The Pawn pbf-1

by Steven James

  I pushed open the bulletproof glass doors, stepped into the lobby, and handed my ID to the bald guard sitting next to the metal detector. He yawned at me as if it were a greeting and glanced at my card.

  The whole case was spinning through my mind. I had more questions than answers.

  I set my gun on the conveyer belt.

  Mostly I thought of Jolene. I knew the state patrol and the Charlotte police were doing everything they could to locate her. Still, I wished I could find her, help her, save her, make it so that none of this had ever happened. And then take her back to her parents or her boyfriend or whoever and laugh with them as I told them it was just a big misunderstanding, that she’d just gone over to spend the night at a friend’s house. See? Everything was fine.

  But that was a dream, not a reality. Was she even still alive?.. What was she going through?… Where might her abductor have taken her?

  I know it’s always best to avoid thinking those kinds of thoughts. Better to keep your distance. But sometimes you can’t help but think them. Maybe that’s what keeps you human.

  And what about this Illusionist character? What kind of game was he playing? Could he really be someone from my past?

  I could think of only one guy I’d put away who was smart enough to pull off something this elaborate, but he was on death row in Illinois. Or at least I thought he was: Richard Basque, the man who slaughtered, disemboweled, and then ate the intestines of sixteen women in the farmlands of rural Illinois and Wisconsin back in the nineties. I was the one who’d put him away, early in my career, when I was a detective in Milwaukee. Come to think of it, that was the case where I first met up with Ralph, who was one of the three agents assigned to help us with the case.

  Richard Basque. I might want to check on that.

  The security guard watched blearily as my gun passed under the X-ray machine, then he handed me my ID and waved me through.

  The building was still draped in early morning silence. I headed down the hallway to the conference room, opened the door, and noticed Brent Tucker already stationed behind his desk. Hmm. He’s getting an early start. He was on the phone and signaled to me with a finger that he would be with me in a minute.

  I made the call to my parents and found out they had indeed gotten two rooms. Thankfully I didn’t have to wake Tessa-she was in the other room. I offered to pay for both rooms, and of course they declined. But my parents did agree to stay at a safe house for a few days. Yes, they’d make sure Tessa was at the airport on time. Yes, they would take care of everything. Yes, yes, don’t worry.

  After I hung up and was grabbing my computer, Brent called to me. “Hey, Pat.”

  “Morning,” I said. “How was the big date last night?”

  “Fantastic.” He gazed at me. “You look tired.”

  I decided not to tell him about the Illusionist’s phone call or the car following me or the strange meeting with the governor. Plenty of time for that later. Right now I needed to get to Mindy’s crime scene. “It was quite a night.” I yawned. “You heard about the girl in Charlotte?”

  “Yeah, from Ralph. Any news?”

  “No. Looks like the same guy, though. He shot someone last night too.”

  “Ralph told me. How is he?”

  “Looks like he’ll be all right. Eventually.” I slipped my computer into its carrying case, then gestured to the empty coffee cup on Tucker’s desk. “You must be one of those morning people I hear about.”

  “I had something I wanted to check on.” He pulled up a chair beside him. “Here, sit down; I want to show you something.”

  “I don’t have much time. I’m heading back to Mindy’s crime scene.”

  “I’ll be quick.” Tucker had set up a chessboard on his desk. The playing pieces were positioned as if someone had stopped suddenly in the middle of a game. “After your briefing yesterday I got to thinking about the significance of the body dump locations.”

  “And?”

  “Well, latitude and longitude are represented by a set of numbers and degrees such as…” He glanced at his notepad and read off the numbers, “35°35′42.65'N, 82°33′25.96'W-where we are right now.”

  I was anxious to get moving. “Go on.”

  “Well, when chess pieces are moved across the board, chess players represent the placement of their pieces with a series of numbers or letters that record their position. I was thinking-”

  “He’s showing us the board!” I interrupted.

  Tucker nodded. “Right! There are several different chess notation systems out there. I’m trying to see if any of them can be broken down into numeric representations that might correspond to the latitude and longitude of the dump sites.”

  I was impressed. “This is good work. Let me know if you find anything. I think you might be on to something.” I pushed my chair back to stand up and bumped the desk in the process. One of the black bishops fell to its side. I reached over and set it upright on the board.

  Tucker watched me. “Now you’ll need to take that piece.”

  “What?”

  “If we were playing chess,” he said matter-of-factly. “If you touch the piece of your opponent you have to take it on your next turn.”

  I’d taken two steps when I froze in midstride. If you touch the piece of your opponent… I spun around. “What did you just say?”

  He stared at me blankly. “In tournament play. If you touch your opponent’s piece you have to take it on your next move or you forfeit the game.”

  I smacked my palm down on the desk, upsetting all the pieces on the board, scattering them across the desk. “That’s it, Tucker! He’s touching our pieces and then taking them on the next turn. That’s what he did with the contact lenses. He reached across the board, touched her, and then took her. Don’t you see?” I stared at the pictures of the victims on the wall. “Reinita wasn’t engaged, was she?”

