The King

by Steven James

  She doubted it would work, but she tried kicking at the window.

  It did absolutely nothing.

  She yanked at the metal mesh, but it wasn’t going anywhere.

  Chilled water was pouring in from the open door in the front.

  The trunk.

  Maybe if she could pull the seat forward and get to the trunk she could get out. Or if there was a spare tire she could maybe unscrew the valve, get some air.

  The words that’d been rattling around in her head all week came back to her: Meaningless, meaningless, all is—

  No, no, it’s not!

  This moment matters.

  Every second does!

  She didn’t have anything with her to try to rip open the fabric of the seat back, but even if she did, she realized she’d never be able to get through it in time—if it even accessed the trunk at all. There was almost certainly some sort of barrier there.

  The car tilted farther forward and the cold dark water engulfed her legs.

  ++

  I sprinted toward the shore, past a cluster of trees, frantically scanning the water with my flashlight.

  Nothing.

  Then I saw the taillights of the car about fifteen meters downstream, its trunk angled up through the water. It looked like there was still air in the backseat, but there wasn’t going to be for long.

  Then the electrical system shorted out and the lights blacked out.

  ++

  Everything went dark.

  Water to her chest.

  The clutch purse wasn’t big, but it was leather. It might hold a pocket of air, at least for a little bit before the water seeped through it. Holding the phone above her head she texted, I love you, Dad, then tipped the purse upside down to capture as much air as she could as the water rose to her neck.

  Then Tessa Bernice Ellis tilted her head up to the roof of the car and filled her lungs one last time before the rest of the air escaped from inside the vehicle and the water enveloped her completely.

  ++

  I was at the shoreline when a shadowy figure burst out from behind a grove of trees just to my left.

  Basque.

  I could see him in the faint light from the city. With his sliced cheek, broken teeth, and burned scalp spotted with stringy, wet clumps of hair and covered with gruesome red blisters, he looked bestial, barely human, like something that had crawled from a nightmare.

  I whipped out Ralph’s Glock. “Hands up!”

  Basque complied and stood watching me. He held a handgun, probably from one of the FBI Police officers he’d killed.

  To my right, in the river, only the back bumper of the car was visible.

  He spoke calmly. “Looks like you lose, Patrick.”

  I had the Glock directed at his chest.

  “Drop the gun, Richard!”

  Fire, Patrick. You need to get to Tessa!

  Do it!

  “Now!”

  He complied, tossing it three meters away from him.

  The car disappeared underwater.

  “I want you to remember this moment,” he said. “Remember when you were so close but you couldn’t do it, couldn’t get to her. You have to take me in, Patrick. That’s how you and I are different.”

  Criminals don’t play by the rules. We have to.

  I aimed at him.

  He held his hands up. “You were too slow, Pat.”

  Center mass.

  I said, “Remember when I told you I was going to do what I could to get you the death penalty?”

  “Yes, I—”

  I eyed down the barrel. “I meant it.”

  It would have been perfect if he would’ve pulled a weapon or made a move at me but he didn’t. He just stood there knowing that if I took the time to arrest him Tessa would die.

  If I did my duty, I would lose my daughter.

  Protocol.

  Justice.

  The greater good.

  Life isn’t always perfect.

  I fired three quick shots, all center mass, and the impact sent him lurching backward into the river.

  I took a running start, grabbed a deep breath, and, flashlight in hand, dove into the Potomac to save my daughter.

  85

  The cold water shocked me, made me surface almost immediately and gasp for breath.

  Tessa, hold on!

  The current was swift and I had to fight it to stay on track toward the car. I stroked desperately through the water. Then went under.

  Everything was inky black and murky. Even with my Maglite, I could only see a few feet in front of me. The current wanted to take me downstream, but I struggled against it and swept the light back and forth to try to find the car.

  But I didn’t find it. Though I’m a pretty good swimmer, holding my breath has never been my strength and I felt myself losing air.

  Don’t surface, Pat! Get to her!

  I still didn’t see the car and I had to get air or I wasn’t going to be able to stay under long enough to locate the squad, let along get Tessa out of it.

  But no, I fought the urge to surface and after two more strokes the car appeared, almost out of nowhere. I swam to the backseat door on the driver’s side.

  Flashlight scanning the backseat, I saw Tessa’s body floating in the car. She wasn’t moving.

  No!

  Cranking on the handle, I swung the door open, but it jammed against a rock on the river bottom before it could open wide enough for me to get Tessa out. I yanked at it but it wouldn’t budge and I couldn’t get to her.

  Come on!

  I needed more air but I wasn’t going to chance waiting any longer to get her out.

  She’d been under at least half a minute by now, maybe longer. Every second mattered for eternity and I kicked urgently through the water to the other side of the car.

  I swung the door open, dropped the flashlight and took hold of Tessa’s ankles with both hands and drew her out of the car.

  Her body was limp and passed easily out the door.

  No, please don’t let this happen. Please!

