The Pawn pbf-1

by Steven James

  All around me, chaos.

  Tessa held her breath, waiting for the gunshot she was sure would come, waiting for the killer to shoot Officer Stilton too.

  No shot came, and when the phone in her hand vibrated, she almost screamed.

  “Hello? Pat?” a voice said.

  “No, it’s me,” she cried. “It’s Tessa!”

  “Tessa?”

  “I’m his daughter.” By then she was crying.

  “Are you OK? Where are you?”

  “I need your help. I’m at the house. She’s dead. Someone’s dead. Hurry.”

  “OK, calm down. I’ll be right there. I’m close by.”

  80

  Off to the right I saw four security guards trying to tackle a mountain of a man near the east entrance to the courtyard. He was wearing a caterer’s uniform and was throwing the guards around like rag dolls. Four to one, but they were hopelessly outmatched. Ralph must have seen them the same time I did because he rushed into the middle of the melee and called to the guy doing the pummeling, “Pick on someone your own size, you freakin’ pansy.”

  Just then I located Kincaid. He was about twenty meters from Ralph. I ran toward him but found my way blocked by the crowd.

  Ralph waved the security guards to safety and then pointed to the capsule the guy had pulled out. “Don’t take the sissy way out. Fight me. Right now. If I win, I don’t let you die today.” Ralph was rolling up his sleeves. “I take you in, we prosecute you, put you away for the next forty years, and you get to experience all the joys of the American penal system. If you win, well, I’ll swallow your little pill.”

  What are you doing, Ralph?

  I wanted to help him, but I had to get to Kincaid. I pushed my way through the crowd, struggling to get to him before it was too late.

  Kincaid was right in front of me. “His future, our future!” he was shouting.

  He slipped his hand into his pocket.

  He’s going for a capsule. Don’t let him die. You need to find out the name of the contagion.

  I rushed him, tackled him, and sent the capsule he’d pulled out spinning across the cobblestone path. But not far enough. It was still within reach.

  As we crashed onto the ground, he wrestled free, squirming and fighting like a madman. “Don’t do this,” I managed to say. “These people are innocent.” But he brought his elbow down with crushing strength into my gut. I gasped for breath. This guy was tougher than he looked.

  He snatched up the capsule, shoved it into my mouth, then punched me hard in the jaw.

  Don’t swallow, Pat. Whatever you do, don’t swallow!

  Tessa waited one moment. Then another. Her heart wouldn’t stop pounding. Still no shot. The killer must have slipped away. Then she heard Officer Stilton gasp when he saw the body in the other room.. the sound of him shouting her name… sirens blaring toward the house… the bedroom door crashing open. “Tessa!”

  It was him. The cop who liked to smoke.

  So then. She was safe. It was going to be OK. Everything was going to be OK.

  I could taste the bitter tablet dissolving on my tongue.

  I tried to spit it out. Couldn’t. Kincaid was on me with a vengeance, clamping his hand over my mouth.

  Just then I saw a blur beside my face, and Kincaid’s jaw snapped back, and he flew off me.

  I spit out the capsule.

  Lien-hua swirled around with the grace of a gazelle, leapt into the air, and cracked her heel into the side of Kincaid’s head a second time, this time hard enough to swipe him off his feet. His body torqued around backward, and he slammed into the ground, unconscious. She landed softly on her feet, ready for another kick.

  “An A,” I said. I was trying to catch my breath. “I would definitely give that kick an A.”

  “’Bout time,” she said, rushing off toward a woman holding a capsule.

  Marcie watched as the others slipped the capsules into their mouths and bit down… watched as the people she loved collapsed onto the floor with mouths full of foam… watched as they convulsed… as they gasped for breath… as they died.

  Being captured alive had never been part of the plan.

  She stared at the capsule in her hand and heard shouting all around her, voices telling her what to do. “Take it… Drop it.. Swallow it… Stand down…” A thousand voices coming from everywhere at once.

  She had a choice. She had to make a choice.

  “Wait.” An Asian woman came running toward her with open hands. “Please. Don’t. No more people need to die.”

