Checkmate (15 page)

“Are you sure you're up for this?” Margaret asked me when I phoned her. “I mean, with that injury of yours?”

“I'm fine.”

“Just a moment.” She stopped talking and then, when she came back on the line she said, “There's a flight for Charlotte that leaves at four.”

“What? Today?”

“Yes. Can you be ready?”

“Um, sure.”

“I was hoping you would say that, because if Joint Terrorism Task Force Director René Gonzalez concurs, I would like both you and Ralph down there.”

“And you want us to leave now, today?”

“If that's where everything is pointing, why not?”

Good point.

However, I wanted to make one thing clear before I went anywhere. “Since Jerome's killer left a clue that connects me to this case, and now this text message was sent to me, I need to make sure Tessa is safe when Lien-hua is at work. We have a couple of agents who've been rotating watching the house. I want them to be put on detail until I get back.”

“I'm sure that can be arranged.” She told me that she would contact the unit chief in charge of the scheduling at the Academy to assign another instructor to cover my classes until further notice; then she asked to speak to Ralph.

I handed him the phone. “Margaret has something to ask you.”

He spoke to her briefly, then told her he would call her back.

I told Lien-hua what was going on, making sure it was okay with her if I went down to Charlotte. I sensed a little hesitation in her reply. “Sure.”

“If you don't want me to, I can just tell Margaret that—”

“No, no. I do. Tessa and I will be fine. But I think you need to be the one to tell her.”

“Sure. Of course.”

When I shared my plans with my daughter she said, “So, does this mean those agents have to keep watching the house?”

“When Lien-hua isn't around, yes. Are you going to be able to live with that?”

“You're gonna owe me big-time for this.”

“I'll make it up to you.”

While I waited in the living room, I could hear Brin and Ralph discussing things in the kitchen. Though I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, they weren't quieting their voices and the conversation was easy enough to make out.

“You need to go down there.” It was Brin.

“I need to be here for you.”

“They were your people. The ones who were killed.”

“And you're my wife. And this is my daughter we're talking about. I want to be here when our little girl comes into the world.”

“Honey, I don't want to be a distraction from you catching whoever—”

“You're not a distraction, Brin. It's . . .” He let his
voice trail off. “You're more important to me than my work.”

“I know that, but that's not what's at stake here.”

Despite how Ralph called the shots everywhere else in his life, Brineesha was known to call one or two of them at home. Ralph was, to put it mildly, strong-willed, but when Brin put her foot down even he didn't try to slide it aside, so I really wasn't sure how this was going to play out.

“When you were a Ranger you were sent on missions and you couldn't have just opted out of one to be home for the birth of your baby. You were gone for six months one time. This'll probably be just a couple days.”

“And that's one of the reasons I left the military, remember?”

“Okay,” she said. “A compromise. Go down there. See what you can find out. You'll only be, what? A forty-five-minute, maybe an hour-long flight away? I was in labor with Tony for nearly ten hours. If I start having contractions, I'll call you and you can get back up here in plenty of time to see your daughter be born.”

He was quiet, and when I heard him speaking again I could tell he was on the phone. “Yeah, Margaret, it's Ralph. I go to Charlotte under one condition . . . Uh-huh . . . I fly back whenever I need to, day or night—if Brineesha goes into labor—so I can be here for the birth of my baby girl . . . Yes . . . Right. The Bureau picks up the bill. That'll work. That's it, then. Alright.”

A moment later he emerged from the kitchen and announced to me, “Pack your things, bro. We're going to
Charlotte.”

PART III

Broken
Blades

They played together as children, Corrine and her brother did.

The two of them lived with their parents on the edge of town near a field that spread out wide and wild into the Maine countryside. In the summertime they would go there, lay in the meadowed grass, and watch the clouds build and billow and form high overhead. And they would talk about what they wanted to be when they grew up.

She dreamed of being a movie star and living a life of glamour and wonder and beauty and fame.

He wanted to be a forest ranger—not a baseball player or a fireman or anything like that. No, he liked the woods, camping, time by himself.

And so they dreamed their summers away, there in the meadow with the skittery sound of grasshoppers hidden around them in the waving grass.

In retrospect she wondered if she should have noticed something.

How could you not wonder? Now, looking back—

How could anyone not wonder?

When you find out the evil someone is capable of, when you see what he is capable of becoming, how can
you not wonder if you should have noticed a sign of it beforehand?

Surely there was something that would have given away what was going to happen? Something small, perhaps: the way he spoke to other children or the way he treated their puppy or the look in his eyes when he got into trouble.

But no, there were no clues to make anyone suspicious.

He was a normal boy.

Just a normal boy.

