The King

by Steven James

  A plan began to form in her mind.

  She carefully placed the newspapers back in the trunk.

  Now there was another killer on the loose, one even more twisted than the one who’d taken Mindy Wells’s life.

  And Saundra realized that it was very possible that he had taken a special interest in her.

  It was strange, really, the thoughts she was having, about the children who needed to be adopted and how expensive it is to get started, how it’s so hard to afford your dream of raising a child, about what her foundation did in giving grants to prospective parents to bring adoption into reach, and in the process, rescue children just like Noni.

  One more life.

  Despite how ridiculous it sounded, Saundra found herself hoping that this man, Richard Basque, would somehow try to contact her. If he did, and the news media caught hold of the story that a serial killer was stalking a crime novelist, it would be a national story.

  The exposure would give her a natural platform to talk about protecting her daughter from the man. And here was the thought that was unfolding in her mind: she was good enough at interviews to bridge the conversation to her foundation to help other children who were in danger of losing their lives.

  It wouldn’t be easy financially, but maybe she could donate the proceeds from her book sales from her next royalty check to the foundation. If she could get on the right talk shows, that could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars for the foundation. And that could mean saving the lives of thousands and thousands of children.

  Yes, literally saving their lives.

  Agent Bowers had intimated that Basque might try to contact her somehow.

  If that happened, it would set everything in motion.

  How could you even think this?

  But she was and she couldn’t put the thoughts aside.

  Maybe, if there was some way, she could contact him.

  That’s ridiculous!

  Her mind was spinning, sorting through the possibilities, and she realized that first, before she did anything else, she needed to find out more about this man, Richard Basque.

  An Internet search was helpful, but the details on different Web sites of what he’d done were contradictory and incomplete. She really needed to get the facts straight.

  She searched for true crime books that had been written about him.

  No, don’t go to this dance, Saundra. Leave this alone. Her instincts tugged her in two different directions—self-preservation and the protection of children just like her daughter.

  But she and Noni were safe—one agent was outside her house, the other had gone to the school where Noni was in kindergarten.

  Regardless of what she decided about communicating with Basque, finding out more about him was the smart thing to do. It would help her understand him better and equip her to better protect her daughter.

  After finding the titles of four books online, she grabbed her keys and drove to the bookstore in the mall.

  The agent in the black sedan followed her as she did.

  32

  As Lien-hua slowly worked her way through her salad, she told me that the doctor had been in to check on her and was pleased with her progress, although it was clear to me that she was still weak and tired.

  “They’re planning on moving me out of the ICU this afternoon and hoping to put the cast on my leg tomorrow. That means I should get out on Wednesday.”

  My phone vibrated from an incoming text message.

  “Let’s just make sure you’re okay before we decide any of that.” I normally don’t like to check texts while I’m talking to someone, but with so much going on right now, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t Ralph with something important regarding the case, so I unpocketed my phone. “The most important thing—” I began, but when I saw who the text was from, I cut myself off midsentence.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  I turned the phone so she could see the photo of the sender that had come up on the screen. “It’s from you.”

  “Basque has my phone.” Her voice was nearly a whisper.

  “Yes, he does.”

  I read the text aloud:

  A fable:

  A farmer’s wife was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. The grief-stricken man took an ax out to kill the snake. When the snake was on its way to its hole, the farmer swung at it; however, he was too slow, managing only to chop off its tail.

  From then on, the snake went about biting the farmer’s sheep until the farmer tried to coax it out, offering a truce. But the snake said, “There can never be peace between us, because you will never be able to forget the loss of your wife and I will never be able to forget the loss of my tail.”

  • • •

  Immediately, I called Cybercrime to see if they could trace the text. While I waited for word, I asked my profiler fiancée what she thought.

  “Well, clearly you’re the farmer,” she said. “I’m the wife. Basque is the snake. Thankfully, he didn’t actually manage to kill me, but he did wound me.”

  Angela wasn’t in, but I got through to her department. They started a trace and said they’d call me back momentarily. After hanging up, I uploaded the text message onto the online case files. “How did I cut off his tail?”

  “You did that when you first caught him, when you sent him to prison. He’ll never forget those thirteen years.”

  “And I’ll never forget his attack against you.”

  “Yes.”

  “And in the story the snake goes after the farmer’s sheep.”

  Lien-hua’s eyes got large. “Tessa.”

  My heart clenched in my chest and I speed-dialed her number, but it was school hours and she was actually obeying the rule not to take calls.

  Either that or . . .

  I texted her to go to the office, then called the school to have their public safety officer find her and let me know as soon as he had—and I left word that I wanted him to shadow her for the rest of the day.

  It could be that Basque’s going after Saundra Weathers. He might think of her and her daughter as your lambs.