  Tucker flipped through some papers on his desk. He looked shocked. “How did you know? That’s in today’s briefing. Margaret hasn’t even signed off on it yet.”

  “No, Reinita wasn’t engaged,” I mumbled, “but Mindy was.”

  “Mindy?” He started flipping through another folder.

  I picked up a pawn and set it upright on the board again, a lone chess piece on the square battlefield. “He touched our piece, Tucker. And then on his next turn, he took her.” I snatched up the pawn, held it up to the light.

  Tucker let out a long, slow breath. “How long has he been doing it?”

  “That’s what we need to find out.”

  27

  I was torn.

  On the one hand I wanted to get to the crime scene, but on the other hand I didn’t really want to go anywhere. If we were right about the Illusionist, we might have found the big break we were hoping for.

  Tucker started pulling out the reports from each of the crime scenes. “Yes. Mindy is engaged to a guy from her hometown-Kevin Young!”

  “So,” I said, “the killer stole the engagement ring from Mindy and placed it on Reinita’s finger. Then he stole Jolene’s contacts and put them in Mindy’s eyes.”

  “Whew. This guy is good. He’s threading everything together for us.”

  “Yeah. Touching the player he’s going to take next. We need to go over everything from the beginning, all the physical evidence. I want to know how long this has been going on.”

  “Gotcha.”

  My mind was spinning, flying over all the facts I’d read so far about the cases, wondering what other clues the Illusionist might have left for us. Does the order matter? What’s the significance of an engagement ring or contact lenses? What else has he left?

  But as excited as I was, I also knew there were good people here who could analyze the forensic evidence better than I could. Besides, I had a lot to do today. I needed to get going.

  Just then, Sheriff Wallace walked into the room. “Whatcha’ll up to?” His mouth was half full of a sausage biscuit; in his hand he held an overstuffed bag f
rom Hardees. Somehow, even though it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, he was already sweating. Damp, yellowish stains emanated from the armpits of his once-white shirt.

  “Sheriff Wallace,” I said, “I need some of your men to pull all the physical evidence from the previous cases.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “Focus on anything found on or near the bodies. Anything at all-rings, glasses, jewelry, brands of lipstick, clothes. Tucker can explain everything. We’re looking for links. Tucker, you on this?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Sheriff Wallace pulled a cinnamon roll out of the bag and popped it in his mouth. He looked lost.

  “He’s reaching across the board,” I explained, “and he’s touching our pieces, then taking them on his next turn.” I realized I wasn’t making any sense, not to someone who hadn’t heard what we were talking about.

  Just then his phone rang. He answered it, looked a little confused, and passed it to me. “It’s for you.”

  “Yeah?” I said into the phone as Tucker started bringing him up to speed, trying to summarize our theory in as few words as possible. “Bowers here.”

  “It’s Lien-hua. I’ve been trying to find you. I tried your phone, then Ralph’s phone-”

  “Long story.”

  “I thought you were heading to the dump sites.”

  “I am. I’m on my way.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “The federal building. I was just leaving.” I grabbed my computer and whispered for Tucker to call me if they came up with anything else. I headed for the door. “Where are you?” I asked her.

  “On the steps outside waiting for you.”

  “What? I thought you were in Charlotte.”

  “Ralph sent me back early this morning. He tried telling you, but I guess your cell phone died.”

  “Actually, it was his. Never mind.”

  She yawned across the phone. “I feel like I’ve been up forever.”

  “I’m glad I took the chopper last night. When’ll Ralph be down?”

  “This afternoon after he’s done interviewing the security guard. He thought it might be helpful if I joined you since I’ve been to each of the crime scenes so far and…”-she paused for a moment-“I’m the one who’s been working on the offender’s profile.”

  Don’t say anything stupid, Pat. Don’t be an idiot. “Yeah. Good. The profile. I love profiles.”

  “You’re a terrible liar.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  I stepped outside and closed up my phone. Wait, not mine. Dante Wallace’s. Oh well, I could give it back to him later. Nearby, Lien-hua was slipping her phone into her jeans pocket. She had on hiking boots and wore a blue North Face fleece pullover and matching windbreaker to fend off the crisp morning air. With the mountains rising behind her, she looked like she belonged on the cover of an outdoor magazine.

  I’d subscribe.

  “He’s touching our pieces,” I said, unlocking the car.

  “What?”

  “Climb in. I’ll explain on the way.”

  28

  Aaron Jeffrey Kincaid finished reading through Governor Taylor’s confidential travel itinerary for the week, and then began perusing the guest list for the upcoming Cable News Forum luncheon. It had cost him nearly $80,000 to obtain this information from a woman named Anita Banner, but it had been worth every penny. And when he found out that she would be there too, he was even more pleased. It would eliminate the need of taking care of her in some slightly less subtle way.

  He looked through the glass at Rebekah and Caleb.

  The effects of the bacterium were beginning to show. Sweating, nausea, sharp mood swings. The rash would start soon, then bleeding from the intestines, the eyes, and then finally, pulmonary failure. It would not be a gentle death.

