by Steven James
“What’s that?”
“We won’t be meeting Valkyrie at the warehouse.”
“We won’t?”
She was rooting through her purse. “Plans have changed.”
“Where are we meeting him?”
But rather than answer, she drew her hand out of her purse, and only when it was too late did Keith realize what she was holding. She was incredibly quick, and before he could pull away she’d jammed the hypodermic needle into the side of his neck and depressed the plunger.
He gasped and attempted to reach up to get the needle out, but whatever she’d given him was potent, because his arm already felt lead-heavy and his hand never made it to his neck.
“And one other thing,” she said. “The cell phone I was letting you use wasn’t quite secure. There’s one phone that connects to it: I’m able to listen in on your calls.”
She removed the needle in her own good time and set it on the dashboard.
Keith felt himself slumping in the seat. “What . . . are you doing? What did you give me?”
“Just something to help you sleep. Until we get there.” She drew a pair of handcuffs out of her purse, and he was helpless to resist when she slipped one cuff over his wrist and snapped the other shut around the door handle.
“This isn’t . . .” He was having a hard time organizing his thoughts. “You’re making a—”
“You called the FBI, Corporal.”
Dark dread swept over him. “No, I—”
“Yes,” Vanessa said softly. “And now I’m going to take you to the man you tried to turn in to them.”
He tried desperately to move his free arm to go for her throat, but it was useless.
She turned his chin so he was looking directly at her. “I’ve enjoyed working with you, Keith. I’m sorry it has to end like this.”
And the last thing he saw before darkness shrouded him was Vanessa pulling the pair of pruning shears out of his jacket pocket and placing them in her purse.
++
Valkyrie listened as Vanessa told him on the phone what Keith had done.
Well, it looked like a trip over to the distribution warehouse wasn’t going to appear on tonight’s agenda after all.
He gave her instructions on how to get to the marina. “From where you are it should be twenty to twenty-five minutes. I’m pleased with how you’ve been monitoring his calls.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll see you at eight thirty.”
Alhazur eyed Valkyrie suspiciously, and when he hung up, he asked him, “Is there a problem?”
“Not at all. Two people will be joining us at half past the hour. One of them will be remaining for the rest of the evening.”
Alhazur’s gaze drifted toward his dead associate, lying on the deck. “One of them.”
“Yes.” Valkyrie said to the remaining suicide bomber, “You can remove your vest now. I’d like you to place it in the backseat of the SUV you and Alhazur drove over here.”
“For insurance?” the man ventured.
“Let it never be said that you’re not a quick study.”
As the man left to obey his instructions, Valkyrie found his thoughts drifting from the suicide vests to the discussion with Alhazur about the proposed attacks in Moscow, to the situation with Keith and Vanessa, to Richard Basque.
If Basque really did make it out of FBI Headquarters tonight, he would be heading over to the distribution warehouse expecting to meet there at ten, but now that Keith had made the call, the Feds would undoubtedly be there at eight thirty, and if they waited long enough they might just find Basque instead of the terrorist they were hoping for.
Valkyrie assured himself that Vanessa had left his cell number with Basque. If the famed serial killer did escape, Valkyrie trusted that he would be prudent enough to call before heading to the place where they had been scheduled to meet.
If not, his freedom was going to be short-lived indeed.
75
Still thinking about the team moving in on Valkyrie, I entered the interrogation room and found Richard Basque seated at the steel table, wrists and ankles shackled.
He calmly assessed me. I calmly assessed him. He had a line of dark stitches across his cheek reaching down across his jaw from the knife wound.
“How’s your mouth, Richard?”
He peeled back his lips to show me the uneven ridges of splintered and missing teeth. It made him look even more like the cannibal that he was.
It brought to mind my conversation with Tessa about werewolves and vampires and how monsters today look like the rest of us and not what they really are. But maybe in Basque’s case, now, tonight, he did look like exactly what he was.
“How do you turn someone into a monster?” Tessa had asked me, then answered the question herself: “Let him be himself without restraint.”
That was Richard Basque.
The form of a man but the soul of a beast.
Just like the fable he’d circled in the book at his house.
“It’s good to see you, Patrick.”
Because of the missing teeth and the stab wound in his jaw I expected his words to be raspy or coarse, but he sounded chillingly normal and for a brief moment I had the sense that he really was some sort of superhuman monster, that he was incapable of feeling pain or letting it affect him.
I took a seat across the table from him and set my phone beside me, making sure there was no way he would be able to reach it. “I’ll be recording our conversation.” I tapped at the screen to pull up a voice recorder.
“I assumed we were already being recorded.” He nodded toward a small hole in the ceiling near the southeast corner of the room where a camera was carefully hidden. But obviously not hidden well enough. “Watched too.”
