Checkmate

by Steven James

  Secrets.

  I keep them.

  I have to.

  In order to protect the people I care about most.

  There’s always that lure of the forbidden, that gravitational pull of your base, primal desires tugging you downward toward doing the very things that frighten you the most.

  Something we all need to fight against.

  Or we’ll get lost for good.

  In my early days as a detective, the woman I was seeing at the time asked me why I did what I did. At first I made light of her question, but when she pressed me, I ended up landing on a phrase that has stuck with me over the years: to keep the demons at bay.

  My biggest struggle isn’t achieving justice. It’s holding myself back from what I would become if all the constraints were removed, what I’m tempted to become every day when I see the evil that humans are capable of doing to each other.

  We throw around the term unthinkable, but most of the time what seems unthinkable has already been done somewhere, by someone who is following the dark threads deeper into his own desires.

  And justifying it as he does.

  No, right now it didn’t feel like I was doing a very good job with the whole keeping-the-demons-at-bay thing.

  In the mine, Mason had told me that he was glad I’d be around for the climax tomorrow night.

  Well, we’d found the mine shaft. We knew where he lived. We would find him.

  And whatever he had planned, I was going to stop it.

  The pilot brought the helicopter around to the Charlotte Regional Medical Center, positioned it over the landing pad, hovered there for a moment, and then took us down.

  50

  Over the last half hour I’d texted my daughter several times to call me, and I’d left a couple messages for Lien-hua, and now I finally caught up with my wife on the phone as I made my way to the emergency room.

  I shared all that had happened in the mine. “I couldn’t save her, Lien-hua. I couldn’t save Corrine.”

  “From what you just told me, no one could have.”

  “But maybe if I would have done something differently, if I would have rushed Mason, tried to knock him down the shaft or . . .”

  “He would have killed her. You know that.”

  She’s dead anyway. At least then we would have taken him out. At least then he’d be gone too.

  I almost said those words, but then realized how uncaring and detached toward Corrine’s death they might seem. And that’s not how I felt about her death. Not at all.

  Lien-hua continued, “You’re not going to help anyone by beating yourself up about what happened. You need to let it rest. I know it’s hard, but you have to.”

  I didn’t want to argue with her, but I wasn’t ready to agree with her yet either. Just thinking about Corrine made me ache deep in my chest.

  “What did you find out this afternoon?” I asked.

  “We were looking into people who’ve made public threats against Richard Basque. Well, it turns out there are a lot them.”

  “I believe that.”

  I wasn’t sure we needed any of this information now, since we knew Mason was behind this, but we still didn’t know if he was working alone. “Upload what you have to the online case files. Maybe it’ll help us out as we try to nail down the timeline and piece things together.”

  “There are people on it as we speak,” she said. “Listen, Pat, how much do you want me to tell Tessa? I mean about you trying to save Corrine?”

  “I left a couple texts for her to call me, but I haven’t heard from her yet. I’ll talk with her. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  However, that wasn’t going to be an easy conversation.

  She’s going to hear about it on the news. You may as well be the one to tell her.

  Still, I didn’t want to have to tell her how close I was to saving Corrine only to see her get killed right in front of my eyes.

  “Well,” Lien-hua said, “let me know if you need anything from me.”

  After a quick good-bye, we ended the call.

  * * *

  In the emergency room, a doctor who wasn’t nearly as good at stitches as Habib back in DC patched me up. The thought of syringes piercing into my flesh was not really something I wanted to be worried about right now, so I had him work on my side without numbing the area.

  After he was done he warned me to be more careful.

  I told him I’d do my best.

  “And that hand of yours,” he said, “you’ve got some pretty bad friction burns. I can give you a prescription for some cream that might help.”

  All that did was remind me how I’d been unable to save Corrine.

  “I should be alright. Thanks.”

  I hid the limp from my bruised ankle. It would be swollen a little, but I didn’t anticipate I would need to wrap it.

  As he was finishing up, I received a text from Ralph that Brandon Ingersoll’s HRT crew had arrived. They’d found evidence that the apartment had been booby-trapped, so it was a good thing SWAT hadn’t rushed in. The HRT was working at figuring out the best way to access the scene now.

  With advancements in robotics in recent years, there were robots that could search for bombs, robots that could sniff out explosives, robots that could disarm charges, and more. Although I wasn’t sure which ones the guys might have brought down, they had access to them all. They knew what they were doing, and if anyone could figure out a safe way into Mason’s apartment, Ingersoll and his team could.

  Ralph met me outside the hospital to fill me in and swing me by our hotel room so I could change clothes before we headed to the apartment to have a look around—as soon as the HRT had cleared the site.

  “Mason wanted me to tell you that the future ends tomorrow,” I told him.

  “How does he even know me? I’ve never worked his case.”

