The Queen pbf-5

by Steven James

  A burst of ominous music interrupted her thoughts, and Tessa went back to staring unemotionally at the group of ghost hunters stalking through the reference section of a small county library in Connecticut.

  A couple of minutes later the show cut to commercial, and Amber asked, “Did you ever play Guess the Plot?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well.” She repositioned herself on the bed so she was sitting cross-legged. “We surf to a random show, give it thirty seconds, and see if we can guess the plot.”

  Oh joy.

  “It’s the opposite of watching a movie trailer from a Nicolas Cage flick,” Amber explained. “You know, when there’s no good reason to watch the film.”

  Tessa looked at her quizzically.

  “With his trailers, you get the whole plot in thirty seconds. Here we guess it.” A smile. “Wanna try?”

  Um…

  C’mon. She’s just trying to be nice.

  Tessa shrugged. “Sure.”

  Amber punched in channel 142, and a news show came on saying that the secretary of state’s meetings in Tehran were moving forward despite the “strained diplomatic relations between the two nations.”

  She had to click up through three channels of commercials before she finally found a movie.

  The scene: a hip, young guy in a suit speaking to a bunch of government officials seated around a large conference table. Within a couple of seconds it was clear that this person was supposed to be from another planet.

  “So, okay,” Amber said. “Aliens are testing the human race to see if we can learn to stop going to war with each other, and if we don’t pass the test, they’ll be forced to blow up our planet.”

  “Kill the people off before they can kill off each other,” Tessa observed. “A perfectly natural response from peace-loving aliens.”

  “Nice.” Amber handed her the remote. “You try.”

  After flipping through a few more channels, Tessa came to a scene of two bishops whispering to each other in a shadow-enshrouded Vatican hallway. Shifty eyes. Foreboding music. The whole nine.

  “Okay,” she said. “There’s an Ancient Deleterious Manuscript that’s been hidden in the Vatican archives For Thousands of Years and there’s A Secret Organization That’s Sworn To Protect It At All Costs so that the Church Can Retain Its Power.”

  “Wow. That’s never been done before. How clever.”

  Tessa was beginning to like this woman.

  Amber eyed her. “By the way, deleterious?”

  “It means detrimental, injurious, nocuous.”

  “I figured something like that. I was just… surprised by your vocabulary. It’s impressive.”

  Tessa was a little embarrassed. “Sorry, sometimes stuff just slips out.”

  Now she thinks you were trying to show off!

  “No need to apologize. I like it.”

  They did a few more shows-a buddy cop movie, a zombie flick, and a romantic comedy that they actually ended up watching for a few minutes and saw that it really was about a guy who spent too much time at the office and ends up falling for a klutzy cat-owning librarian lady who astonishingly becomes a complete babe when she takes off her glasses and lets her hair down. What a plot twist that was.

  Groundbreaking cinema this afternoon.

  Finally, Amber shut off the TV and said, “So when you’re not watching bad movies, what do you like to do?”

  “I read. Mostly. Listen to music. Patrick’s into all this outdoor stuff, like rock climbing and rafting and everything, but that’s not really my thing.”

  “Those Bowers boys do like the outdoors.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what do you like to read?” Amber sized her up. “I’m thinking fantasy, right?”

  “More horror, actually. Gothic stuff. Poe, like that. Some of the French realists: Guy de Maupassant, Flaubert, Zola, you know. Poetry sometimes. I never got into fantasy. The authors just aren’t creative enough.”

  A pause. “Fantasy writers aren’t creative enough?”

  “Yeah, I’m like, I get it, but could you please come up with a better way of creating your character names? Just add ‘or,’ ‘en,’ or ‘ick’ to any name and you get a fantasy novel name. Choose whichever one you prefer. I’d be probably be Tessaor. You’d be Amberen.”

  “Or Amberick. Hmm. Yeah. Or Amberor.”

  “See?”

