The Chessman (15 page)

“What is it you want from me?”

“To see if you’re the one. I can’t just saddle up with any old partner for this here roundup, can I? I need someone with
gray matter
.”

“Partner? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Get with the program, Agent Cady. Someone started a whole new game.”

“I wonder who that could possibly be.”

“It’s not my match.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The Chessman tilted his head in the gloom as though to say
so what
.

“They never should have left my calling card,” the hushed voice continued. “They won’t like how I play the game.”

“What is it you want from me?” Cady asked again.

The dark shape shifted. The Chessman’s arm stretched toward him, something equally dark and lethal pointed at Cady’s forehead.

“You have sixty seconds, Special Agent Cady, to prove your worth. Or I’ll see what your gray matter looks like for myself.”

“Sixty seconds?”

“Strike that. Fifty-five.”

“What the hell?”

Silence.

“Gray matter?”

“Thirty seconds.”

“But what does that mean?”

“It means twenty-five seconds left to live, Agent Cady.”

Cady’s mouth went dry. All he could focus on was the pistol in the Chessman’s hand. He knew he somehow, very quickly, needed to impress the psychopath with his brilliance. Except Cady had no clue what to offer.

“Ten seconds.”

Silence.

“Three seconds. Two seconds. One second. You lose—”

“Nothing you ever do, Braun, will bring Marly back.”

Although the pistol remained centered on Cady’s face, Cady caught an almost imperceptible twitch of the shadow figure’s head.

“This entire charade, every twist and turn along the way, all crimes of passion.”

“Hmm,” the silhouette replied. “I am a romantic.”

“Dane Schaeffer was a masterstroke. Perfect symmetry.”

“Pray continue.” Back to a Brokaw whisper.

“In Dane Schaeffer’s death you were reborn, because Schaeffer became the Chessman and the game ended. Checkmate. Drugs were found in Schaeffer’s system. We assumed he’d medicated himself to make his own drowning…softer, but really it made him easier for you to kill. Isn’t that right, Braun? You held Schaeffer underwater until it was done, and then floated his body down the stream.”

The dark shape sat motionless.

“What happened at Snow Goose that night?”

“I think you know.”

“What did Patrick Farris and the Zalentines do to Marly Kelch?”

“A tale for another time, perhaps.”

“You pounded the shit out of me and then smashed my hand as an insurance policy—so I couldn’t get off a lucky shot.” Cady voiced the million-dollar question, the one that had spun in his mind every day for the past three years: “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Another time, perhaps.”

“You watched us from the Robillards. You were going to kill Farris that night, after I left, but you saw me notice the king in the aquarium. You knew what I was thinking. And you knew you couldn’t get to him in custody.”

“Mr. Gray Matter, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

With that the Chessman was gone, out the suite’s only door in an instant. All that remained was Cady’s Glock 22 under an empty armchair. Cady grabbed the phone next to the bed and brought it to his ear. Dead. Two seconds later he opened the door to the room.

The hallway was empty.

Chapter 18

“H
e was in your room?”

Cady met Special Agent Evans on the street outside the Kellervick residence. It was a rush hour of local police, medical examiners, gawking neighbors, and a swarming hive of FBI agents. Cady led Evans to an untrampled section of the yard.

“Woke me out of a dead sleep, after three, about the time the old KGB used to come for dissidents.”

“How did he know where you were staying?”

“Social engineering. Probably called the few hotels he assumed I’d be in until he got a hit.”

“And they’re checking the security cameras?”

“He took the east stairwell down and left through that side exit. He knew where the cameras were, so we’ve got a worthless overhead of someone dressed like Lamont Cranston as The Shadow.”

“It confirms that he’s alive.”

“Very much so.”

“It rules out a copycat.”

“He denied killing Gottlieb.”

“You believe him?”

“If the Chessman tells me to duck down, Agent Evans, I will leap as high into the air as I possibly can. The SOB is a house of mirrors, but we can use that against him.”

“So you’re staying onboard?”

“For the time being.” Cady felt more at ease with the weight of the Glock 22—on loan from the assistant director—snug in his shoulder holster. It was a little past noon and he’d already had a full day. After an early morning debriefing at the Hoover, Jund had Cady doubletime it to the airport for a flight to Boston and cab it to this address in Brookline to meet with Agent Evans. “What happened here?”

