The Knight pbf-3

by Steven James

  “Right.” I heard a smile in her voice. “I’ll see you in a few.”

  Even though Tessa was a fast reader, she was taking her time working her way through her mother’s diary.

  In a way, reading the entries felt a little weird, like an invasion of her mom’s personal space, sort of like stepping into Patrick’s bedroom, but way more private. More intimate.

  In addition, her mom never used any last names in the diary. Maybe it was a way of protecting people’s privacy. Hard to know, but it added a cryptic touch to every entry, and Tessa liked that.

  Most of the early entries dealt with her mom’s struggles relating to her parents (whom Tessa had met when she was younger, but who’d died before she was six), her boy problems, and overcoming the loneliness and isolation she often felt as a senior in high school. Even her thoughts of suicide.

  Not a whole lot different than you.

  Tessa knew that sometimes girls reach a point in their relationships with their mothers where they become almost like sisters. She’d never had the chance to experience that with her mom when she was still alive, but now, reading these entries she found herself feeling close to her in a way she’d never felt before.

  And of course, with each entry she came closer and closer to the winter day of her mother’s sophomore year in college when she was conceived.

  She tried not to think too much about that, and to just take the entries one at a time, but with every page it was getting harder and harder not to wonder when her father’s real name might appear.

  As Cheyenne and I drove to Professor Bryant’s house, we reviewed everything that had gone down during the morning. Kurt had already told her about Bennett’s death and John’s phone call to me, so I focused instead on summarizing my conversation with Richard Basque.

  “It looks like you do have a fan, after all,” Cheyenne said. “Maybe two.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “It’s very possible Basque wrote Giovanni back-that they’re closely acquainted. And that would open up all sorts of interesting possibilities.”

  I had to think about that.

  And I did, all during the drive.

  In fact, her words were still cycling through my head when we arrived at Dr. Bryant’s subdivision on the outskirts of Littleton.

  72

  I parked across the street from Bryant’s red brick home.

  Cybercrime hadn’t called me back to tell me his cell’s location had moved, and since his BMW was still in his driveway, I figured he was probably still here as well.

  Cheyenne rang the doorbell, and a few seconds later a blond man wearing Chaco sport sandals, a gray T-shirt, and Patagonia shorts answered the door.

  “Dr. Bryant?” I said.

  “Yes?” Caucasian. Mid to late forties. Lean. Athletic. A tanned face, taut and wind-lashed. He looked like he’d spent the last twenty years backpacking and running marathons instead of lecturing at a university.

  I showed him my ID. “I’m Special Agent Bowers with the FBI, and this is Detective Warren with the Denver Police Department.

  We’re wondering if we could ask you a few questions.”

  He let his eyes drift from me to Cheyenne. Then back to me.

  “What does this concern?”

  “An ongoing investigation,” Cheyenne said.

  “May we come in?” I asked.

  He looked like he might object but then said curtly, “Of course.”

  Once inside, I surveyed his living room. New furniture that looked like it had never been used. No television. A violin and music stand in the corner. The smell of freshly brewed coffee in the kitchen, still percolating. Good coffee, the kind they serve at Rachel’s Cafe. A collection of medieval swords and daggers hung prominently on the wall.

  A sword had been used to kill Tatum Maroukas on Wednesday.

  “That’s an impressive sword collection,” I said.

  “Thank you.”

  No, Pat, think about it. John would never have used a sword that could be linked to him. He’s too smart for that.

  I made note of the swords, tried not to assume too much. We could follow up on that later. I got right to the point. “I understand you teach several courses on the Renaissance humanists.”

  “I do.” He’d crossed the room and now stood protectively in the doorway to the hall, arms folded.

  On the other side of the living room, an empty Camelbak hydration pack lay draped over the seat of a mountain bike, a high-end 7 Point Freeride Iron Horse caked with dirt. This was a bike that had seen some miles. He saw me admiring it. “I’m meeting some friends to go mountain biking in fifteen minutes. I really don’t have time right now to chat.”