“This is for my own personal use.”
“Ah.”
“How many?” I trusted he would know what I was referring to.
“Bodies? Victims?”
“That’s right.”
“I could thank you for not killing me back at the marsh, but from what I’ve heard, you did.”
I chose not to reply.
“But I would like to thank you for not leaving me that way. It would’ve added too much irony to the scene—the marsh where I disposed of the dead becoming the place where I ended up expiring, myself. Quite poetic. I’m glad it didn’t end like that.”
“Tell me about them. About the victims.”
“I’ll tell you everything you want to know if you’ll answer two questions.”
“I’m not here to make deals, Richard.”
“You’ll be wanting to hear what I have to say. There are more bodies than you think.” He paused. “Your team is searching the marsh, I assume?”
“They are.”
“It’s a large area.”
“Yes.”
“I can help you narrow down your search.”
“If I answer your two questions.”
A nod.
All of this was a power play, and I didn’t like the idea of him feeling any sense of power over me, over the investigation, over anything.
However, I was also aware that it’s not uncommon for killers to offer this type of information. Often, recounting their crimes or going to the site of the homicide with authorities to reveal the location of bodies allows murderers to relive the thrill of the kill all over again.
It’s not an easy call, trying to figure out what to do in a situation like this.
I decided to just go for it and see where that took the conversation. “What is it you want to know, Richard?”
“Did you ever wonder about the meat hook—why I said it hit me and that’s what broke my jaw? Back when you first arrested me?”
“The hook? That’s what you want to know?”
�
��Yes.”
“You wanted one thing to hold over me.”
A slight grin. “That’s so unlike you, Patrick. Delving into motives.”
“I’m branching out. What’s the second question?”
“I want to know if you’ve ever thought what it would be like.”
“To be like you.”
“Yes. I know you try not to enter the minds of the people you track, but do you find yourself climbing deeper into your own mind as you pursue them? Wondering what it would be like to be them? When you’re alone and contemplating the implications of the case, have you ever put yourself in my shoes? Tell me if you have and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Why would you tell me about other victims if I answer that question?”
“Because you’ve already caught me.” He sounded so matter-of-fact about it that it unsettled me. “I have nothing to gain by keeping my crimes a secret. And perhaps, by cooperating, I might find some favor with the judge.”
I didn’t buy it. Basque was too smart for that. He had to know that nothing he said or did at this point would bring him any less than life in prison or the death sentence.
“Yes,” I told him. “I’ve wondered.”
“What it would be like? To be like me?”
“Yes.”
“And where did that take you?”
To acknowledging that there’s a monster inside each of us looking for a way to get out.
It seemed petty to argue with him about the fact that I’d answered his two questions and was now ready for the information about the crimes. It felt almost like if I were to squabble with him, it would prove that he was somehow in control again.
“To the edge of myself,” I said. “To the places I refuse to go.”
He nodded slowly. “I’ve seen the look in your eyes, Patrick. Fourteen years ago when you apprehended me in that slaughterhouse, it was there. Then at my trial, at Dr. Werjonic’s funeral, just before Renee Lebreau’s death when we met at the lawyers’ office. It’s there. I know it is.”
“What’s there?”
“The darkness. You try not to feed it, but it’s there. I can see it. We’re not that different, you and I.”
“We are different. Because I fight against it and you don’t.”
He didn’t answer right away. “If you have to fight it, how do you know you’re always going to win? One day when you’re not so careful, when you’re in the wrong state of mind, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, you might lose.”
I knew that to a certain extent he was right—just as everyone is capable of fighting against his primal desires, everyone is capable of losing that fight.
From out of nowhere a saying came to me: There but for the grace of God go I.
It’s more true than we care to admit.
“I told you what you wanted to know. Tell me about the other victims.”
He leaned back. “Tomorrow.”
More games. More manipulation.
Not a huge surprise.
“I’m not coming back tomorrow, Richard.”
“I think you’ll want to. You’ll finally get the answers you so badly want.”
“No.” I pocketed my phone. “I’ll see you at your trial. We both know you’ll never be a free man again. I’m going to be very thorough when I testify.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Irritated that he’d succeeded in getting me irritated, I returned to my car.
The meeting had been brief, and that was okay by me.
Now I could get over to the Blue Whale.
If the information we had was correct, in less than fifteen minutes the team would be moving in on Valkyrie.
And then neither Basque nor Valkyrie would ever see the light of day again.
I left Headquarters and aimed my car in the direction of the distribution center to join Ralph at the command post.
++
Even though the dance had started already, there were still a lot of kids outside the school, posing and taking pictures with their dates in the quickly fading light.
