by Steven James
No sign of foul play.
That’s what they said.
Another death.
Another dose of grief for another distraught family.
As I considered the possible implications of the explosion, I checked my email and noticed a message from Margaret notifying all the task force members about an 11:00 meeting at the command post. Our paths hadn’t crossed since Rodale had put me back on the case, and I assumed she would not be thrilled by his decision, but I decided not to worry about that unless she brought it up.
Thankfully, another instructor was covering my classes again today, so that would give me the chance to focus the majority of my day on the case-even though, admittedly, I wasn’t thrilled that the other instructor was Jake Vanderveld.
After uploading the files from Rodale and the financial reports from Fischer onto the task force’s command level database, I reviewed the updates to the case. I remembered that a gas station receipt had been found in the van parked at the hotel, and when I pulled up the jpeg of it, I saw that it was from the same gas station that had exploded.
Knowing how these killers worked, I suspected they had left that receipt in the van on purpose, just to taunt us.
Or to give you a clue to another crime they’re planning to commit.
A future crime.
They left the receipt from the gas station, then killed Juarez.. . left Mahan’s car, then killed him later that night… left Mollie’s purse, then killed her the next day.
Hmm.
I was reminded again of Adkins, the only murderer I’d ever faced who’d followed this pattern of leaving clues to future victims, but he was dead after an ambulance chased him to the bottom of a North Carolina gorge. Perhaps someone had found access to his case files and was imitating his pattern.
I spent more than an hour looking into that possibility but found nothing, and at 9:02 I was scrolling through yesterday’s DNA reports from the lab when my phone rang.
Caller ID told me it was Angela Knight.
When I answered she didn’t waste any time: “I found Richard Basque.”
“What?” Immediately, I moved toward the back deck so if Tessa woke up she wouldn’t overhear the conversation. “You found him? Where?”
“He’s here, in DC-or at least he was an hour ago.”
“Where is he now?”
“I’m not sure.”
I was on the deck now, closing the door behind me. “How do you know he was in the city?”
“At first when you asked me to look for him, I did the usual-you know, looked for GPS, credit card use, reviewed airline flight manifests, routine traffic stops-nothing. I even tried the defense system’s satellite video archives to see if we had footage of his car leaving Chicago; they started keeping old footage, you know-”
“Yes, for six months. I know.” I was anxious to hear how she’d found him. “So you found his car?”
“No, that’s the thing. I didn’t.” I heard her yawn and ended up doing so myself. Power of suggestion. She went on, “So I turned to the next best thing-”
“Mass transit surveillance.”
“Yes.” She sounded disappointed that I’d guessed what she was going to say. “I started a metasearch of the twenty largest US cities’ transit video footage since Tuesday. You can’t even imagine how long it takes to access some of that data. The bandwidth most of those cities still use is from-” She yawned again.
“How long have you been up, Angela?”
She thought. “I’m not sure. Anyway, there he was, walking through the Metro Central Station in DC at 7:31 this morning. I know that’s over an hour and a half ago. Sorry I didn’t catch it earlier.”
I didn’t think she needed to apologize for anything. “No, you did great. Are you sure it’s him?”
“Eighty-four percent. According to Lacey.”
Her computer. Good old Lacey.
“Did you tell Ralph yet?” I asked.
“I thought I’d let you do that. Considering you’re the one who asked me to locate Basque.”
I tried to process what she’d told me within the broader context of the case. “All right. Anything on Patricia E.?”
“Pat, I’m way behind here,” she said, which was not exactly an answer. “Just before I punched in your number, I got word that Metro found a stolen car with Mollie Fischer’s laptop in the backseat, and guess who gets to do the data recovery?”
“They found the computer?”
Oh yes, good.
Things were popping.
“Yes, and you’re gonna love this-the car is sitting in front of police headquarters.”
Why didn’t that surprise me.
“Who found it?”
“Lee Anderson.” He was the Metro PD officer who’d shuttled me from the hospital to my car Wednesday afternoon. The one who’d been surprised by my take on motives when we first met.
“Call me if you find anything, Angela. Thanks again. You’re the best there is.”
Another yawn. Once more I found myself following her lead. I wished she would stop doing that. “See you soon, Pat.”
“Okay.”
End call.
Obviously, in order to understand the foot traffic patterns as well as the potential pedestrian entrance and exit routes from the car, I needed to have a look at the vehicle and evaluate its orientation in respect to the neighboring streets as well as its actual distance from the entrance to the police headquarters. However, I didn’t want to leave Tessa here alone, especially after yesterday when Lansing cornered her at the hotel. In addition, even though Basque had never threatened her in any way, just knowing that he was in the vicinity made me uneasy.
But I couldn’t take Tessa to a secondary crime scene that was still being actively processed.
Figure that out in a few minutes.
First things first.
I punched in Ralph’s number, and he listened in cold silence as I explained that Angela Knight had found Basque.
“You should have told me yesterday that you had her working on this.”
“It wasn’t exactly aboveboard,” I said. “I didn’t want to involve you.”
“You involved her.”
