The Knight pbf-3

by Steven James

  “You’re welcome. I’ve been thinking, I’ll probably need to eat sometime in the next week or so. Maybe we can do it again?”

  “Hmm,” she said. “I’ll have to check my busy social calendar.”

  “That full, huh?”

  We arrived at the porch, but instead of stepping into the light as I expected her to, Cheyenne paused on the fringe of the night. “You have no idea how popular I am.”

  “And yet you chose to spend the evening with my stepdaughter and me.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I’m honored.”

  The night settled in, calm and sweet and cool around us. “I had fun,” she said. “And I really like Tessa.”

  “She has a way of growing on you.” Then I added, “She means the world to me.”

  “I can tell.” Even though I didn’t remember either of us edging closer, the space between us seemed to be shrinking. I gazed at her standing in the faint glow of the porch’s twilight.

  Cheyenne Warren really was a beautiful woman.

  Moments eased by.

  The sounds of traffic drifted toward me from far away, from some distant city that had nothing to do with the two of us.

  Finally I said, “Maybe I should be going. You know. Take Tessa home.” But after I’d said the words, I didn’t go anywhere. Neither did Cheyenne. It seemed like neither of us wanted the date-that-wasnot-a-date to end.

  I had the urge to take her in my arms, to hold her, to kiss her and see where everything might lead, but then I remembered Lien-hua and how things had ended with her. I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot with Cheyenne. Didn’t want anything to go wrong.

  Take it slow, Pat. She’s worth it. Don’t do anything stupid.

  The sound of a car honking on one of the neighboring streets broke the spell, and I eased back a step. “OK,” I said. “I guess-”

  Cheyenne let out a soft sigh. “That’s twice now.”

  I hesitated. “Twice?”

  “Yes. Once at the barn earlier today, and then, just now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her eyes were still filled with their usual confidence and strength but also held a touch of disappointment. “That’s twice I thought you were going to kiss me and you decided to back away from me instead.”

  Oh man.

  My heart was racing. I felt like I was in junior high again, fumbling for the right words to say to the girl I’d finally worked up the nerve to talk to. “It isn’t that I don’t want-”

  She squinched her eyes shut and hit herself in the forehead with the heel of her hand. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. I’m always doing that. I just say what I’m thinking. I don’t even-it’s a bad habit. I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t a bad habit, that her blunt honesty was one of the things I liked about her, but just ended up saying, “Never apologize for telling the truth. It suits you.” And then, “Good night, Cheyenne.”

  “Good night,” she said, and then I gave her a light, friendly hug, but that was all.

  And as I turned and walked back to the car I heard the condo’s door swing open and then click softly shut behind me.

  63

  Back at home, I wanted to get to bed, but Tessa only left me alone long enough for me to get my toothbrush in my mouth before she knocked on my bedroom door, walked in, caught me in mid-brush in the adjoining bath. “Why didn’t you kiss her good night?”

  I spit out the toothpaste. “That’s none of your business.”

  “She’s nice. I like her. I think you should’ve-”

  “All right, that’s it.” I set down the toothbrush. “What are you trying to do?”

  “Just saying you should have kissed her.”

  “No, I mean all night.” I grabbed a cup of water. Rinsed out my mouth. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You made dinner for me. You’ve been playing matchmaker. You even complimented my book. Something must be seriously-”

  “Can’t I just be nice once in a while without you getting on my case for it?”

  “I’m not getting on your case. I just don’t understand.”

  She slung a hand to her hip. “What? Maybe you’d prefer I cop an attitude instead?”

  “Well…”

  “How about a little obstinacy? Would that be better? Or despondency, maybe? Is that what you’d like?”

  “Look, it’s just that you haven’t seemed like yourself tonight, that’s all. Usually, you’re more quiet and introverted and sort of just annoyed at life in general, and not so…”

  “Not so what?”

  “Aberrantly cheerful.”

  “Well, that’s easy enough to fix,” she said.

  “Tessa, please.” I tried to think of anything that might have happened earlier in the day to cause all this. “Is it leaving for the summer? Is it something to do with that?”

  She was silent.

  “The shoe box?”

  No reply.

  What else?

  Oh yes.

  “Your mom’s diary. Is that it? Is that what this is all about?”

  The look of pain that swept over her face came so swiftly and suddenly that the whole mood of the room changed in an instant.

  “I was just trying to…” she began, but didn’t finish.

  The diary must have been more important to her than I ever would have guessed.

  “I loved her, you know? More than anything else in the world.” Her voice had become something small and fragile. A little girl’s voice.

  “Come here.”

  I took her in my arms, and she leaned against me in a way that made my heart break. And as she did, I thought of Christie, the woman both Tessa and I had loved so much, and of the promise she’d asked me to make regarding the diary.

  But now, considering how troubled Tessa had become, I couldn’t imagine that Christie would want me to keep it from her for five more months.

  “Hey, listen.” I backed up and gently held her shoulders. I saw that she hadn’t actually started to cry, but she was a girl experienced at hiding her pain. “I’ll give it to you, OK? Tomorrow. I’ll give you the diary in the morning.”