  I scrambled over to Kincaid to cuff him and see if I could find out the name of the virus, but when I was only a few steps from him, he pulled out a syringe inside a plastic bag, thrust the tip through the bag, and plunged it into his heart.

  No!

  He fumbled for something in his pocket. “And this is for-” he started to say, but then he began to convulse.

  In all my time in law enforcement I’d never witnessed such a terrible death.

  In the end I had to turn away. I couldn’t watch. I looked up just in time to see Ralph punch the gorilla in the stomach. The man was gasping, backing up as Ralph went at him, bashing him with his shot-put-sized fists.

  Roundhouse.

  Uppercut. Finally a left hook. Ralph hit him so hard in the face that he spun around in an instant and, with a meaty crunch, collided face first against the stone wall of the hotel and toppled to the ground. Ralph wiped his hand across his face to get the blood out of his mouth as he cuffed him. “Ah,” said Ralph. “Just the way I like it. Fast and clean.”

  Tessa looked around the living room.

  Police and a bunch of ambulance guys had arrived, and half a dozen people she didn’t know were milling around asking her questions. They’d put the cop who’d gotten shot on a gurney. Maybe she was still alive.

  “Tessa!” Agent Tucker came running in. “Are you OK?”

  She blinked. “Where’s Patrick?” she said weakly.

  “He’ll be coming in a minute,” he said. “Don’t worry, Tessa. I’m here to help you.”

  “We would rather die free than live as slaves,” said Marcie.

  “That’s what he told you, isn’t it?” asked the woman, coming closer. “Kincaid, right? Or maybe Jones? But what do you think? You get to decide. That’s the thing. A slave is someone who can no longer choose.”

  “Stay back!”

  The Chinese woman stopped. “What’s your name?”

  After a pause. “Marcie.”

  “I’m Lien-hua. Please, Marcie, help us protect these people. Please.”

  Marcie watched as the security guards tried to corral people into conference rooms, control the panic, calm people down.

  She thought of her daughter lying still on the floor. Saw the look in the little girl’s eyes as she’d told her to drink the “medication” back in the library. “Will it hurt, Mommy?” her daughter had asked. “No, sweetie, it won’t hurt,” Marcie had said-had lied. She’d lied to her only daughter because Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid told her to. “Of course it’ll hurt,” she’d wanted to say. But she didn’t say it. She just told her it wouldn’t hurt, and then her daughter nodded and closed her eyes and opened her mouth, a trusting little girl.

  Marcie backed into the retaining wall of the fountain, lifted the tablet. “There’s nothing left for me here. My daughter is dead. I killed her.”

  The woman, Lien-hua, was still talking to her. “Please. I know you loved your daughter. I know you did. Sometimes when people are afraid, they do things they later regret.”

  “You don’t know what it’s like-”

  “No, I don’t,” the woman said, and it surprised Marcie that she agreed with her. “None of us can know what it’s like for someone else. It’s what makes us individuals. We each have our own pain, our own mistakes. But we can reach out toward each other, help each other. That’s what makes us human.”

  “It’s too late…”

  Lien-hua pointed to the line
of people being herded out of the courtyard, guided into conference rooms to be quarantined and treated. “It’s not too late for them, for their children. You don’t have to do what Kincaid says. He’s gone. You get to decide. Please help us.”

  The capsule was in Marcie’s hand.

  She raised it to her lips.

  She got to decide. It was her choice.

  She saw them: the children in the library. The poison still moist on their lips. Moist on their lips.

  Her daughter’s trusting face.

  At last, with her little girl’s smiling face drifting before her, Marcie let the last fragment of her old life fall from her fingers and onto the floor. “Francisella tularensis,” she whispered. She sensed a man beside her, a big man with a rough voice. It was almost as if she were somewhere else watching, a spectator observing a woman getting handcuffed. “Genetically enhanced…” she said in case anyone was listening. This was good. She could finally do something good with her life. Something right. “We spliced the genes… Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever…”

  81

  Tessa tried to drink the glass of water Agent Tucker had gotten for her, but her hands were still shaking. She heard purring and noticed Midnight stretching out on the floor at her feet. She hadn’t seen Sunshine since the craziness started.