“Elaine Kellervick, thirty-eight-year-old Caucasian, was found stabbed to death in the entryway of her townhouse.” Agent Evans nodded toward the door. “A neighbor the victim goes jogging with every morning stopped by. When no one answered the door, she peeked in the sidelights, saw the body, and called 911 from her cell.”

“Kellervick live alone?”

“Her husband, Stephen Kellervick, was at an engineering conference in Colorado. Mr. Kellervick’s a managing director at Chem-Tel. He’s also on a plane back as we speak. They tell me he sounded real shook up and he’s been in Denver all week, so it’s not an O.J. Although the autopsy will be more definitive, it doesn’t appear to be a sex crime. The victim was fully clothed. The ME’s initial best guess places her death between three and six p.m. yesterday.”

“So we’re here because…”

“A glass pawn was inserted into the victim’s stab wound.”

Cady nodded, anticipating this response. “The Chessman killed Barrett Sanfield with a switchblade—a stiletto to be exact. I’m betting the autopsy will indicate that to be the case here as well. Where did Mrs. Kellervick work?”

“She was an investment strategist at Koye & Plagans Financials. Been there over two years.”

“An investment strategist and the designated Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. A pawn and a queen. He’s got an interesting wingspan.” Cady looked toward the front door. “Is Liz here?”

“She’s inside,” Evans replied. “Would you like a look?”

Cady nodded again. Both agents walked up the driveway and entered the townhouse.

Cady spotted Agent Preston huddled with an agent he didn’t recognize in the living room. He sidestepped Agent Evans, who had knelt down with the criminologists around the lifeless body of Elaine Kellervick, and headed toward the Special Agent in Charge. As though in sync, Preston looked up and caught his eye.

“It couldn’t have been Braun,” Preston said and turned toward a tall blonde she’d been speaking to. “Have you met Special Agent Beth Schommer from the Washington Field Office?”

Cady shook his head and then Schommer’s hand.

“Agent Schommer recently transferred in from Illinois.”

“Go Bears.”

“They’re not going anywhere with that quarterback,” Schommer said, then got to the subject at hand. “Eric Braun was processed out of the United States Marine Corps two years ago. He was piloting an AH-1W SuperCobra in Iraq—the Al Anbar province near Fallujah—when the Chessman killed Congressman Farris, Sanfield, and the psycho twins. Braun now lives in Hawaii. He makes a mint giving helicopter tours in Maui, flies tourists over waterfalls, that sort of stuff.”

Cady nodded, but wasn’t ready to give up. “If Braun has over a decade in the Corps, he’ll have connections.”

“We’re culling through his known associates, mostly jarheads and other servicemen he was chummy with, but you know how that goes. It will take some time to rule any of them in or out.” Agent Schommer glanced at Preston and then back at Cady. “Hard to believe Braun was pulling strings behind the scenes while flying missions in Al Anbar.”

“We’ve had Braun under surveillance since we tracked him to Maui, after your call yesterday,” Preston added. “No way was he your night visitor. Now that you’ve placed the Chessman in D.C. the morning after this,” she motioned with one arm toward Agent Evans, still hunched over the body in the entryway, and continued, “I guess we now know that we’re dealing with the real McCoy.”

“Boston to D.C.?”

“We heard from an administrative assistant where Kellervick worked that she had cancelled a late afternoon meeting and left work at two o’clock yesterday. The admin said Kellervick appeared happy. So if he followed her home—or was waiting for her here—this could have been done by 3:30. Plenty of time to make it to D.C., even if the UNSUB drove. Remember, he took out the Zalentine twins on the same day.”

“I called him ‘Braun.’ It was dark in the room, but that got a tic of his head. I read it as a tell. If he’s not Eric Braun, I think he knows Braun. Any of the other names pan out?”

“No one else on the Kelch list served in the military,” said Schommer. “To be honest, the remaining names are pretty farfetched. There’s an accountant in Philly, Marly’s summer camp boyfriend is a priest in Erie, and one of her old thespian friends owns a catering company in Allentown and still acts in community theater.”

“He wore a smart disguise. Good costume for the cameras.”