She remembered when she was twenty-four and first heard the news that he'd been arrested, that he'd been found at a crime scene where several women had been murdered.

And not just murdered. Cannibalized.

Yes, she remembered that day.

And for some reason her first reaction had not been shock.

It should have been.

That's the thing.

For someone in her situation, for a young woman to find out that her older brother was accused of such things, it should have shocked her.

But it had not.

And ever since then, she had wondered why that was.

If accusations like that about someone so close to you didn't shake you to the core, then surely you should have seen it coming.

Signs.

She should have seen signs.

But she had not.

No one had.

When the crimes became known, when the verdict was
read, the media had pressed her with questions about her upbringing, about her parents, trying to pin down a reason for her brother's actions—abuse, neglect, a brain injury of some type; anything so they wouldn't have to admit that he was a successful, popular, well-adjusted guy who just started abducting, murdering, and eating people.

Psychiatric problems? Had he taken medication? Been depressed when he was growing up?

No.

He'd been a good boy. A good son. A good brother, playing quietly with his sister under the still summer skies, daydreaming about what they would do someday when they were grown and all their dreams would come true
.

No, he hadn't been a troubled child. And that's what frightened people the most, because if that happened to him, then the same thing could perhaps happen to anyone.

And yes.

That was it.

That's what made everyone so uncomfortable.

The people who knew him had trusted him.

Everyone in the family had loved him.

She had loved him.

Did love him.

He was her brother.

Their parents were gone now, both dead. Natural causes. All their other relatives had disappeared into anonymity after the trial. Corrine was the only one left.

She knew that he loved her. She had never doubted that.

She'd been married briefly when she was in her late twenties, and after the divorce she'd decided to hang on
to her married name. It didn't keep all the reporters and bloggers away, but it did help her establish a small sense of anonymity.

Corrine Monique Davis.

Formerly, Corrine Monique Basque.

The sister of Richard Devin Basque, the killer, the cannibal, who had started off his criminal career by torturing and slaughtering and cannibalizing women who reminded him of her.

The sister he loved.

*   *   *

And now.

Here she was.

In a long, narrow tomb, trapped in this tunnel that dropped off into nothingness two hundred steps from the water. She had almost fallen off the edge, almost lost her balance when she found no ground for her foot as she mapped out in her mind the length of the tunnel.

Then when she raised her hand above her, she found one final beam where the ceiling ended. It must have been how the man had gotten her into this tunnel.

The walls ended too.

A shaft.

To the surface? A shaft that leads to the surface?

She'd felt an immediate surge of hope, but it was short-lived because when she tried leaning out and looking up, all she saw was stark blackness. No light. Not even a tiny dot of daylight in the distance.

Maybe it's night? Maybe there'll be light coming down if you wait here long enough?

She reached out in search of a rope, in search of
anything, but there was nothing there. Just blank, eternal darkness.

She screamed until she lost her voice, begged the silent, unfeeling emptiness to help her.

And she prayed.

How long had passed now since she'd prayed last?

It didn't matter.

There was no reply.

No help came.

A stone tossed into the shaft told her it was a long way to the bottom.

A very long way.

The tears came in waves—she would be fine for minutes, for hours, for what seemed like days, and then she would find herself wracked with tears again.

But they didn't offer her any comfort.

She'd started to shiver more, and though she was walking back and forth to keep moving and to stay warm, she was getting tired and she was afraid to sit down and sleep.

Afraid that she might stop shivering.

She was thirsty but, still leery of drinking the water at the tunnel's other end, she opted to let drops from the ceiling partway down the tunnel land on her tongue. But it didn't quell her growing thirst.

The only option she had right now was to persevere, to hold on, to keep moving, and to trust forces bigger than herself to bring her help before it was too late.

She wasn't sure if she should wait here by the shaft. It seemed like the best option for being found.

But what if that man comes back?

Maybe you should go back by the water.

No. What if someone else comes looking and misses you because you're too far away?

She tried evaluating things, but her thoughts seemed muddy and thick. One moment it was clear that the obvious choice was to stay here, then the obvious choice seemed to be to wait by the water.

But why? Why by the water?

You could swim. You're a good swimmer. You could swim to safety, find where the water goes—

What are you even thinking, Corrine? That's crazy.

Finally, she decided on the sensible thing, the logical thing: to wait by the shaft where she could see if someone was coming down to save her.

Her thoughts returned to her brother.

To summers with him as a child.

And as she sat there alone, shrouded in darkness, she wondered once more, just as she had so many times over the years, why—if Richard loved her—had he gone on a killing spree, brutally taking the lives of women who resembled her.