  She set down the glass and looked in her lap. She had two phones-hers and the one Patrick was using. She slipped them into separate pockets in her jeans and gently stroked Midnight’s soft fur.

  She just wanted to get out of here. To go home.

  Mr. Tucker was talking on his cell. “Yeah, Agent Wellington?” he was saying. “This is Brent. I need to get a message through to Pat. Tell him I’m with his daughter, and she’s fine. Yeah. Make sure you tell him. All right. Thanks.”

  I overheard Lien-hua talking with one of Kincaid’s people about the contagion. Ralph was cuffing the woman. I ran to them. “Wait, ma’am. What did you say?”

  “Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever,” she said.

  “What’s that? How do you know?”

  “I have a degree…” Her eyes were blank. “In microbiology.. ” She spoke to us from another place. “I used to work for Father at PTPharmaceuticals… I was a researcher… that’s where we met.”

  I looked her in the eye, tried to help her focus. “Can we stop it? Do you know how to treat it?”

  The woman nodded. “We altered the genetic makeup, but I worked on the project. I can help you.”

  “Let her go,” I said.

  “It’s another trick,” said Ralph. “She’ll kill herself just like the others.”

  “I believe her,” said Lien-hua. “I believe you, Marcie.”

  So her name was Marcie. I looked at her. Tried to read her eyes. Couldn’t. “Why would you help us?”

  “The children,” she said, “my daughter.” Mists began to form in her eyes. “No more children need to die.”

  “She could be lying,” said Ralph.

  “She’s not lying,” said Lien-hua softly.

  Marcie’s eyes found me. Searched me. “Do you have any children?”

  A rush of emotion overwhelmed me. “Yes. I do,” I said. “A daughter. She’s seventeen.”

  The woman nodded, smiled. “My daughter was seven. I loved her.” She looked directly at me. “I killed her,” she said, her voice as fragile as glass, “because I loved her.”

  Fear and love, the two missing motives that drive all the others. Set free in some hearts. Twisted in others.

  Then Marcie began to weep, and Lien-hua reached out for her, cut off her restraints, took her in her arms. Ralph’s cell phone sprang to life and he flipped it open. “It’s the CDC,” he said. He told them about Marcie and then grudgingly he handed the phone to her. “They want to know what you know.” Then he glowered at her. “No games, you understand?”

  She nodded and stepped aside with him to a quieter corner of the courtyard.

  Just then Margaret came hurrying over to us. I didn’t even know she was here. Probably just came when she heard about all the media people present. “Sit down, Pat.” It didn’t sound like anger in her voice. Something else. Fear? Concern?

  “What is it?”

  “Sit down.”

  “Tell me.”

  “A few minutes ago there was a 911 call from the safe house.” “What?”

  “Listen, Tessa’s OK. An officer was shot, though. Officer Muncey.”

  “Where’s Tessa?”

  “She’s still there. Don’t worry-”

  “Jason Stilton has always been a good friend,” Trembley said. “Do anything for a buck.”

  “Where’s Stilton?”

  “Officer Stilton?” She looked at me curiously. “He’s there, Pat. They called an ambulance. Brent Tucker’s there too. I just talked to him. He told me he’s with Tessa. He wanted you to know.”

  Oh no.

  Suddenly, everything began to spin and click. The pieces of the puzzle slid together with grim accuracy, shattering my mind, my world. “He knew we were leaving for Denver,” I muttered. “That’s why he called me this morning. He wanted me here. That’s why he gave me Kincaid…”

  “What?” said Margaret.

  “The first murder,” I whispered, “was two days after Grolin’s girlfriend moved out, after he beat her up… Right?”

  Lien-hua nodded but looked confused.

  “She was treated for her injuries, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes,” she said. “What are you thinking? What is it?”

  “He knew,” I said. The world was getting bleary. Whatever was in that capsule was starting to affect me. How does the killer get away? He always slips away. At the mall… at the golf course… Alice’s house…

  “He knows how to cut them…” I said, “to keep them alive.. ” “What are you talking about?” asked Margaret.

