Checkmate

by Steven James

  “Over here, Ralph!” I descended the steps, taking them two at a time, and banged open the basement door.

  Ralph was right behind me.

  The hall split off in two directions. By the looks of it, one hallway led to administrative offices and the parking garage, the other went past the morgue.

  There didn’t appear to be any patient rooms on this level and the emergency lighting was less substantial than it had been on the first floor. Dim red lights glowed to illuminate the hallway, while the fire alarm continued to cycle in the background.

  Ralph unholstered his weapon. “You go right. I’ve got left.”

  “Good.”

  The hallway stretched before me, hospital-white and throbbing in the crimson, pulsing light.

  Red like blood. White like bones.

  Blood and bones.

  I clicked on my Maglite and directed it in front of me as I sprinted down the hall, wondering if I’d been right about Pine Street, if the officers would get there in time, if—

  I could only hope they—

  I came to the morgue.

  The door was closed but I whipped it open.

  And found Richard Basque leaning over the autopsy table. There was a rolling gurney situated between us. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I could hear wet, rough coughing sounds coming from the table.

  Someone was lying there.

  From here it looked like he was wearing a physician’s lab coat.

  “Step back, Richard.”

  Basque turned and looked at me. He held a scalpel in one hand. Blood covered the bottom of his face and dripped from his lips.

  Just like the first time I’d apprehended him.

  A scalpel in his hand.

  Blood.

  A victim.

  Full circle.

  I had no gun—my SIG was in that mine shaft; the Glock was back in Charlotte.

  Oh, well.

  I would use my hands.

  I pocketed the flashlight.

  When Basque faced me, whoever was on the table rolled off the other side and landed heavily on the floor.

  Then rose unsteadily to his feet.

  Kurt Mason.

  His abdomen had been sliced open, exposing a loop of intestines. It reminded me of my gruesome dream earlier in the week of a woman whose stomach had been torn open. His chest had been cut into as well. I had no idea how Mason was even able to stand with the extent of his injuries.

  He snatched a bone saw off the counter next to him.

  How did Basque do that to him without restraining him? Drug him? Knock him out? How did he get Mason to lie still for—

  “You promised to leave me alone with him,” Basque said to me. He licked some of the blood off his upper lip.

  “You’ve had plenty of time.” Then I called to Mason, “What did you do to Brineesha?”

  “You can’t save her.”

  “What did you give her!”

  + + +

  Ralph Hawkins found nothing on his end of the hallway or in the parking garage.

  He hastened back to the stairwell and saw that the wing Pat had gone down was empty.

  Pat’s in one of the rooms.

  He dashed forward to find out which one.

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  “I’m not going to tell you.” Mason sounded firm but weak. “But it’s too late for her.”

  “I know about Pine Street,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Allie. I know who took Tryphena, and—”

  “I—” He coughed and winced in pain, holding one hand against his open stomach to push back in parts of himself that were bulging out and unlooping in glistening, gruesome folds.

  Richard said, “It looks like Brineesha and the baby die in the final act.”

  “You knew to come here.” I felt my hands tighten into fists. “You knew Kurt was going after them.”

  “Of course. Patrick, don’t forget who I am. I would’ve killed that little girl and eaten her myself if I’d had the chance. You know that.”

  Mason coughed and doubled over in pain.

  He wasn’t going to last long.

  I went at Basque but he grabbed the rolling gurney and shot it toward me. As I leapt aside, he made his way to the door and escaped into the hallway. I debated for a second whether I should chase him or stay here with Mason to try to find out what he knew, but he was profoundly injured and he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Entering the hall, I shouted for Ralph, who I now saw sprinting toward me.

  Basque had flared in the opposite direction, toward the loading area where they move corpses into and out of the building. He was too far away for Ralph to get a shot.

  “I’ve got him!” I yelled. “Mason’s in the autopsy room. He’s dying. Get him to tell you what he gave Brin!”

  “And Tryphena?”

  “He didn’t take her.” I thought I knew who had, and, if I was right, we could still save her. “We’ll find her!”

