrick Bowers thriller, The Bishop, in summer 2010.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to Sonya Haskins, Pam Johnson, Rhonda Bier, Pamela Harty, Jennifer Leep, Tricia Hafley, Jeff Walker, Geoff and Linda Stunkard, Kristin Kornoelje, Lizbeth Burkhardt, Dave Beeson, Dr. Todd Huhn, Detective Sharon Hahn, Eden Huhn, Liesl Huhn, William Cirignani, Chris Haskins, Pam and Dr. John-Paul Abner, Shawn and Carly for giving me a place to get away to write, Al Mosch and the gang for the tour of Phoenix Mine, Eddie Jones for the greeting card, Amy Lynn for your name, and Randy, Jerry, and Delberta, for your hospitality.

  I am indebted to the writings and research of Dr. D. Kim Rossmo and Dr. David Canter for information about geographic profiling and the Dacoits. For anyone interested in geospatial investigation, I highly recommend their books.

  MORE ADRENALINE-LACED SUSPENSE

  TO KEEP YOU UP ALL NIGHT!

  “A WILD RIDE. . . ”

  —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  Available at your local bookstore