  “It’s the drugs,” said Lien-hua, eyeing the half-dissolved capsule on the floor. “Get a doctor over here!” And then to me, “Take it easy, Pat. Sit down.”

  Only the most foolish of mice would hide in a cat’s ear, but only the wisest of cats would look there. I felt weak. “The Illusionist,” I whispered. “He’s been hiding in my ear the whole time.”

  And that’s when I saw that Kincaid, before he died, had pulled something out of his pocket. It lay hidden in the grip of his left hand.

  “I have something to give you,” he’d said to Taylor and me.

  He had something to give me.

  And I knew who it was from.

  82

  Tessa was on the couch, trying to relax, trying to catch her breath. Agent Tucker sat beside her. The house was a little quieter; a bunch of the cops had left when they wheeled that woman away.

  Agent Tucker placed his hand on her shoulder. “You OK?”

  She nodded. “I’m shaking, though.”

  “It’s shock,” he said. “We need to get you out of here.”

  “Is she dead?” asked Tessa softly. “That police officer?”

  Agent Tucker nodded slowly. “I’m afraid so.”

  A paramedic appeared in the doorway. “Is everyone in here OK?”

  Agent Tucker slipped his hand around Tessa’s shoulder. “I’m taking her with me.”

  “The CDC team is on its way,” announced Ralph. He had left Marcie with Mr. Williamson’s security personnel.

  “Good,” I mumbled. I was walking over to Kincaid’s body.

  Ralph pointed to Marcie. “They think they can control this thing with her help. Treat it.” He looked at the gruesome scene around us. The bodies of Kincaid’s group lay scattered around the courtyard. Only the big guy and Marcie had survived. “With a little luck, no one else is going to die today.”

  I heard his words but only faintly. They were fading into the distance of space and time.

  It couldn’t really be what I thought it was in his hand. It couldn’t be.

  Showing us the board… he’s been showing us the board…

  I reached Kincaid’
s body.

  The paramedic looked confused. “The guys outside told me to come in and take a look at her.”

  Agent Tucker stood up. Stood toe to toe with the paramedic. “C’mere for a second,” he said.

  Then Tessa watched him lead the paramedic into the hallway and around the corner out of sight.

  Brent Tucker is with Tessa…

  I knelt down, noticed a ragged scar across the inside of Kincaid’s wrist, probably from a suicide attempt a long time ago.

  He shot the man in the neck but didn’t kill him… made sure he didn’t kill him… he knew where to shoot them…

  I reached out to open Kincaid’s hand. My heart was screaming. No, no, no!

  My fingers began to tremble.

  He reaches across the board, touches a piece, then he takes her.

  Tessa heard a muffled gasp and a soft thud.

  I uncurled Kincaid’s fingers.

  Saw the item.

  Tessa’s necklace.

  “Agent Tucker?” called Tessa.

  I spun around, yelled to Margaret. “Get Tucker on the phone! Now!”

  Tessa strained to see around the corner. “Are you OK, Agent Tucker?” Her heart began to slam against the inside of her chest.

  A voice inside of her told her to get up. To get out. Something was wrong.

  She tried to stand but was still dizzy from shock.

  Her legs felt wobbly.

  “Agent Tucker?”

  Margaret put her hand on my elbow to calm me down. “Don’t worry, Pat, Tessa’s all ri-”

  “I know who it is!” I yelled.

  “Hello, Tessa,” said the killer, the Illusionist, the boy who had snuggled up to the corpse of his mother, the man who was at home in the dark. He stepped around the corner, holding a dripping blade, and grabbed Tessa, shoving a cloth over her mouth, quickly, so quickly that it swallowed her scream and sent her reeling into a terrible, terrible sleep. Terrible and dark.

  But before the shadows closed around her she saw one last thing-one last grisly thing-a man trying to crawl around the corner of the hallway, trying to get to her. To help her. Failing. Falling. Collapsing onto the carpet, his throat slashed.