The Knight

by Steven James

  “He . . .” She was speaking softly, but at least she was speaking. “He left me in . . .”

  “I know,” I said. “Who was it? Who did this to you?” She shook her head. She didn’t know. “What’s your name?”

  She gasped. Took a breath. “Kelsey.”

  “We’re going to get you warmed up, Kelsey. You’ll be OK.”

  She gave a small nod.

  Moments passed. Curls of warm steam rose from the water and meandered around us.

  Kelsey’s breathing began to grow more normal, more steady. Then I heard running in the hall.

  “It’s the doctor,” I called to Cheyenne, but she was already heading for the door. A moment later a man in doctor’s scrubs, a nurse, and Lance Rietlin came hurrying into the room. “Over here!” I yelled as I lifted Kelsey from the water and carefully stepped out of the whirlpool.

  “Let’s get her on the gurney,” Lance said, then helped me lay her down. He touched her hand lightly. “What’s your name?”

  “Her name’s Kelsey,” Cheyenne said, then brushed some wet hair out of Kelsey’s eyes.

  “We need to get you out of these clothes,” the nurse said to Kelsey. “Is that all right?”

  Kelsey nodded, and Cheyenne and the nurse removed her wet clothes while Lance retrieved some towels and blankets from the linen closet. Then he handed them to the nurse, who quickly and thoroughly dried her off and laid the blankets over her.

  The doctor, a balding man in his fifties with a look of permanent worry etched on his face, checked Kelsey’s eyes with a penlight. “Whose idea was it to warm her in the pool?”

  “Mine,” I said. “There was no other way to heat her up. No doctors here, no elevators. She was going into shock. We needed to do something.”

  “We came down the elevators,” he said. It sounded like an accusation.

  “They were out of service when I brought them down here,” Lance explained.

  After a moment of reflection, the doctor seemed to accept that. “All right. Well, let’s get her out of here.” Then Cheyenne told me she’d reconnect with me in a few minutes, there was a rush and swirl of bodies, she left with the medical crew and I was alone in the room.

  I grabbed a towel and wiped it across my face and arms. Right now Kelsey had plenty of people helping her, so I decided to return to the morgue and have a look around, especially now that it was a crime scene for attempted murder.

  I threw the towel on the pile. Turned toward the hall.

  A man stood in the doorway. “Hey, Pat. Good to see you.”

  The profiler, Special Agent Jake Vanderveld, had arrived.

  27

  “Hello, Jake,” I said.

  He stepped into the room. Four years younger than I am. Handsome. Smart. On his way up. Jake had tousled blond hair, intensely blue eyes, and he wore his neatly trimmed mustache like a badge. Even a decade after graduating with his master’s degree in abnormal psychology, he still had the honed physique of the Division I swimmer that he’d been at Cornell.

  “So, Assistant Director Wellington tells me you can use a little help on this case.” He was staring at my dripping clothes. “I’m glad I was available.” He was smirking.

  “I thought you weren’t arriving until this afternoon?”

  “Shifted my schedule around. I figured you’d be glad to have an extra set of eyes on this thing. So that woman they were taking down the hall, what happened?”

  As I summarized, I noticed that in the haste to get Kelsey to a room, her clothes had been left on the floor. Jake watched me pick them up, and the gears seemed to be turning in his head. “You took her into the whirlpool?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish I could have been here to help.”

  Immediately, I sensed that his words could be taken two ways: either as an expression of genuine concern or as a lame and completely inappropriate joke. His tone of voice made me think it was the latter of the two, but before I could respond to him, my phone rang. I was amazed the water hadn’t shorted it out.

  Tessa’s face came up on my caller ID and I told Jake to hang on a second, then answered the cell. “I’m in the middle of something, Tessa. This isn’t the best time to talk.”

  “Um, Agent Jiang called, like, half an hour ago. She left a message on my cell. Said she’d tried you first.”

  She must have called before you turned on your cell.

  “She must really be trying to get a hold of you,” Tessa went on. “You’re supposed to give her a shout.”