Ralph and I landed at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport and entered the famous atrium decked out with a row of old-style rocking chairs lined up along the glass wall that overlooked the tarmac.

Live grand-piano music resonated through the air. The hustle and hum of busy people living busy lives paused here, found a respite near the food court and the rocking chairs that offered a taste of Southern hospitality.

Before exiting past security I went to grab a cup of coffee at Chierio's, an indie coffee shop in the C terminal, something I always did when flying through Charlotte. But today, to my disappointment, I found that it was gone and a Starbucks occupied its place in the concourse.

“So,” Ralph said, “I'm guessing you're gonna pass on the java?”

“You know me all too well.”

“No mermaid coffee.”

“No mermaid coffee.”

“Tessa's right. You really are a coffee snob. And to think I'm the one who got you started drinking the stuff. Can I ever forgive myself?”

“‘Snob' is such an unflattering word.”

He nodded toward a store nearby. “Buy you a Snickers?”

“That'll do.”

*   *   *

As we waited in line at the Avis rental counter, Ralph, who was crunching his way through a duty-free almond chocolate bar nearly the size of a tablet computer, said, “Remember the last time we were in Charlotte?”

“Tracking Sevren.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

Sevren Adkins was a killer who'd left clues at his crime scenes about who his next victim would be. Eventually that investigation had led us to uncover a conspiracy that had its roots in the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana, South America, back in the seventies.

The mnemonic of the origin of the Latin text message formed the phrase
I am back
.

But, no, that didn't work. Sevren was dead.

A copycat?

Possibly.

Something to keep in mind.

Because now death had brought me back to this city.

It's strange how the past threads its way into our lives, affecting the trajectory of our moments, sometimes bringing unexplainable unity to the way the present unfolds.

Even with the priority of this investigation, the Bureau wasn't interested in “unnecessary case-related expenditures,” so we had only one rental car between us and we were staying at a midpriced hotel fifteen minutes from Uptown.

Once we had our car, a compact that Ralph could barely squeeze behind the steering wheel of, we navigated through the early-evening traffic.

As he drove, he shared what he thought the people
who'd laid out the road system, with the right-hand lanes ending so frequently and abruptly in exit-only lanes, should do to themselves. His suggestions included a few unique and rather memorable anatomical suggestions that, though impossible, were, if nothing else, quite inventive.

Traffic held us up and we didn't arrive at our hotel until after seven, too late to swing by the FBI Field Office, so we grabbed supper next door at a small, locally owned fried-chicken place. “Tessa's not here,” Ralph reminded me. “That means you can have chicken without any meat guilt.”

“What about deep-fried Southern-grease guilt?”

“I won't tell Tessa if you don't tell Brin.”

“Deal.”

When we'd finished, I had a mango smoothie to help assuage my grease guilt. Ralph chose a packet of gummy bears.

Afterward, as I stowed my suitcase in the hotel closet, I said, “When I first met you in Milwaukee, back when I was a detective, you told me that you used pillow mist.”

“That's right.”

“I didn't believe you.”

“I know.”

He dug through his things and produced a small spray bottle. “You should have.” He held it out, offering it to me.

“I think I'll pass.”

He chose the bed nearest the television and spritzed
his pillow. “Your loss, my friend, your loss. There's nothing like a nice-smelling pillow to welcome you to dreamland.”

“Did you just say ‘welcome you to dreamland'?”

“Just seeing if you were paying attention.”

We spent some time reviewing the case and then laid out our plan for the morning: visit the Field Office and orient ourselves to what they were working on, drive past the locations in Charlotte that seemed pertinent to the case, and then connect with the curator of the Mint Museum at eleven thirty, a meeting Margaret had set up for us while we were flying down here.

Earlier, on our way to the airport, I'd called Gonzalez and asked him to look into the minister from the funeral, and now he texted that the pastor was a friend of Jennings, the National Security Council rep, and that Jennings was the one who'd coordinated with the families to have him speak.

I found that informative, but I couldn't see how it had any immediate bearing on the case.

At last, Ralph and I called it a night.

I've stayed in hotel rooms with my friend on a couple of occasions, and I was thankful he didn't snore.

Or at least that's what I thought, but I soon found out he'd developed a new habit since I last traveled with him.

I tried adjusting the air conditioner/heater unit under the window to cover up the sound, but the thing apparently had two settings: tepid and arctic.

In the end I went for arctic.

With my unscented pillow folded around my head and an extra blanket over me so I wouldn't shiver from the frigid air blasting at me from only a few feet away, I tried to get some sleep.

+ + + +

The bard was back in Charlotte. It'd been a long day, but it had been worth it to visit the graveyard. He'd gotten the photos he needed. He'd seen Lien-hua and Patrick Bowers, and also Agent Hawkins and his quite-pregnant wife.

