by Steven James
“No.”
“You loved her and when you—”
“No!”
But even as he denied it, images were sliding across Alexei’s mind, images of things he should not have been able to remember, not if he were innocent. The pictures came to him as if they were filtered through a screen, as if he were recalling someone else’s life . . . attacking Erin Collet on Wednesday night . . . pressing the remote control detonator and blowing off Kirk Tyler’s head . . . then leaving to read The Brothers Karamazov . . . having a conversation with . . .
Himself.
No!
Yes.
Valkyrie.
The sirens drew closer.
Valkyrie knew about the Tanfoglio in Italy. About Tatiana! He had contacts in Pakistan, first appeared in May, left the money at the dead drop. All of this, Alexei, all of this, because you were—
Images. Memories. Pain.
Seeing Tatiana, the look on her face when he raised the pistol, the terror in her eyes, the sound of the shot—
No!
Yes.
The day Valkyrie was born. The day Tatiana died.
Alexei removed the bone gun from Special Agent Bowers’s calcaneus bone.
“If you leave here”—Bowers’s words were steely and unflinching—“I will find you. I’m going to bring you in.”
“I have no doubt,” Alexei heard himself say softly.
Blue and red lights were flashing, curling, through the blowing snow, flashing through the windows and the still-open door.
He backed away from the conveyor belt, and, as the patrol cars arrived on the property, Alexei pocketed his bone gun and disappeared into the night.
104
Four days later
We did not find Alexei Chekov.
I expected him to use Sean’s truck for his getaway from the sawmill, but he did not.
In the hours, and now days, following his escape, state patrol scoured the lumberyard, the roads surrounding the area, even the ELF tunnels and base.
Nothing.
That night, thinking that Alexei might try to catch a ride in one of the cruisers, I’d had the officers check their trunks before leaving the property. No sign of the assassin.
It was as if he really was a ghost and had stepped out of that sawmill door and slipped right into the invisible fabric of the air.
Alexei Chekov, shirt off, back to the mirror, stared over his wounded left shoulder at his reflection, studying the infected bullet wound beside his scapula.
He had managed to hide in the forest until the officers left the lumberyard, and then made his way down here to South Chicago one borrowed car at a time, and now he was in a motel that charged by the hour. He’d paid for four.
Alexei had purposely left the bullet in his shoulder, purposely left it untreated in order to make his wife’s killer suffer. The day she died he had vowed to do so, and he was a man of his word.
Angry, red, infected lines fingered out from the bullet wound and snaked across his shoulder, down his arm, up onto his neck. Bearing this wound without complaint had also been his own private penance, a self-imposed sentence for slaughtering his beautiful bride.
But it had not been enough.
The memory flashes hadn’t stopped, but each day became more and more frequent: conversations he didn’t know he’d had, travels he’d been unaware of until now, crimes Valkyrie had committed against those whom Alexei never would have harmed.
There were two people inside of him. One who killed because it was his profession, the other who killed because it was his passion.
But this battle was going to end tonight.
Last week when he was in that jail cell in Wisconsin, Alexei had told Agent Bowers, “I have someone to take out my vengeance on; you have only God to blame.”
Tonight he would avenge Tatiana’s murder by putting a bullet in the brain of her killer.
Alexei put on his shirt, dressed for the cold, and then left the motel to find a pawn shop where he could purchase a handgun.
Lien-hua and I arrived at Sean’s house late for supper.
This afternoon’s debriefing with Tait, Torres, Natasha, and Linnaman, the coroner, had gone longer than I’d thought, and when we arrived at the house, Tessa, Sean, and Amber were already seated at the table for the meal.
As Lien-hua hung up her coat, I noticed a small package addressed to me sitting on the table near the front door. The package had a Denver postmark, and I knew immediately what it was—the item I’d had my friend John-Paul send me.
The item I needed for tonight.
Surreptitiously, I slid it into my pocket so Lien-hua wouldn’t see. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” I told her. “I need to run to my room for a sec.”
“See you there.”
Alexei arrived at the pawn shop.
“Can I help you?” asked the greasy-haired man behind the counter.
“I believe you can.” Alexei indicated toward the guns propped up in a large glass case on the wall.
“You got a Firearm Owner’s ID card?”
“No. And I’m looking for something you have cartridges for, here in the store.” Alexei pulled out a thick wad of hundreds. “This will be a cash transaction.”
Sean stared into the wok. “It’s called what, again?”
“Tofu,” Tessa said.
“Tofu,” he mumbled.
“Yes.”
Amber slid some of the firm white squares onto his plate.
Sean tentatively prodded at them with his fork. “And it’s . . . you said it’s curd?”
“Soybean curd,” Tessa answered. “You’ll like it. Trust me.”
“Soybean curd.”
“It’s really not that bad,” I assured him. From across the table Lien-hua gave me a wry smile.
Margaret had wanted me to rest for a few days, Tessa didn’t mind missing a little school, and Amber needed family around, so it’d been an easy decision to stay at Sean and Amber’s place for the week. Additionally, with all of the follow-up on the cases, it hadn’t been hard to get Margaret to sign off on letting Lien-hua stay in the area for a few extra days as well.
