Checkmate_The Bowers Files

by Steven James

  I ran through what had happened today: dropping Ralph off at the airport this morning, the briefing at the Field Office, the research with Professor O’Brien, meeting with Richard Basque . . . almost catching Mason at the house.

  Almost.

  And then the flurry of activity as we tried to stop the train to avert a catastrophic anhydrous ammonia spill.

  We almost succeeded there too.

  Almost.

  That seemed to be the refrain for the day.

  You almost caught Mason, almost caught Basque, almost stopped the train before it derailed.

  Yeah, and you almost kept your promise to Lien-hua about upholding your integrity—but then you chose to work with Basque, agreed to leave him alone with Mason.

  I told myself that there was a good reason for it—saving people’s lives.

  But maybe I was just trying to justify my choice—which was something I’ve never been very good at.

  How much of your integrity are you willing to give up in your quest to save others?

  All of it, I suppose, based on the choices I’d made earlier today.

  In addition to the case, I had some unfinished personal business, including telling Sherry Ritterman the truth about what her husband had said to me right before he died: the message that he was sorry about Iris.

  And also, I felt like I’d left things unresolved with Tessa.

  Before leaving DC, I’d explained to her that I was going to be leaving someone to watch over her and she’d told me, “You’re gonna owe me big-time for this.”

  Yes, she was eighteen and she was a pretty self-reliant girl, but still, I felt responsible for her and couldn’t help but want to do all I could to make sure she was safe.

  Now as I thought about her, I recalled the day when she first told me she was going to refer to me as her father.

  “Okay, I’m going to officially call you Dad from here on out.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Not my stepdad—although I reserve the right to still call you Patrick.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “But this job of being a dad comes with a lot of responsibility.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “So if I ever get married—which I actually doubt, because every guy I go out with ends up being a total loser, but if I do—you’ll walk down the aisle with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll be there for me if I ever get malaria or scurvy or something?”

  “Malaria or scurvy?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “I’ll be there no matter what. If you need me, I don’t care where I am in the world, you need me, you call me, and I’ll be on the next flight. You have my word.”

  I stared out the window at the clouds.

  I wanted things to be cool with her.

  Take some time. Sort things out when you get home.

  The clouds were billowing into ominous thunderheads that somehow served to shift my attention back to the case.

  Currently, we had no leads on Mason or Basque and I knew that more suffering was on its way unless we could come up with something soon.

  So, administrative leave or not, I wasn’t going to rest until that situation was resolved.

  Now seven gods use thirty-eight.

  What does that mean?

  To Mason everything is significant; it’s all part of the story he’s telling.

  Every detail matters.

  Every.

  Detail.

  Matters.

  The case appeared to be all about the train, but I’ve been in this business long enough to know that when something seems obvious you should be very careful—all too often there’s a deeper truth that’s running under the surface and things aren’t what they at first appear to be.

  He told me the climax would be tonight. I just had to figure out what that was going to be.

  84

  Kurt Mason arrived in DC and drove through the industrial district to the abandoned building on 669 Pine Street, where he’d kept his captive locked in the basement since last Sunday afternoon.

  He’d chained her ankle to the bed, but had left enough food and water for her to survive for ten days. There was plenty of air. It was warm enough. She wasn’t in any danger of dying of hypothermia.

  He wasn’t interested in torturing her or making her suffer. He’d even left a television and a stack of DVDs down there to help her pass the time. No, he just wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to go anywhere.

  After confirming that no one else was in the vicinity, he entered the building and knocked on the door.

  He heard her crying.

  Okay.

  She was still alive.

  Good enough.

  He was the only one who knew she was here.

  If anything happened to him she would be left there, locked up. Secure. Until she ran out of food and water.

  And life.

  He returned to the SUV and left for the place where the climax was going to occur.

  9:01 p.m.

  * * *

  After we touched down, I found Lien-hua waiting for me at the curb in her Infiniti Q60 Coupe.

  She informed me that Brin was hoping we could swing by tonight so I could see Tryphena before visiting hours ended at ten.

  At this time of day it would normally be about a thirty-five-minute drive to the hospital. However, with Lien-hua behind the wheel, we would probably be talking more along the lines of twenty-five.

  My cell was still at the bottom of that Rudisill mine shaft, so I borrowed my wife’s to call Sherry Ritterman.

  “This is Patrick Bowers. Yes, listen; I’m sorry to be calling at this time of night. I need to . . . Well, I’m wondering if we could meet? . . . No, we haven’t caught Mason. It’s . . . Well, if we could talk in person? . . . Tomorrow afternoon should be fine. Yes, thanks. Two o’clock at your house? Alright.”

  Then I phoned my daughter to clear the air.