  “Patrickick doesn’t quite flow,” she said, “but Patricken works. Patrickor’s not too bad. Nice.”

  “Yeah. And your husband would be Seanor or Seanen.”

  “Or Seanick.”

  “It doesn’t quite work with everyone, though,” Tessa admitted. “Patrick has this guy at the Bureau that he’s friends with-Ralph Hawkins.”

  “So Ralphor, Ralphen-”

  “Or Ralphick.”

  Amber grimaced. “Yeah, not as good as Patrick’s.”

  “Or Sean’s.”

  “Right.”

  For a moment the conversation pooled into silence, but it was more friendly than awkward.

  “So, you’re a pharmacist?” Tessa asked her, but it was one of those conversational pseudo-questions because she already knew the answer.

  “Yes.”

  “Cool.”

  More silence.

  Hmm. An idea.

  “So then, if I had a prescription, you could fill it?” Another blatantly pseudo-question.

  “You’re from out of state so I’d need a paper script, but sure. Is there one you need?”

  “I take these pills to help me sleep. I forgot ’em in Minneapolis.”

  “Well, do you have the prescription with you?”

  “Uh-uh. It’s in Denver.”

  “Well,” Amber said reflectively, “I guess I could call your doctor, he could fax me your prescription, but it’s a Saturday. Maybe your regular pharmacy would have a copy on file?”

  Tessa wasn’t excited about the idea of telling her that her doctor was a psychiatrist or that Patrick didn’t know about the shrink or the pills. “Yeah, um, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll be okay without ’em.”

  Silence again, longer this time.

  Finally, Amber said, “Tessa, how are you doing since your dad’s death?”

  Wow. That was a leap.

  “Um…”

  “I’m sorry if that’s too personal, I was just…”

  “No. It’s okay,” Tessa replied. She tried to think of what to say. “It was hard, you know, but it seems like it’s getting better. With my mom it was worse. I was into this pretty intense self-inflicting stuff for a while. You know, cutting, that sort of thing.” She paused. “This friend of mine, Anisette, she started in with bulimia after her parents divorced. That was just harsh. I’m glad I never ended up going there.”

  A brief pause. “I’ve been praying for you.”

  Her comment about prayer and the previous exchange about meds made Tessa think of her last session with the shrink-when he’d asked her if she thought God wanted her to forgive herself.

  “So you pray a lot, then?”

  “Probably not as much as I should.”

  “But you believe in God? Forgiveness? That sort of thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “So did my mom.”

  Tessa remembered that after her mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, even though she seemed to take the news relatively well, Tessa had been devastated. Her mom had told her more than once that she needed to learn to believe in grace as much as she did in pain, in forgiveness as much as she did in shame.

  Just ask her.

  “So do you ever think about what it means to forgive yourself?”

  “To forgive myself?”

  “Yeah.”

  Amber considered the question for a long time. “Honestly, that sounds kind of arrogant to me.”

  “How is it arrogant?”

  “Well, that someone could claim to have the power to cancel the debt that they owe God.”

  Tessa tried to let that sink in.
She remembered her little object lesson with the glass coffee table in the shrink’s office and understood where Amber was coming from with the debt idea but hadn’t exactly thought of it in any kind of religious terms before.

  “When you ask someone to forgive you,” Amber said, “you’re really asking the other person to sacrifice for the benefit of the relationship.”

  Duh. If you would’ve shattered the doctor’s end table and he forgave you, he would’ve been the one to pay for it, the one to sacrifice.

  “But what if you wrong yourself?” Tessa retorted. “I mean, can’t you-oh, I get it. We’re accountable to someone else besides ourselves. To God.”

  Amber said nothing, and it looked to Tessa like she was deep in thought.

  Regardless of the theological ramifications, the idea that this whole forgiving yourself deal was an act of arrogance seemed kind of weird, and Tessa wasn’t sure she bought it.

  She stood. “You know, I’m gonna go to Patrick’s room. Maybe lie down.”