  It’d been bad enough talking to Lien-hua with Cheyenne nearby; I definitely did not want to do it in front of Jake Vanderveld. I laid the phone against my chest to muffle the sound. “Hey, could you give me a couple minutes? Call dispatch, get a CSU team over here to process the morgue.”

  A small grin from him. “I’ll see you soon, Pat.”

  “All right, Jake.”

  Then he left and I told Tessa, “I talked with Agent Jiang about twenty minutes ago.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “Is it official?”

  This girl was more observant than most of the agents I work with.

  “It’s been that evident, huh?”

  “That would be a yes.”

  “Well, I guess, you could say that, yes; it’s official. Listen, about lunch—”

  “Your decision or hers?”

  “Not so much a decision as a mutual acknowledgment.” I headed for the hall. “I have to take care of a few things, maybe I can call you later.”

  “I’m sorry, Patrick.” It sounded like she really meant it. “Breaking up sucks.”

  “I’m a big boy, Raven. I can handle it.”

  “Doesn’t matter how big you are.” She paused. I heard her take a sip of something. “It still sucks.”

  Here I was, getting relationship counseling from a teenage girl.

  I wasn’t sure what to say. “Well, thanks.”

  Since my clothes were soaked, after I’d had a chance to have a look around the morgue, I would need to get changed, and that meant swinging home. “Are we still on for lunch?”

  “Yeah. I was thinking that new vegan place—Fruition. You know all those signs, ‘Come to Fruition,’ ‘Have you tasted Fruition?’”

  How exciting. Bean curd, spinach, and chickpeas.

  “Are you still at Pandora’s house?”

  “She dropped me off at home.”

  “OK.” I was almost to the morgue. “I can probably be there in about half an hour. You can pack until I arrive.”

  “Well, actually, though, I’m pretty busy.”

  “Oh, really? On a Saturday morning? What are you doing?”

  “Dora gave me this Rubik’s Cube that I’m trying to figure out. And, oh yeah, I’m finishing up this iced triple grande three pump dolce breve with whip, pumpkin pie spice latte before you get here.” She rattled off the name of her drink in one breath.

  I stopped walking and stared blankly at the wall. “You’re kidding me. Please tell me you’re kidding me.”

  “It’s Dora’s favorite. I decided to try one. It’s good. Should I save some for you?”

  This was very troubling. “Admit it. You bought that just to annoy me.”

  I heard her take a sip. “If I did, you deserve it. You’re a coffee snob.”

  “Not snob, connoisseur—wait a minute. Pumpkin pie spice is seasonal. They only serve that in the fall.”

  “They had some in the back.”

  “Oh, please tell me you didn’t.”

  “I did.”

  “You’re drinking mass-produced, factory-packaged coffee that was roasted and ground more than six months ago?”

  I heard her sip again, a big hearty slurp. “Ahh. Yummy. Maybe I’ll go buy you one.”

  “I’ll see you in half an hour for lunch. Get packing. And put that thing down before someone arrests me for child abuse.”

  One more noisy sip. “See you.”

  I arrived at the morgue an
d found Dr. Eric Bender inside, rolling the as-of-yet unidentified headless corpse out of the freezer.

  After a quick greeting, I filled him in about the woman we’d just rescued. He listened intently, occasionally shaking his head, and when I was done he said, “You mentioned that her name is Kelsey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this was her husband.” Eric gestured toward the corpse in front of us. “Travis Nash. He was brought in yesterday morning, myocardial infarction. There was no autopsy ordered, everything pointed to natural causes.” He pulled out a file folder and showed me a picture of Travis before he’d been beheaded.

  “We need to find out what this man really died of,” I said. “But this exam room is now a crime scene—attempted murder. You’ll need to either move him or wait for CSU to get in here.”

  Eric didn’t look happy with that, but he didn’t argue with me. “OK,” he said.

  “Can I have a look at Taylor?”

  Eric nodded and I followed him into the freezer.