  I wasn’t going to take any chances. After hanging up with the school, I confirmed that the agents were still watching Miss Weathers and her daughter—one was with Saundra at the mall, the other was with Noni at her school.

  A call from Headquarters told me they weren’t able to trace the location of Lien-hua’s phone, which didn’t really surprise me. Basque would certainly have known we’d try to track it and he would have removed the battery or destroyed the phone as soon as he sent the text.

  Just moments after I set down my cell, it rang again. I looked at the number, and saw it was from FBI Director Wellington’s office.

  Well, that was quick.

  I picked up. “This is Agent Bowers.”

  “Sir, this is Alicia Becerra, I’m calling on behalf of Director Wellington. She would like to see you this afternoon.”

  This meeting might be in regard to our current progress in the Basque case, or it might have to do with the incident at the water treatment plant.

  Margaret was uncompromising when it came to agents following standard operating procedures and I’d defied Ralph’s orders and gone into that facility alone after Basque.

  I doubted Ralph would have brought that up to her, but the grapevine is alive and well at the Bureau and it wasn’t hard to imagine that Margaret had heard the details from someone else about what’d happened at the plant.

  So I probably had an official reprimand waiting—hopefully not a suspension. That would not be good with the Basque case heating up right now.

  “The Director has a meeting at three,” her receptionist told me. “She would like to meet with you before then. Can you be here by two fifteen?”

  “Does this concern Saturday night? The search for
Basque?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, she hasn’t informed me what it concerns. So, two fifteen, then?”

  Getting across town by then would not be easy, but if I left right away I could probably make it.

  “Alright. Two fifteen. I’ll be there.”

  33

  Tessa quietly watched things unfold.

  Mr. Tilson steepled his fingers and stared down at Melody Carver, who was sitting in the chair just across the aisle. From where Tessa sat, she could smell Tilson’s body odor.

  “So,” he repeated, “can you tell us the difference between fiction and nonfiction, or not?”

  Melody looked dumbfounded, embarrassed. “Um, well . . .”

  Everyone knew her gift was glee club and not English Lit. Tessa had no idea how she’d ended up in the AP class, but she had and she’d struggled all semester and this wasn’t the first time Tilson had made a point to put her on the spot in front of the rest of the class. It was pretty infuriating.

  Now Melody was really struggling. “I mean, some nonfiction stuff is made up, right?” she fumbled. “And, like, fiction is novels? Or . . . Is that . . . ?”

  “We covered all of this last week,” Tilson said condescendingly. He had critical eyes, a sharp nose, and a single eyebrow that diminished only slightly in thickness as it crossed the bridge of his nose. “Really, Miss Carver, you should know this by now.”

  Tessa could feel her temperature rising.

  “Fiction,” he stated, “refers to what is made up. Nonfiction refers to what is true. The first is a product of imagination, the second is always based on facts. Do you remember last week’s discussion at all, Miss Carver?”

  Tessa scoffed loudly enough for him to hear.

  He directed his attention to her and said somewhat curtly, “Do you have something to add, Miss Ellis?”

  “I might.”

  “And that is?”

  “Melody is right.”

  Arms folded now. “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “That ‘some nonfiction is made up’?” When he went on he mocked the way Melody had said the words. “And, like ‘fiction is novels’?”

  Okay, that was it.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I’m afraid both you and Miss Carver haven’t been paying close enough attention in class.”

  Tessa saw Melody gaze down at her textbook, more embarrassed than before.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Tessa asked her teacher.

  “Do what?”

  “This? You and me, here in front of the whole class?”

  Stillness invaded the classroom. Every student who’d been shuffling in his seat or doodling or sneaking out his cell phone to text stopped and stared at Tessa.

  Fire rose in Mr. Tilson’s eyes.

  He walked briskly to his desk and picked up the English textbook he’d chosen to use for the year and flipped through it, then said, “Page two twenty-five: ‘Fiction refers to stories that come from the imagination of the author; nonfiction refers to the record of facts.’” He closed the book authoritatively, placed it on his desk.

  “That’s not the only place that textbook is wrong,” Tessa said.

  “Well, perhaps you can enlighten us then.” He spread out his hands. “About how Baldric and Grisham are wrong.”

  “Do you know Latin, Mr. Tilson?”

  “Do I know Latin?”

  “Yes. It’s the language Baldric and Grisham refer to as ‘dead,’ even though it’s not.”

  “Latin isn’t spoken anywhere anymore, Miss Ellis. Thus it is referred to as a dead language.”

  “It’s spoken at the Vatican. It’s not dead. So do you know it?”

  His jaw tightened. “What does Latin have to do with the distinction between fiction and nonfiction?”

  “The word ‘fact’ comes from the Latin facere—to make or do. The word ‘fiction’ comes from the Latin fingere—to make or shape, more specifically referring to the way a potter would shape his clay.”