  The discussion I’d had with Lien-hua about the brevity of life raced through my head and I tried to still it, quiet it, deny it as I tucked an arm around Tessa’s shoulder and chest and kicked desperately toward the surface.

  As I did, time became a blur. Prayers, love, fire flashed through me. A father fighting to save his daughter, fighting to get to shore in time.

  Then I was at the surface and swimming toward the bank, stroking as powerfully as I could.

  Then I was at the shoreline and stumbling up the bank, pulling her onto the grass and positioning her on her back so I could begin resuscitation breaths.

  Come on, Tessa. Please. Breathe.

  I started rescue breaths and thought of what I’d done earlier in the week with Basque. Pulling him from the water. Saving his life.

  Now I regretted it.

  You should have left him dead! You caused this!

  She wasn’t moving.

  Come on, Tessa!

  So much death this week, so much suffering, so much pain.

  I prayed for her, that this time there would be a happy ending, begged God to save her.

  But she didn’t move.

  I went back and forth from rescue breaths to chest compressions.

  “You’re gonna be okay, Tessa.” I was pressing on her chest and the words became a prayer. “You’re gonna be okay.”

  While we live, let us live.

  Let us live.

  Let us—

  All at once, her body lurched. She coughed and gagged, spit out a mouthful of water. Breathed, breathed, lived.

  Turning her on her side to help her clear her mouth of water, I supported her and swept the strands of wet hair
from her eyes. She drew in a deep breath. Then another.

  “I knew you’d come,” she managed to say.

  “Shh. You’re safe. It’s over.”

  She nodded, kept trying to catch her breath.

  I said, “I love you.”

  “You too.”

  She leaned heavily against my arms and I lowered her softly back against the ground.

  “Is he dead?” she whispered.

  “Yes. And I’m proud of you. You lit him on fire?”

  “Perfume.” She took a moment to breathe. “I was out of coffee creamer.”

  86

  23 hours later Saturday, April 20 Dusk

  FBI Director Margaret Wellington spread out the papers in front of her and stared at them, thinking about what all this would mean.

  They hadn’t found Basque’s body.

  Metro PD was still searching the river.

  The dead FBI Police officer whom Basque had stolen the uniform from was also missing his body armor. No one knew if Basque had been wearing it when Agent Bowers shot him, but Margaret wasn’t about to label the case closed until they found Richard Basque’s body.

  As the search went on, they were finally getting some answers about Corey’s death.

  Corporal Tyree, the man whom Valkyrie had been torturing belowdeck on the yacht, was in intensive care, but he was conscious and told them what they needed to know about the drug production and the suicides he and the red-haired woman, who was really named Vanessa Juliusson, had overseen.

  Tyree was facing a long list of felonies and capital murder charges but he almost seemed relieved. Maybe prison for him was a freedom of sorts from the life Valkyrie had entwined him in. He claimed that—apart from the pills on the semi at the distribution warehouse—there were no other tainted drugs in the supply chain.

  But Margaret wasn’t going to take any chances.

  Earlier in the day, PTPharmaceuticals had agreed to the full recall of Calydrole. National health warnings went out over the airwaves, online, through texts and tweets and Facebook, and they were just hoping and praying that no additional tainted versions of Calydrole had made it into the hands of consumers.

  Following up on the demolished SUV’s diplomatic tags, Angela Knight and Lacey found out who the Chechens were. Margaret contacted the CIA to have their people look into whatever activities the men might have been plotting with Valkyrie, and they found plans on a laptop in Alhazur Daudov’s house for a coordinated attack against schools in Moscow. Classes were canceled indefinitely until the authorities could guarantee the children would be safe returning to school.

  That afternoon, Margaret had visited prison to speak with the partner of the man she suspected had been the one filming her while she slept last summer.

  The visit had been fruitless and she’d decided it was the last time she was going to pursue this matter. There are some questions, after all, that we never get answers to. Some doors remain locked forever, and that’s life. If we’re ever going to have the courage to face tomorrow, sometimes we have to acknowledge that and it has to be okay.

  She was ready to move on. She’d at least gotten the answers she’d sought about her brother’s death. There was some resolution in that, some peace.

  The DVD of her asleep in her bedroom sat on her desk next to the framed photo of her and her brother when they were children, and now she picked it up.

  She decided two things: (1) she was going to remove the locks on the inside of her bedroom door when she got home and (2) she was going to fill out the papers here on her desk.

  Life is for living, for moving on, for letting the past lie behind us.

  She put down the picture, smashed the DVD on the edge of her desk, and brushed the shattered pieces into her wastebasket.

  Then she filled out the forms that she needed to submit to create an exploratory committee to run for Virginia’s soon-to-be-open first-district congressional seat.

  ++

  We were at the Hawkins house. Tony and Ralph had just finished a game of the latest version of “Call of Duty.” Ralph won and was smiling broadly, but Tony winked at me as he walked past and I knew what had gone down.