He'd also made sure his captive was secure in that basement on Pine Street.

Yes, at an address that the Bureau would, eventually, find to be quite informative.

A productive trip.

Now he retired to his bedroom. Tomorrow he had to go to work in the morning; then in the afternoon he could check on Corrine and confirm the Semtex placement.

He contacted his person in DC and offered a reminder of what would happen if things did not go as planned.

“You have a job to do,” he said. “And you understand what will happen if it's not carried out?”

“I . . . understand,” came the soft reply.

+ + + +

Though Tessa had searched all afternoon and evening, she hadn't found anything online about the Latin phrase, and now, with her dad and Ralph gone to Charlotte, she doubted she was going to get any more chances to help them out.

Which pretty much sucked.

She hadn't admitted to them how important it was to her that she help them, that it was her way of trying to deal with what was happening this week. It was something positive she could do in the face of something so devastating.

Ever since her mom had been diagnosed with cancer, the idea of death, of real people dying in real life, had been hard for her to deal with.

Blood.

Corpses.

Funerals.

All deeply distressing.

Not that anyone likes those things—of course not—but for her it was different. She'd already seen too much suffering and death. Her mom. Her dad. Media photos from the cases Patrick worked.

Obviously, he never let her see his case files, but the pictures that made the rounds on the cable-news shows and the Internet were grisly enough.

She almost felt guilty being thankful at a time like this, but she
was
thankful—thankful that he and Lien-hua hadn't been killed when the bomb went off. That would have been too much for her. That would have sent her plummeting off a cliff she never would have recovered from.

Given everything that had happened, despite herself, she found her thoughts revolving around death and loss: her mom dying of cancer, her biological dad being shot last year.

She needed to process all this, needed to sort out the jagged images that were caught in her mind.

Making sure she didn't wake up Lien-hua, she snuck out for a smoke, but that didn't seem to help.

Back inside her room, she pulled out her journal and picked up a pen.

She could type faster than she could write, much faster, but there's something about having a pen in your hand that forces you to think carefully about every word.

Typing gives birth to bloviated writing, fat and wobbly and sloppy.

You see it all the time on the Web. Thoughtless, mindless prose, unwieldy and unfocused.

Blog. Blog. Blog.

Even the word sounded fat and imprecise.

But with a pen, you actually experienced each word as you shaped it, stroke by stroke, curve by curve. One letter flowing to the next, each word a nonpareil experience.

But when you type, every letter is shaped the same beneath your fingers, a flat or maybe concave square little world.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Type. Type. Type.

Only writing longhand allowed you to enter the breadth and unique form of every letter, every word.

She flipped to a blank page in her journal.

Write. Clear your head. Get death off your mind.

She thought of her mom, and of growing up in Minnesota—springtime in a budding, unfolding world, the smell of moist soil underfoot, a warm rain erasing the remnants of winter.

But even her memories of spring led her back to thoughts of death when a very specific afternoon came to mind, a day when she and her mom were taking the laundry outside to hang up on the line that stretched between two poles in their backyard.

And she wrote:

One day they found a dead bunny in the yard. It wasn't fun to pet and they couldn't leave it there or it would attract the wrong kind of flies.

So they buried it beneath a spreading tree and said a prayer, and the little girl watched her first dead body get lowered into the ground on a sunny day when all she'd wanted to do was hang up the laundry with her mother and play tag in the tall, leaning grass.

As she stared at the words, a cord seemed to stretch across the canyon of pain inside of her, connecting the sting of those memories with the present-day vague sense of grief that had draped over her life in the years since her mom had died.

The Latin phrase that'd been texted to Patrick came back to mind, as well as the translation she'd come up with:
Why, mortal man, do you raise up your head when, behold, you will die and end up as bald as this skull?

Yeah, that was actually a pretty good question. Why, indeed?

She hadn't been able to find the quote anywhere.

Sure, the Web was a great repository of knowledge, but it wasn't the only one.

Last summer she'd gotten a Library of Congress card. They're only given to researchers—and sometimes students who can prove they're doing research “of a significant and enduring nature.” She'd convinced them to give her one and was thankful because it allowed her to get into the main reading room, which was off-limits to the general public. They were good for a year, so she was golden.

Yeah, tomorrow she would visit the Library of Congress while Patrick was gone and Lien-hua was at work.

Who knows? Maybe Beck would need to come along with her, to protect her.

Or maybe it'll be that woman, his partner.

Well, if it was Beck, Tessa told herself that she would just have to find a way to put up with it.

As if that was going to be a problem.