  “You’re the head of the NCAVC. He attacked it. I suppose it makes sense that he would know who you are.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  At the hotel, he stepped out of the room to give me some privacy. I cleaned up and was changing clothes when I finally heard from my daughter.

  51

  Ever since Beck had left the house two and a half hours earlier, Tessa had been distracted from packing by thinking about him.

  She’d been so caught up in her thoughts that she hadn’t even been checking her texts. Then, when she finally did, she found a ton from Melody asking how she was, and three from Patrick telling her to give him a call.

  So after replying to Melody, she phoned her dad and now listened as he told her what had happened in that mine shaft.

  Lieutenant Mason had worked closely with Patrick while they lived in Denver, so she’d known him before he was arrested last summer. He’d fooled everyone into believing that he cared about his family. He’d been especially convincing when his baby died. He seemed as devastated as anyone, but as it turned out, it was all an act.

  Just an act.

  Patrick asked, “Do you want me to come home, Tessa?”

  “No. Obviously, you need to stay there. You have to catch him.”

  “Until we do, I’m going to want an agent there with you whenever Lien-hua isn’t around.”

  Tessa looked outside and saw the sedan where Beck’s partner was stationed.

  Her conversation with Beck on Plato’s forms and quantum mechanics had been really engaging.

  It wasn’t pride, it was just reality—sometimes it was hard for people to keep up with her. However, Beck hadn’t had any problem doing so. He was scintillatingly smart and wasn’t intimidated by her like some guys seemed to be.

  And that just made it even harder to put him out of her mind.

  Of course s
he wanted to see him again, but now she stated the obvious to Patrick. “But if Mason’s down there, what’s the danger up here in DC?”

  “He might not be working alone. He’s trying to tell a story and I’m caught in the middle of it, which . . . well . . . means you are too. There are still a lot of questions about what’s going on. Hopefully, in the next day or two we’ll be able to get some answers. Are you good with that?”

  “Yeah, whatever. That’s fine. You just need to find him. Don’t worry about me.”

  So she wouldn’t be distracted thinking about Beck, she switched topics and asked Patrick about the skull painting she’d tracked down in the Library of Congress. “Was it there at the museum? The artwork with the Latin text?”

  “Yes. That was good work, finding it. I never thanked you for disobeying the rules of the Library of Congress and calling me.”

  “Anytime you need me to break some more federal regulations for you, just let me know.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” He paused. “Hey, I have to get going. Is there anything else you need right now, or are you good?”

  “I should be good,” she said.

  “Text me if anything comes up.”

  “I will.”

  + + +

  I met up with Ralph in the parking lot. He was finishing a phone call with Brineesha and, from his side of the conversation, it was clear that something was up.

  When the call ended, I asked if things were alright.

  “Brin had a doctor’s appointment today. Her cervix is dilated two centimeters. So it’s not much, you know, but it’s a start.” His tone made it clear that the news both excited him and made him anxious.

  “Does that mean you have to go back?”

  “Not yet. She hasn’t started having contractions. I should be good. She’s going to keep me updated as things progress.”

  “Congratulations, Ralph. I’m thrilled for you guys.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.”

  I was a little surprised he wasn’t checking into flights yet, but I figured he knew what he was doing and would take care of that in due time.

  “Oh,” he said, “Ingersoll’s guys sent THROWERS in.”

  The acronym stood for Throwable Handheld Remote Operating Window-Entry Robotic Sentries. They were heavy enough to break through the glass of most windows, and once they landed, their legs would unfold and the robot would scamper around taking video footage, almost like the mini “spider” robots in the movie Minority Report.

  The apartment was on the fourteenth floor so I anticipated the HRT would have probably rappelled off the roof, cut a hole—a clean hole—through the window’s glass, and sent the THROWERS in that way.

  Ralph continued, “They’re still working at clearing the place. We’ve got a few minutes. Let’s snag some supper, then get over there.”

  * * *

  After a quick bite, we drove to the apartment building. With the search for Mason, the chopper ride, the trip to the hospital and then the hotel, and now supper and the drive back to the apartment building, the afternoon had gotten away from me and it was already after five.

  Ralph and I took the elevator to the fourteenth floor. By the time we arrived, the HRT had finished and the Evidence Response Team was gearing up to process the scene.

  Voss was standing near the elevator bay, speaking with some CMPD officers. They seemed to be getting along alright—which I was glad to see. When he asked how I was doing, I assured him I was fine.

  “What do you need from me?” he asked.

  “A gun. A phone. A car.”

  “Done.”

  That was easy. “And a new Mini Maglite. Mine’s at the bottom of that shaft.”

  “Um, yeah. We can do that.” The officers he’d been talking to stepped away.

  “Great. Who owns that textile-mill property?”

  “A Vietnamese industrial company.”

  “Vietnamese?”

  “We’re looking into it.”

  “Did we ever find Guido?”