  28

  I stared at Taylor’s headless, mutilated corpse. The case files mentioned that he’d been tortured, but I hadn’t realized how extensive the injuries had been until now.

  Eric must have noticed me observing the wounds. “This man did not die quickly,” he said.

  I was mentally reconstructing the way Sebastian Taylor had been attacked, when Eric pointed to the bone protruding from the corpse’s right forearm. “Look here. His ulna is fractured, but there were no contusions near the site of the break. His wrist was also fractured.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I can’t tell for certain from a cursory external observation, but most likely the killer used his bare hands.” He pointed to the break in the forearm. “Based on the angle and severity of that open spiral fracture, the attacker would need to be unusually strong and has probably studied—”

  “Martial arts, close quarters combat, or some type of hand to hand.”

  “Yes.”

  The killer found Taylor . . . disabled his surveillance cameras . . . possibly has skills in self-defense . . .

  Military intelligence training?

  Law enforcement experience?

  “OK. Keep me up to speed.”

  He nodded. “I will.”

  I found Cheyenne standing beside the doorway to room 228, texting someone. She looked up as I approached. “Kelsey’s doing a lot better.”

  “That’s great.”

  “They have her on a warm saline IV to raise her core body temp.” She finished sending her text and slid her phone into her pocket. “An officer’s on his way over here to guard the room in case the killer finds out she survived and tries to return to finish what he started.”

  “Good. Did Kelsey give you a description of her assailant?”

  “She wouldn’t talk about it. When I asked her, she just closed her eyes and shook her head.”

  Sometimes victims take weeks before developing enough emotional distance to talk about life-threatening events, so, after an experience as traumatic as getting locked in a morgue, Kelsey’s reaction didn’t surprise me. But it wasn’t going to make our job any easier.

  “We’ll follow up,” Cheyenne said. “If she’s willing to talk, I’ll call for a sketch artist to come in. Oh, and Agent Vanderveld stopped by.”

  “Great.”

  “He seems like a man who is very sure of himself.”

  “That’s one way to put it.” I didn’t really want to talk about Jake. “Hey, let’s have an officer review the hospital’s video surveillance cameras to find out when Kelsey arrived. Maybe there’s some footage of her attacker entering or leaving the hospital.”

  “I’ll get someone on it.”

  I quickly briefed Cheyenne on Kelsey’s husband. She nodded solemnly, then glanced at her watch. “I can’t even imagine what she’s going through. I’m going to stay here for a little while. Whether or not she decides to talk, she needs someone with her right now.”

  “One more thing,” I said. “I need to get home and change. Can I borrow your car?”

  “Anytime.”

  I gave her Kelsey’s wet clothes, she handed me the keys, and I was on my way.

  Since receiving the flowers nearly an hour ago, Amy Lynn Greer had been searching through every article she’d written in the last year, looking for connections to stories about people named John, Jonathan, or Johnson, and had found a few possibilities, but nothing that looked relevant.

  After she’d eliminated the articles that she’d personally worked on, she’d expanded her search to include articles by other journalists.

  Still nothing solid.

  The phrase about telling of others’ tears made her vaguely uneasy, and as an investigative journalist, she didn’t like mysteries that she couldn’t solve.

  A thought that had been nagging her was starting to become more and more intrusive.

  Maybe it wasn’t just a coincidence that she mysteriously received the flowers while her husband and the rest of the crime scene unit were investigating one of the most gruesome crime sprees in Denver’s history.

  She decided to give herself one more hour to see if she could uncover anything about the phrase “Must needs we tell of others’ tears?” and then, even though she wasn’t supposed to, she would call her husband to find out if this might be related to any of the cases he was working on.

  All right, then. One more hour.

  29

  After talking with Patrick on the phone and torturing him about the pumpkin pie spice latte, Tessa had spent some time lounging in her room, listening to music and working on the Rubik’s Cube, but she couldn’t solve it. Even with her eyes open.

  And that really annoyed her.