Agent Schommer didn’t need to check her notes. “Her actor friend, Kurt Holt, is maybe five foot four inches tall and quite heavy. Kevin Costner he’s not. Holt is also gay, which doesn’t fit the profile, but we’ll take another look.”

“Beth is nearly done nailing down alibis,” Preston said. “Frankly, Drew, it doesn’t look promising. Ditto for Marly’s male friends at Princeton.”

“So much for my instincts, Liz,” Cady said. “So much for that.”

—

“Don’t be a goddamn fool!”

Cady stood in front of the assistant director’s desk, arms crossed. “If he wanted me dead, I’d be wearing a toe tag.”

“But now that we know definitively that the Chessman is still alive—hell, now that you two are practically dating—we can use that to draw him out into the open.”

“Using me as bait is a waste of everyone’s time. It’s not me he’s after. And he’d be the
goddamn fool
if he tried another hotel room visit.” Though not invited, Cady sat down in the guest chair in front of Jund’s desk—the perks of being a consultant. “And we both know he’s not a goddamn fool.”

“Then at least I’m going to partner you up,” Jund responded. “Do you know Agent Dave Merrill?”

“That’s unnecessary where I’m going, sir.”

“Where are you going?”

“You wanted me to find him in the past so we could catch him in the present, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’m heading to northern Minnesota.”

Chapter 19

Six Months Ago

“W
ill I ever see Mom again?” Lucy asked softly.

“We need to avoid England, but something can be finessed down the road.” Hartzell looked at his daughter. “We can never return to the colonies, Slim.”

He added red onions, sliced grape tomatoes, skim milk, and Provolone cheese to the frying pan as he scrambled the egg whites. Although it was nearly three in the morning and Hartzell had never been much of a chef, both of them were starving—larceny must make one hungry—plus it gave him something to do as they plotted potential futures. Neither one was ready for sleep after a night of difficult revelations.

“There are two options on the table. Option A is that we flee to a country that does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.” Hartzell divvied up the scrambled eggs onto two china plates and then took the balled melon that Janice, their chirpy housemaid, had left for them from out of the refrigerator. “But I’m not so sure we’d find enlightenment in North Korea or Rwanda. And no matter who we bribed, we would forever be looking over our shoulder.”

“Please tell me Option B is the
good
news.”

“A clean slate.” Hartzell smeared orange marmalade on the wheat toast. He’d been steering the conversation in this direction for the past half hour.

“A clean slate?”

“If we vanish without a trace, that is, assume new identities, say, somewhere in France or Spain, Italy or the West Indies, or even the Cayman Islands…well, it’s a big world out there, Slim, with all sorts of nooks and crannies in which to fade away.”

“How far down this road have you traveled, Papa?”

“There may be a villa and vineyard in Tuscany, all on the up and up, as the Yanks like to say, that’s owned by a certain chap who’s almost never there.”

“Italy is nice.”

“And there may be a string of five-star rental properties in Venice, Paris, and Madrid also owned by this same old fogy—all strictly obeying the tax laws of each home country, in both letter and spirit.”

“And the new identities?”

“That needs to be handled in such a manner that there is no tie back to Drake or Lucy Hartzell,” he explained, not admitting that he’d set her up months ago as part of Option B. He’d lifted a couple pictures of Lucy from her high school modeling portfolio—photographs that held only a passing resemblance to how Lucy currently appeared—and sent them on to a
documentation perfectionist
he’d come into contact with a dozen years back through a Chinese dissident he met at some long-forgotten fundraiser for Tibet. The documentation perfectionist, a Filipino forger-savant, knew Hartzell only through wire transfers and a bogus P.O. box.

“But if your face is plastered all over the news?”

“Best to be long gone before they start searching for us, Slim. Plus,
Andy
has short hair and a moustache, both dyed hideously black. I think the poor guy’s sporting a midlife.”

“Who’s Andy?”

“
Andrew Pierson
, the Tuscany gentleman who owns the vineyard and rental properties.”

“Well then, Andrew—when must we leave?”

“I’m afraid I must insist by the end of this month at the very latest. Drake and Lucy Hartzell will take a flight to Heathrow, pick up some accounting spreadsheets and a couple of keys from a safe deposit box at Barclays, and then father and daughter Pierson will Eurostar it to Paris, and from there to Tuscany.”