A pause. “Yes. I did.”
“If Basque’s lawyer finds out about this, and it comes back to bite us in the butt-”
“I know. Don’t worry. I’ll take the heat, but you remember the promise I made to Grant Sikora. I need to stop Basque.”
“Right now you need to let me worry about him.”
It wasn’t the time to argue with my friend. “All right.”
Last year when Sevren Adkins was murdering young women in the southeast, Ralph had been the one who called me in to help, so I took a moment to mention the observation that the killers seemed to be leaving clues to future crimes just as he had.
He was quiet. “They never found his body, Pat.”
“Ralph, there was barely anything left of the ambulance.”
He didn’t reply.
“No one could have survived a fall like that.” But even as I said the words I remembered hearing about instances of parachutists who’d survived falls from thousands of feet when their chutes didn’t open.
“You should keep it open as a possibility,” he said.
Part of me knew he was right, part of me didn’t even want to entertain the prospect that Sevren was still alive.
Theorize, evaluate, eliminate possibilities.
“I’ll have the lab go back over all DNA and prints,” I said. “We’ll look for any other evidence that he might have surfaced somewhere since October. What about Basque? Are you going to stay up there or come back?”
I expected, of course, that he’d tell me he was going to be on the next flight to DC, but instead there was a long pause. “Last night Kreger uncovered some correspondence that Basque and his lawyer had with Professor Lebreau a couple years ago when they asked her to reevaluate their case.”
“I remember when it hit the news,” I
said. “She was an anti-death penalty advocate.”
“Crusader,” he corrected me. “Anyway, we’re looking into all that. Seems he’s written to her off and on over the years. We’re not sure if she wrote him back. If I find any evidence that Basque contacted her since his release it might give us something to go on. Until then, we still don’t have anything solid that ties him to Lebreau’s disappearance.”
“Except the timing.”
“Yes.”
“And these connections from their past.”
“You and I both know that’s not enough to bring him in. And if we question him without anything but assumptions and-”
“Yeah. I know. The press will have a field day.”
“And his lawyers will too.”
He thought for a moment. “Here’s how this’ll go down. I’ll stay up here for now and follow up on Basque and Lebreau’s address book contacts in the DC area, talk with some of her friends, see if there’s anyone they might have gone to the Capital to visit. In the meantime, we’ll have Metro PD look for his car, monitor those mass transit videos.” He took a breath. “How’s that scratch on your arm, anyway?”
“It’s fine. By the way, that was just plain rude when you yanked out that IV.”
“Man up. When I was a Ranger we used to-”
“No alpha Ralph stories, please. You heard we located Mollie’s body yesterday?”
“Yeah. At the hotel. It’s all over the news.”
“Anderson found her laptop this morning in a car parked in front of police headquarters.”
When Ralph heard the location he cussed under his breath. “So, you looking into that?”
“Well, I’d like to, but Tessa’s dad has been contacting her. He knows where we’re staying, so I don’t want her here at the house alone, however, as far as I know, they’re still processing the scene so I can’t take her with me.”
He thought for a moment. “What about Brineesha? They know each other, and Brin’s not working today. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
Actually, Ralph’s wife would be perfect.
“I’ll give her a shout,” I said. “Thanks.”
We agreed to keep each other in the loop, then he hung up.
I contacted Brineesha and set everything up: I’d drop Tessa off at their house at 10:15, they’d hit the mall-oh, Tessa would just love that-then, after my briefing, I’d meet up with them at the food court at about 2:00.
It would give the two of us just enough time to get to Missy Schuel’s office by 2:30 and touch base with her before the 3:30 custody meeting.
Whew.
Based on Missy’s reaction yesterday when I’d told her that I was coming to the custody meeting, I could only imagine what she would say when I showed up with Tessa, but this was about Tessa’s future, her life, and I wanted her to be present.
All of that, later.
I gave the command post a quick call to get Sevren Adkins’s name on the radar screen. “See if he’s shown up anywhere in the system since last fall. ViCAP search, AFIS, CODIS, the whole deal.”
“Yes, sir.”
After ending the call I glanced at my watch and saw that it was already 9:16. Normally, it’s a forty-minute drive to Ralph and Brineesha’s house from here, but with Friday morning traffic it would take even longer, and Tessa still wasn’t out of bed.
10:15 would be tight. I headed to her room to wake her up.
Which might very well be the most challenging thing I would do for the rest of the day.
80
Tessa groaned when I nudged her awake.
“Turn off the lights.” She wrapped a pillow around her head.
“The lights are off. That’s the sun.”
“Well, turn off the sun.”
“Tessa, I need you to get up. It’s important.”
“Why?”
“Because something was found, some evidence, and I have to follow up on it and then get to a briefing.”
She moaned. “I don’t want to sit around lobbies all day while you meet with people. I’ll be fine here. Paul’s not gonna come by, his lawyers would never let him. Just leave me a gun or something.”
“I’m not leaving you a gun. I’m going to drop you off with Mrs. Hawkins.”
“Where?”
“Where what?”
