Checkmate

by Steven James

  “Sorry, I—”

  “No problem. So, ‘unique’ as in ‘fresh and intriguing,’” she asked, “or as in ‘weird and anomalistic’?”

  “Fresh and intriguing.”

  “Well, thank you, Beck.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  As he ate and scanned the room, he sometimes let his eyes linger on her for just an instant longer than he needed to.

  And that was just fine by her.

  + + +

  We hadn’t eaten yet, so I was grabbing a quick lunch at a drive-through on my way to the distribution center when my phone rang.

  When I answered, Lien-hua jumped right in: “Pat. Listen, Corrine Davis never showed up for her flight on Tuesday morning.”

  “What?”

  “She was supposed to fly to Miami, Florida, from Columbia, South Carolina, for a business meeting. She didn’t make it to the airport and no one’s seen or heard from her since Monday night. The story hit the news cycle this morning and they’re not letting it drop. Do you think it’s possible her brother took her?”

  Corrine was the one person, the only person, I’d ever known Richard Basque to care about.

  I’d spoken with her a few times over the years and gotten to know her a little when we contacted her a couple months ago after we failed to find Richard’s body, when I shot him and he tumbled backward into the Potomac. She’d been cooperative and promised to let us know if he got in touch with her, but we hadn’t heard anything from her.

  I processed things. “It wasn’t him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know Richard. She’s the last person he would ever go after.”

  “But when he first started out, didn’t he kill women who looked like her?”

  “Yes. I can’t explain it, but he cares about her. That much I know.”

  According to Freud, pretty much every motive can be explained by someone wanting to have sex with someone else. So Freudian psychologists would have probably had a field day psychoanalyzing Richard’s relationship with his sister, no doubt finding all sorts of hidden sexual meanings in his choice of preferred victims.

  But neither Lien-hua nor I went there.

  She wasn’t Freudian.

  Neither was I.

  Without jumping to conclusions, I had to acknowledge the obvious. “The timing points to her disappearance as being related to this case. We need to add the search for Corrine to the mix.”

  “I’ll talk to Gonzalez, get a team down to Columbia to work with local law enforcement, look into her disappearance.”

  “Good. And I want to know who saw her or talked to her last before she disappeared. Check her phone records. Let’s see if we can pin down a time and place where she was still accounted for.”

  Then I told her about the search for Guido and the possibility that the vending-machine-supply worker was involved. “I’m on my way to their distribution warehouse now.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “I will.”

  “Is there anything else I can do for you from here?”

  “Hmm . . . maybe look into traffic cameras near Corrine’s house. There might be something there—you know, an unaccounted-for car entering or leaving the neighborhood around the time she disappeared.”

  “Good call.”

  “And why don’t you pull up Basque’s files. Last year there was an attempt on his life in Chicago during his retrial. The father of one of his victims went after him. Let’s see what other threats have been made against him.”

  “You think someone might be trying to hurt him by going after Corrine?”

  “It’s worth looking into. Also, any more word on establishing who it was who looked up the location of the surveillance cameras?”

  “Debra’s on it. I just spoke with her. With Allie at camp this week she’s been working on this nonstop. The minute I have anything I’ll call you.”

  Debra had mentioned to me earlier that her daughter was at her dad’s this week. Maybe the guy had sent her to camp.

  “I’ll let you know what I find out at the distribution center,” I told Lien-hua.

  + + +

  Corrine knelt and swirled her hand through the chilled water.

  She told herself that the sediment would have drifted to the bottom. Yes, this water would be safe to drink.

  Trying to put out of her mind how muddy it might be or how polluted it might have gotten from minerals or chemicals that had seeped into it, she used one hand to cup the water and took a drink.

  It tasted gritty and coarse and sour and she had to spit out the first mouthful.

  You have to drink. You have to!

  She readied herself, dipped out some more water, and drank it.

  Swim.

  You could go for a swim.

  Just take off your clothes and—

  Stop it, Corrine! What are you even thinking about here?

  —to safety. You could swim to safety.

  Think about something else!

  She forced herself to mentally shift gears and ended up moving on from the water to the man who’d left her down here.

  Why is he doing this to you? Is it because of Richard? He said he knows him, but is this his way of getting back at him? Did he know one of Richard’s victims? Is this revenge?

  Revenge.

  Justice.

  The concepts cycled around each other in her mind. Where does one end and the other begin?

  Revenge exists. There’s no question about that. But does justice? Does it really?

  When you look at the natural world there’s no evidence of justice; there’s only the struggle for life, the inevitability of death.

  Life.

  Death.

  Injustice.

  Yet we naturally know that there are things that are right and things that are wrong and that people should be punished for the wrongs they commit.

  Punished for their wrongs.

  Like Richard.

