The Knight pbf-3

by Steven James

  • Found out my unlisted phone number.

  As I examined the list, I recalled Tessa’s comments about the Dacoits: to find them, the Indian authorities evaluated the most likely travel routes, studied land use patterns, and compared those with the proximity of the crimes to reduce the suspect pool.

  Yes, reduce my suspect pool.

  I still hadn’t had a chance to follow up on Jake’s surprisingly cogent suggestion that the killer might have access to the Federal Digital Database, so now I logged in and pulled up the access directory for all federal, state, and local government employees in the city.

  Denver trails only Washington DC for the highest number of federal employees in a U.S. city, and I ended up with a huge list: 21,042 names.

  But the list shrank exponentially with each of the search criteria I added: male, Caucasian, height between 5'10" and 6'2", weight between 175-190 pounds. Then I weighted the search with consideration to military or medical background, previous convictions, forensic and hand-to-hand training, inclusion on the suspect list, or residential or work addresses in one of the four hot zones.

  I might have landed on the list myself if I were an inch shorter, but as it was, I ended up with fifty-one names.

  Finally, I cross-checked those names against the flight manifests to and from airports in the Chicago vicinity on Thursday and Friday. I came up empty with that, but as I looked over the list again, I did recognize some of the fifty-one names: two dispatch personnel, six police officers, including Officer Jameson, the man who’d researched the owner to Bearcroft Mine, and Lance Rietlin, the young resident from the medical examiner’s office who’d led me and Cheyenne to the morgue.

  Lancaster Cowler had mentioned that someone from the ME’s office had accessed the 911 transcriptions. That’s where Lance worked. He was also one of the three people who’d responded when Cheyenne had intercommed for help in the morgue.

  I uploaded the list to the online case files and emailed a copy of it to Cheyenne, asking her to follow up on all of the names, specifically on Rietlin.

  Then the flight attendant announced that we were beginning our final descent to the Denver International Airport, and as the seat belt sign went on, I folded up my computer and got ready to go to work.

  Over the last four hours, Giovanni had taken one man and one woman to his self-storage unit against their will. However, since then he’d had to follow up on some work-related business and was only now able to slip back to check on them.

  He found that they were both still secure. Still alive.

  Good. He would return later tonight to take care of that.

  Before leaving the storage unit, he made sure that his duffel bag was packed with all the necessary items and checked the temperature of the warming pad: 84 degrees.

  Perfect. He placed the pad on the backseat of his car, laid the cloth bag containing his three remaining rattlesnakes on top of it, locked the storage unit, and went to find Amy Lynn.

  98

  4:40 p.m.

  “Well?” Tessa said.

  “Just chill,” Dora replied, her mouth thick with gum. “I’m looking.” Earlier in the day, Martha had removed the diary from Tessa’s trash can but had returned it to her when she’d asked for it after school.

  Now, as Tessa waited As Patiently As Humanly Possible for Dora to find her dad’s last name, she twisted and untwisted the sides of the Rubik’s Cube, solving it twice-but it didn’t count because she had her eyes open.

  After five more minutes of waiting, Tessa asked again, “Anything?”

  “I’m going as fast as I can, but it’s hard. Your mom didn’t use last names.”

  I already told you that!

  “I know,” Tessa moaned. “Like I said before, don’t look so much at what she wrote. More the other stuff. The letters. The postcards. The things she glued in there.”

  “I am,” Dora snapped, in a tone of voice Tessa had never heard her friend use.

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah. I know. It’s just, I’m doing my best, OK?”

  A moment of uncomfortable silence crawled through the room.

  Finally, Tessa said, “I read your story last night.”

  “My story?”

  “The one about your name. Pandora’s Box. I should have read it before, way earlier, I know. But anyway, you were right. I thought it would end with some kind of plague or infection or something, but it doesn’t.”

  Dora looked up from the diary. “So, you know what the last thing out of the box was?”

  “Yes,” Tessa said. “It was hope.”

  Dora started slowly thumbing through the diary again.

  “I like how it begs her to let it out, and finally when she does. ..”

  But Dora had stopped flipping pages and was staring at the diary.

  “What?” Tessa asked.

  Her friend was silent.

  “What is it?” Tessa dropped the cube and crawled across the bed toward her friend. “What did you find?”

  Dora answered by handing the diary to her, and Tessa saw the postcard pasted onto the page:

  Christie,

  Found your address online. I still think of you.

  I hope you’re well.

  – Paul

  It’d been postmarked just three years earlier and sent to the address in New York City where Tessa and her mom had lived before they ever met Patrick.

  And it included a handwritten return address: P. Lansing, 1682 Hennepin Avenue East, Minneapolis, MN 55431.

  Suddenly, everything about her dad seemed more real than ever. He was an actual person who lived at an actual address on a specific date.

  Your last name should have been Lansing.

  Tessa Lansing.

  Tessa Lansing.

  Tessa Bernice Lansing.

  She read the note again. It was too brief to really tell her anything-except that Paul Lansing had never really gotten over her mom. Quietly, half to herself, half to her friend, Tessa said, “He doesn’t say anything about me.”