  Brin and Tessa were in the kitchen cleaning up supper. I went to check on Lien-hua in the basement, then we all met outside on the back porch.

  Metro PD was still searching the river for Basque, and for now, that was all that could be done. Relief that Tessa was okay and that Lien-hua was recovering was paramount in my mind, not the possibility that Basque was still out there.

  If he was, I would deal with it.

  I would get back to the chase. Tomorrow.

  We would be prudent, yes. We would be careful, yes. We would keep up the search, keep up our guard, but I wasn’t going to let the question of whether or not he was alive control my life or destroy my family. If I ever saw him again I would take care of him, I had no doubt about that anymore. No remorse. No regret. No hesitation. I knew what I was capable of, and call it justice or call it revenge, I was ready to enact it as soon as I had the chance.

  Life isn’t always perfect.

  And justice doesn’t always have clean hands—sometimes she has to get them dirty to do the right thing.

  • • •

  Now, as the sun began dipping down past the edge of the tree line, we were all quiet. Even Ralph and Tony seemed entranced by the sunset.

  “So you really set his hair on fire?” Tony asked Tessa.

  “Yup. Burned really good too.” She gave me a slightly mischievous look. “Good thing I’ve been smoking or I wouldn’t have had that lighter with me.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  She told Tony, “By the way, don’t start smoking just so you can make a flamethrower out of a perfume bottle someday.”

  “What else besides perfume would work?”

  “We’re not making flamethrowers,” Brin told him firmly, “out of anything.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  Ralph winked at him, and I had a feeling they would be spending a little father-son time later discussing alternate techniques.

  Lien-hua’s eyes were on the striking sunset.

  I made an offer to Tessa. “Tell you what, if you make it until graduation without smoking, I’ll buy you a cake.”

  “Chocolate?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at me curiously. “You’re trying to bribe me.”

  “Oh, I would never do that.”

  “You are so trying to bribe me.”

  “It’s called an incentive. Parents use them all the time. Don’t they, Brin?”

  “Don’t get me in the middle of this.”

  “An incentive?” Tessa pressed me.

  “That’s right. An incentive not to smoke.”

  “Bribery.”

  I did my best imitation of a Tessa response: “Whatever.”

  Then we were all quiet and watched the sunlight filter through a pile of soft cumulus clouds. Finally, Lien-hua spoke. “How much would you pay to see this? To see the clouds just this way, to see the sunlight fading like that from orange to gray? How much would you pay if you knew this was the last sunset you’d ever see?”

  ++

  Everything, Tessa thought. Everything I have.

  A Latin phrase popped to mind: Crepusculum vorat diem; aurora evincit noctem: Dusk swallows the day; dawn conquers the night.

  And when she thought of that, she realized, at last, what she was going to do her graduation speech on.

  ++

  I heard Tessa whisper to herself, “Yes. That’s perfect.”

  “What is?”

  “I think I know what I’m going to talk about.”

  “Talk about?”

  “At graduation.”
<
br />   “Sunsets?” Tony asked.

  “Sort of.” She leaned forward. “Okay, here it is: What would it look like to live in awe of every moment? To really, really see the terrible splendor, the delicate wonder of life? I mean, most people just go through the motions of living: texting, going to the movies, watching TV—it’s tragic how many moments go by unnoticed.”

  “That kind of awareness . . .” Brineesha said thoughtfully, “I think it’s just too terrifying. Most people are barely able to live in awe of just one moment out of a thousand. I can’t imagine what it would be like to thread them all together, one after the other.”

  Lien-hua’s voice was barely above a whisper. “It would be life-transforming.”

  “Yeah.” Tessa took a small breath. “Listen. In that car last night I really thought I was gonna drown—I guess, officially, I did—anyway, when you really think you’re gonna die it changes the way you think about life, about God and hope and eternity, all that stuff. But nobody ever talks about any of that at graduations—the things that really matter. It’s always the same clichés about pursuing your dreams and following your heart.” She contemplated that. “I was reading Ecclesiastes lately. There’s a lot of stuff in there about how meaningless life is.”

  “Well,” Ralph mumbled. “That’s encouraging.”

  “But it doesn’t end with everything being meaningless. The king who wrote it ended up saying that finding God brings meaning into every moment—I mean, that’s a paraphrase. Anyway, in my speech I think I’m gonna say that as soon as we put religion out of bounds, we put the search for truth and the quest for meaning out of bounds, and that’s not education, that’s repression. This isn’t 1980s Russia. If we’re not free to speak about what matters most, we’re not free at all.”

  “I’m not sure that’ll fly so well at a public school,” I said.

  She gave me a small grin. “Neither am I.”

  “That’s part of the reason you want to talk about it.”

  “You never know. I’ll call it ‘Wisdom from the King.’” She hesitated. “As long as I don’t puke all over the place first.”

  “Any more ideas on your plans after that?” Lien-hua asked.

  “After throwing up?”

  “After graduating. You still thinking English or deep ecology?”