The Knight pbf-3

by Steven James

  The Knight

  ( Patrick Bowers files - 3 )

  Steven James

  Steven James

  The Knight

  1

  Thursday, May 15

  Bearcroft Mine

  The Rocky Mountains, 40 miles west of Denver

  5:19 p.m.

  The sad, ripe odor of death seeped from the entrance to the abandoned mine.

  Some FBI agents get used to this smell, to this moment, and after awhile it just becomes another part of the daily routine.

  That’s never happened with me.

  My flashlight cut a narrow seam through the darkness but gave me enough light to see that the woman was still clothed, no sign of sexual assault. Ten sturdy candles surrounded her, their flames wisping and licking at the dusty air, giving the tunnel a ghostly, otherworldly feel.

  She was about ten meters away and lay as if asleep, hands on her chest. And in her hands was the reason I’d been called in.

  A slowly decomposing human heart.

  No sign of the second victim.

  And the candles flickered around her in the dark.

  Part of my duties at the FBI’s Denver field office include working with the Denver Police Department on a joint task force that investigates the most violent criminal offenders in the Denver metroplex, helping to evaluate evidence and suggest investigative strategies. Since this crime appeared to be linked to another double homicide the day before in Littleton, Lieutenant Kurt Mason had asked for my help.

  But some local law enforcement officers tend to be territorial, and from the moment I’d stepped off the task force helicopter I’d seen how excited the four men from the crime scene unit were that I was here. It probably didn’t help matters that Kurt wanted me to survey the scene with him before they processed the tunnel.

  The mine was barely high enough for me to stand in, and narrow enough for me to touch both sides at once. Every five to ten meters, thick beams buttressed the walls and ceiling, supporting against cave-ins.

  A rusted track that had been used by miners to roll ore carts through the mine ran along the ground and disappeared into the darkness somewhere beyond the woman’s body.

  As I took a few steps into the tunnel, I checked to see if my Nikes left an imprint but saw that the ground was too hard. So, it was unlikely we would have shoe impressions from the killer either.

  With each step, the temperature dropped, dipping into the low forties. The time of death was still unknown, but the cool air would have slowed decomposition and helped preserve the body. The woman might have been dead for two or three days already.

  One of the candles winked out.

  Why did you bring her here? Why today? Why this mine?

  Whose heart is that in her hands?

  The voice of one of the crime scene unit members cut through the dim silence. “Yeah, Special Agent Bowers is inside. He’s taking his time.”

  “I should hope so.” It was Lieutenant Mason, and I was glad he was here. He’d been on the phone since I arrived, and now I paused and waited for him to join me.

  A beam of light swept past me as he turned on his flashlight, and a moment later he was standing by my side.

  “Thanks for coming in on this, Pat.” He spoke in a hushed voice, a small way to honor the dead. “I know you’re leaving to teach at the Academy next week. I’m hoping-”

  “I’ll consult from Quantico if I need to.”

  He gave me a small nod.

  Forty-one, with stylish, wire-rimmed glasses and swift intelligent eyes, Kurt looked more like an investment banker than a seasoned detective, but he was one of the best homicide investigators I’d ever met.

  It’d been a hard year for him, though, and it showed on his face. Five months ago while he and his wife Cheryl were on a date, their fifteen-month-old daughter Hannah drowned in the bathtub while the babysitter was in the living room texting one of her friends. Kurt and I had only known each other for a few months when his daughter died, but I’d recently lost my wife, and in a way the sense of shared tragedy had deepened our friendship.

  Silently, we donned latex gloves. Began to walk toward the woman’s body.

  “Her name is Heather Fain.” His voice sounded lonely and hollow in the tunnel. “I just got the word. Disappeared from her apartment in Aurora on Monday. No one’s seen her boyfriend since then either-a guy named Chris Arlington. He was a person of interest in the case… until…” He let his voice trail off. He was staring at the heart.

  I looked at Heather’s body, still five meters away, and let her name roll through my mind.

  Heather.

  Heather Fain.

  This wasn’t just a corpse, these were tragic remains of a young woman who’d had a boyfriend and dreams and a life in Aurora, Colorado. A young woman with passions and hopes and heartaches.

  Until this week.

  Grief stabbed at me.

  Kurt’s comment led me to think he might have reason to believe this was Chris Arlington’s heart. “Do we know the identity of the second victim?” I asked. “Whether or not it’s Chris?”

  “Not yet.” An edginess took over his voice. “And I know what you’re thinking, Pat: don’t assume, examine. Don’t worry. I will.”

  “I know.”

  “We have to start somewhere.”

  I focused the beam of light on the heart. “Yes, we do.”

  Together, we approached the body.

  2

  The candles gave off a scent of vanilla that intermingled with the smell of moldering flesh and the sharp sulfurous odor coming from deeper in the mine. I wondered if the candles were the killer’s way of trying to mask the smell of the body as it began to decay, wondered where he might have purchased them, how long they’d been burning.

  Details.

  Timing.

