Checkmate

by Steven James

  “Did you have a flight earlier?” I overheard her say matter-of-factly.

  “No.”

  “Then what good would it have done?”

  He looked a little annoyed but had no response to that and instead did an end run around her question. “Okay, so Lien-hua drove you there—is she staying with you?” This time I didn’t hear Brin’s response, but he said, “Good. I’ll be there in a couple hours.”

  Ending the call, he grabbed his things and said to me, “We’ll keep each other informed. I’ll fill you in about our baby. You call me about the case.”

  “I will.”

  Without another word he was off.

  I hadn’t had a really good cup of coffee since we arrived in Charlotte, and this morning’s briefing at the Field Office wasn’t until eight thirty, so I checked my phone to see if there were any coffee roasters with coffee shops that were open this early.

  One came up. It was in a part of town called NoDa, which an online search told me referred to North of Davidson—a little like SoHo in New York City, which refers to South of Houston. Apparently NoDa was a hip, artsy part of Charlotte.

  Perfect.

  I plugged in the address and took off.

  And even though the team wouldn’t be meeting for almost an hour, my thoughts were already back on the case. The whole way to NoDa, I was contemplating what “seven gods use thirty-eight” could possibly mean.

  + + +

  Tessa rounded up some breakfast long before she wanted to, especially on a Saturday.

  About forty-five minutes ago Lien-hua had left to take Brineesha to the hospital.

  Sitting around a hospital waiting room for what might have ended up being all day was not really ideal for a twelve-year-old boy, so Tony Hawkins was going to spend the day at a friend’s house.

  The guy’s dad was a cop who had the day off, so everyone was cool with the arrangement. After the baby was born and Brineesha was feeling better, he would bring Tony over to meet his little sister.

  Right now, Ralph was on his way back to DC, Agent Priscilla Woods was outside the house, and Tessa was torn. On the one hand she was excited about the baby—especially considering the story of her own birth—but she was also distracted by her thoughts about Beck.

  She had kissed him.

  Yes, she’d read things that way, had gotten the vibe that he wanted her to, and she’d gone ahead, and ended up ruining everything.

  Turning him off.

  Making him back away.

  Usually she waited for guys to make the first move, but last night she’d decided to go for it and that had ended up completely backfiring.

  And things were even more confusing now, because right before Lien-hua had left she’d said, “He’s cute.”

  “Who?” Without any context, Tessa really had no idea who her mom was talking about.

  “Beck. He’s cute. And he can’t be that much older than you, is he?”

  “He’s twenty-four.”

  “Twenty-four?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You asked him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, mid-twenties, which in Patrick’s eyes would be way too old for you.”

  “Pretty much.”

  A moment passed.

  “I got a call from him this morning—Beck, I mean,” Lien-hua said. “He asked to be reassigned.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m not super surprised.”

  But then Lien-hua went on, “I’m just telling you because now his cell number is on my phone.” Then she set her phone on the table. “I need to grab my purse from the other room. I’ll be right back.”

  And she left Tessa alone.

  With the phone right in front of her.

  Lien-hua was familiar with Tessa’s history with guys, how hard it’d been for her to find one who was both cool and was someone she could connect with—Lien-hua also knew how badly things usually turned out.

  Lien-hua had done all the stuff her real mom would have done: encouraging her, hanging out with her, even taking her prom-dress shopping. Of course, prom ended up being a complete disaster when Tessa found a text message on her date’s phone from his supposedly ex-girlfriend about them hooking up after the dance. But Lien-hua had even been around to listen to her deal with that.

  Though her friend Melody had done her best to set her up with a couple guys since then, Tessa hadn’t dated anyone all summer.

  Maybe, officially, Lien-hua shouldn’t have been doing anything to help her get together with an agent assigned to watch her, but she undoubtedly knew this assignment was short-term and that after it was done there really wasn’t any reason the two of them couldn’t get together.

  Except age, maybe.

  But Lien-hua was three years younger than Patrick and, as far as Tessa could tell, had never looked at age differences as that big of a deal for relationships.

  So, when Lien-hua stepped away, Tessa had done it—she’d looked up Beck’s number on her mom’s phone.

  Then Lien-hua returned. “Well, I better get going.”

  “Sure.”

  She had a slight smile as she retrieved her phone. Then she’d left to take Brineesha to the hospital.

  Now Tessa had Beck’s number, but she wasn’t sure where to take things from here.

  Should she contact him or not?

  Well, either way, whatever she decided to do, she wasn’t about to text him at this time of day on a Saturday.

  So now she was at home, alone.

  That is, if you didn’t count Agent Woods in the sedan across the street.

  Tessa was planning on visiting the hospital in a couple of hours to see how Brineesha was doing and also to talk to her about the baby, about how glad she was that she was having it.

  Personal reasons.