  “Well, then, it still remains that ‘fact’ means ‘a thing that is done’ and ‘fiction’ means ‘a thing that is made up.’”

  “But that’s not true anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Is poetry made up?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “At every library and on every bestseller list in the country, poetry is classified as nonfiction.”

  “Well, perhaps that’s because it’s based on the poet’s observations of real life.”

  Even he had to know how lame an answer that was, but Tessa wasn’t going to be finical.

  “And plays are nonfiction. So if I were to write a novel, it would be fiction, but if I were to leave out the passages of narration and the descriptions and simply include the dialogue and some stage directions, the story would be categorized as nonfiction.”

  “I don’t believe that’s the case.”

  “It is. And graphic novels are nonfiction, too. So novels without pictures are fiction; novels with pictures are nonfiction.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “If you’d like, we could take a field trip down the hall to the library, find out for sure. Comic books are also classified as nonfiction. So are humor and joke books. That’s why Dave Barry won a Pulitzer prize—for writing a humor column. So here’s my question: are you really telling us that poetry, plays, jokes, humor, graphic novels, and comic books are all factual? That none of them are made up? Melody was precisely correct: novels are fiction and some nonfiction is made up. You, Baldric, and Grisham are wrong.”

  The bell rang but no one in the class moved.

  “Miss Ellis, I would like you to stay for a moment after class.”

  “Not a problem.”

  “The rest of you are dismissed.”

  No one moved.

  “Dismissed.”

  At last the students shuffled out of the room. Tessa picked up her book bag, slung its strap over her shoulder, and stood unmoving beside her desk. Mr. Tilson was glaring at her from the front of the room but she didn’t care and she didn’t look away.

  As the last few students were leaving, Tessa crossed the room to his desk.

  When he spoke to her, she sensed that he was trying to slap her in the face with his words. “You haven’t graduated yet, Miss Ellis. Don’t burn bridges that you haven’t crossed. The final grade for your senior project has not been submitted yet.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Hardly. I would never threaten a student. I’m simply exhorting you to focus on your work.”

  “Ah. Well, I’ll exhort you to stop putting Melody on the spot or else I’ll point out other places where your precious Baldric and Grisham—and you—are wrong.”

  She exited the room and didn’t turn around, even when he called her to come back, even when he warned her not to walk away from him like that.

  This was not the day to threaten her. Not when her mom-to-be was in the hospital and there was a serial killer out there targeting the people she loved.

  Just down the hallway, she found Melody waiting beside the drinking fountain near Aiden’s locker—oh, yeah, Tessa definitely knew where that was.

  “Tess.” Melody had a breezy smile and was one of the Beautiful People. She wore a gentle pink sweater that looked like it was made out of Muppet hair, but she somehow managed to make it look cute.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  Aiden materialized from a clutch of students and went to put his books away. Blond hair that was a little too long, a little unkempt. An infectiously impetuous smile. Oh, man. Tessa tried to focus on her conversation with Melody, but it was not easy.

  “Okay.”

  “No,” Melody said. “Seriously, I mean it. I don’t
know why he does that, it’s just . . . Anyway. Thanks.”

  Aiden glanced Tessa’s way, and she pretended not to notice.

  “You had the right answer, Melody. All I did was agree with you.”

  It looked like putting his books away was taking Aiden longer than it needed to.

  “You’re awesome.”

  Tessa looked at Melody again. No one except Patrick had ever told her that she was awesome. “Thanks.”

  “Yeah.”

  Then Melody thanked her again, said they should hang out more. “There are a bunch of us going out for supper before prom Friday night. You should join us.” She winked good-naturedly. “You got a date, right?”

  “Oh. Sure. Of course.”

  “Text me.”

  “Yeah, I’ll let you know.” They exchanged numbers.

  Tessa appreciated the offer but knew she wouldn’t take Melody up on it—even if she actually did have a date. Melody’s crowd was definitely not into fringers like her.

  Then Melody flitted away and merged with the stream of students walking past them—the stream that was not swallowing Aiden.

  Tessa tried to hide from looking at him and checked her texts to see if there was anything from Patrick about Lien-hua and saw that he wanted her to go to the office and talk to the public safety officer ASAP.

  When she looked up Aiden was right beside her. “Hey,” he said.

  She flushed. She couldn’t help it. “Hey.”

  “I heard about what happened in there. In Tilson’s class.”

  Already?!

  “Oh.”

  “That was cool. What you did. I mean, standing up to him. He can be a real . . . Well . . .”

  “Yeah, no kidding.”

  Awkward silence.

  Awkward, awkward silence.

  He’s talking to you. He’s actually talking to you!

  “Um . . .” she stuttered. “I heard you got third in the hundred-ten-meter hurdles the other day. At the meet.”

  “The other schools weren’t really that good.”

  “But third, I mean, it’s still pretty good, right?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  More silence.

  Oh, man.