Obviously, Sean and Amber had a rocky road in front of them, but I figured if their marriage could survive everything that had happened last week, they might just be able to make things work after all.
“Mmm, not bad,” Sean said, referring to the tofu. “It’s kind of tasteless, but that’s better than I expected.” He offered Tessa a friendly wink.
“Hey,” he said to me, “I’ve got something for you.” He reached under the table. “The description you gave me of the tree wasn’t perfect, but . . .” He produced my .357 SIG P229, retrieved from the snowbank near the Chippewa River, cleaned, just like new.
“Oh yes.” This morning when he’d offered to go look for it, I hadn’t thought he was serious, and when I realized he was, I hadn’t thought there was any chance he’d find it.
“You’re amazing.” I took the gun from him.
And it was happy to be home in my hands.
Alexei made his decision.
A Rossi 351 .38 special. “Good choice.” The clerk unlocked the cabinet to get the gun. “Simple. Small. Perfect for concealed carry. Reliable.”
Reliable wasn’t really the issue since Alexei was only going to use it to fire one bullet, but he decided he didn’t need to mention that.
While the clerk pocketed his money, Alexei left for the motel, carrying the gun, the holster that came with it, and the cartridges, which only came by the box.
We’d put a moratorium on watching the news.
Listening to the ways that America and Iran were spinning the incidents of last week, watching the atmospheric rises and falls of the volatile stock market, hearing the political analysts drone on, was just too much.
Honestly, being here, isolated in the winter wonderland of northern Wisconsin, it felt like we were in another world.
And I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go back
to the old one.
After supper, when I was on my way to talk to Tessa to show her what was in the package from Denver, Sean called me aside.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m driving over to Green Bay tomorrow—Tessa said she’d be glad to stay with Amber.” They’d been taking turns making sure Amber wasn’t left alone. It was part of the deal for us bringing her home from the hospital.
“Green Bay?”
“I’ve decided to tell him—to tell her son—the truth.”
I still wasn’t following. “Her son?”
“Nancy Everson. She had a twenty-two-year-old son when she died. I’m gonna tell him the truth about that night—that I’d been drinking, that I lost control of the car, and that’s the reason his mother is dead.”
“Sean, I’m really not sure you need to do that. There are statutes that—”
“Yeah, he could press charges. I know. I’ve thought about that. But he deserves to know the truth. It matters. I need to do it. Resolve this thing. It’s as simple as that.”
I realized that whatever the outcome of my brother’s meeting with the man in Green Bay tomorrow, I was proud of him right now for choosing to entrust his future to the truth.
Yes, I was proud of my brother.
And for the first time I could ever remember, I told him so.
Right after my brief conversation with Sean, I headed down the hall and knocked on Tessa’s door.
“Yeah, come on in.”
I went in, closed the door behind me. Tessa was lying on the bed, writing in her journal, her teddy bear, Francesca, nestled up beside her.
“I have something to show you, Raven,” I said.
Curious, she scooted forward, sat on the edge of the bed, and I held up the box containing the ring.
“What!” Her eyes were wide. “Can I see it?”
I gave her the box.
“It finally arrived this morning. I’m about to go ask her right now.”
Tessa opened the ring box and let out a long, slow breath. “You did good.” She admired it longer than I thought she would. “You did real good.”
At last she handed me the box, and I slid it into my pocket. “Anyway,” I said, “that’s why I stopped by. I just wanted, one more time, to make sure that you’re cool with—”
“Patrick.” Tessa had chosen a parental tone. “It’s been almost two years since Mom died. You have a life to live. Lien-hua is great. I couldn’t ask for a cooler stepmom.”
“Thanks.” I gave her a light kiss on the forehead.
“You gonna tell her about DC?”
“Yes.”
“A new adventure.”
“That’s right.”
A small silence. I saw her tapping her leg. “Hey,” she said, “did Amber ever teach you that game of hers, Guess the Plot?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Well, you watch, like, a little snippet of a movie and then you try to guess the rest of the story. I was just thinking . . . you, Lien-hua, me—if this were a movie, how it would end.”
“And?” I said, somewhat apprehensively.
“It looks like the guy finally gets the girl.”
“That’s my kind of story. What about the precocious teenager? Does she live happily ever after with the dashing and brave geospatial investigator and his exotically beautiful kickboxing bride?”
Tessa looked at me with mock incredulity. “You’re dashing and brave, she’s exotically beautiful, and I’m precocious?”
“In an endearing, fetching sort of way.”
“Humph.” She folded her arms but wasn’t really angry. “Well, I think maybe she stops having trouble falling asleep.”
“Really?”
“I think so. Yes.”
“This is turning out to be the kind of ending I like.”
“But as far as living ‘happily ever after,’ let’s hope that doesn’t happen.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t happen?”
“Yeah, I mean, just sitting around being happy all the time? Boring. I’m more into an ongoing adventure kind of thing.”
