The Knight pbf-3

by Steven James

  Her leg bumped into one of her dresses and she heard the hanger rattling on the bar above her.

  And she realized how she could get away.

  A puzzle with so many pieces.

  Who could have found Sebastian Taylor? Who could have worked with Grant Sikora to plan Basque’s assassination? Who could have known the response times and the fact that I was on the task force? Who had access to my unlisted phone number and to I opened my eyes. “That’s it.”

  Cheyenne furrowed her brows. “What’s it?”

  If I was right, the killer had been right under my nose the whole time. And he had the perfect alibi-but I couldn’t be sure yet. There was one more thing I needed to check.

  I calculated the time difference between Denver and DC and realized that Angela Knight would still be at her desk at cybercrime.

  “Pat, talk to me,” Cheyenne said. I could tell she was getting frustrated.

  “Let me check with cybercrime first, but I think I might know who John is.”

  103

  I used Cheyenne’s phone, dialed Angela’s number.

  Janie was still scrolling through the fifty-one DMV photos.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Angela picked up. “Hello. This is Special Agent-”

  “Angela. It’s Pat.”

  “Oh, I just sent you the address.”

  “What address?”

  “For Paul Lansing.”

  I blinked. “Angela, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Six minutes ago you sent me an email request for a locate on Paul Lansing, formerly of Minneapolis, Minnesota.”

  A rising uneasiness. “I didn’t send you a request.”

  “It came from your computer.”

  A request for Paul Lansing? From my computer?

  You left your computer at your parents’ house, Pat!

  Paul… from Minneapolis…

  Tessa must have found an old address for her dad.

  A mixture of anger and a strange kind of loneliness shot through me. “Angela, you said you already replied?”

  “Yes.” Her confusion had shifted to concern. “What’s going on?” This can wait. Find John.

  “I’ll explain later, just don’t send me any more emails until I call you back. For now, pull up those audio files I sent you earlier. I’m wondering about the caller’s location.”

  “I told you before, I wasn’t able to get a lock on-”

  “I know, I know, but can you isolate the background sound on the first call? Separate the audio tracks from the two sides of the conversation, analyze them individually? Can you do that?”

  “Sure.” But she sounded a little reluctant. “Just a sec.”

  Amy Lynn struggled against the ropes binding her hands behind her back, trying, trying to reach another dress. If she could just get hold of a wire hanger, she could use the hooked end to work at the knots.

  But even though she’d managed to pull down five dresses so far, no hangers had dropped to the floor.

  She heard her captor dragging a body into the bedroom.

  Hurry! You need to hurry!

  She leaned as far to the right as she could and grabbed one more dress.

  Tugged. Rolled.

  It slumped to the floor.

  And this time the hanger fell with it, bouncing off her shoulder and landing on the carpet beside her face.

  After only a few seconds, I heard Angela mumble, “That’s odd,” and when she said those two words I knew what she’d found.

  “The ambient noise,” I said. “It’s from both sides of the conversation, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. But that would mean that the first anonymous tip-”

  “Was placed from inside the dispatch office.”

  “But that’s…”

  “Yes.”

  “Here!” Janie tapped the phone. “This is the guy.” She turned the phone so Cheyenne and I could see the photo. “I saw him come in with that reporter a bunch of times.”

  Even before I looked at the picture I already knew who she was pointing at-Ari Ryman, the ex-Marine who’d played the audio tapes for us in the dispatch office.

  The Day Four Killer.

  104

  I handed Cheyenne her phone. “Quick. Call HQ, see if Ari Ryman is there.”

  A flood of emotions crossed her face as she looked at Ari’s photo.

  “The guy from dispatch? You think he’s John?”

  “Yes, I do. Please, I’ll explain in a minute.”

  As Cheyenne made the call, I turned to Janie. “You’re sure? The reporter, she used to come in with that man?”

