The Knight pbf-3

by Steven James

  She offered me a half smile.

  She’d left the door slightly ajar. Behind her I could see the front doors of the hospital.

  “Thanks for getting me out of that mine,” I said. She was still holding my arm.

  “I told you I’d come back for you.”

  Her words brought to mind the comments I’d made as I was awakening in the ambulance. I’d been mumbling Lien-hua’s name, that I was glad she’d come back. That I needed her.

  Gently, I removed Cheyenne hand from my arm. “Cheyenne, when I woke up in the ambulance, I thought that you were someone else.”

  “Lien-hua.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s all right. I know. You were groggy.”

  I searched for the best way to balance honesty with sensitivity. Obviously, I liked both her and Lien-hua, but I felt like I needed to be straight with her. To tell her everything.

  Cheyenne must have sensed that I was struggling with what to say. “Really, Pat. It’s all right. I understand. You don’t have to explain.”

  Here’s where things got tricky. “Well… you see… maybe I do.”

  Silence.

  “Oh,” she said softly. Her tone mirrored the distance that was already stretching between us. “I see.”

  “Listen, maybe I just need some time to sort out my feelings.”

  “Right, sure, that makes sense.”

  Her voice was breaking, a thin crack ran through every word.

  She’s as lonely as you are, and you hurt her.

  You hurt her.

  I wanted to take her in my arms, to hold her, to tell her I was sorry, but I knew that if I did, it would be a way of making a promise that my heart wasn’t ready to keep.

  “Cheyenne, this is really-”

  “Can you tell me one thing, Pat. Please?”

  “Of course.”

  “Over the last year I’ve asked you out more than once and the timing was never right-and I understood all that, but…” She took a gentle breath. “Is there a chance it ever will be?”

  Oh man.

  This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. “Cheyenne, you’re an amazing woman and I… I mean, if I wasn’t-”

  But she cut me off by holding up her hand. “No, that’s good. That’s enough.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Please. Don’t be. The truth,” she said softly, “it suits you.”

  In the moment that followed, our eyes said good-bye and I felt helpless, trapped by my feelings toward these two women who both seemed, in different ways, to be out of reach: Lien-hua, because of my past. Cheyenne, because of Lien-hua.

  Then through the doorway, I saw Tessa and my mother entering the emergency room.

  “Maybe we can talk more about this later,” I said.

  Cheyenne turned to see who I was looking at. “That’s OK. I think we’ve talked about it enough.” Her voice carried no animosity, and for some reason that only made me feel worse.

  Before I could respond, she stepped away and flagged down Tessa, then she disappeared around the corner and my mother and stepdaughter hurried to meet me in the exam room.

  And I realized it was time to talk to Tessa about her father.

  115

  My head still ached, but other than that I felt passable, so after assuring my mother that I was all right, I asked her to wait in the lobby for a few moments to give me and Tessa a chance to talk.

  She didn’t look convinced that I was OK. “They told us a boulder fell on your head.”

  “A small boulder,” I said.

  She smiled in a careful, concerned way. “All right, but we’re not leaving this hospital until a doctor looks you over.”

  “Deal.”

  That satisfied her and she left for the lobby as I guided Tessa toward a nurse’s station, where we found out that Calvin was in room

  “Patrick,” Tessa said. “I’m really glad it wasn’t a bigger boulder.”

  “Thank you. That’s kind of you to say.”

  We headed down the hall and I was about to bring up the cy-bercrime email when she mentioned she’d seen Detective Warren leaving my room. “I recognized that look on her face.”

  “What look?”

  “Please.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. “Tessa, I wanted to talk with you about-”

  “So, pretty much: boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Boy loses girl. The end.”

  I held back a small sigh. “Pretty much.”

  “What kind of a story is that, anyway?”

  The story of my life.

  “I guess sometimes things don’t work out like you hope.” It was all I could think to say.

  “Is Detective Warren what you were hoping for?”

  Definitely time to change the subject. “So you’re looking for your father?”

  She took a few steps before answering. “My last name should have been Lansing.”

  “Did you read the email from the cybercrime division?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want to meet him?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  A terrible whirlwind of emotions blew through me. Even though Tessa wasn’t my daughter, it felt like she was, and it stung to hear her words. But even though I had serious reservations about this man, I said, “OK.”

  “OK?”

  “If Paul Lansing is your father, your real father, you have every right to meet him.” How to put this. There really was no delicate way. “But…”

  We passed room 123.

  “But?”

  “Do you remember how you felt yesterday when you found out your mother struggled with the decision about whether or not to have an-”

  “Abortion. Yeah. I remember.”

  I took a small breath. “Have you thought about the possibility that Mr. Lansing doesn’t…”

  “What? That he doesn’t love me? Doesn’t want anything to do with me?”

  “It’s possible,” I said.

  Room 127. Calvin’s room lay just ahead.

  She worked her jaw back and forth for a moment, then said, “I just want to know the truth. I mean, he is my father.” Then she looked my way. “You understand, right?”

  A moment of awkward silence. “Yes. I do.”

