The Pawn pbf-1

by Steven James

  Too easy.

  Read the numbers blinking on the timer.

  He likes to watch.

  14…13…

  “Bomb,” I yelled. I spun. I ran. “Get out now!”

  Kept the countdown going in my head…

  … 12… 11…

  I sped toward the steps.

  … 10…

  Bolted up the stairs, three at a time.

  … 9… 8…

  “Out! Ralph! Lien-hua! Bomb! There’s a bomb!”

  I burst through the hallway door, Lien-hua right in front of me.

  … 7…

  Down the hall, toward the front door.

  … 6…

  Ralph landed at the bottom of the staircase.

  … 5…

  Outside. Onto the porch.

  … 4…

  Jumping. Landing on the grass.

  … 3…

  Scrambling forward. Lunging to the ground.

  … 2…

  Throwing my body over Lien-hua’s.

  … 1.

  Boom.

  11:42 a.m., Eastern Standard Time

  In Charlotte, North Carolina, Governor Sebastian Taylor caught sight of his reflection in a mirror and tilted his head to see which side of his face was more photogenic.

  In Denver, Colorado, Tessa Ellis shook her head and dragged her suitcase up to the next spot in line at the US Airways ticket counter. In West Asheville, North Carolina, Alice McMichaelson stole a glance at the business textbook on her lap during a time-out in the last few minutes of her son’s soccer game.

  At the concierge’s desk in the lobby of the Stratford Hotel, Theodore punched in the appropriate codes to change the name of the caterers for Monday’s luncheon.

  In front of his computer, the Illusionist leaned forward with a satisfied grin and watched the house explode.

  I felt the heat of the explosion wash over me, singeing my hair. Scorching my neck. And then, a shower of debris peppered my back, my legs. A storm of burning slats of wood followed immediately, raining down around us and on top of us, bringing with it a sudden, searing pain in my shoulder.

  But I didn’t move. I kept my body draped over Lien-hua, and I didn’t even turn to see what sort of object had knifed its way deeply into my back, wedging itself against my shoulder blade. Behind me I heard a roar as the house’s bone-dry wood exploded into a fireball.

  Then Ralph was beside me, urging us forward, yelling for us to get away from the heat and the flames. I helped Lien-hua to her feet, and we hobbled forward toward the trees, then turned to look at the house.

  It was completely destroyed.

  Any evidence in it would have been destroyed as well.

  The cell phone in Ralph’s pocket rang.

  He fished it out and answered it. Cursed. “They found her,” he said grimly. “They found Jolene.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “The trunk of Margaret’s car.”

  40

  By the time we got to the federal building, the crime scene guys had already roped off half of the parking lot. Shock, anger, and sorrow had settled over every inch of the scene. Margaret was stalking back and forth shaking her head, one hand planted firmly on her hip, the other rubbing her forehead. Despite the fury orbiting her, she looked pale.

  As we crossed the parking lot, Ralph whispered to Lien-hua and me, “He must have put the body in the trunk of her car early this morning before she left for work. She drove here with it in there. Got an email half an hour ago telling her to look in the trunk.”

  “Can they trace the email?” I asked.

  “Trying to. But the way it was routed, looks like the guy knew what he was doing.”

  Tucker stood beside the car. He motioned for us to come closer. His face looked pasty, drained. “He blew up the house?”

  Ralph nodded.

  I looked at the car, couldn’t see inside. “She still in there?” I asked Tucker softly. He didn’t answer. Just stepped aside. I walked past the crime scene technicians and peered into the trunk.

  The naked upper torso of a woman lay in the trunk of Margaret’s Lexus-but only the upper half. Jolene had been sawed in two just above the pelvis. She’d also been brutally tortured: dozens of cuts crisscrossed her torso, her face, her arms. Six cuts aren’t enough for him anymore, I thought.

  Despite the fact that she’d been mostly drained of blood a pool of dark liquids leaked from the bottom of the corpse and spread across the carpeting in the trunk.