  “They’re calling for snow this afternoon,” Cheyenne said.

  “I’m an avid mountain biker.” His tone was turning more and more caustic, and I didn’t like it.

  “Dr. Bryant,” I said. “I understand you were scheduled to teach at a conference in Phoenix this weekend but didn’t make it. May I ask why?”

  “I had a personal issue come up. I was here at home the whole time. What exactly is this about?”

  “An ongoing investigation,” Cheyenne said again, less cordially than before. I could feel tension twisting through the air.

  “There’s a book,” I said, “The Decameron, by an Italian author named Boccaccio. You’re familiar with it?”

  “Yes, of course. I cover it in several of my classes.”

  “Can you think of any of your students who’ve shown unusual interest in it?”

  “Many of my students enjoy Boccaccio’s work.”

  “Avid interest,” Cheyenne specified.

  “No one comes to mind.” He answered the question too quickly to have given it any serious consideration.

  I was beginning to lose my world-famous patience. “Dr. Bryant, we are not-”

  “We’re not very familiar with the book,” Cheyenne said, interrupting me, in what I assumed was an attempt to calm me down and draw him out. I was glad she spoke up. The words I’d been planning to say weren’t quite as amenable as hers.

  “We’re told you’re the expert,” she went on. “Can you take just a moment to give us a quick rundown?”

  Dr. Bryant looked like he was about to object but must have thought better of it, or maybe her subtle compliment appealed to his ego. He let out a thin, aggravated sigh instead. “The Decameron: Prencipe Galeotto is about seven women and three men who are fleeing the Black Plague-”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “What did you just call it? You said something in Latin after ‘decameron.’”

  “It was Italian,” he said impatiently. “Prencipe Galeotto. Boc-caccio didn’t just name the book The Decameron. He also gave the book a secondary name, a subtitle: Prencipe Galeotto.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “Galeotto is another rendering of Prince Galahalt, or Galehaut.”

  “You mean Galahad?” Cheyenne asked. “The knight?”

  “No. Galahalt.” He didn’t hide his condescension. “But yes, he was also one of the knights of the round table. Not one of the most common characters in Arthurian lore, although he does play a significant role in the story.”

  “And that is?” I asked.

  Dr. Bryant let his gaze climb to the clock on the wall, and he must have decided it would be best to just give us what we wanted and be done with it. He gestured toward the hallway. “Come here. I’ll show you.”

  73

  Professor Bryant led us to his study.

  On the way past the kitchen I saw the coffee brewing. A full pot.

  And it got me thinking.

  We arrived at the office, and I saw that most if it was taken up by a large desk piled high with papers, notepads, and textbooks. The walls were lined with bookshelves. An iMac sat on his desk.

  Wondering if he might be the one who’d checked out the library’s five Decameron commentaries, I scanned his bookshelves for spines with an 853 Dewey decimal number
but didn’t see any.

  He approached one of the shelves on the east wall. “The legends vary as to Galeotto’s origins, but in nearly all of the stories he’s the man credited with setting up Sir Lancelot and Queen Guine-vere.”

  Cheyenne was examining the room as well, taking everything in.

  “But Guinevere was married to King Arthur at the time, right?”

  “Exactly. Galeotto arranged for their licentious meeting and encouraged them to kiss.” Dr. Bryant studied the spines of the books on one of the top shelves. Based on the titles on that shelf, it appeared he was looking for a commentary on Dante, rather than a collection of Arthurian legends as I’d suspected.

  “However,” Dr. Bryant said, “as a result of Guinevere’s meeting with Lancelot, she consequently fell in love with him and they had an affair that destroyed the famed harmony of King Arthur’s court.” He pulled a dusty, leather-bound volume from the middle of a group of other dusty, leather-bound volumes. “Boccaccio took the reference to Galeotto from Dante’s Inferno, one of the three sections in his Divine Comedy. ”

  The Inferno.