  We arrived at Calvin’s room, I pressed open the door and saw him lying on the bed. A doctor I didn’t recognize was reading his charts. Jake Vanderveld stood beside the bed.

  Calvin wasn’t moving, and I feared the worst. “What do we know?”

  The doctor looked my direction. “He’s stable, but he still hasn’t regained consciousness.”

  Tessa had met Calvin a few times, and I noticed a cloud of worry on her face. “Is he all right?”

  “Can you wait with my mother?” I said. “We’ll talk more in a minute, OK?”

  She was still eyeing Calvin.

  “Tessa, go sit with Martha. I’ll be there in a little bit.”

  She finally backed into the hall but then looked at me. “You meant it, though, right? That I could meet my dad? It wasn’t just-”

  “I meant it. We’ll set it up, I promise. Now, please.” I gestured toward the waiting room.

  After one more lingering glance at Calvin, Tessa left.

  And I pulled the doctor aside to tell him that his patient was dying.

  116

  I explained to the doctor that I didn’t know what Calvin’s condition was, but that Special Agent Ralph Hawkins did. I gave him Ralph’s number and he immediately left the room to make the call.

  I went to Calvin’s side. My mentor. My friend. He looked so old and frail.

  “So it was Kurt?” Jake said.

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  “Amazing. You knew him all this time and yet never suspected a thing.”

  “It’s hard to know people.” I felt a knot of tension in my chest.

  “To really know them. What they’re capable of.”

  “That is true, Pat. That’s a good observation.”

/>   Jake took a slow breath, then went on. “They found the priest. That man and the woman, too, in the storage unit. They’re all OK. Looks like we got to them all in time.”

  It was nice to hear some good news.

  My attention shifted back to Calvin. I had so many questions: How did he know to go to the Greers’ house? Why did he call me from police headquarters? What evidence led him to suspect that Richard Basque was innocent?

  I’d seen Calvin taking notes at the trial. Maybe his notebook would give me some answers.

  His clothes and personal items were in the chair beside the nightstand. I walked to them.

  “Her laptop is missing,” Jake said abruptly.

  “Excuse me?”

  I didn’t see Calvin’s notebook, but I found a slip of paper in his pants pocket.

  “Amy Lynn Greer’s,” Jake said. “It looks like she was the one who posted the article online. But it’s hard to tell for sure because her laptop computer is missing.”

  Calvin had written Dr. Renee Lebreau’s name and phone number on the piece of paper-she was the law professor at Michigan State University who’d found the DNA discrepancies that had led to Basque’s trial. The sheet also contained a cryptic message: H814b Patricia E.

  I had no idea what it meant.

  Another mystery.

  I memorized the information and returned the paper to its place.

  “You ask me,” Jake said, “Kurt took it. Destroyed it.”

  I couldn’t understand why we were even having this conversation about the computer. “Well, maybe we’ll find something on her digital voice recorder.” I didn’t find any other answers to my questions in Calvin’s things, so I returned to his side.

  Jake’s demeanor shifted. Cooled. “Her what?”

  “I saw a voice recorder in her purse when I was at the house.”

  Jake seemed to be internally debating something.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He checked his watch and stood. “I have to go. Captain Terrell and I have a press conference coming up.” He patted my shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, Pat. I’ll make sure everyone knows how much you helped us with the case.”

  The more I spoke with Jake, the more my headache returned.

  “Please,” I said, “don’t bother. Just tell them the truth-that we never would have solved it without your profile.”

  “Thanks, Pat. That means a lot.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  After Jake left, I sat in silence for a few minutes beside Calvin. Then, I said softly, “We got him. We got Kurt.”

  In his current state I didn’t know if Calvin could hear me, but I added, “And I told the truth today. On the stand. I don’t know if it was the best thing to do, but I’m glad I did it. We’ll see what happens next.”

  Calvin lay still. Silent.

  A few moments later the doctor returned and told me that he’d just spoken with Calvin’s internal medicine doctor in Chicago.

  “And?”

  “And I’m sorry, but it’s the family’s wish that his condition remain confidential. You’ll have to take it up with them.”

  Not the news I wanted to hear, but this wasn’t the time to argue. I figured I could contact Calvin’s family tomorrow. “I have to go,” I said, “but I need you to call me if his condition changes. You can do that much. That’s not breaking any kind of confidentiality.”

  The doctor nodded. I gave him my office number, quietly told Calvin that I would see him again soon, and then left the room to regroup with Tessa and my mother.

  I checked the time: 10:02 p.m.

  So, unless Ralph had been able to pull a few strings with Internal Affairs, I was officially on administrative leave from the FBI.

  117

  One week later

  A dirt road

  52 miles west of Riverton, Wyoming

  2:51 p.m. Mountain Time

  Our flight had landed two hours ago, and while I drove the rental car toward Paul Lansing’s remote cabin in the mountains, Tessa sat beside me, her eyes closed, trying to solve the Rubik’s Cube that her friend had given her.

  All around us, sunlight cascaded across the Wind River Range, but clouds were moving in.

  We were less than ten minutes from the cabin.