  “Yeah,” she lowered her voice. “I think they might have been having an affair. You work here long enough, you watch people, you can usually tell when two people are… you know.”

  I let my thoughts fly through the facts that had led me to suspect Ari: as an EMS dispatcher he would have had access to my unlisted phone number, known the task force members’ names and our response time, and been able to pull up information about the hospital and the morgue; he was an ex-Marine.

  He would have learned hand-to-hand combat.

  The call came from inside the dispatch office.

  And he hung out with Amy Lynn Greer at Rachel’s Cafe, the place where the killer apparently hunted for his victims.

  Cheyenne pocketed her cell. “Ari Ryman never came back to work after lunch today.”

  I looked around Rachel’s Cafe again, trying to figure out where he might be.

  He comes in here with Amy Lynn. He sent her the note: “Must needs we tell of others’ tears? Please, Mrs. Greer, have a heart.

  – John.”

  I spun. Faced Cheyenne. “Is Amy Lynn still at the safe house?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She tapped at her cell again.

  I thanked Janie for her help, pocketed Tessa’s phone, and was turning to leave when Cheyenne exclaimed, “Amy Lynn left the safe house last night. The GPS for her Blackberry is at her home address, 7881 East 8th Avenue.”

  “C’mon.” I ran for the door. “She’s next. The killer wants her to have a heart.”

  Yes!

  Amy Lynn finally managed to grab the hanger.

  Frantically, she twisted the wire tip and went to work at the ropes.

  We climbed into the car.

  So many thoughts-I was furious at Tessa, determined to catch Ari, dreading what might have happened to Amy Lynn Greer and her husband.

  No, Pat. In his note at Bryant’s house, the killer said he was going to tell the last three stories tonight, after you returned to Denver. So they might still be alive I fired up the engine. “Cheyenne, get some cars to the Greer house-”

  “Already on it.” She had her phone to her ear.

  And I squealed the car into the street.

  Giovanni removed the shirt of the unconscious man and placed it beside him on the bed. Then he picked up the scalpel.

  The candles flickered beside him.

  He could hear Amy Lynn squirming in the closet, and he paused for a moment to listen to her. Carrying the scalpel, he crossed the room, opened the closet door, and found that she’d pulled half a dozen dresses onto the floor. She’d managed to get hold of a hanger and was trying to use the tip of the wire to work her hands free.

  “I’m impressed,” he said. “Really, I am. That was a good idea. Keep working on that. I’ll be back in a few minutes to check on you. Let’s see how far you get.”

  He returned to the bed, positioned the scalpel’s blade against the man’s bare chest, and was just about to press down when he heard Detective Warren call for dispatch to send two squads to 7881 East 8th Avenue.

  Giovanni stopped.

  They’d found him. They were coming.

  So.

  He looked at the man on the bed, then at the blade in his hand.

  A change of plans.

  He set down the scalpel and went to remove Amy Lynn from the closet.

  “Two squads are on their
way to her house,” Cheyenne said. “Now, fill me in.”

  In a handful of seconds I summarized the hypotheses that had led me to suspect Ari.

  Cheyenne listened. Tracked with me, then shook her head. “But motive? What’s his motive?”

  “We’ll ask him when we find him.”

  So many sides of the cube to lock into place. It was hard to prioritize. I could think of at least four people we needed to call immediately.

  I took us around a corner so fast I almost lost control. “Cheyenne, make some calls for me, OK?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Try to get a hold of Reggie and Amy Lynn. Tell her to report immediately to the FBI field office, not police headquarters. Her life’s in grave danger.”

  I still couldn’t believe that Tessa had used my computer to email the FBI’s cybercrime division to look for her dad. She should have just asked me for help. Not gone behind my back.

  I definitely needed to calm down before talking with her. Sort out what to say.

  So I didn’t call her, but I did call dispatch. “Tell the officers who are watching the house to go inside, confiscate my computer, and stay with the girls.”