Aiden led Tessa toward the front doors. He seemed to know everyone and they all greeted him and gave Tessa mildly intrigued looks. Normally, no one paid her much attention and tonight it kind of got to her. Made her self-conscious.
She wondered what they were thinking, seeing a guy like him—a track star—with a loner girl who argued with their English teacher about the etymology of words.
Despite herself, she placed her left hand over the scars on her arm to hide them from the other kids.
Aiden found some friends, and they all handed phones around, taking each other’s picture, and finally Tessa started to calm down, at least a little.
She was here.
She was with the guy she’d liked all semester.
Tymber was nowhere around.
There was no reason to let anything ruin her night.
They went inside the dimly lit gymnasium and stepped into some kind of boppy song Tessa had never heard before, and she started to dance with her date.
++
Two male FBI Police officers escorted Richard Basque toward his cell. They were the only two officers in this hallway, the only two he’d encountered all night, so Richard hoped that if something happened to them, it might be a little while before word spread.
Both of them had guns.
Good.
He would be needing a weapon.
Once he had that, it would all be over.
Using the paper clip Vanessa Juliusson had given him, he finished with the lock on his handcuffs when they were halfway to his cell.
76
I was five minutes out from the Blue Whale when Ralph informed me that so far there was no movement at the warehouse.
“No employees. No night watchmen. No lights. Nothing. If Valkyrie was planning to be there tonight, he found a way to shut the place down, keep it cleared out.”
If Valkyrie was going to be paying this place a visit it would make sense for him to clear it out so that no employees would be present to identify him. I took what Ralph said as a good sign.
He went on. “HRT is going to monitor the facility for another fifteen minutes or so, see if any cars drive up, then they’re planning a full breach. Sweep the whole place. Make sure it’s clear.”
“You think we were set up here?” I asked him.
“Well, we confirmed that the semi carrying the counterfeit Calydrole arrived here a couple hours ago. That and the fact that the warehouse is shut down—it looks like someone had inside intel.”
“Any word on who turned him in?”
“I haven’t heard. But if Valkyrie doesn’t show up, whoever called it in is out five million dollars.”
++
Keith woke up slowly, blearily. The whole world seemed to be moving around him in a blur of colors and waves of time shifting across themselves. He blinked, tried hard to orient himself.
He was in a small room, he couldn’t tell where, but it seemed like it might be in the cabin of a boat. Wherever he was, he was certainly not in a warehouse. He was restrained in a chair.
“Corporal.” Valkyrie was standing stoically in front of him. “Good of you to join us.”
He was still working hard to clear his head. “This is all a mistake, you don’t—”
“You called the Bureau, Keith. That was not a wise move.”
Finally, his vision came into focus and he saw two other men, as well as Vanessa, in the room.
She removed the pruning shears from her purse and handed them to Valkyrie.
“Thank you, dear.”
“Of course.”
But rather than start with the shears, Valkyrie started with his fist.
; ++
8:33 p.m.
I met Ralph outside the Blue Whale.
The HRT was taking lead on this, but Doehring was at the command post too, and so were Metro’s SWAT Commander Shaw and his team.
Ralph was shaking his head in frustration. “Still no movement. But HRT decided to wait until nine. I’m not sure why. I guess, since they have all the entrances and exits covered, it doesn’t hurt to wait and see if anyone shows up. Personally, I’m thinking either we were played or Valkyrie got wind of everything and rabbited.”
“So what do you want to do?” I asked. “Wait here or find Corporal Tyree and his lady friend?”
“You got an idea where they might be?”
“I’ve got an idea of where we could start looking.”
++
Valkyrie watched Keith spit out a glob of blood and wrestle against the ropes to try to find a more comfortable position. But the way he was tied, that wasn’t going to be possible.
“There are some techniques I learned in South Africa. I haven’t used them in a long time. Tonight, I thought you could help me sharpen my skills.”
“Listen, please—”
Valkyrie put his finger up to Keith’s lips. “Shh. I’d rather you handled this with honor, as any Marine would.”
++
It didn’t take Richard Basque long to find out that Vanessa’s instructions had been accurate after all.
He knew that someone entering the Hoover Building would have to pass through any number of security checkpoints, but once you were in, no one would check an ID or make you pass through security to leave. Once you were in, they’d assume you were supposed to be here. After all, that was what the security measures at the entrance were for.
And that played to Richard’s advantage.
The other day, wearing a police officer’s uniform had served him well, and he was not against using a technique that worked.
He slaughtered the two FBI Police officers, careful to keep blood off of one of the uniforms that he then wore, and, following Vanessa’s instructions, headed for the parking garage.
He needed to kill only one additional agent on the way there, so that wasn’t so bad.
Finding a car he could use wasn’t difficult. He chose one of the FBI Police cruisers with a metal mesh cage separating the front seat from the back.