I patted her arm. “Don’t worry. I’m sure something bad will happen soon enough to keep things interesting.”
Then I left to go ask Special Agent Lien-hua Jiang for her hand in marriage.
In his motel room, Alexei Chekov addressed the six envelopes.
Each contained over $150,000, all of the money he had left from his trip to Wisconsin.
As a small way of showing recompense for the death of their husbands, he left one envelope to Mia Ellory, the deputy’s wife, another to Annette Clarke, the wife of the truck driver he had killed. The third envelope he addressed to Erin Collet, because he had attacked her and allowed her father to die; the fourth was for Kayla Tatum, for mental duress suffered during her abduction and captivity; the fifth, for the maid who would find his body tomorrow. The final envelope contained enough money to pay for cleaning up the motel room.
Then, Alexei sat at the desk and carefully wrote a note to each of the women expressing his deep regret for the pain and grief he’d brought into their lives.
Lien-hua was already waiting for me outside the front door in the lightly falling snow. Quietly, I took her mittened hand and we left the house, choosing the trail that led past the woodshed and toward the forest. Faint light from the patio glowed around us, gently illuminating the peaceful winter landscape.
After a few moments of silence she said, “I spoke with Director Wellington today. Asked her whatever happened to Terry Manoji.”
Margaret was not the most forthcoming person I knew. “And how did that go?”
“She said, and I quote, ‘My counterpart at the CIA has assured me that Terry Manoji will no longer be a threat of any kind to the United States of America.’”
“No longer a threat of any kind, huh? And what does that mean, exactly?”
“Well, I asked her that too, and she just said that in the scope of her conversation with CIA Director O’Dell, some things were left unsaid and some things were left unasked.”
“Aha.” I still wasn’t completely clear on why Margaret hadn’t been more available the night everything went down last week. Two days ago she’d curtly told me that the missile crisis was not the only disaster she was trying to avert at the time. It was hard for me to believe that there could’ve been anything as pressing as what we were dealing with, but she let it go at that.
Lien-hua and I took a few steps. I watched the snow swirl around us, thought of how I was going to do this. She said, “What do you think ever happened with Chekov?”
“Well, he was going to kill his wife’s murderer. I can’t help but wonder if he might’ve just gone ahead and kept his word.”
I thought of Tessa’s probing question at the hospital last week: “Apart from forgiveness, can you think of any way of dealing with your wrongs that doesn’t involve some form of denial or negotiation?”
The question had been on my mind a lot over the last few days as we wrapped up these cases, as I considered all the crimes that Terry, Cassandra, Jake, and Alexei had committed. And in the background, always in the background, casting a long, thin shadow across the last fourteen years of my life, Richard Devin Basque and the women he’d killed.
Can you think of a way . . . ?
And I still had to answer Tessa’s question “no.”
If you don’t find forgiveness, you’ll never end up with peace, just get lost in a maze of comforting excuses.
A maze I decided I was not going to enter.
I felt Lien-hua reposition her hand in mine, grasp my fingers more tightly. “So have you decided?” she asked. “About teaching at the Academy again?”
“I’m going to take the job.”
“So you’ll be moving to DC?”
“Yup.”
“Well, then, we’ll be neighbors.”
“I hope not.”
“What?”
We stopped walking and stood on the edge of the night, snow falling lightly ar
ound us. “Lien-hua, do you remember how, in that ELF tunnel, I told you there was something I wanted to ask you?”
“Yes.”
“And you made me wait until all that was over?”
“Yes.”
“And then, when I was about to climb up that shaft, I sort of said I was going to marry you, and that’s why I wasn’t about to fall—because I’d miss out on that?”
“I think I recall something along those lines.”
I took out the ring box.
Her eyes widened. “Oh, Pat,” she said, drawing a mitten-covered hand to her mouth.
“Lien-hua . . .” I brushed a snow-dabbed strand of hair from the side of her face. “Since the first time I met you I’ve been under your spell. You’re beautiful in all the ways that matter most, and the more I get to know you the deeper I fall in love with you. I’d do anything for you and I want to spend the rest of my life by your side. Lien-hua, would you marry me? Would you be my bride? My queen?”
She said nothing at first but then threw her arms around me, leaned up on her toes, drew herself close, pressed her lips against mine.
And said yes.
There is a fate worse than death.
The discovery that you’re the one who killed the person you love the most. How do you deal with that kind of knowledge? That deep a sin?
Alexei raised the Rossi, placed the end of the barrel against his temple, and, in his mother tongue, Russian, counted down the last five seconds of his life.
Pyat’ . . .
He would finally be reunited with Tatiana again.
Chetyre . . .
Justice meted out against her murderer.
Tri . . .
The pain of loss fading into night.
Dva . . .
Alexei closed his eyes.
Odin—
Valkyrie opened his eyes.
Lowered the gun.
Then breathed in deeply, savoring the moment, the feeling of air filling his lungs, the thumping beat of his heart in his chest, proving, proving, proving that he was alive. Yes, alive.