  He glanced down at his hands and noticed that his shirtsleeve had pulled back, revealing the scar on the inside of his left wrist. He stopped and stared at it, gently rubbing his finger across the discolored skin.

  The mark of true love.

  Even after all this time, the scar was still visible, a reddish gash just over two inches long. The cut had been deeper than he’d originally thought, and without stitches it hadn’t healed evenly. Over the years it had even broken open a few times. And sometimes, on days like these, it still seemed to bother him. Still seemed to itch.

  Maybe it itched because he was thinking about love once again. Maybe that was it. Or because he was thinking about Monday morning and how destiny would finally play out and about his family and about the babies and about the pawns he’d had Theodore leave beside the bodies of the young women and about how it would feel to watch the newscasts in the days following the luncheon as the disease trickled, traveled, spread family to family, husband to wife, lover to lover, friend to friend. One kiss, one sneeze, one handshake at a time. Around the world, evening the scales.

  The Cable News Forum guest list read like a Who’s Who of the world’s media leaders and also included speeches by senators, congressmen, and dignitaries about First Amendment issues, the upcoming presidential election, FCC guidelines, and a number of other mediarelated issues. But really, Kincaid wasn’t interested in all that. He was most interested in the attendees: Juan Carlos Mendez, president of the Pacific Media Group; Roberta Stratham, CEO of Satellite Broadcast News, along with all the nation’s premier cable news correspondents and newscasters. And, of course, Governor Sebastian Taylor.

  It was perfect. Especially considering the rest of the governor’s schedule for the week-appearances at the Pentagon, National Press Club, and a visit to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In fact, the governor’s speaking schedule was one of the reasons he’d moved the plans to Monday instead of the original date in November.

  He grazed the scar with his finger one last time. That afternoon with Jessie had been the first time he’d seen just how far someone would go to prove the depth of her beliefs. Of her love.

  But it would not be the last.

  Alexis and Bethanie hadn’t understood that. He’d had to spend another $120,000 to take care of them and to keep the plans alive. But in the end it was worth it.

  Every time he touched his scar, it was as if he were reliving those moments with Jessie, those dreams of youth, all over again. Caressing them.

  Some moments are meant to be caressed forever.

  He smiled, pulled the shirtsleeve back over his wrist, and headed off to the Alexander Bros. Trucking Company to ship the vats of blood to Theodore.

  29

  As we drove higher and higher into the mountains, Lien-hua told me what they’d found out about Jolene overnight-which wasn’t much. I tried to keep the facts of Mindy’s case separate from Jolene. It wasn’t easy, but that’s the nature of this business. Often you need to juggle two, three, five or more cases at a time. I almost never have the luxury of having only one corpse or missing person on my mind.

  I told Lien-hua about how the Illusionist was connecting the crimes for us, and I tried to summarize Tucker’s latitude and longitude theory. She listened quietly, then asked, “How does Agent Tucker know about all that stuff? I mean, the chess notation systems and the touching-the-piece thing?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe he plays chess.”

  Once again she was quiet, thoughtful.

  Ralph had told her about the phone call I’d received last night from the Illusionist. She asked a few follow-up questions about it and scribbled observations in her notebook as I answered.

  “How does all this fit in with what you know about the offender?” I asked.

  “Most serial killers are sexual predators, but this guy doesn’t seem to be. He cares for the bodies, washes them-and I don’t think he does that just to get rid of physical evidence. He doesn’t rape his victims-either while they’re alive or postmortem. It’s more about power and control than sex. Calling to taunt you on the phone is consistent with that.”

  And now for the big questio
n. “So, could you run through the profile for me?”

  “You actually want to hear the profile?”

  Careful, Pat.

  “Yeah. I do.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “Hmm. OK. Well, I’ve been revising it all morning in light of Jolene’s abduction. It helped me pass the time while I rode back from Charlotte with two very large, very hairy state troopers. I think they were both named Bubba.”

  I smiled.

  “I should mention I don’t like doing verbal profiles. Too many details get lost, forgotten, misunderstood…”

  “I promise that whatever you say will not be held against you.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “Intimately.”

  Hmm. I’m not sure that came out right.

  Or maybe it did.

  “Give me a few minutes to collect my thoughts.”

  We drove in silence up the winding road toward Arrowhead Mountain. I was anxious to hear what she had to say but forced myself not to bother her. After about twenty minutes Lien-hua looked up from her notes.

  “OK,” she said. “Here we go. Looking at the style of killings and the demographics of crime in this region of the country, I’d say he’s Caucasian. Definitely male. Based on the sophistication of the crimes, the organization displayed, and the intricate way he’s linking the crimes for us, I’d say our offender is older, probably late thirties, early forties. He’s experienced. These aren’t the first crimes he’s committed, but he hasn’t been caught, hasn’t served time. He works alone, no partner.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Our guy is proud of his work, confident, arrogant. As you noted from his phone call, narcissistic. He wouldn’t want to share the limelight with anyone. He works solo. High birth order, possibly an only child.”

  “What about military service?”

  “No, he would look at it as beneath him. Too menial.”

  Hmm. She was pretty good.