  Like you, for not noticing what he was becoming.

  Is that what this is now—punishment? Divine justice? Divine retribution?

  She thought of her brother. Was he still alive? How would he react when he heard his sister was missing? Did he even know yet? Certainly—if he even was alive—he wouldn’t chance coming to her funeral.

  If your body is ever found.

  If—

  Stop!

  She thought again of the man who’d left her down here.

  Corrine didn’t know what frightened her more: the thought of that man returning or the thought that he might never return.

  If he came back, she could only imagine the kinds of things he might do to her.

  But if he didn’t come back and if no one else was able to find her, she would eventually die down here, starve to death or die from hypothermia.

  Maybe it would be better if he came back.

  At least then it would all be over sooner.

  Swim.

  Corrine couldn’t shake that thought.

  The water leads somewhere.

  Down. It leads down.

  Where else?

  To another tunnel. To a way out!

  But how? How could it lead out?

  The voices inside of her vying for attention became more and more distinct. In fact, they became undeniably audible until she realized she was saying the words aloud, arguing with herself about whether or not she should get into the water.

  And that frightened her almost as much as the thought of what might happen to her if that man returned.

  You need to get ahold of yourself.

  Relax.

  But as she passed her hand through the water again she couldn’t help but wonder if it was more than just a shaft that had filled with water over th
e years, and, if so, where the water might actually lead.

  + + +

  The bard had left work an hour ago.

  He was at his apartment now, reviewing dosages and delivery mechanisms for insulin. Subcutaneous would be quicker. But using an IV would be a little more surreptitious, if the circumstances allowed for it. So he would have to see how things played out.

  Taking a sedative with him was also a good idea, in case he needed to make sure the character in his story was unconscious while he administered the insulin.

  An insulin overdose was not something the medical personnel would be looking for.

  At this point he was planning to give her the drug himself, but if necessary he would have his person in DC do it for him. From the information he currently had, there didn’t appear to be any rush to make that decision.

  As for right now, after he wrapped up some research here, he would go check the Semtex placement in the mine. However, on the way to the Saint Catherine tunnels and shafts he would need to pass through the Rudisill Mine, and while he was there he could visit Corrine.

  Yes, he was attracted to her.

  He hadn’t fully satisfied himself with her the other night.

  It would be ideal if she were still alive, still warm, but she didn’t need to be breathing for him to meet his needs with her.

  So.

  Finish up here.

  And then head to the mine.

  36

  The manager, a disheveled, overweight man who introduced himself to me simply as Fletcher, led me to his office at the National Vending Distribution Services warehouse.

  “I need to know who’s assigned to make deliveries to the Mint Museum,” I said. “The Randolph branch. He would have visited there last Tuesday.”

  “Randolph branch? I imagine that’d be either Ned or Danny. I’d need to look it up.”

  I waited while he went to his desk, which was surprisingly organized, considering his unkempt appearance. He flipped through a few time sheets, then pulled one out and showed it to me. “Danny Everhart.”

  The name didn’t ring a bell. “You have his personnel files?”

  “I can’t show you those.”

  “You let me see them now, you help the FBI out. You make me get a warrant, you slow us down. Which scenario would be better for your company when word leaks out to the press?”

  He looked like he might have a rebuff, but then grudgingly pulled out Danny Everhart’s personnel file and handed it over.

  As I perused the file, Fletcher told me, “He came in about a month ago. Always shows up for work on time. Never complains. He’s a good worker. He’d been in a bad car accident, I guess, a couple weeks beforehand. His face was still all bruised up. Needed a chance, a fresh start. I gave it to him.”

  “Uh-huh.” I flipped through the papers. “It says here part-time. How many hours per week?”

  “A couple days, usually. We moved most of our full-time staff to part-time. You know, Obamacare. All that.”

  “Sure. Has he been in today?”

  “Made a delivery earlier to the stadium—they’re gearing up for Fan Celebration Day tomorrow.”

  I looked up from the file. “The stadium uses vending machines rather than concession stands?”

  “Most of the time our products are distributed through vending machines. Occasionally, for big events like this, they’re hand sold. They’re expecting twenty thousand people tomorrow. You need a lot of soda and candy bars for a crowd that size. Is there something I should know about him?”

  “No. This address—is it still correct?”

  “As far as I know.”

  In addition to the twenty-third, Everhart had made a delivery to the museum on the first Monday and then the third Friday of July, after the skull painting had been moved to storage.

  He could definitely be the guy who’d written the numbers on the back of the painting.

  Could be. There’s no guarantee that he is.

  “Thank you.”

  You need to see if Voss’s guys find any video footage of Everhart observing the painting before it was taken down to storage.

  I spoke Everhart’s address into my phone, asked for directions, and took off to see if I could catch up with him at his apartment to have a little chat.