  It was important to tell her, and she just hadn’t really taken the opportunity yet.

  Better late than never.

  She needed to figure out the best way to move into that conversation.

  Until then, she settled down at the table with an orange, a sliced apple, and the last piece of chocolate cake and tried to get up enough nerve to contact the cute twenty-four-year-old FBI agent whose phone number she now had.

  + + +

  Richard Basque snapped his eyes open just in time to avoid colliding with the car to his left. The driver was hitting his horn and flipping him off.

  Richard had driven through the night and now found himself bleary, unfocused.

  But at least he’d made it here to Charlotte, North Carolina, safely.

  Barely, maybe, but he had.

  He exited the highway toward the warehouse that contained the mine shaft where his sister had died.

  He wanted to see the location for himself. However, he knew it would’ve been foolish to show his face in public or stand on the edge of the police tape near the cable news vans, so instead he drove down one of the neighboring streets.

  Throughout the night he’d monitored the news using his phone and the radio. From what they were saying, the FBI hadn’t yet been able to recover Corrine’s body from the mine shaft. The Feds were apparently wary that Mason had left explosives down there, and based on what Richard knew about him, that seemed like a very real possibility.

  He parked halfway down the next block.

  Though he tried to convince himself that Corrine was in a better place, he wasn’t sure what to believe about the afterlife.

  In order to get sympathy during his retrial, he’d claimed to have found religion in prison. He’d had to do a lot of Bible reading to make things plausible, and it had informed him but had not, in the end, changed him.

  Regardless of whether heaven existed, as he sat in the car now, he took this opportunity to say good-bye to his sister. Maybe she could hear him in some way, maybe she c
ouldn’t, but in either case nothing was lost by the gesture.

  “I love you,” he whispered. “I always have.”

  And he might have been imagining it. He probably was. Maybe it was from lack of sleep, but he thought he heard the words “I know” echo somewhere deep inside of him.

  Though his pulse was still racing from his near miss in traffic, he yawned. He needed to find Mason, but he needed to be alert to do that, and right now he was not.

  He’d been up for nearly twenty-seven hours straight, and as much as he wanted to start looking for Mason, he figured he’d better clear his head and rest a little first.

  Richard drove to a park, found a spot in the shade, shut off the car, locked the doors, tilted the seat back, and closed his eyes.

  60

  8:30 a.m.

  7 hours until kickoff

  The cup of coffee had really hit the spot.

  In fact, I’d also taken a cup to go and had it here with me now in the conference room of the Field Office.

  Ingersoll and Voss were here, as well as half a dozen agents who were working the case.

  I started by telling them about Ralph flying home for the birth of his daughter, then we turned our attention to the search for Kurt Mason. I shared all that I knew about him from apprehending him last summer.

  “And he escaped from prison with the help of Richard Basque?” Voss asked.

  “Yes. The surveillance video at the prison confirmed it.”

  “If it was confirmed, why didn’t the guards stop it?”

  “It was only later that they identified him. He played himself off as Mason’s lawyer. He snuck in the materials Mason needed to escape.”

  “And now Mason went after Basque’s sister? Killed her?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Does that make any sense to you?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s ask Mason why he did it when we find him,” Ingersoll said.

  “I’m good with that,” I replied.

  Unless we take him down first.

  An outcome I was not exactly opposed to.

  I finished my coffee while Ingersoll gave us an update on the HRT’s analysis of the mine shaft. “According to our calculations, the one Corrine was killed in is three hundred and fifty feet deep. I’m still not comfortable sending my men down there. We need to find out more about the tunnel network and structural integrity first.”

  We spent several minutes discussing how to do that.

  Then, during a video conference with Gonzalez, we laid out our plan for the day.

  Ingersoll and his team would be using ground-penetrating radar that was being delivered from a mining company in West Virginia to try to map out the tunnels.

  Voss’s agents would keep searching the city for the Buick LeSabre, following up on tips, interviewing people who had known “Danny Everhart,” and piecing together a timeline of his movements over the last month to see if that might lead us to anything specific regarding Mason’s current whereabouts.

  We also had agents investigating myths and folklore, especially from the Catawba and Cherokee tribes, that might be related to seven gods.

  * * *

  After finishing up with Gonzalez, we phoned Guido and put him on the line for a conference call.

  He’d located a UNC Charlotte professor who supposedly knew more than anyone else in the area about the gold mines. I wondered briefly why his name hadn’t come up earlier, but apparently the guy had been out of town speaking at a nanotechnology conference. He was driving back this morning and would be available to meet with someone from our team at the campus library at ten.

  It seemed like a promising avenue of investigation, so I volunteered to go.

  “A nanotechnology professor who’s an expert on the gold mines?” Voss said skeptically.