  “What?” She looked at me with a mixture of hope and skepticism. “Really? No, you won’t.”

  “Yes. I think your mom would understand. I’m sure she never meant for this to be such a big deal, for it to upset you like this.”

  Tessa looked past me into my bedroom. “So where is it?”

  “It’s not here.” I let go of her hands. “I’ll have to get it tomorrow. It’s at my office at the federal building.”

  “Can’t you just-”

  “Tomorrow. We’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “You’re not just saying this as some kind of manipulative parenting thing to-”

  “No. I’ll give it to you.”

  She studied my face for a moment and then said softly, “Thank you, Patrick. I seriously mean it.”

  “I love you, Raven,” I said.

  She smiled at me then, a soft, unforced smile. “I love you too.”

  And for a moment, just a moment, the dead bodies in Colorado and the trial in Illinois faded from my mind, and life seemed in sync with the way things should be. Tessa and I were on the same page, and I felt like I was able to give her a pngt, a chance to connect with her mother in a way she’d never been able to before.

  But almost immediately, I realized that reading Christie’s diary would undoubtedly bring back Tessa’s feelings of grief and loss all over again, might open old wounds, possibly make her even lonelier than ever.

  I tried not to think of those things, and instead I just told myself that this was the right thing, the loving thing to do.

  Then Tessa left for her room, but I noticed that the feeling of peace I’d had only a moment earlier had evaporated even before she stepped out the door.

  64

  45 minutes later

  I couldn’t sleep.

&nbs
p; In addition to my questions about giving Tessa the diary, my thoughts had returned to the ranch where we’d found Thomas Bennett and almost caught the killer.

  Almost.

  But we hadn’t.

  I tried to put everything out of my mind, but I couldn’t seem to relax, and eventually I gave up and grabbed my laptop, propped some pillows behind my back, and surfed to the online case files.

  Read them for twenty minutes.

  Didn’t get sleepy.

  Didn’t notice anything new.

  I checked my email and found, amid fifty-nine junk mails and four internal FBI memos, three messages that caught my attention-one from Kurt, one from Ralph, and one from United Airlines telling me it was time to check in for my 4:04 p.m. flight to Chicago tomorrow.

  Oh yes. The trial.

  Another thing to think about.

  But not at the moment.

  I read Ralph’s email first.

  Hey,

  Why aren’t you answering your cell? I hate typing.

  Nothing much here. Officer Fohay’s clean, tho. Prints didn’t match and he had no prior association with Sikora.

  Calvin hasn’t left his house all day.

  Talk to you tomorrow.

  Don’t waste my time. Just answer your phone.

  – R

  So, nothing earth-shattering. It would have made things a lot easier if Fohay had been the one who’d loaded the gun; but things aren’t usually that simple.

  I replied to Ralph, explaining that my phone was dead and that if he needed to get in touch with me to just use my landline or call Tessa’s cell.

  It surprised me a little that Calvin hadn’t left his house. After all, he didn’t believe in retirement, worked weekends, and only took Wednesdays off. He’d told me on Friday that he was going to wait and see what happened next. I wondered if maybe something had.

  So I emailed him as well, to see if he could pick me up at the airport tomorrow evening to give me a ride to my hotel.

  Then I scrolled to Kurt’s message:

  Pat,

  I’ve attached the video file of the footage you took inside the house. A couple other things:

  We found Elwin Daniels’s body in a shallow grave near the house. Preliminary time of death looks like eighteen to twenty-one days ago.

  No DNA or prints yet, but animal control verified that one of the aquariums contained toads, not snakes-Colorado River toads. Based on the size of the tank and the amount of droppings it looks like our guy had about ten or twelve of them. Problem is, their skin contains 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin-psychedelic drugs, but when ingested in concentrated doses… you get the idea. Looks like John is getting ready for story number seven.

  Nothing yet on any missing priests, but Missing Persons is still looking into it. See you tomorrow. We’ll have a briefing at 1:00, sixth floor conference room. Get some rest.

  – Kurt

  P.S. Reggie told me you had a date with Cheyenne tonight. Don’t worry. I won’t spread the word.

  How thoughtful.

  Enough with this. I needed some sleep.

  I put my computer away, crawled beneath the covers, and closed my eyes.

  65

  Sunday, May 186:13 a.m. Sunday did not start out well.

  My nightmare of the slaughterhouse and the whispering corpses had returned, and when I eased my eyes open, I saw that the day was going to be bleak.

  God had decided to send rain to Denver, and the flat gray sky reminded me more of a November morning in Milwaukee than a Denver day in spring.

  I opened the window to check the temperature, and a brush of crisp air with some leftover winter greeted me. The temp had dropped more than twenty degrees from the night before, and by the looks of the clouds and the plummeting temperature, I wondered if we might be in for a late-season snowstorm before the end of the day.

  But you won’t be here at the end of the day.

  Oh yes.

  Chicago.

  After a quick shower I went online, hoping to switch to a later flight, but there were no openings, which meant I would need to leave for the airport by 2:30, maybe 3:00 at the latest, and that gave me less than nine hours to make some progress on this case before flying to the Midwest.

  I was definitely ready for some coffee.