  A metal tent stake was driven deep into Jolene’s chest, pinning down a note: “TOO SLOW. YOUR MOVE.” A white pawn was in her mouth. A ribbon in her hair.

  My mind went numb, spinning, blaming, aching. For the first time in years I felt physically ill at a crime scene. Completely nauseous.

  I’d been hoping maybe we would find her alive, save her, rescue her, hoping, hoping, hoping, trying to convince myself the Illusionist had been lying when he said it was too late to save her.

  But he hadn’t been. Not at all.

  It seemed like he’d planned everything, even timed the discovery of her body to coincide with the explosion.

  I muttered an excuse to the people clustered around the car and pushed my way through the crowd. I needed some air. Some space. Actually, I needed to throw up, but I couldn’t let anyone see me. I slipped off behind a nearby car and just barely made it out of sight before I leaned over to retch.

  I emptied my stomach onto the asphalt. There wasn’t much there. My entire life tasted like bile. I could hardly believe what was happening. Everything seemed to be spinning apart, the fabric of both my personal life and my career ripping right down the seams.

  My stepdaughter hated me. This killer was mocking me. Christie was haunting me. I turned away from the mess of vomit and reached into my pocket to see if I had a handkerchief, anything, and found the jewelry store receipt instead. Evidence that I really had remembered Tessa’s birthday, that I really had visited that mall in Atlanta earlier this week, that I really did have a birthday present to give her.

  We celebrate the days of our birth, moments of new life.

  I was gone on her birthday.

  The killer had mentioned her name.

  Tessa.

  He knew I had a daughter.

  Stay focused, Pat. Don’t let him get to you.

  Jolene was someone’s daughter. So was Mindy. So were the rest.

  Christie would want me to find this guy, shut him down. To do anything I could to stop him from stealing birthdays from other young women. Other daughters like hers. Like mine.

  “We know she’s going to be OK. We love you, Mindy,” her father had said on TV. He didn’t know she was already dead. “We’re here for you-”

  But how could I catch this guy? He was smarter than I was, always one step ahead.

  The only way to catch him is to stop playing by his rules. You need to make a move.

  I thought of Jolene, what it would be like to lose a daughter like that, to have her mutilated, abused, slaughtered. I couldn’t even imagine it.

  Right now, the Illusionist was somewhere laughing at us, probably watching us, mocking the pain he was causing. I couldn’t let him get away with it. I couldn’t.

  With those thoughts, rage, white hot and unchained, began to rip through my soul. Howling anger sharpening its claws. Filling me. Boiling inside of me. Chasing away the nausea, chasing away everything and replacing it with a storm of fury. The rage both frightened and reassured me. Over the last eight months, wrath had started to feel right at home in me.

  You gotta move out in front of him, Pat. Do what you do best.

  I looked back at the people examining Margaret’s car.

  Everyone was talking in whispers. A tumble of barely audible words skittered across the parking lot toward me. I heard someone mutter something about the media and warrants, and then someone started calling Grolin the names I’d been thinking of but just hadn’t gotten around to saying yet.

  I had to s
top him. And I would. For Christie.

  I wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my windbreaker, stuffed the receipt into my pocket, and headed back to the crime scene.

  I arrived just in time to hear Lien-hua gasp. “He sawed her in half?” Her voice broke in the middle of the sentence, and I wanted to save her from seeing the body and from the images she would never be able to erase from her mind, to protect her from doing her job, from becoming more like me. But I couldn’t protect her. I wasn’t here for that.

  A few minutes later, Lien-hua, Ralph, and I drifted back together on the edge of the parking lot. Margaret strode up to us, jittery and tense. No one said a word. Then Agent Tucker and Sheriff Wallace found their way over to us, and I spoke softly, but to all of them. “When he talked to me last night, he called himself the Illusionist. He told me, ‘You can’t have her. I saw her first.’”