  Great.

  The world’s most famous description of hell.

  “By the way, a bit of trivia.” Dr. Bryant was flipping through the pages of the well-worn copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy he’d chosen from his bookshelf. “Boccaccio was a big fan of Dante. He’s the one who gave this book the title ‘Divina.’ Dante had just named it ‘Commedia.’”

  Trivia or not, I made a note of it on my notepad.

  He stopped paging through the book. “By the time Dante wrote his masterpiece, Galeotto had come to signify unhappiness or disappointment in love…” His voice trailed off as he perused the page, then he nailed the center of it with his finger. “Here: Canto V, lines 137-138.” He tilted the book so that we could see the passage.

  Cheyenne had been standing across the room from me and now edged closer to get a better look at the page.

  “See?” Dr. Bryant said. “Dante wrote, ‘Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it. That day no farther did we read therein.’”

  “So what does that mean?” I asked. “Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it?”

  “Well, there are different interpretations, of course, but I would say that Dante means that Galeotto was both a part of the tale and a shaper of the tale. Some literary critics believe that by giving The Decameron the subtitle Prencipe Galeotto, Boccaccio was placing himself in the role of Galeotto.”

  “So you’re saying that Boccaccio saw himself as a matchmaker of a love affair?”

  “Yes.”

  I considered the implications. “Between whom?”

  “His book and his readers.”

  “But how does that follow?” Cheyenne said. “Lancelot’s love affair with Guinevere was illicit. There’s nothing illicit about reading a book.”

  “You have to remember,” Bryant said, “The Decameron was written in the fourteenth century. Boccaccio’s stories might not be controversial today, but in those days his book caused quite a stir.”

  Dr. Bryant was slipping into the familiar role of the professor-being the one with the answers, the one in charge, and that seemed to help him open up. He began to pace, although the cramped room gave him little space to do it. “Reading lurid tales was not considered a valuable use of one’s time in the 1300s.”

  “The soap operas of the middle ages,” Cheyenne said.

  “Something like that.” He gazed from Cheyenne to me. “Although I think it would be more accurate to say that the church of those days regarded The Decameron in much the same way as they would regard Internet pornography today. Thus, the reason it was condemned.”

  His eyes flicked, probably subconsciously, to his computer, and I decided that, taking into account his sword collection, his intimate knowledge of The Decameron, and his lack of an alibi for yesterday, it might not be a bad idea to have my friends in the Bureau’s cybercrime division do a little checking on the professor’s Internet surfing history. We should have enough probable cause to get the request cleared.

  But maybe not.

  Then a thought.

  Maybe I wouldn’t have to wait for them.

  I wrote a few more notes on my pad, then rolled the pen through my fingers. “All right,” I said to Professor Bryant. “You’re proposing that, to Boccaccio, the relationship between the reader and the text, between the person and the story, was an illicit affair?”

  “Yes.”

  I surveyed the bookshelves again, laid the notepad and pen on his desk. “And Boccaccio was the one bringing them together, playing the role of the knight, Galeotto.” I still hadn’t seen any 853 commentaries, but the professor had thousands of books.

  “That is correct.”

  Yesterday, Jake had suggested that all of the killer’s stories were about the tragic consequences of love: “Cruel, fatal tales of love and loss.”

  Is John acting as a matchmaker between lovers and death? Is that his game?

  Professor Bryant looked impatiently at Cheyenne and me. “Now, if that’s all, I really need to-”

  My phone rang. “Excuse me.” I stepped into the hallway. Through the door I could hear Cheyenne asking the professor about the specific literary significance of the stories told on day four.

  As I answered the phone I walked softly to the kitchen to check on something. “Yes?”

  “It’s me,” Ralph said. “I had an agent watching Calvin. She said he was at home, but he wasn’t returning my calls so I swung over to invite him to lunch. He’s not there.”