  She had her iPod docked to her stereo, and when the playlist came to Vigilantes of Love’s Audible Sigh CD, she cranked the music to help her concentrate. A little retro, kind of an R.E.M college rock feel, not quite as edgy as most of the bands she was into, but sweet lyrics. Bill Mallonee was a genius with words.

  When “Black Cloud O’er Me” came on, she couldn’t help but think of her conversation with Patrick. He’d really been into Lien-hua, and even though he was acting like it wasn’t a huge deal, he must have been hurting pretty badly after breaking up with her. Talk about a black cloud.

  Tessa had started getting used to the idea of the two of them being together but had noticed their relationship disintegrating for the last couple of weeks, and it was probably better that they called it quits now, before either of them ended up getting hurt worse. She’d seen lots of kids at school drag things out way too long and then break up. It wasn’t pretty.

  A carnage of hearts.

  Sounded like something Bill Mallonee would write.

  So, do what Pat asked. Pack. Cheer him up.

  Obviously, since they were only going to be out East for three months, they weren’t taking everything, but most of the stuff in their bedrooms needed to go. They’d been clearing out his closet the other night. Maybe she could just finish that before he got home.

  Going into his room had always felt a little weird to her, like some kind of invasion of his personal space, but the longer they lived together, the more OK it seemed to her. Part of being in a family. One of the good parts.

  She stepped inside. Glanced around.

  Rumpled bedsheets on his bed. A half-read copy of Pascal’s Pensées on the end table beside it, rock-climbing gear thrown on the floor under the window. Ansel Adams prints of Half Dome and El Capitan, two of the places he’d climbed, hung on the wall.

  Two photos sat on his dresser. One of the family: Mom, Patrick, and her on the Staten Island Ferry—her mother bald from chemo. The other picture was of him in the Appalachian Mountains when he was a wilderness guide in college. He had a ponytail in the picture, and she’d gotten a ton of mileage out of that.

  Scattered around the room were five heavy-duty cardboard moving boxes.

  She popped open the one next to the cl
oset and found it half full of dog-eared criminology textbooks and back issues of the Journal of Environmental Psychology and the Journal of Forensic Sciences, and a clutter of office supplies just thrown on top—pens, scissors, paper clips, pencil holders, USB cords, rubber bands—a pair of dress shoes, and some crumpled-up dress shirts. How he could be so meticulous in his FBI life and such a slob in his single-guy-at-home life had always been a mystery to her.

  There was still room in the box, though, and she knew they didn’t have a ton of extra moving boxes around so she opened the closet and saw that, apart from a couple pairs of running shoes, and an old backpack, the floor was empty.

  But there was a shelf near the ceiling and some camping stuff sticking over the edge.

  She dragged a folding chair to the closet, stepped up, and yanked down a first aid kit and daypack.

  Only after she’d pulled down the sleeping bag did she see the shoe box shoved against the wall. Between her and the box lay an ocean of thick dust—which was way, way disgusting since the human body sheds over two million dead skin cells every hour and nearly 65 percent of dust found in homes is from human skin.

  Ew.

  Gingerly, she managed to retrieve the box without touching the layer of human remains. Then she stepped off the chair, closed her eyes, and blew the dead skin off the box.

  Eyes open again, she realized it was an old Keds shoe box, which was a little weird since Patrick never had kids and the box wasn’t big enough to hold his shoes.

  There was stuff in it, but by the weight she could tell it wasn’t a pair of shoes. She took one of Patrick’s shirts from his dresser and wiped off the box.

  And noticed her name written in black magic marker on the end.

  But it wasn’t Patrick’s handwriting, it was her mother’s.

  30

  Tessa sat on the bed, the shoe box on her lap.

  Popped it open.

  And found a small stack of postcards, two ticket stubs from a Twins game, three genuine arrowheads, a couple dozen letters stuffed back into their opened envelopes, a bunch of photos, a brochure from the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, a few pictures that Tessa had drawn when she was a kid with big lopsided hearts and crayoned words that read, “I love you Mommy!!”