The Knight

by Steven James

  “I’m no hero, Calvin.”

  “You saved a man’s life.”

  “Who?” This was the last thing I wanted to talk about. “Basque? He deserved to die. Sikora deserved to live. How does that make me a hero?”

  Calvin thought for a moment. He chose not to reply, and I felt his silence to be some sort of refutation.

  “I was proud of you today,” he said at last. “Proud to have been your teacher.”

  His words sounded conclusive, as if he were wrapping up one of his lectures rather than simply commenting about the day. It made me uneasy. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  Once again he chose not to reply, which was uncharacteristic of him. Now, he definitely had my attention.

  A dump truck in front of us spit up a plume of sour exhaust.

  Calvin pulled into the left lane to pass.

  Silence stretched between us, and finally, when I realized he wasn’t going to answer my question, I tried to guess what he’d been hoping to talk to me about. “Was there something I said on the stand that . . .” I searched for the right word. “That you felt was inaccurate or unrepresentative of—”

  He swept his hand through the air dismissively. “Don’t be ridiculous, my boy. Of course not. Nothing like that.” I waited for him to continue, but once again I received only silence.

  I’d never met anyone who chose his words more carefully or more precisely than Dr. Calvin Werjonic, but now he was being evasive. I didn’t want to pressure him, but I did want to find out what was going on.

  “Patrick, governments daily break international laws and treaties to look after their nation’s best interests. And this is necessary because laws are established to serve something greater than themselves.”

  “Justice,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  I considered his words in light of the day’s events. “But Calvin. Justice is a matter for the courts to decide.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. The right answer. The textbook answer.”

  I hadn’t noticed earlier, but now in the cloud-darkened day, I saw that he looked frail and tired, like a mighty cliff finally eroding with time. “But not your answer?”

  “The quest for justice leads not to an answer but to a dilemma: how far is one willing to go to see it carried out?” Calvin merged back into the right lane.

  I was beginning to see how his words might be related to the trial. I hoped I was wrong. “Don’t we vow to tell ‘the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’? Justice isn’t served when truth is censored.”

  “Yes, precisely.”

  Another surprising answer. “But?”

  “But have you noticed that the attorneys for both the prosecution and the defense are not required to take the same oath? Rather than being bound to tell the whole truth, they are, I dare say, expected not to. Their legal obligation is to tell only the version of truth that supports their case. Only the witnesses, not the lawyers, have to vow to tell the whole truth. And yet, as you just noted a moment ago, justice is not served when truth is censored.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. Thick traffic closed in on us. Rush hour.

  “We’ve lost sight of the goal, Patrick. Our justice system is concerned more with prosecutions and acquittals than it is with either truth or justice. You know it’s true. It’s just that we’re reticent to admit it.”

  He was right on both counts: it was true, and I didn’t like admitting it. Both the prosecution and the defense stick to the evidence and witnesses that support their case. If they discover evidence that would help the other side, they don’t submit it to the trial—even if it might mean keeping an innocent man from going to prison or making sure a brutal killer gets locked away. That’s what happens when a legal system values individual rights above the search for truth or the administration of justice.

  Calvin went on, “But seeing justice done, isn’t that why we entered this field in the first place? Isn’t that more important than winning a case?”

  “You’re not justifying—”

  A tired sigh. “I’m seventy-six years old, my boy. I don’t have time left to either justify or condemn, only to reason and, while I’m able, to act.”

  It felt strange hearing Calvin say these things. Over the years, I’d questioned aspects of the judicial system myself but had never articulated my misgivings to anyone.

  “Yes,” I said, returning to his question. “That’s why I entered this field.”

  We were nearing the exit for O’Hare airport, and I sensed that we hadn’t yet made it to the crux of our conversation. “Calvin, at the courthouse you said you wanted to ask me a question.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “Now, please understand that I mean no disrespect whatsoever when I make reference to your stepdaughter in my hypothetical example.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Imagine that a man is on trial for first degree sexual assault. You are called in as a witness and you know that he is guilty and that your testimony will make the difference in the verdict.”

  I began to feel a little uneasy. “All right.”

  “However, the evidence is not sufficient for a conviction and you know that if you relate only the facts of the case, he will be acquitted and will sexually assault Tessa, or perhaps another girl her age. However, if you shade the truth in your testimony toward his guilt, he will be convicted. What would you do?”

  His hypothetical situation left me very little wiggle room.

  “Assuming my testimony was the only deciding factor.” I felt my throat tighten. “I would lie to protect her.” Finally, like a lens slowly coming into focus, I realized what Calvin was saying and how it related to the events earlier in the day.

  “Yes.” He nodded gently. “Because protecting the innocent matters more than anything else.”

  He turned his head and gazed at me. Despite his age, his eyes were as piercingly observant and incisive as ever, and this time he cut straight to the point. “Do you believe Richard Basque is guilty of those murders?”

  There was no question in my mind. “Yes, he is. And probably more that we don’t know about.”