  Dora chewed her gum squishily for a moment, then took it out and stuck it to a piece of crumpled paper in the trash. “Maybe he doesn’t know about you.”

  “What?” Tessa watched Dora shove the trash can away from the bed. “What do you mean? When she was pregnant he wrote to her asking-”

  “No, I know all that. I mean, what if he didn’t know you were even born?”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Why not?” Dora asked.

  “I don’t know, it’s just-he had to.”

  A slight pause. “Did your mom ever actually say that he was the one who moved away?”

  Tessa let the diary slide from her fingers and land on the pillow beside her. “Are you saying my mom did instead?”

  Dora shrugged. “Sure, I don’t know. Why not?” She was unwrapping a fresh piece of gum. “I mean, she was scared and didn’t want him in her life. Maybe she just packed up and left to start over somewhere else.”

  It seemed unbelievable.

  But also, not so unbelievable.

  Paul wanted to help raise you. If he knew you were alive, he would have come to be with you, especially after Mom died.

  But as Tessa thought about it, she realized that she couldn’t remember her mother ever telling her outright that her dad was the one who’d moved away from them. Maybe she’d just assumed that he “So, now what?” Dora was chewing again.

  Tessa’s racing, quivering heart made it hard to think, hard to consider her options. “I don’t know.”

  Maybe she could just pretend that she hadn’t found the memory box or the diary or Paul’s letter and his postcard, and just go on with life like none of this had ever happened.

  Yeah, right. As if that would work.

  On the other hand… Tessa stared at the postcard. The address.

  She grabbed her school backpack, pulled out her laptop, and flipped it open.

  “Wait.” Dora scooted closer to her. “You’re not thinking-�
��

  “Yeah,” Tessa said, “I am.”

  Martha didn’t have wireless, but one of the neighbors did, and Tessa was able to jump onto their network. She clicked to an online white pages site and typed Paul Lansing’s name in the search box.

  Pressed “enter.”

  99

  As soon as the plane landed, I slid out my cell.

  I needed to connect with Cheyenne to follow up on any leads generated by the list of fifty-one names, however, I didn’t like the fact that John had left a note for me at the crime scene earlier in the day. So, before heading out to spend the rest of the night tracking him, I wanted to make sure that Tessa and my mother were safe.

  Maybe if Cheyenne could meet me at my parents’ house I could kill two birds with one stone.

  I punched in her number, but the line was busy. So I left a voicemail asking her to meet me, ASAP. Then I told her the address, and before I ended the call, I thanked her for the pendant and assured her that my testimony had gone fine.

  Which was true, whether or not justice ended up being carried out.

  A few minutes later as we were taxiing to our gate, the phone vibrated and I thought it might be Cheyenne returning my call, but when I answered it, I found myself talking to Dr. Eric Bender.

  “Oh,” he said, “I must have punched the wrong number. I thought this was Tessa’s phone.”

  “I’m borrowing it for the time being.”

  “Well, hey, now that I’ve got you on the line, Pat. The reason I called-I need to do another autopsy tonight-an unrelated case, but Dora isn’t answering her cell. The thing is… I don’t want her home alone. Not with John still at large. I just… I’m worried.”

  I completely understood his concern.

  The pilot maneuvered the plane into the gate.

  “You know that my wife is out of town for the week. Well, Dora went over to be with Tessa after school; I just wanted to ask if she could stay over there tonight. I don’t think I can get out of here until 10:30 or 11:00. I can swing by and pick her up if I get off early-”

  “No need. She’ll be fine. Tessa’s at my mom’s; the girls can stay there. Two officers are watching the house.” The seat belt light went off. I stood. Collected my things. “In fact, I’m on my way to check on them right now. Just one quick question. Your resident, Lance Rietlin, was he working with you on Saturday afternoon?”

  “Yeah. We were at the hospital together until almost six. Why?”

  Then he couldn’t have been at the ranch. He couldn’t be John.

  Dead end.

  “Just checking up on everyone involved in the case.” All the passengers were deplaning. I joined the pack.

  “Well,” he said. “I’ll let you know if my plans for tonight change. And can you have Dora give me a call when you see her?”

  “Sure. Talk to you soon.”

  I hung up, exited the plane, escaped the terminal.

  And headed to my car.

  As Amy Lynn Greer turned her car onto her street, she couldn’t help but smile.

  Since meeting with the FBI profiler-and digitally recording their conversation-she’d spent a few hours writing, drove to Evergreen to get a look at Sebastian Taylor’s house for herself, and then talked with two literary agents in New York who were both interested in representing her-well, her and her coauthor.

  And since she’d been careful to keep her Blackberry turned off for most of the day and had an older model car with no GPS, she’d enjoyed the freedom of being alone and not being followed everywhere by a cop or an FBI agent. Still, she knew Reggie would be incensed that she’d slipped away from him. It was time to get home. Kiss and make up.

  But as she approached the house she saw that his car wasn’t there.

  Hmm.

  He might be out looking for her. How sweet.

  Well, once she got in the house she could see if he’d left a note for her, and if not, just check her voicemail. She turned on her Blackberry. Punched the garage door opener.