  “You’re welcome to stay in here.”

  “That’s okay, I’ll see you in a little bit. Hey, it was cool, though. Thanks for hanging out.”

  “Any time.”

  Patrick’s motel room looked pretty much like Tessa expected-a clutter of papers on the desk, clothes strewn across the floor, sweaty workout stuff hanging up in the bathroom. Disgusting. A couple buckets of water on the floor-no idea what those were for. A brand-new camo jacket flung on the chair. Wow. How very Wisconsin of him.

  She pulled the shades shut, grabbed the extra blanket from the closet, flopped onto the bed. Closed her eyes.

  And thought of arrogance.

  Was it really an act of arrogance to be haunted by guilt? Or was it an act of humility, admitting that you weren’t living up to the standards you’d set for yourself?

  Two ways to look at it.

  Guess the plot, huh?

  Yeah, well, she really didn’t have any idea where this one was heading.

  61

  Sheriff Tait was waiting for us outside the building when we arrived.

  He looked about sixty, was a little too round, but still had a formidable appearance. His face was chiseled with creases and shadows, and as we approached he snuffed out a cigarette against the wall and flicked the butt into the snow.

  An observation of Tessa’s came to mind: Smoking is suicide. It just takes longer than a gun, but I kept it to myself.

  Alexei remained silent while he was processed and fingerprinted and then led to a cell. “You get one phone call,” Burlman taunted. “You better make it a good one.”

  “I’ll wait on that for now.” He was looking at me.

  I tried to think what to do.

  How are you going to find Kayla without his help?

  Once Alexei was out of earshot, I said to Tait, “I want two people watching his cell at all times. Rotate them in and out.”

  “No good. We’re short on staff with this storm, with the search for Kayla, with everything.”

  “This man is an escape risk, Sheriff, and we cannot let him get away.”

  “We’re stretched thin here, Agent Bowers, you know that.”

  “I’m not sure the cells here will hold him.”

  He eyed the wall beside me. “I can give you one officer. That’s it.”

  “At all times then. But not Burlman. And Chekov stays cuffed, even in the cell.”

  “Sure. Okay.” He tapped the edge of his lip with his tongue. “This guy, he killed my deputy.”

  “I know this is easier said than done, but you need to set that aside for right now. We just have to make sure Chekov doesn’t slip out of here.”

  “Oh, he won’t.” His voice was filled with acid, and I had a feeling I knew what he was thinking.

  “Sheriff Tait, two state troopers already beat him with their batons.”

  “Yeah, I heard. Kicked the living-” He caught himself, perhaps concerned he shouldn’t be defending police brutality by cussing to an FBI agent. “He was resisting arrest.”

  “I know you don’t buy that.” I wasn’t going to play this game. “I’ll be filing a report dealing with their actions later. For now, Alexei stays in his cell, and no one goes in there with him. Mistreating him in any way isn’t going to encourage him to give up anything on Kayla’s location-or help us get a conviction against him for Ellory’s murder.”

  A pause. “You gonna interrogate him, then?”

  “I am.”

  Although I was planning to talk with Alexei, I honestly couldn’t see him giving anything up unless he decided it was in his best interest-and even striking some sort of deal wouldn’t make any substantial difference in the charges that were going to be brought against him.

  I looked around.

  In the next room over, the 911 dispatch call board was staffed by a bleary-eyed overweight man in his thirties. Some storage rooms, a few offices, two holding cells, restrooms, and a small conference room rounded out the place. The building wasn’t equipped with anything close to a secure interrogation room, and I figured Alexei would do whatever it took to escape and would likely somehow use the transfer to any other room to his advantage, so I decided to leave him in the cell when I spoke with him.

  Sheriff Tait was quiet for a moment. “So did he tell you why he killed the Pickrons? What he did with Donnie?”

  “I don’t believe he killed the Pickrons.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The evidence points in another direction.”