  “I should tell you,” Kurt said, “Captain Terrell’s not thrilled this is going through the task force. He wants it local law enforcement all the way.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up.” Even from three meters away I could see the heart’s intricate, fleshy veins. “We’ll deal with that later.”

  We arrived at Heather’s body.

  Caucasian. Mid-twenties, medium build, dusty brown hair. Fresh lipstick. I pictured her alive, moving, breathing, laughing. Based on the bone structure of her face, she would have had a lovely, shy smile.

  Her skin was mottled and blotchy and there’d been minor insect activity, but the cool temperature had kept it to a minimum.

  I studied the heart for a moment-reddish black and clutched in her hands. It looked so dark and terrible lying on her chest.

  Then I let my gaze shift to the candles. Over the years I’ve found that having a clear understanding of a crime’s timing and location is the most important place to start an investigation. I looked at my watch and then blew out the five candles encircling her legs. “Jot down 5:28 p.m.”

  Kurt wrote the numbers on his notepad. “Wax flow?”

  “Yes.” Later, we would have Forensics burn this brand of candle at this altitude and this temperature and compare the melting rate and amount of wax flow to determine how long these candles had been burning. It would tell us when the killer was last here. I didn’t need to tell Kurt any of this; we were on the same wavelength.

  I studied the position of the body in relationship to the way the tunnel curved to the left as it followed the vein of minerals winding through the mountain. It appeared that Heather’s body hadn’t been placed haphazardly in the mine. The killer had centered her between two support beams.

  He wanted us to see her as soon as we stepped into the mine. He’s framing her. Like a picture.

  “Just a few more minutes,” Kurt said, jarring me out of my thoughts. “Then I need
to let the CSU guys in.”

  I leaned over her body.

  Her eyes were closed.

  No visible body art.

  No ripped clothing, no sign of a struggle. Black slacks, brown leather boots, a yellow and orange flower-patterned blouse stained dark with the blood that had seeped from the heart.

  I brushed away a strand of hair covering her left ear and saw that it was pierced in three places, but she wore no earrings. I checked the other ear. No jewelry. “Let’s find out if she was wearing earrings the day she was abducted. If she was, check ViCAP for other cases of killers who take earrings as trophies of their murders.”

  He wrote in his notepad.

  “Kurt, besides you, how many officers have been in here?”

  “Just two.” He pointed his light toward an intersecting tunnel leading to the east. “I checked the tunnels before they got here. It’s clear. No more bodies.”

  Water dripped out of sight somewhere deep in the mine. Wet echoes crawling toward me.

  “Do we know who owns this mine?”

  He shook his head. “Up here, mineral rights change hands a lot. Get inherited, resold. It’s hard to track down. Jameson’s working on it.”

  I gave Heather my full attention again.

  No contusions on her face, no blood in her hair, no ligature marks on her neck. How did he kill you, Heather? Press a pillow against your face? Drown you? Poison you?

  “Let’s get a tox screening.”

  “ME’s on his way up to get things rolling.”

  The candle beside her right shoulder blinked out.

  I moved my beam of light past the heart and directed it onto the slight folds and wrinkles in her clothing.

  Kurt bent beside me, pointing first at her shoulders, then at her ankles. “No clumping or bunching of her clothes,” he said. “He didn’t drag her in here; he carried her.”

  “Looks like it. Either way, he took time to smooth out her clothes, to brush her hair. He spent time with her. Posing her. Making sure everything was just right.”

  I felt a renewed sense of sadness at her death and the death of the person whose heart now lay on her chest. Moving the beam of light across her body, I thought of how many killers return to the dump sites of their victims to violate their remains, to relive the thrill of the murder, but there was no sign he’d defiled her remains. And I was thankful, if for nothing more than that.

  Why here? Why did you bring her here? When I’m in the middle of an investigation I have a tendency to talk to myself, and I didn’t realize I’d done more than just think my two questions until I heard a woman’s voice behind me: “He’s sending us a message.”

  Then footsteps, quick, firm, purposeful. Careful to avoid shining the beam in her eyes, I tilted my flashlight toward the woman approaching us. In the corner of the light, I could see her naturally beautiful, cowgirl face and strawberry blonde hair.

  “Detective Warren,” I said.

  “Agent Bowers.”

  At twenty-nine, Cheyenne was the youngest woman ever to be promoted to homicide detective for the Denver Police Department. She was smart, down-to-earth, dedicated, and I liked her. I’d worked six task force cases with her over the last year, and each time I’d become more impressed.

  Even though I was seven years older, there was definitely chemistry between us, and she’d taken the lead and asked me out twice, but the timing hadn’t been right. However, in light of the problems I was having in my current relationship, those two instances came to mind.

  Her eyes whisked past me and found the body illuminated by Kurt’s flashlight. “Ritualistic posing,” she said. “He took his time to get it just right.”

  “Yes.” I focused my light on Heather again.

  One of the CSU members called loudly for Kurt. I saw his jaw tense; he spent a moment in quiet deliberation, then handed Cheyenne his light, excused himself, and stepped away.

  I returned my attention to Heather, and as I leaned close to her face, I noticed something in her mouth. Gently, I pressed against her lower lip to peer inside.