  85

  After her dinner with Lien-hua, Tessa had gone to a coffee shop nearby and ordered a no-whip, soy-mocha-latte-thing that Patrick would never have approved of. She was trying to concentrate on the novel she had with her, Silence, by Shuˉsaku Endoˉ, but was distracted by waiting for a text from Beck that he was ready to meet.

  She found herself rereading the same paragraph for the third time when her phone rang. Lien-hua’s ringtone, but when she answered, it was Patrick on the other end.

  A bit of small talk, then he said, “So, I know it’s been a weird week, having someone assigned to watch you and everything.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now that I’m back we’ll reevaluate that. I . . . um, well, I get some time off while they sort through how many laws I broke working with Richard Basque.”

  “Time off, huh? Shooting for a little positive spin there?”

  “You got me. In any case, since I’ll be around, it doesn’t look like we’ll be needing anyone to protect you.”

  “Right.” She couldn’t help but feel a little conflicted about that.

  Well, Beck’s already working on another assignment anyway.

  “Good,” she said. “So, are you heading home right away?”

  “Brineesha wants us to swing by the hospital. She really wants me to see her new baby. Are you still there?”

  “I’m at a coffee shop, but it’s pretty close. I can come back and meet you there, or I can see you at home. Whatever’s best.”

  She got a notification on her phone: a text from Beck. He was done and could meet her anytime.

  “Up to you,” Patrick said.

  “I’ll let you know. I need to think for a sec. I’ll text you.”

  “Okay.”

  End call.

  She texted
Beck back with the address of the coffee shop and he replied that he wasn’t far and would be right over.

  + + +

  Richard didn’t know all the details of Mason’s plan, but he knew enough, so when he didn’t find what he was looking for at St. Mary’s, he moved on to the next hospital on his list.

  Tanner Medical Center.

  + + +

  Sometimes it’s best to go back to the beginning when you’re trying to piece a case together, to set all your assumptions aside and look at things with fresh eyes, as if you were viewing them for the first time.

  I thought of what Lien-hua had said to me at the hospital on Monday: that we needed to take into account the personal narrative the offender was working from, the posing, the meaning that lay beneath the appearance of the crime.

  The truth that lies beneath the appearances . . .

  Jerome Cole was last seen on Sunday evening leaving his friend’s place at a few minutes after eight, but the security archives were accessed almost two hours earlier. No, it didn’t make sense that Jerome would have been the one to do that.

  But if not him, who?

  Mason? But how did he access them?

  What was I missing here?

  I flipped open my laptop and, as Lien-hua wove through traffic, I used her phone as a hot spot and went online, then I logged in to the Federal Digital Database and began to sort through the personnel files to see if I could figure out who might’ve had access to that information.

  86

  The streetlights outside the coffee shop blinked on as darkness eased down across the city.

  Tessa was texting Melody, letting her know about the meeting she had coming up with Beck and, in between texts, was watching out the window, putting on her best I’m-not-really-waiting-for-a-guy face.

  Then she saw him heading her way on the sidewalk.

  After a short internal debate, she grabbed her things and went to talk with him outside, where it would be a little more private than here in a coffee shop with a bunch of other people around inadvertently eavesdropping.

  She caught up with him beneath the yellowish, hazy glow cast down from the vapor streetlight above him.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hey.” He fumbled to put his hands into his pockets, trying to look nonchalant. Wasn’t working. “So, how are Mrs. Hawkins and the baby?”

  “They’re good. They named her Tryphena. I like it. It’s pretty.”

  “Yes.” Then, “It’s crazy about Charlotte and your dad—he’s okay?”

  “He’s fine. Yeah. He’s good.”

  “Was he near the stadium when it happened?”

  “I guess you could say he was in the general vicinity.”

  This conversation drifted into a silence that felt even more awkward than the first time when they were talking in the living room at home.

  “So,” she said, “you had an assignment today?”

  “Paperwork. You were right, what you said last night about me having to spend my life filling it out. Sometimes it seems like that’s all I do.”

  “Yeah.”

  Traffic coursed past them on the street nearby.

  Okay, just do this thing.

  She took a deep breath and dove right in. “So listen. I’m not usually forward like that—like kissing you last night. I usually just sit around waiting for the guy to make the first move, but I was . . . Look, I don’t care that you’re a few years older than me. I feel like we had something—okay?—chemistry, whatever. And I’m sorry I ruined it. I hope I didn’t get you into trouble. That’s why I wanted to meet. So I could apologize. I’m sorry.”

  He said nothing.

  She wanted him to say something—anything—but he remained silent. “Okay,” she said at last. “It’s your turn now. You get to respond to what I just said.”

  He hesitated. He was obviously searching for the right words. “You know that superpower you told me you wished you had?”

  “To not be invisible to you.”

  “Well, you don’t have to wish for that.”

  “What do you mean? Why do you say that?”

  “You’re anything but invisible to me. From the first time I met you I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

  She stared at him dumbfounded. “But then . . . Why did you . . . ?”