  “Oh, I get it.” His tone had turned snide. “Keeping an open mind, huh?”

  “Would you suggest we do the opposite?”

  “’Course not. It’s just… what Burlman told me before he headed to the hospital, and Chekov… well, there are two sides to every story, Dr. Bowers.”

  “Yes. But there’s only one truth.”

  And sometimes neither of the two sides is telling it.

  He took a somewhat strained breath. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to him.”

  Behind him I saw Alexei sitting placidly on his cot, examining the walls of his cell, his cuffed hands resting on his lap. I wished I could climb inside his head, unravel his thoughts, and study them one by one, not just to find out what he was pondering at the moment but to find out where Kayla was, to discover if she really was okay.

  I checked Alexei’s spring-loaded bone injection gun into evidence, then pulled over a chair and took a seat beside his cell.

  62

  Solstice drew her skis to a stop at the edge of the woods and scanned the barren field stretching before her.

  Though not yet dusk, with the thick cloud cover, daylight was already beginning to fade. A bitter wind shrieked around her.

  She’d heard the rolling whine of a motor as she approached the field, and now, at last, saw a snowmobile trail groomer about a quarter mile away. She had no idea how long it had been in the area, but it was pressing forward along one of the trails that skirted directly around the old ELF site.

  Taking a trail groomer out in weather like this wouldn’t be entirely unheard of, but the all-too-convenient fact that someone was doing it here, today, disturbed her.

  At the moment, she and her team were still hidden in the forest, as well as dressed in Marine Corps Disruptive Overwhite snow camouflage so they wouldn’t be visible to the people in the trail groomer, and she took a moment to orient herself and see if there might have been more than one machine out.

  To her left, two wide swathes of forest were missing, lonely for the ELF lines that had been removed back in 2004. A few intermittent scraggly grass blades fingered through the snow, breaking up the otherwise pristine snowscape. Only one structure was visible: a windowless thirty-foot-tall sheet-metal maintenance building with six reinforced sliding garage doors.

  That was her destination.

  No other trail groomers or snowmobiles were visible.

  Solstice knew that the forest rangers occasionally used the building to store old vehicles an
d trail upkeep equipment, but, though the rangers wouldn’t have been privy to it, that wasn’t the only purpose the building served.

  Three power lines stretched from a telephone pole to the top of the building. One provided electricity to the building, another was the now-useless phone landline, the third served as the sat comm antennae for the base.

  The trail groomer turned south, toward Solstice’s team.

  She borrowed Tempest’s semiautomatic AR-15 and sighted through the scope. It took a few moments for her to get it dialed in, but at last she was able to identify three people in the cab. An Asian woman, a Native American man, and a male Cauca Wait.

  She knew that Asian lady from a previous encounter, the same one in which she’d met Agent Bowers last year. Jiang. She was an FBI agent as well.

  Solstice took a moment to let things sink in.

  Agent Bowers is here. So is Jiang.

  She peered through the scope again.

  Solstice couldn’t identify the two men with Jiang. One might be a civilian operator, but FBI agents usually work in teams so she went with the most likely assumption that at least one of them was a federal agent as well.

  Somehow the FBI knew.

  But why only send three or four agents? If they really had intel about what she was up to, they would have certainly sent a larger team-at least a second trail groomer.

  They’re just on a fishing expedition.

  Immediately, she thought of Chekov. The Bureau had to be getting their information from somewhere, and he was the most likely link.

  Perhaps she hadn’t made the right choice in allowing him to live after all.

  The only way she was going to get her money or see Terry again was if the mission was successful. This was not the time to make a misstep.

  She considered aggressive action, but if these three went missing, it would only draw more attention to the site at a delicate time in her operation. Definitely not something she needed.

  Option one: press forward, get her team to the building, deal decisively with the people in the trail groomer.

  Option two: retreat to a safe location, monitor the situation, and move in as soon as night fell. Only respond with force if necessary.