Finally, she unpeeled the pillow and looked at me. “Where are you dropping me off? Last time she took me shopping.”
A slight pause. “She did say something about the mall, but it’s just for-”
“You know how I feel about shopping,” she complained.
“Like I feel about briefings.”
“Worse.” With every moment she sounded more lucid, and I could tell it was annoying her. “Way worse.”
“It’ll just be for three or four hours-”
Tessa grimaced. “How about this: drop me off at the Library of Congress. I’ll hang out in the main reading room. Cell phones aren’t allowed in there so Paul can’t call me. And it’s the world’s most secure library. They guard it better than anything in DC except maybe the Capitol and the White House.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Whatever.” She propped herself up on one elbow. “Besides, if I see him anywhere I’ll just tell a police officer that he’s stalking me and then call you. Come on, don’t make me go shopping. How’s your arm, by the way?”
“My arm is fine, and going shopping wouldn’t be that…”
Actually, the more I thought about it, the more I found myself considering her request to go to the library. In contrast to the mall, which was at least a fifteen minute drive from the command post, the Library of Congress was just down the street, so I’d be close. And Tessa would certainly be more protected in there than in public with Brineesha.
“All right, you can go to the Library of Congress. But we need to get moving. Get dressed. We leave in fifteen minutes.”
I stepped into the hall, cancelled with Brineesha, and went to collect my notes and laptop.
The scavengers had arrived sometime in the middle of the night. Rats, she guessed, but the way her head was positioned she hadn’t been able to see them clearly enough to be certain. They had bitten her ankles, chewed on the flesh next to the straps that held her down. She’d tried to scream, but gagged; she couldn’t even do that. All night she’d wrestled unsuccessfully to get free but had only managed to loosen the dirt around her, which might have been what attracted the rodents-the ripe smell that seeped out from the body beneath her. At least, now in the daylight, they’d left her alone. But her strength was gone, wasted in her useless efforts to get free. Her courage had died, her tears were used up, and now she was lying flat against the putrid corpse, exhausted. Cold. Broken. She had become again that fragile little girl, trembling under a bed on a night in May, praying to a silent God. She hadn’t prayed since that night, hadn’t ventured to believe God was there to listen. But now, with no other recourse left, she prayed. However, this time she was not asking for anyone’s life but for her own death. For a quicker and more merciful release from the terror of all that had befallen her. Death. For herself and her child. Yet even in this, the Almighty offered her only silence in reply.
81
12 hours left…
9:29 a.m.
It took Tessa less time than I expected to get ready.
She foraged in the kitchen for some food and ended up with a plate of some of the leftover Chinese from the meal Lien-hua had brought last night, and a slice of apple pie from Cheyenne.
Two distinctively different flavors.
Okay, Pat. Do not even go there.
“You can eat in the car,” I told her. “I won’t bug you about it. Let’s get going.”
She grabbed her collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, and before I could ask her about it, she said, “Yeah, I know, but I promised Dora I’d finish it. I’m almost done.”
We climbed into the car and started down the driveway. “So are you a fan yet?” I asked her.
“Of what?” She was eating dessert first, and her mouth was full of apple pie. “Holmes?”
“Yeah.”
“Um.” She swallowed. “That would be a no. Doyle cheated.”
She’d contrasted Doyle and Poe to me before, and I drew from our previous discussions: “You mean by shamelessly basing Holmes on Poe’s Dupin character?”
“Well, that and the solutions to his mysteries.” Balancing the plate of food on her lap, she flipped open the book. “Okay, so this one, The Silver Blaze, the one I was reading last night. Holmes solves it when he notices…” She took a moment to page through the story. “Yeah. Here: ‘The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime
… the dog did nothing in the nighttime… that was the curious incident.’”
I recognized it as one of Sherlock Holmes’s most famous lines. “Sure, the dog didn’t bark-Holmes realized that it should have, and that was the clue-not what did happen but what didn’t happen that should have; the thing you would’ve expected.”
“Right,” she said, “well, it would have been curious if the dog didn’t bark, but up till that point in the story, Doyle doesn’t tell you the dog didn’t bark. It’s cheating to let your detective suddenly know something your readers don’t. How convenient is that? I mean, if you’re gonna write a mystery, you have to at least play fair and include enough clues for astute readers to solve the case.”
We turned onto the county road in front of the house. Six minutes to the interstate.
“That makes sense,” I said. “But at least Holmes’s reasoning was sound, I mean, the investigative principle is true.”
“And which Holmes would you be referring to?” She was working on the Chinese food now, and her mouth was full. In lieu of chopsticks she was using a fork.
“You’re just prejudiced against him,” I said, “because you don’t like his author.”
“No, seriously, his entire approach to solving crimes is based on a logical fallacy.”
“A logical fallacy? Sherlock Holmes? I don’t buy it.”
She swallowed her food. “Doyle has Holmes say-I don’t know, I think it’s in The Hound of the Baskervilles or maybe The Sign of Fouranyway, he says: ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ I’m not sure if that’s word-for-word, but you get it, right?”