  Cruised inside.

  And then closed the door.

  Tessa hadn’t found any Paul Lansings in Minneapolis, Minnesota, so she’d expanded her search and eventually came up with eighty-two of them scattered throughout the country.

  She knew that her mom had attended college with her dad, so it was easy to see that in each of the cases, either the length of time the men had spent at their current address or their date of birth or the universities they’d attended precluded them from being her father.

  Finally, after the last one didn’t pan out, she let out a frustrated sigh.

  Dora was tweaking her hair. “Nothing, huh?”

  “No.”

  “So what now?”

  Tessa sighed. “I don’t know. It doesn’t look like he’s anywhere online, and it’s not like you can just erase your personal history. Once something gets posted on the Internet… You know.”

  Dora shrugged. “Could he have moved out of the country or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  For a moment, Dora found a way to chew her gum silently. “You don’t think, maybe, I mean… you know.”

  “What?”

  “You know, that he, um… well… that he died.”

  That was something Tessa hadn’t allowed herself to consider. “I don’t know,” she said softly. As she thought about that, she noticed that Dora had stopped working on her hair and was just staring blankly into the mirror.

  She gave Tessa a smile, but her eyes betrayed her.

  “What’s wrong?” Tessa asked her.

  “I was just thinking about him dying and I thought about… well… ”

  “Hannah.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Seriously, Dora. You have to stop beating yourself up about all that. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Dora was quiet.

  “You sent a text message. That’s it. That’s all you did. It was the other girl, the babysitter. She’s the one who left the baby alone

  …” Tessa could see this wasn’t helping, and going on describing everything would probably only make things worse. But before she could think of anything better to say, or consider the dark possibility of her father’s death anymore, she heard the front door pop open, and Patrick calling, “Tessa? Dora? You girls in here?”

  She and Patrick had been through enough hard times together, enough weird stepdaughter/stepfather stuff already. The last thing she needed right now was for him to find out she was looking for her real dad without discussing it with him first.

  She closed the webpage and then yelled down the stairs, “We’re up here.”

  Amy Lynn stepped into the kitchen and set her purse on the table.

  And saw a black duffel bag on the floor, next to the refrigerator.

  What in the-?

  But the footsteps behind her cut her off mid-thought.

  “Hello, Amy Lynn.” She knew the voice and spun and saw a man in a black ski mask. “Welcome to Day Four.”

  She gasped, couldn’t believe who it was, but before she could say a word, before she could move out of the way, he struck her, hard, in the face, and the world went dark.

  The door to Tessa’s room was half open and she could vaguely overhear Patrick opening and closing doors downstairs. He spoke with Martha for a moment, although it was too mumbly to catch what he was saying. Then he came pounding up the stairs and knocked once as he pressed her door all the way open. “Hey, Tessa. Dora.” His eyes scanned the room. He walked over and looked in the closet.

  “You girls all right?”

  OK, so that was a weird question. “Why wouldn’t we be?” she said. She folded her laptop shut. Dora tucked her legs under her on the bed. Tapped her finger anxiously against a pillow.

  “No reason.” Patrick looked like he was trying to figure out what to say next. He crossed the room toward the window. “Your exams go OK?”

  Tessa shrugged. “I guess so. But I might not get an A in chemistry. Just so you know.”


  “Well, that’ll be good for you. A little variety.” He stared intently at the street.

  “Way to steer me toward mediocrity.”

  “Anything I can do to help. Just a sec.” He left the room. The doors on the second floor opened and closed, then he returned and addressed Dora. “Hey, your dad called me. He said he needs to take care of a few things tonight and asked if you could stay here until tomorrow.”

  “Stay here?”

  “Yes. He wanted you to give him a call.”

  Dora looked a little concerned. She pulled out her cell and elbowed past Patrick, who watched her for just a second and then looked back at Tessa.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “It’s OK. Everything’s OK.” She could tell he was trying hard to find the right words before continuing. “Are you feeling better? I mean after yesterday, with the diary and everything?”

  “Yeah, of course.” This was definitely not the time to get into all that. “How was the trial?”

  His eyes found the Rubik’s Cube sitting on the bed.

  I didn’t want to talk about the trial.

  I picked up the cube.

  None of the sides were completed, so it didn’t look like Tessa had made much progress. “These things are pretty tough, huh?”

  “I do all right. You didn’t answer my question about the trial.”

  “It went about as well as I expected.” I moved the cube through a few turns then handed it to her. “Show me.”

  She accepted it, flipped it around in her hands, studied it, and then quickly twisted the sides until, only a few seconds later, two of them were solved.

  “That’s great. Good job.”

  “It’s only two sides. Besides, I was cheating. Are they gonna put him away?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How were you cheating?”

  Her expression told me that I’d just asked the stupidest question of the week. “I had my eyes open.”

  “Oh, OK… and?”

  “There are these kids on YouTube who can do it blindfolded.”

  “Wow.” I took the cube from her again. Scrutinized it. I could hardly believe anyone could solve it blindfolded, unless he’d memorized the pattern of turns. “So have you ever solved the whole thing?”