  “He has varied interests,” Guido answered. “He’s also a member of the Charlotte Historical Society and is on the board at the Mint Museum. His name’s O’Brien.”

  Frankly, if he could help us, I didn’t care what department he taught in—nanotechnology, scuba diving, or candle making.

  We finished the call, wrapped up the briefing, and then it was time for me to leave to meet with Professor O’Brien.

  61

  9:30 a.m.

  6 hours until kickoff

  On the way to the UNC Charlotte campus, I phoned Lien-hua to find out how Brin was doing.

  “She’s fine; I’m in the room with her now. There’s not much happening and from what they’re saying, it could be a while. I’ve got my laptop with me. I was studying Mason’s history. He’s the real deal, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  Although I’d told her about Mason when I tracked him down last year, Lien-hua and I had been going through a rocky patch in our relationship and had broken things off for a short time, so she wasn’t intimately familiar with his case.

  She said, “From what I’ve read about him, it’s always about the story he’s telling. He sees himself as the author.”

  “Yes. Of stories about tragedy and death.”

  “And lovers. It’s more than just about death—it’s about the tragic consequences of love.”

  She was the profiler, I was not. And though I’m not a big believer in her approach, I had learned to trust her insights and acumen, so I just went ahead and asked her the question that had come up during our briefing. “Can you think of any reason why Mason would have gone after Corrine like that? What’s he trying to do?”

  “Maybe he’s trying to find Richard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You mentioned it yourself yesterday: Corrine is the only person Richard ever loved. Maybe Mason went after her to draw Richard out. And based on what you said he told you in the mine, he was hoping Richard would be coming.”

  “That is true.”

  On one level it made sense, but why anyone would want to provoke Richard Basque like that was beyond me. Especially when you knew what he was capable of and that he would come after you.

  She continued, “We don’t know why Basque helped him escape from prison, but from what I can see from reading Mason’s case files, he’s not random and he’s not petty. It’s not revenge and it’s not just publicity—although he does want his story known. There’s something big on the horizon.”

  “I agree with you there. He mentioned a climax occurring tonight.”

  “Everything is significant and this ‘seven gods use thirty-eight’ thing is at the heart of it.”

  “Yes, but we still have no idea what that means. Angela and Lacey pull up anything?”

  “No,” she said. “Not yet.”

  The conversation pooled off as we both sorted through where things were at. Finally, I broke the silence. “Say hi to Brin for me. I have a meeting at ten with a prof at the university here who might be able to help shed some light on this mine system Mason was using.”

  “Great. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  + + +

  Kurt Mason stepped outside the Fourth Ward home where he was staying.

  The day looked like it was shaping up to be a hot one. Humidity was down, which worked in his favor.

  Streaks of high, shredded clouds were scudding across the sky like they were in a hurry and had somewhere important to be. He was hoping that as the day wore on there would be a breeze down here in the city too.

  A northeasterly one, ideally.

  With the size of the vapor cloud, even a little breeze would carry it a quarter of a mile—which was all he really needed.

  The train yard where M343 would be departing from was an hour and fifteen minutes by car. The train wasn’t scheduled to leave there until two thirty-five, which gave Kurt more than enough time to get over there now, disable the air brakes on the two tankers that he had i
n mind, and return here to the house to be present when everything went down this afternoon at the stadium.

  When a train sits in the yard, its air brakes are engaged so it won’t roll, but Kurt had found a way to override that and still leave the train stationary and pass the engineer’s and conductor’s on-site inspection.

  He went inside to get the things he would need to close the angle cocks of those two train cars.

  + + +

  Richard Basque woke up.

  He wasn’t sure where Kurt Mason might be hiding, but he did know one thing that the FBI did not: the alias Mason was using.

  According to the news reports, the Feds knew about “Danny Everhart,” but there was no mention of this second identity. Getting the name out there to the public would have helped their search for him, so if they had it they would have released it.

  For Corrine’s sake, Richard wanted to take care of Mason, to make him suffer.

  However, he understood that everything he had planned was not in the service of justice or of balancing the scales. After all, it was naive to think either of those two things was attainable.

  Balancing the scales?

  Really?

  It’s simply not going to happen.

  How many true statements balance out one lie? How many kind words make up for one cruel one? How many kept promises balance out one betrayal? And those are the simple questions—what about making up for rape or murder? It’s just not possible.

  Richard was all too aware of this. After spending thirteen years in prison, a good portion of it in solitary confinement, he’d had plenty of time to think through issues of justice and morality.

  As far as justice goes, an eye for an eye might help make the punishment fit the crime, and that might be as close as we can get to it in this life, but even that wouldn’t erase the pain in the lives of the people affected, and no form of retribution would ever make the wrongs go away.

  A life for a life doesn’t bring back the dead.

  Nope. There is no balancing the scales.

  It just doesn’t work that way.

  Not in real life.