  “Yeah. He was at an ice cream parlor Uptown. There are a couple of agents talking with him, but it doesn’t look like he had anything to do with this.”

  “See if he knows anyone—any historians, any researchers—who could tell us more about the Rudisill Mine.”

  “I will.”

  Brandon Ingersoll had left the apartment at the end of the hall and now joined us. I said to him, “Don’t send any teams down into that mine until we know more about the layout of the tunnels. Last year Mason used C-4 to blow a shaft in an abandoned gold mine in Colorado. Now he has nearly two hundred pounds of Semtex. He could have other explosives as well that we don’t know about. Taking out this mine system while we have teams of SWAT or HRT guys down there might just be the very ‘climax’ Mason has in mind.”

  But then why would he have said the climax is tomorrow night? How would he know when we were going to send people in there?

  I wasn’t sure.

  Ingersoll said, “You’re thinking he might have booby-trapped the mines like he did his apartment?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. We need to take this slow, think things through. Seal off the mine shaft and that textile mill. But before we send anyone down there we need to finish processing Mason’s apartment and find some historian who can inform us about the layout of those mines and, ideally, their structural integrity.”

  Ralph added, “Once we know what we’re looking at, I want your team to study the mine’s topography and identify the most likely places where Mason might have left explosives to cause a cave-in.”

  “Roger that,” he said.

  “And why don’t you put a call out to a mining company, see if they have any engineers who can get over here. Maybe arrange for some ground-penetrating radar to help analyze the area.”

  Ingersoll nodded briskly, then strode off.

  Ralph turned to me. “So, you ready to see where Mason lived?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Together we walked toward the doorway at the end of the hall.

  52

  “So, I’m not too familiar with Mason’s case,” Ralph told me as we crossed down the hallway toward the apartment. “Fill me in.”

  “He’s not a typical serial killer—if there even is such a thing. It’s not about a sexual thrill for him, or power or control.”

  “What is it?”

  “He’s a storyteller. Typically, he frames his crime sprees around literature or famous stories from history. He isn’t into seeing people suffer. That’s not his deal. It’s all about context.”

  “Stories, huh? So a folktale or a myth about seven gods? But what about them using thirty-eight?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m hoping Angela and Lacey can dig something up. In any case, there’s a detachment to what he does. When I confronted him last year, I asked him why he did it, why he killed all those people, and he told me it was interesting to watch people die.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “Yes.” It still disturbed me to think about it. “It is. And when he said it there was no emotion, no regret, no empathy.”

  “So, why did he call himself Giovanni?”

  “It has to do with the stories he reenacts, the crimes he commits. It goes back to this book called The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio. It was written in the 1300s and contains a hundred stories—ten stories told on ten consecutive days while a group of travelers is fleeing the black plague. Basically, the group passes the time telling stories. Well, on one of the days—day four—all the stories are about tragedy and love. He set about reenacting his version of those ten tales. It included some really brutal crimes, and he nearly got away with it. His stories always have a twist and they never have a happy ending.”

  We arrived at the door. “And this is the guy who kill
ed Werjonic?”

  Last year Mason had attacked and poisoned my mentor. “Yes.”

  Ralph cursed under his breath, then he showed his creds to the officers stationed outside the apartment, and we stepped inside.

  * * *

  Rarely do their lairs look like you’d expect.

  Based on the violent or aberrant nature of some crimes, it’s easy to think that the people who commit them are somehow different from the rest of us, that the places they live in would reflect that deviancy. And, although that’s true in some isolated cases, it’s not the norm.

  For every Jeffrey Dahmer storing bodies in vats in his bedroom, there are a hundred other killers who have relatively normal homes.

  Normal lives.

  At least on the surface.

  So.

  Now.

  Mason’s apartment.

  The place was dimly lit, the thick shades drawn shut, leaving only a few slits for sunlight to leak in. No bulbs in the overhead lights, just two amber floor lamps in opposite corners of the living room.

  Typical furniture.

  All so typical.

  In truth, every one of us leads a double life. We act one way when the door is open, another when it’s closed. We have certain impressions we try to make on others, pretenses we strive to keep up.

  In some branches of criminology, deviancy is considered anything you do in the dark. In other words, it’s any act that you try to hide from others. So, what kind of person are you when the shades are drawn? That’s really the question. “Integrity,” as Dr. Werjonic used to say, “has no private life.”

  But, of course, no one has complete integrity because everyone has things to hide. All of us act differently when no one is watching.

  We are, each of us, a contradiction in terms. We’re a species that’s puzzling to even the most astute philosophers and psychologists. Evil and good wrapped up in flesh and blood and hope and dreams.

  We choose, we act, we live within the incongruity of our godlike desires and our animal instincts.

  A double life.

  And no matter how self-controlled we might be, we all do things we don’t want to do, that are antithetical to our beliefs.