  “I’ve reviewed the case, as you know. And I am convinced of it as well.”

  We came to the airport exit. Calvin took it.

  A thought.

  No, it couldn’t be.

  But maybe it was.

  “Calvin, you loaded the gun, didn’t you?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry to disappoint you. There must be someone else out there thinking the same things as I am.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have believed him, but I did. After all, someone else had killed Heather and Chris and had left the taunting message in the mine. So then, Calvin’s comments could mean only one thing: “You don’t think I should have stopped Sikora.”

  He was quick with a reply. “No, no. I’m not questioning anything you did. I think you did the noble thing, the heroic thing.”

  “But not the right thing?”

  “If you hadn’t reacted as swiftly as you did, two people would be dead instead of one. They would not have taken Mr. Sikora alive, you know that.”

  I noticed he hadn’t answered my question. “But if you’re not questioning what I did, what are you doing?”

  “Explaining myself.”

  He stopped the car in front of Terminal 1.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Calvin let the car idle. “For more than five decades I have told the truth and then watched as people whom I knew to be killers and rapists and pedophiles were set free.” His fingers shook slightly. He laid them on the steering wheel, probably so that I wouldn’t notice. But I did.

  “And they molested again,” he said. “They raped again, they murdered again. So many lives have been destroyed because I trusted that if I related the facts, justice would be carried out. But it wasn’t. And now, the suffering of the innocent weighs heavily upon my conscience.”

  He looked at me, a gray fire burnin
g in his eyes, a single terrible teardrop trailing down his cheek. “Perhaps I could have done more to help them.”

  “But perhaps not.”

  “True,” he acknowledged. “But either way, it is too late to change what has been done. We can only change what is and what will be.”

  A police officer approached the car. We either had to move or I needed to grab my suitcase and head to the ticket counter. I could have identified myself as a federal agent, but my wallet was in my computer bag in the trunk and I didn’t want to mess with all that. I just wanted to finish this conversation. “You’re no longer sure you did the right thing by telling the truth all these years.”

  Calvin stared out the window at the rain. His silence was all the answer I needed.

  I remembered his hypothetical question regarding the rapist: “If you shade the truth in your testimony toward his guilt, he will be convicted. What would you do?”

  Truth and justice always wrestle against each other in our courts. For all these years I’d chosen the side of truth. So had Calvin. Maybe we’d chosen the wrong side.

  “Promise me,” Mr. Sikora had said.

  “I promise,” I’d told him.

  I could feel something shifting inside of me. The confidence I’d always had in the justice system suddenly seemed overly naive and optimistic.

  “Do you believe Basque will kill again if he is set free?” Calvin asked.

  “Yes.”

  “As do I.”

  The officer rapped a knuckle against the glass. I held up a finger to tell him to give me a moment, then I asked Calvin, “You’re going to do something, aren’t you?”

  Silence.

  “What is it? What are you going to do?”

  He folded his hands on the top of the steering wheel. “I’m going to watch carefully.” His words were decisive. Firm. “And see what happens next.”

  I searched for what to say. The officer pounded on the door and began to demand I step outside, which I finally did. He pointed to Calvin. “He needs to move along.”

  I exited the car, and Calvin rolled down his window. “I’ll call you,” I said.

  “Yes, do. Ring me.”

  Then I retrieved my bags and watched as Calvin drove away, the taillights of his car glimmering off the wet pavement. A blurry, distorted reflection.

  The officer was still standing beside me, and when I didn’t move he said, “Is everything all right?”

  No. It’s not. It might never be.

  “Yes,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

  Then I entered the terminal, wondering if I should have just let Sikora kill Richard Basque, or if maybe I should have helped him aim the gun. Calvin’s words stalked me as I made my way through the concourse: “I’m going to watch carefully and see what happens next.”

  Well, so would I.

  17

  Baptist Memorial Hospital

  Denver, Colorado

  7:51 p.m. Mountain Time

  Disguised and dressed as a custodian, Giovanni passed through the lower level of Baptist Memorial Hospital toward the morgue. He carried a black waterproof duffel bag and was careful to avoid the hallways that had security cameras.

  His flight had arrived nearly an hour ago, which had given him plenty of time to get ready.

  Now, he picked the lock to the morgue, entered the room, and shut the door behind him. Set down his duffel bag. Unzipped it.

  Then, he headed to the cold storage area where the recent arrivals were kept.

  Giovanni had never served time for murder, which was a bit surprising, considering how many of them he’d committed.

  And considering he’d even confessed to one.

  But no crimes, not even that first one, appeared on his record because he was only eleven when he confessed to it and the court system decided that he was too young to understand his actions, that he was just a boy and so.

  And so.

  And so.

  Instead of serving time in jail, he’d spent six months at a special hospital and then attended a boarding school and met with a counselor three times a week to talk about his feelings.