  I’d just sent some freshly roasted Peruvian beans through my burr grinder when my unlisted landline rang. Cordless, but an older model. No caller I.D., and since I’d emailed Ralph last night telling him to call my landline if he needed me, I figured it was probably him.

  I picked up the receiver. “Pat here.”

  “Congratulations.” The caller spoke in a low whisper, the voice electronically disguised. “On getting to the ranch so quickly.”

  My thoughts zoomed in, focused to a pinpoint. “John?”

  “That’ll do.”

  Play this right, Pat. Play this right.

  “I’m glad you called.” Knowing how this guy had toyed with Sebastian Taylor and then killed him in his own house, I pulled out my SIG and made sure it was loaded and had a chambered round.

  “Yes, well, I thought it was time we spoke.”

  I hurried to Tessa’s room. Eased her door open. Walked to her bed. Yes, she was safe. Sound asleep.

  I figured John would be too smart for the “So what’s your real name? Where are you calling from? What would you like to talk about?” routine, so I decided on a different approach and said, “We almost had you at the barn.”

  “Yes. Almost.”

  “Switching shirts was smart. It might have been the only thing that kept me from shooting you.”

  “Well, then I’m glad I did it.”

  Into the living room.

  To the window.

  I studied the neighborhood. “I saw the newspaper articles in the bedroom.”

  He said nothing.

  No unfamiliar cars. No one sitting in the parked cars on the street.

  No movement behind the bushes next door, no fluttering curtains in the neighbors’ homes. “Why did you circle my face?” I said.

  “I admire you.”

  Speech is individualized by vowels, pronunciation, and the suprasegmental phonemes of pitch, stress, and juncture, so as I listened to each of his sentences I tried to catch a sense of John’s pauses, inflection, intonation, cadence, but didn’t notice anything distinctive.

  I ignored his comment about admiring me. “We were able to get Bennett out of the barn in time.” As I spoke, I finished checking the house room by room. “Saved Kelsey too. You’re getting sloppy, and I’m coming for you.”

  Rather than argue with me, he said, “I wanted to tell you that I’m veering slightly from the text for this next story.”

  “Veering?”

  As we spoke, I looked in the garage. In the car. Under it.

  “Updating,” he said. “Boccaccio wasn’t as politically correct in his collection of tales as today’s audiences would demand. So I’m adapting it to better reflect the diversity of our culture.”

  I had no idea what that meant, but I would remember it. I would use it.

  Then he added, “Have you figured out how I’m choosing the victims yet?”

  I suspected he’d call my bluff if I tried one, so I was straight with him. “Not yet.” I went to the back door of the house, looked into the yard. Clear. “But I will.”

  “That would really be the key here, I think. The only way to stop me is to get out ahead of me.”

  “I can think of a few other ways.”

  A slight pause. “I would congratulate you on rescuing Kelsey, but let’s be honest-that was a fluke. You stumbled onto her by accident.”

  “You fled south down the cliffs, didn’t you? Then probably west along that old mining road skirting the national forest. Did you grow up in the area, John? Is that how you know it so well?”

  Another pause, and I had a feeling I’d nailed it.

  “Remember,” he said, “Kelsey was supposed to die of grief, not hypothermia.�
��

  Check on her, Pat. He’s going after her.

  Yes, I would check on her-both her and Bennett-as soon as I was off the phone.

  He continued, “And after what she went through Friday night in the morgue-all that time in the freezer with those cadavers-I think there’s a good chance she’ll die of grief after all, and the story will play out like it’s supposed to.”

  His words “The story will play out like it’s supposed to” troubled me.

  Remember, Pat? He was prepared in the barn. He was ready for you.

  If I was reading things right, Thomas Bennett was in grave danger. “Why did you wait so long before opening the door to the cage, John?”

  “Ah yes. Gabriotto’s nightmare.”

  It was a dream.

  It was all a dream.

  John went on, “What does he really die of, Patrick?”

  No, please.

  I grabbed the car keys from the kitchen counter.

  “You know, don’t you? It isn’t the greyhound that kills him.”

  Get to the hospital. Now.

  I flew toward the front door but immediately realized that if John knew my phone number he might know where I lived. I couldn’t leave Tessa here alone. I ran back to her room.

  “You’ll need to be calling the hospital now, I suppose,” John said. “To check on Thomas. We’ll talk again. I’m moving up the timetable. Dusk arrives tomorrow, just like it did in London.”

  Then he ended the call.

  My heart jackhammered.

  As I turned on Tessa’s desk lamp, I flipped through my mental catalog of phone numbers. Found Baptist Memorial’s. Punched it in.

  It rang, no one answered.

  I patted Tessa’s shoulder firmly enough to wake her up, but she groaned and wrapped a pillow around her head.

  The phone continued to ring.

  Come on. Pick up.

  Since I wasn’t on a mobile phone, I couldn’t take the receiver with me in the car. I had to wait in the house for them to answer.

  Pick up!

  Finally, a receptionist answered, “Hello, Baptist-”

  “This is Special Agent Patrick Bowers with the FBI. I need you to send a doctor to check on Thomas Bennett-I don’t know his room number-”