  Ralph’s teeth were clenched. “The sawing the woman in half trick.”

  “That’s sick,” said Sheriff Wallace.

  Margaret turned to Lien-hua. “Where did you say Grolin works?”

  “ MountainQuest magazine. He writes the outdoor column.”

  Wallace nodded. “I know the place. It’s out on highway 25 on the way to Hendersonville.”

  “Find him. Bring him in.”

  Dante turned to me. “Dr. Bowers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I have my phone back?”

  “Oh yeah. Sure.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out the handful of parts that used to be his phone, and handed it to him.

  “What on earth happened to it?”

  Ralph answered for me. “He dropped it.”

  “Something like that,” I mumbled. “I’m really sorry. I’ll buy you a new one.”

  He shook his head, stuffed the pieces into his pocket, and then motioned to a couple of uniformed officers who followed him to a patrol car.

  I felt bad, but then Margaret turned to me and I prepared to feel worse. I was sure she was going to rip into me about disregarding her orders and heading over to Grolin’s place. “Get that shoulder looked at,” she said. “Have the EMTs check it out.”

  Now that was a surprise. Considering the circumstances, her concern was somewhat moving.

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Dr. Bowers, there is a piece of wood sticking out of your back.”

  No wonder it hurt.

  “Get that taken out. You get an infection, it costs us more money. I don’t want the Bureau to have to spend any more money on you than it has to.”

  Oh. Well. In that case.

  “Ralph?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I want you to do the questioning.” Her voice was iron. Flat and cold.

  He nodded.

  She tried to stay calm, but her voice began to quaver. “No kid gloves, Ralph. He put that girl in my car.”

  He nodded again. “I understand.”

  Joseph Grolin, here we come.

  41

  Tessa stared out the window of the 737 at the towering castles of clouds surrounding the plane. Glowing corridors of vapor and light split open to encircle the plane, to welcome it into their fairytale landscape. At one time she might have been impressed, even astonished by this journey through gossamer light, but today all she saw was a bunch of stupid clouds.

  When she was younger she used to lie on her back in the summer grass and look up at the clouds with her mother, pointing and giggling and finding mystical creatures in the sky; mermaids and dragons and fairies. Just like all children do at one time or another.

  “See that one,” she would cry. “It’s a unicorn!”

  “Yes,” her mother would say. “I see it. I see it.”

  Whatever the clouds really looked like, Tessa could always find a unicorn.

  But not anymore. No, today there were only clouds in the sky. Shapeless and blank. No unicorns. Just misty haze surrounding her. In fact, she hadn’t seen a unicorn in a long, long time. She couldn’t even remember when.

  She glanced over at the profile of the man escorting her. He’d told her his name: Special Agent Eric Stanton. He didn’t really look like an FBI agent, more like an accountant. Hair parted on the side, baby face, clean shave. But he wasn’t wearing a ring, and he wasn’t really that old-maybe twenty-two or so-and he might have actually looked cute if he could lose the tie and the old-man-looking glasses, grow a little soul patch… ruffle up his hair a little…

  “Yes?” He was looking directly at her now. “Did you need something?” He had soft brown eyes.

  “Um, no.” She looked away, out the window again. She hoped she wasn’t blushing.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  He leaned close. She could smell his aftershave.

  Gak. Why did he have to use aftershave?

  “You OK, kid?”

  Kid!

  “I’m fine.”

  “Well, that’s wonderful,” he said sarcastically. “As your chaperone I’m very glad to hear that.”

  She looked at him again. What in the world was wrong with her! The guy was probably over thirty! Old enough to be her dad. She folded her arms and glared at him. She glanced momentarily at the Sudoku puzzle he was working on. He’d been struggling with it for the last hour or so. It was rated “expert.” Huh. Yeah, right. He should have probably been doing one rated “toddler.”