  A black device the size of a folded-up strip of gum lay on her tongue.

  Cheyenne saw it too. Knelt closely beside me. Most of my attention remained on the crime scene, but some of it shifted to her, to the soft brush of her arm against mine.

  We both scrutinized the object. “What is that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll be right back.” She exited the mine while I used my cell phone to take pictures of Heather’s face and the placement of the object in her mouth.

  Cheyenne returned with plastic tweezers and an evidence bag. “CSU was thrilled to pass these along.”

  “I’m sure they were.”

  She handed me the tweezers, and I slid them carefully into Heather’s mouth. Squeezed the object to remove it.

  And heard a voice.

  “I’ll see you…”

  I toppled backward.

  “… in Chicago…”

  A recording.

  “… Agent Bowers.”

  I caught my breath.

  Felt my heart race.

  I stared at the tweezers, at the small recordable device. It looked like the kind you find in some types of greeting cards. Depressing the sides had activated it.

  “OK.” Cheyenne let out a long narrow breath. “I didn’t see that one coming.”

  My heart was still hammering. “Me either.”

  The message repeated. “I’ll see you in Chicago, Agent Bowers.”

  I waited to see if there was more to it, but those seven words just repeated every six seconds. Carefully, I placed the recording device into the evidence bag.

  “He knows about Chicago,” Cheyenne said, taking the bag from me. “About Basque’s trial.”

  Tomorrow morning I was flying to Chicago to testify at the retrial of a serial killer named Richard Devin Basque, a man whom I’d caught thirteen years ago in my early days as an investigator. He’d been found guilty and had been imprisoned since then, but recently new evidence had emerged and now it was possible he might be set free.

  I didn’t want to think about that now.

  The recording continued playing: “I’ll see you in Chicago, Agent Bowers.”

  The faint sound of dripping water.

  For a moment I listened to the tunnel. To my thoughts.

  Whoever left the recording not only knew I’d be in Chicago tomorrow, he knew I’d be here, at this crime scene today.

  But how?

  And how is this murder connected to Basque’s trial?

  Another candle blew out. Stale darkness crept toward us from deeper in the mine, and the heart Heather was clutching no longer looked red at all, but completely black.

  Voices behind me. Kurt and the CSU.

  “All right,” Cheyenne said. “Here they come.”

  The recording continued repeating the message. I wished I knew how to shut it off.

  As the team approached, I let my light drift from Heather’s body and wander along the wall of the tunnel, where I studied the glimmer of light glancing off the minerals embedded in the mountain. Occasional fissures and clefts only a few centimeters wide ran through the rock.

  An ancient, rough-hewn ladder disappeared down a shaft four meters past the body. I walked to it and aimed my light down. The shaft was barely wide enough to allow a person to descend. About ten meters further down, it terminated at another tunnel.

  “Any idea how big this mine is?” I asked Cheyenne.

  “Not yet, but some of these old gold mines run for miles.”

  Then the crime scene unit arrived, we left the recording device with them, and Cheyenne and I headed for the mine’s entrance.

  As I passed the men on my way out, I greeted them softly, but Kurt was the only one to reply.

  3

  Cheyenne walked beside me. “You think it’s Taylor who left the message?” she asked.

  Sebastian Taylor was an ex-assassin on the FBI’s Most W
anted List who’d taken a special interest in me a few months ago and had started sending me taunting letters and cameo photographs of people in my family. He signed all the notes “Shade,” the code name a pair of killers had used in San Diego on a case I’d worked in February. Trace DNA left on one of the envelopes told us Taylor was the one sending the messages and that he was actually the father of one of those killers.

  Two weeks ago an officer had found tire impressions in the mud next to a rural mailbox that Taylor had used to mail an envelope. We didn’t know yet if the tire prints were from his vehicle, but it looked like a good lead. Kurt’s team was looking into it.

  “This doesn’t seem like Taylor’s type of crime,” I told Cheyenne. “And all of his previous messages to me have been handwritten, not recorded.”

  “Any other killers in the habit of sending you personal messages?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  If Taylor was the killer and really was planning to see me in Chicago, I wanted to be ready for him. So, when Cheyenne and I reached the entrance, I pulled out my cell. “I’ll call a buddy of mine at the Bureau. Put some things into play.”

  “Be careful, Pat.” Her voice held deep concern. Deeper than that of just a co-worker. “This one’s different. I don’t like this. Any of this.”

  “I hear you.” A slightly awkward moment passed between us, then she returned to the mine and I speed-dialed Ralph’s number.

  Special Agent Ralph Hawkins wasn’t just the acting director for the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, or NCAVC, but was also one of my closest friends. Even though he was based in DC at FBI headquarters, I knew that if anyone could get a team in place at the Chicago courthouse by tomorrow, he could.

  As I waited for him to answer, I noticed that the sun had dipped almost to the mountains, and the day was beginning to fade. Just past the flat strip of land where the helicopter sat, untamed spruce forests bristled down the slopes. Beyond them, ragged snow-covered peaks jutted to the sky.

  My cell reception died, and I headed toward the chopper. Tried again.