  “Pull away when you kissed me?”

  “Was it just a professional-duty thing?”

  “Well, there is that. And we can’t ignore the fact that there’s also an age issue here.”

  “Seriously, that’s not a big deal. You can’t—”

  “Would your dad be okay with me seeing you?”

  “I’m old enough to decide who I want to hang out with.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. But if it matters to him, then it should matter to us.”

  She had the sense that he was right, but she didn’t want to admit that he was. Patrick would almost certainly not approve of her seeing Beck, and bringing it up to him might very well end things with this guy before they even got started.

  “I want to get to know you better,” he said, “but since we met while I was on duty protecting you, I feel like, well . . .”

  “You need to talk to my dad.”

  “I kind of do. Yes.”

  She was about to counter that, but then the impact of what he was saying struck her.

  He really wants to see you. To get to know you. He does. He likes you.

  “So,” Beck said, “is he still in Charlotte?”

  “Who? Patrick?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, he just flew in. He’s on his way to the hospital to see Brineesha and Tryphena.”

  Beck checked the time. “Maybe tomorrow we could connect and I could talk to him.”

  She’d kind of been hoping he would ask to go and talk with Patrick right away, but it probably wouldn’t be ideal trying to chat there at the hospital when her dad was just hoping to see Brineesha and Tryphena.

  “Sure,” she said. “Tomorrow. That would be good. What are you going to tell him?”

  Beck stared at her in the gentle glow of the streetlight. “That I think his daughter is pretty amazing. That I’d like to get to know her better.” The way he looked at her seemed to somehow disarm her and fill her with courage at the same time. “And then I’ll tell him why I asked to be reassigned today.”

  “What do you mean? It wasn’t because you didn’t want to see me?”

  “Just the opposite. I did want to see you, but not while I was getting paid to do it.”

  She thought, thought, thought, then—

  Screw it.

  She did not want to wait until tomorrow.

  “Follow me.” She indicated toward her car. “You can talk to my dad tonight.”

  87

  Since Brin had misplaced her cell phone before coming to the hospital, Ralph left his by her side, but he turned off the ringer so it wouldn’t disturb her. She unplugged the room phone.

  One of the nurses told him that it was time to give Tryphena a bath.

  “I’ll come along,” Ralph said. “You can review it for me. It’s been a few years.”

  “Of course.”

  Then he kissed his wife on the forehead. “We’ll be back in a little bit, dear.”

  “Don’t be too long. You know Pat and Lien-hua are on their way over.”

  + + +

  Kurt Mason passed the construction area across the street from the hospital and then cruised to a stop in the parking lot.

  He didn’t want to attract any undue attention, so he photographed the complex while still sitting in the SUV.

  Tonight, after everything was done, he would post the pictures and go live with his site.

  + + +

  As Lien-hua dr
ove, I took into account what we knew about the case.

  “Talk this through with me,” I said to her. “Mason, he’s always telling stories that relate to history or literature. So what’s the story he’s telling here?”

  “Seven gods use thirty-eight . . . I know Angela and Lacey are looking into historical references he might have drawn from, but beyond that . . . I don’t know. The team didn’t find anything related to Native American myths or folklore, did they?”

  “No. And Mason told me it wasn’t what I would think. There’s something else going on here.”

  “Well,” Lien-hua said, “he left clues to lead you to Charlotte—the stolen Colonial-era weapons, the Meck Dec mnemonic, the Latin text message . . . He evidently wanted you to go down there.”

  “Yes, but based on what he said when I arrived in the mine, I don’t think he expected me quite so soon.”

  I recalled the photos in the bedroom of his apartment, visualized them: the ones I recognized, the ones I didn’t.

  He used a textile warehouse.

  And a mine shaft.

  And he blew up the railroad bed.

  All three.

  Three statues.

  Every detail matters.

  And a fourth.

  Ice ran through me, found its way to the base of my spine.

  “It’s the statues,” I said half to myself.

  Yes, the ones on Independence Square, the place the Meck Dec had been signed. That was the key. That was—

  “What statues?” Lien-hua asked.

  No, please—

  “What are you thinking, Pat?”

  “It all fits, in a twisted way, it all fits together. He’s retelling the story of Charlotte. That’s what he always does, he’s . . .”

  No, no, no.

  I snatched up her phone.

  That’s why Mason told you that the future ends tomorrow evening, Pat. That’s why he told you to tell Ralph—

  “Pat, don’t shut me out. What is it?”

  I was punching in Ralph’s cell number. “The four statues at the corner of Trade and Tryon. One represents industry—it’s a textile-mill worker. One is transportation—that’s a man with a hammer to lay railroad tracks. The third is a gold miner—and Mason used them all: the gold mine, the railroad tracks, the textile mill. But all those statues are facing the final one, the fourth one—”