  She studied it for a few brief seconds. “Six, nine, eight, four, one, three,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The bottom row. Fill those in, you should be able to take it from there.” After registering his surprise she added, “Though I wouldn’t bet on it.”

  He looked down at the sheet then back at her. “How do you know that?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe it’s just easy to figure out when you’re a kid.”

  Then he made a small sound with his mouth half open, asked her to repeat the numbers, looked down at his puzzle, and started scribbling. While he filled in the squares in his lame little puzzle, Tessa turned back to the wall of the airplane and stared out the window, searching the sky for something. Anything.

  But all she could see were miles and miles of clouds.

  42

  Alice McMichaelson sighed and slumped into her recliner.

  After taking Jacob to his last soccer game for the year (they won four to three thanks to Jacob’s two goals) and maneuvering through traffic and then stopping by the library to drop off Brenda’s overdue books and check out another stack that she’d probably finish by the end of the weekend and swinging through McDonald’s to get some lunch and then crawling past that nightmare construction zone on highway 240 West, she’d finally made it home.

  Whew.

  She kicked off her shoes. Stress. That was the problem. Starting a new job, arriving late for work, not getting enough sleep last night, running around all day with the kids.

  She took a deep breath and let her thoughts wander back to work. She really liked this job. The bank was going through a merger-Second National had been bought out by Montrose Intl. Investments last month, and transferring files and accounts had been a nightmare because the two banking companies just happened to use different computer programs-surprise, surprise. But that was one of the reasons they’d brought her on board. They needed extra staff to help with the transition and she needed the money. Garrett had never sent any child support and it was tough enough just making house payments. She had to keep this job. She had to.

  She sighed again, then reached down and rubbed her left foot. Ah, that felt good. Tonight, once the kids were in bed, she could do some studying, get ready for her exam on Monday. But for now it just felt good to relax.

  Jacob had deposited his soccer clothes in the middle of the hall and disappeared into his room to play video games, and the truth was, she didn’t even care. A few minutes ago Brenda had emerged from her room just long enough to find a bag of Cheetos. Alice watched her daughter return down the hallway and then let her eyes wander
around the living room. Could use some cleaning. Vacuuming mostly. But then again, it wasn’t so bad, really. Being a single mom with two kids, what did you expect? She’d managed OK. And maybe she wouldn’t be single forever. She was still young enough to start over again and hadn’t lost all of her looks-at least not yet. And there were a few guys who’d shown interest in her, after all.

  She brushed at a stray wisp of hair. Never did find that brush, though, and it bugged her. Usually she prided herself on knowing where everything was around the house.

  Well, not a big deal. She’d buy another dumb brush. And at least she didn’t have to get up for work tomorrow, just take the kids to mass at ten, and after that she had all day to relax. She could make it through until then. Yes. She could manage.

  In a few minutes she would get up and straighten the living room. She closed her eyes and whispered a small prayer and rubbed her foot while the weekend drizzled past her outside.

  The angels were winning.

  At least for now.

  43

  Ralph suggested we take a breather and then reconvene in half an hour to debrief. It gave us all a chance to collect our bearings, refocus, grab some coffee, whatever. While everyone else went their separate ways, I had one of the paramedics take a look at my shoulder.

  He pulled out the blade-like slat of wood that the explosion had buried six inches into my back, cleaned the wound, and smeared the area with antibiotic. “You really should have this stitched up,” he said. “There’s a lot of muscle damage.”

  “I’ll be all right,” I told him. “Just butterfly it shut with some bandages.”

  “Are you a doctor?”

  “Not that kind of doctor. I used to lead wilderness trips, though. Learned first aid for that.”

  “Might leave a scar.”

  “It wouldn’t be my first.”

  He gently bandaged the wound and then patted my good shoulder. “You be careful out there.”

  I thanked him and headed inside for the meeting. On the way past the senator’s office I noticed Ralph and Lien-hua standing by the water cooler. Water, good idea. Rinse the bile out of my mouth. I grabbed a cup.