  Over the last week, Angela hadn’t found out anything negative about Paul Lansing. No red flags. And in a strange way, that bothered me. I’d promised Tessa that she could meet him and Angela hadn’t uncovered anything that gave me a reason to break that promise.

  So here we were.

  However, there was no way I was going to leave Tessa alone with Lansing. Not for an instant.

  I watched the clouds gather in the west, and Tessa, with her eyes still closed, said, “Have you heard any more about Dr. Werjonic? Since this morning?”

  She twisted the cube.

  Click. Click.

  “Still no change,” I said.

  Calvin’s family had chosen to keep his illness confidential, and even though I could have gone through some back channels to find out the details, I’d respected their wishes and let that information remain between them and his doctors. The family was furious enough that Ralph had discovered Calvin’s health issues before they had and I didn’t want to disturb the waters any more. Calvin was stable, he was being treated, and they were keeping me informed about his condition. That was enough for now.

  I’d placed a call in to Professor Renee Lebreau to see what H814b Patricia E. might mean, but hadn’t yet heard back from her.

  So, nothing on that front either.

  “Almost there… almost there…” Tessa mumbled, twisting the cube’s sides in quick succession.

  A bit of good news, though: Ralph had managed to expedite the Internal Affairs review and since I hadn’t been with the FBI when I physically assaulted Basque, I’d only ended up with an official reprimand. My first students for the summer arrived in two days.

  “Got it!” Tessa held up the cube. Opened her eyes.

  None of the sides were solved.

  She groaned. “Ugh!” She threw the cube over her shoulder and into the backseat. “It’s impossible! I’m never gonna get that thing!”

  “Don’t feel bad,” I said. “This morning on our flight while I was watching you work on it, I thought about those people on YouTube who solve it blindfolded. I think there might be a secret to it. It’s so obvious that I didn’t even consider it at first.”

  “What secret?”

  “Just start with a solved cube, film someone blindfolding you, then mix up the sides, remove the blindfold, and then play the video backward.”

  A pause. “You’re kidding me.”

  I shrugged. “We can check it out later, but I’ll bet we’ll be able to tell if we watch the videos closely enough.”

  She let her hands drop to her lap. “Oh, that so sucks. I spent all week on that stupid thing.”

  “Well, Raven,” I said. “Sometimes the process of solving a problem is more valuable than coming up with a solution.”

  She stared at me.

  I glanced at her. “What?”

  “Dr. Phil?”

  “What? No. I don’t watch Dr. Phil.”

  “That was so from Dr. Phil.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Oprah then.”

  I looked back at the road. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You just averted eye contact. Ha, it was Oprah. I knew it.”

  I drove for a few moments. “I was channel surfing once. I stumbled across it. I only saw a couple minutes.”

  “Yeah, right.” She tried to say the words sarcastically, but I heard a smile underneath them.

  “It’s still good advice.”

  “It’s not advice. It’s an aphorism.”

  “Right.”

  We arrived at the intersection of Glory View and Eastern Timber Roads.

  To get to Paul Lansing’s house we needed to drive half a mile up Glory View, then jump onto an old
logging road that terminated at his cabin. I slowed down, maybe more than I needed to, hesitated for a moment, then turned onto Glory View.

  Tessa picked up the diary from the floor. Set it on her lap. She fingered it for a moment, then said, “So, ninety minutes. That’s all it took for them to decide?”

  I was slow in replying. I knew this was going to come up, I just didn’t know when. “That’s the way it goes sometimes,” I said. “Some juries don’t need long to deliberate.” The news of this morning’s verdict had been all over the TV screens at the airport. And since my name and face were part of the Richard Basque saga, I’m sure it hadn’t even taken Tessa two seconds to connect the dots.

  “So what happens now? He just goes free? Just like that?”

  Emilio Vandez had filed for a mistrial, but for now the answer to her question was yes. “That’s the way the system works. Mr. Basque was found not guilty.”

  “But he is guilty, though, right?”

  “He was found not guilty,” I repeated, although I knew it wasn’t the answer she was looking for. “According to the law, he’s an innocent man.”

  A stretch of silence.

  “According to the law,” she said.

  We rumbled up Glory View Road.

  I didn’t reply.

  More clouds gathered overhead.

  “He’ll go after other women, won’t he?”

  “No. I won’t let him do that. I made a promise that I wouldn’t let him hurt anyone else.”

  She stared at me. “How are you going to do that?”

  I thought about it. “I’m not sure.”

  The space between us seemed to widen, and after a few moments she said, “You knew, didn’t you? All this time? That mom was going to abort me?”

  For a long time I considered how to answer her, finally opted for the truth. “Yes, I knew. It was a magazine ad. That’s what changed her mind.”

  “Of a little girl. With a jewelry box in the background.”

  I looked at her curiously.

  “The story doesn’t end in pain,” she said softly, cryptically, then added, “But you never told me because you thought it would hurt me, right?”

  This was an incredibly difficult conversation to have. “Tessa, sometimes to protect people you can’t be completely open with them.. . It’s… I guess what I’m trying to say is, it’s hard to balance the truth with compassion.”