  “What?” I was silently looking over Dr. Bryant’s countertops, then I quickly searched his cabinets.

  “Somehow he slipped past us.”

  “He’s nearly eighty years old.” Quickly, quietly, I checked the contents of the professor’s dishwasher.

  “I know. I’m looking into it.”

  “We need to find-”

  “I said I know.” He turned his words into hammer blows. “I’m looking into it.”

  “OK,” I said. “Thanks.”

  He ended the call abruptly. I didn’t find what I was looking for in Dr. Bryant’s kitchen, and, discouraged on both counts, I returned to the study.

  74

  As I entered the room, I heard Professor Bryant wrapping up his explanation to Cheyenne: “You see, while the ten pilgrims were trying to escape the Black Plague, death was only one step behind them, but of course it would eventually catch up with them, just as it catches up with us all. So, in all of the stories told on this fourth day of the journey, we find the underlying, unstated theme that love itself is a plague, a sickness, that tracks us down and ends unhappily, that love inevitably leads to misery.”

  Based on what we knew about the killer and his crimes up until that point, Bryant’s analysis seemed right on target.

  I caught Cheyenne looking at me. I guessed that she was just checking to see if I had any follow-up questions. I shook my head.

  She handed Dr. Bryant her card. “Well, thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful. Please call us if you think of any students who’ve shown particular interest in The Decameron.”

  “I will.” But by the look on his face I suspected he’d throw the card away as soon as we were out the door.

  “And if we have any more questions,” Cheyenne said, “we’ll be in touch.”

  “Yes.” He led us to the front door. “All right.”

  “Oh, wait.” I patted my pockets. “I forgot my notepad and pen in your office. I’ll be right back.”

  A few seconds later I was in Professor Bryant’s office again, this time, alone. I went around the desk to his keyboard and tapped the spacebar to still the fish swimming across the screen and wake up his iMac.

  Sometimes you have to poke around for evidence to find out if there’s enough reason to even bother getting a search warrant.

  At the end of the hall I heard Cheyenne say, “So, when does the semester finish up?”

 
The desktop screen appeared. I quickly clicked on the apple on the upper left-hand corner, scrolled to System Preferences “Two weeks,” Bryant told Cheyenne.

  I clicked the “Sharing” icon. Turned on “Remote Login” and “File Sharing.”

  Dr. Bryant’s voice drifted down the hall. “If you would excuse me.”

  I memorized his IP address so I could remotely log into his computer. Heard footsteps. Grabbed my notepad and pen.

  Closed his System Preferences.

  Turned.

  He was standing in the doorway. “All set?” he asked.

  I held up the notepad and pen I’d purposely left on his desk a few minutes earlier. “Mission accomplished.”

  After Cheyenne and I were in the car, I promptly started the engine and pulled into the street.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “He was lying.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The coffee.”

  “The coffee?”

  “It smelled like Geisha beans from Hacienda la Esmeralda’s farms in Panama, one of the world’s rarest and most expensive coffees.” “You identified the coffee by its smell?”

  “Well, that and the fact that I saw the bag while I was on the phone looking around the kitchen, but that’s not the point. The point is: he doesn’t own a thermos.”

  She blinked. “He doesn’t own a thermos?”

  “Nope. Or a travel mug-or if he does, he’s hiding them really well. And he made twelve cups. OK, now this is just my gut reaction, but I doubt that someone who buys one hundred dollar per pound coffee would brew that many cups at once unless he was expecting someone. A coffee connoisseur brews small pots to keep his cups fresh. And it was percolating when I walked in, so I don’t think he was about to go mountain biking.”

  “Did you just say your gut reaction? And here I was, thinking you were the guy who doesn’t trust his instincts.”

  “I don’t,” I said. “That’s why we’re circling around the block.”

  “So he lied about going mountain biking,” she said. “Do you think that matters?”

  “Everything matters.”