  + + +

  Tessa and Beck returned to the house and parked on the street out front.

  Lien-hua’s car was gone so she must have still been at work.

  “Um.” Tessa had been debating whether or not to bring this up again ever since they left the restaurant, and now she decided to just go ahead and do it. “You know, it really is kind of stupid for you to be sitting out here. Seriously, you can hang out in the living room. I mean—if you want to. Unless it’s against some sort of rule or protocol or something.”

  He smiled in a way that she was quickly getting used to. “No, that’s not against a rule. I’m not staking out your place. I’m just here in case . . . well, in case anyone shows up who’s not supposed to be here.”

  “Okay.”

  He shut off the engine.

  “I suppose it can’t hurt anything to sit inside.”

  + + +

  On the way to Everhart’s apartment building, I phoned Ralph.

  “Anything on Lombardi?” I asked him.

  “Still looking for him. He’s turning out to be a little hard to track down.”

  “I’ve got something else to check into. I want us to find out everything we can about a guy named Danny Everhart: DMV records, credit-card activity, past residences—everything. A full background. He’s the guy who drove the vending machine truck to the museum on the day the artifacts were stolen.”

  “You think he might be our guy?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But the timing for his visit fits. Also, he had a delivery run there a couple weeks ago. He might have accessed the storage area on either occasion. I’m on my way to talk with him right now.”

  “I’ll contact Gonzalez, get things rolling on the background.”

  “Also, send a team to the vending-services warehouse, look over Everhart’s delivery van, get the ERT out there, see what we can pick up DNA-wise.” I told him the address.

  “Done.”

  End call.

  Five minutes to Everhart’s place.

  He lived in an awfully nice part of the city for someone on a part-time delivery man’s salary.

  I tried to hold myself back from assuming too much, but it was data to add to the mix.

  Data leads to discoveries.

  Discoveries lead to the truth.

  Finding out how long Everhart had lived here and what he did before starting work at NVDS would help. Hopefully, the background Ralph was running would tell us what we needed to know.

  + + +

  Corrine saw colors.

  Yes.

  For the first time since she had awakened in the tunnel, Corrine Davis began to see shapes and objects swirling around her.

  It took her a moment to realize, however, that they were appearing while her eyes were closed rather than open.

  The colors took shape, took form.

  You’re five and your mommy and daddy are in bed and you’re jumping up and down on it, up and down, telling them to get up because it’s Saturday! And they promised you pancakes!

  Giggling.

  It’s echoing.

  Images as clear as day.

  You’re nine and you’re playing with your brother. You’re chasing him through the basement, around the couch, and he’s laughing.

  The laughter courses all throughout the basement and then you’re having a pillow fight. He’s a normal boy.

  You’re fourteen and you’re behind the bleachers at the football stadium at your high school and the guy you have a crush on is drawing
you toward him. Then he’s kissing you and it’s awkward and it’s your first time and it’s terrifying and electric and—

  You’re twenty-four and you hear the news that your brother was arrested.

  Arrested?

  Laughter.

  He’s a good boy. A good brother.

  You’re thirty-eight, at home, and you’re turning around.

  Someone is there in your bedroom.

  Laughter.

  That echoes throughout the basement.

  But you’re not in the basement.

  You’re here.

  Where?

  The tunnel.

  The colors are real.

  Open your eyes.

  She did. Reoriented herself. And then Corrine realized it was her. She was the one laughing and she was not in the basement.

  You’re losing it, Corrine.

  You’re losing it!

  She was in a tunnel somewhere deep, deep in the earth.

  The water. You can do it. You can swim out of here.

  Now. Jump in. Swim to safety.

  Take off your clothes.

  And this time, she listened to the voice.

  Corrine Davis bent down to untie her shoes.

  + + +

  As a precaution, the bard never left certain items in his apartment when he wasn’t there: the sedative, the insulin, and his laptop. Also, just in case, he set the trip wire on his front door to protect what was in his bedroom. If anyone tried to enter, the whole apartment would blow.

  Taking the phone and the sensor to check the Semtex detonator, he stowed his duffel bag with the harnesses and rappelling equipment in his van beside the handcuffs he’d used on the woman, then he climbed in and started the engine.

  37

  I showed my ID to the attendant working the parking garage that lay beneath the apartment building where Danny Everhart lived. Then I found a parking space near the exterior wall, which was not completely closed in, allowing my cell phone to have two bars—but at least it still worked. Before leaving the car, I used it to pull up the background Ralph had run on Everhart.

  I didn’t recognize his DMV photo and I couldn’t tell if he was the guy who’d been at the NCAVC earlier this week. Single. Brown hair. Brown eyes. The healing wounds from his car accident were visible in the photo on his driver’s license.