  A slight hesitancy. “Yes, sir.”

  I shot through a red light and merged onto I-25.

  Amy Lynn lay in the trunk of her own car.

  The man had freed her legs, but her hands were still tied behind her back. She was still gagged.

  They were backing down the driveway.

  She heard the garage door rattle shut, and as the car rolled into the street, in a moment of dark and ironic clarity, she realized that unless she somehow found a way to escape, she was going to end up as nothing more than a chapter in someone else’s book.

  And it would be the story of a lifetime.

  Hers.

  The car accelerated.

  She didn’t care if the gag and the sound of the engine stifled her cries, Amy Lynn kicked against the trunk’s latch as hard as she could.

  And screamed.

  Amy Lynn Greer wasn’t answering her cell, but Cheyenne did reach Reggie. They spoke for a few moments, then she filled me in: that morning, after discovering that Amy Lynn had left the house, he’d dropped his son off at day care and gone looking for her.

  “He told me that he didn’t put out an APB on her because he wanted to find her himself, to protect her. That he was embarrassed he’d let her out of his sight.”

  I smacked the steering wheel with my hand. “That’s just great.”

  I accelerated. Slid into the left lane.

  “This afternoon he got a GPS lock on her Blackberry. Apparently she placed a call to New York City while she was near Sebastian Taylor’s house, so he drove up there to look for her, but she was gone. About twenty minutes ago he received a text message from her that she was at home. He’s on his way there, but he’s still a good fifteen minutes out.”

  We called Jake, filled him in; I thought of calling Kurt, but he was still in Breckenridge trying to salvage his marriage, so we gave a shout to his boss, Captain Terrell, instead. Cheyenne told him, “We think it’s Ari Ryman,” and something caught in my memory.

  I began to mumble, “Ari… hurry… Ari… hurry.”

  A couple seconds later, Cheyenne ended the call to Terrell and stared at me. “Are you all right?”

  “He didn’t say ‘hurry.’”

  She shook her head. “Who didn’t say hurry?”

  “On Friday when Grant Sikora was dying, I told him the paramedics were coming and I asked him who’d gotten him the gun. He answered, ‘Hurry… You have to get… hurry…’”

  She connected the dots: “You’re thinking he said, ‘Ari. You have to get Ari.’”

  “I can’t be certain, but yes. I think he was giving me a name, not asking for help.”

  “Considering everything we know now, that would make sense,”

  Cheyenne said.

  Yes, it would.

  In fact, too much sense.

  If Grant had said Ari’s name, that changed everything.

  “Cheyenne, I want to see the work schedules from last week. We’re looking for anyone who’s had anything to do with this case.

  Police officers, detectives, CSU members, also hospital staff and medical examiner’s personnel. Call Baptist Memorial and police headquarters; have human resources upload them to the online case files-”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking I don’t want to jump to conclusions. I have a theory. I’m hoping I can prove myself wrong.” I flashed past two cars that had to be going at least seventy-five.

  We would be at the Greer house in less than four minutes.

  On the way to police headquarters, Giovanni radioed dispatch to requisition a task force helicopter and a pilot for Special Agent Bowers.

  Almost no one else could have convinced them as quickly and easily as he did to clear the chopper. “Colonel Freeman is on call here at the station,” they told him. “He’ll be waiting for you on the helipad.”

  “Thank you.”

  End call.

  Though Giovanni hadn’t expected things to play out quite like this, he’d planned for a number of contingencies and he was pre-pared: he had a police department ID badge with him so that he could enter the staff parking garage underneath headquarters. From there, he would take Amy Lynn up the service elevator to the he-lipad on the roof.

  And fly to the mine.

  Tessa knew she was in deep trouble.

  A little while ago as she and Dora were waiting for the reply from the cybercrime people, Dora had paged through the rest of the diary, and just about the time she was finishing, the two dopey cops who’d supposedly been protecting the house for the last couple days had come in, taken Patrick’s computer from the bedroom, made Dora and her join them downstairs in the living room, and now, they weren’t letting either of the girls leave the room or make any calls.