  But neither his counselor nor any of his lawyers or the judges or court-appointed advocates had ever understood that he really had known what he was doing when he killed his grandmother two days before his twelfth birthday. He’d known very well. And even now, all these years later, everything was still fresh in his mind.

  He unlatched the metal door that led to the cadavers and felt the sweep of cool air brush across his face, his arms, as he stepped inside. Just a few degrees colder than the mine—cool enough to store the bodies for a few days, not cold enough to freeze them solid.

  He was responsible for eight deaths during the last week, or possibly seven, if the priest was still alive, so he recognized several of the bodies in the cold storage area, but he noted their presence without any emotion or even satisfaction. They’d only been characters in the epic story he was telling, nothing more.

  Giovanni wheeled the gurney containing the corpse of Travis Nash into the examination and autopsy room and shut the freezer door.

  A white sheet covered the corpse and he slid it aside, revealing the naked, clay-like body of the man he’d killed twelve hours ago by what had appeared to everyone to be a heart attack. No autopsy had been ordered.

  Giovanni realized that if he were going to stick literally to the plot, he would have needed to find a way to have Travis’s wife dig up his body and slice off his head with a knife, but burial practices had changed quite a bit since the fourteenth century, and, considering Travis’s cremation was scheduled for the following morning, taking his body from the morgue was as close to disinterment as possible.

  Since his death earlier in the day, Travis Nash’s blood would have pooled in his body cavity, so there wouldn’t be much of a mess, just a little seepage.

  He unzipped his duffel bag, took out the crosscut saw that he’d used on Brigitte and the governor, placed the blade against the cold, bloated neck of Mr. Nash, and set to work.

  Giovanni remembered the night his grandmother died.

  He could still see her standing in the kitchen, bent over the sink, her frail fingers scrubbing the dishes, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, and her soft, papery voice asking him to please put the glasses in the cupboard next to the plates and if he enjoyed the summer with her and was he ready to go back to his father next Tuesday, and then reminding him not to forget his copy of The Canterbury Tales that he’d been reading all summer because she’d seen it on the porch earlier in the day.

  She was wearing a white apron with a picture of a faded bouquet of lilies embroidered on the front, and there were yellow stains of chicken broth beside the flowers from the times she’d wiped her fingers across the apron while she was cooking.

  Yes, he remembered it all: the quiet Kansas breeze blowing through the open window above the sink, the sound of crickets chirping in the dewy shadows outside, the smell of his grandmother’s old-lady perfume mixing with the lemon-scented dishwashing liquid, and the fading smell of the chicken dumpling soup that she’d made from scratch for him because it was his favorite.

  Yes, and he remembered the knife resting patiently on the counter beside her.

  And his grandmother’s voice again, “Please make sure those glasses are dry before you put them away, dear. You know how they’ll just pick up germs if they’re still wet.”

  “And did his grandmother yell at the boy? Verbally abuse him?”

  “Not to my knowledge, Your Honor.”

  “What about his home life with his father? Was he neglected in any way?”

  “He appears to have had a normal, stable upbringing, Your Honor. His mother died while giving birth, but there is no sign of physical or mental abuse whatsoever from his other family members.”

  The knife handle looked so shiny and smooth and inviting.

  He remembered that. And he remembered wrapping his fingers around it and picking it up and feeling it
s steady, balanced weight.

  He rotated it so that the kitchen light could slant and dance along the blade, where it glistened, glistened, glistened, and then lingered for a moment before sliding off the edge and disappearing into the air around him.

  The knife felt right at home in his hand.

  Yes, he remembered.

  And then his grandmother turned and saw him holding it, and she wiped her hands on her apron and asked what he was doing and would he please put down the knife because knives are dangerous and not to be handled carelessly and he should know that, a boy his age.

  And he remembered how glad he was that she’d turned around because he hadn’t really wanted to push the knife into her back and this way he could watch her face when it happened.

  “Your Honor, the boy is too young to understand his actions. There’s no precedent for a child under fourteen years of age being convicted of first-degree murder. He’s a deeply troubled young man who needs psychological help. He should be offered counseling, not incarceration.”

  Everything was clear.

  When his grandmother saw that he wasn’t going to put down the knife, she took a hesitant step backward, pressing herself against the sink. She was still holding the dishrag, and soapy water was dripping from it and forming a small uneven puddle at her feet on the checkered linoleum floor.

  He remembered that, even after all these years.

  Giovanni finished with Travis’s neck and set the blond, curly haired head in a plastic bag, then wrapped it carefully in a large white linen sheet and placed it in the duffel bag.

  It took him only a moment to wash up and then change into the doctor’s scrubs he’d brought with him. He stuffed the custodian’s clothes into the duffel, covered the body again, and rolled it into the freezer.

  Kelsey would be arriving in less than ten minutes.

  Good.

  He went to the sink to rinse off the saw and prepare the needle.

  For some reason, as Giovanni stepped toward his grandmother, the crickets stopped chirping. Maybe they knew. Maybe somehow they could tell what was about to happen.