  Patrick must have found out about the message she’d sent.

  Which meant it was too late to erase it before he saw it.

  Which meant she was dead meat.

  Especially since she’d read the reply from FBI headquarters just before the cops arrived.

  We were close.

  Two minutes, maybe less.

  Cheyenne lowered her phone and cursed. “HQ says they’ll have the work schedules posted ‘within the hour.’”

  “Within the hour? We don’t have-”

  “I know,” she said between gritted teeth. “I know.”

  What else? What else?

  The timing of Thomas Bennett’s death… the flight schedules. .. the time Brigitte Marcello bought the Chinese food… the candles in the mine had been burning for two hours…

  I was deep in thought when the phone rang, jarring me. Kurt’s caller ID came up and I answered it, heard static, then my name. “Pat, the -aptain called.” His voice cut out. “I -eard what’s going on.”

  “Take a left here,” Cheyenne shouted.

  I bounced over the curb, then pounded the gas.

  “Listen, Kurt.” I knew there was spotty reception in Brecken-ridge, but I hoped he’d be able to catch what I was saying. “The tire impressions we found two weeks ago from Sebastian Taylor’s car. Who processed them?”

  “What?”

  “The tire tracks. Who did you send to investigate them?”

  “-eggie.”

  Reggie Greer.

  “There!” Cheyenne called. “Turn right. Four houses down.”

  No sirens.

  No flashing lights.

  The patrol cars should be here by now!

  Kurt said something I couldn’t make out.

  “Did the Denver News do a story on Hannah’s death?” I said.

  “Did they do an article?”

  “Ye-”

  “Who interviewed you?”

  He lowered his voice. “I’m here wi- Cheryl, I can’t… I’m -osing you.”

  “Was it Amy Lynn Greer?”

&
nbsp; “-es.”

  “You and Cheryl are in danger, Kurt-”

  “I’ll -all you back.”

  “Kurt!”

  Then nothing. I slammed the phone against the dash.

  We arrived at the Greer house.

  I jumped out of the car, drew my SIG, and ran toward the porch.

  105

  Brown.

  Stucco.

  Two story.

  Around us, twilight in the city.

  Cheyenne flared to the right. “I’ll get the back.”

  No cars in the driveway. The house was dark.

  “Watch for snakes,” I yelled.

  “Got it!”

  Onto the porch. I tried the doorknob.

  Unlocked.

  I pressed open the door, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other.

  “Reggie? Amy Lynn?”

  Silence.

  I swept the beam of light across the living room. Scanned for rattlers. Saw none.

  Steady, Pat. Steady.

  Assess and respond.

  Then I heard the squeak of another door and Cheyenne’s voice calling for Amy Lynn. A flashlight beam cut through the dining room. I shouted out my location; Cheyenne acknowledged, and I edged into the kitchen.

  No one. A few baking pans beside the stove. The oven light was on.

  It’d been preset to 450 degrees.

  The temperature gauge flipped to 440 as I approached.

  Story number nine: he kills the woman’s lover, cuts out his heart, and then feeds it to her for dinner.

  A deep tremor. Primal dread.

  I didn’t want to look in the oven, but I knew I had to. I surveyed the room one more time.

  Reached for the oven door. Prepared myself.

  Opened it.

  Empty.

  Thank God.

  A quick glance at the countertops, the sink. No dirty dishes. No blood. No meat.

  It looked like John had turned on the oven but hadn’t had a chance to finish his tale.

  “He might still be here!” I called to Cheyenne.

  I closed the oven. Shut off the heat.

  Cheyenne yelled from the end of the hall. “Pat. In here.”

  She sounded concerned but not in danger, so I took a few seconds to make sure each room was clear as I moved down the hallway to join her.

  No people; no snakes.