  I swung open the door and saw Basque running across the parking lot toward a brightly lit construction area across the street, maybe fifty meters away.

  I bolted after him.

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  Ralph entered the autopsy room, tossed aside the gurney that was partially blocking the doorway, and approached Kurt Mason, who was leaning against the counter, a bone saw in his hand.

  “What did you give my wife?” Ralph said.

  “It’s too late. The story’s over. No one will ever find Allie.”

  “Allie?”

  Then he raised the saw and drew it violently against his exposed intestines, ripping out a long, bleeding clump of viscera that flopped heavily onto the floor beside his feet.

  Before Kurt could collapse, Ralph grabbed the man who had killed six of his people earlier this week and had targeted his family tonight, and considered what he would need to do to save his wife.

  + + +

  Tessa was standing outside with Beck, wondering whether or not there really was a fire in the hospital, when she saw a woman hurrying out one of the doors, carrying a crying baby.

  With the fire alarm blaring, there were a lot of people exiting, but this woman’s urgency caught Tessa’s attention.

  When she repositioned the child in her arms, Tessa saw the pink hat the baby was wearing.

  It’s the one Brineesha knitted!

  She gasped. “That’s Tryphena.”

  “What?” Beck said.

  “Hey!” Tessa yelled to the woman. “Come back here!”

  But that only served to spur her on, and she hurried faster toward a nearby car, opened the door, slid inside, fired up the engine, and started toward the street.

  “Stop her!” Tessa cried to Beck. “She’s got Tryphena!” He raced across the grass to cut her off before she could make it out of the lot and onto the road that led toward the highway.

  + + +

  As I chased Basque I thought of all the times we’d faced each other in the past and his words to me: “It feels good, doesn’t it?”

  Yes, it felt good to taste the darkness.

  Yes, but one thing was going to feel even better.

  Ending this.

  He went at one of the construction workers, but the guy leapt out of the way, letting go of the industrial-strength pressure washer he’d been using. The hose shot backward, twisting and heaving through the air like a giant, spitting viper, until the handle reengaged and the hose dropped solidly to the pavement.

  The generator was loud, and although I shouted for Basque to stop, I doubted he could hear me. He went for the hose and aimed the nozzle at the man who’d been using it only a moment earlier.

  They were about four meters apart.

  No!

  Basque squeezed the trigger and
a fierce, cable-tight stream of water cut through the air and hit the man’s shoulder. The force torqued him to the side and drove him backward.

  He fell and groped along the ground to get out of the path of the water. I tried not to think about what the coarse jet would have done to him if he were any closer to Basque, or if Richard had aimed it at the guy’s stomach. With that much pressure it could have bored right through him.

  I faced Basque and closed the space between us until I was less than two meters away.

  The sound of the generator drowned out everything else, but that was okay. We’d said all that needed to be said.

  The time for talk was over.

  If you go any closer and he aims that at you, it could—

  This ends now.

  I went at him.

  He directed the nozzle at my abdomen and squeezed the trigger. I spun, the jet sliced across the back of my wrist, tearing off my skin and leaving a streak of ragged red behind.

  But I made it to him. Tackled him.

  Somehow he managed to hold on to the hose, and as we landed, he was quick and rolled to the side, and I found myself on my back with him on top of me.

  I’d almost forgotten how fiercely strong he was, and he held me in place while he triggered the water and blasted it just to the side of my face, moving it toward my left eyeball.

  For the moment I was able to hold his arm at bay, but that wasn’t going to work for long.

  I remembered when I was fighting him in the marsh in April, when it looked like he was going to drown me. That night I was able to get out my knife and stab him in the jaw.

  Tonight I had no knife.

  No gun.

  But I did have the Maglite.

  While I struggled with one hand to keep him from drilling that column of water through my face, I used my other to tug the flashlight out of my pocket. I swung it up, flicked it on, and directed its beam within inches of his eyes.

  As he flinched and squeezed his eyes shut, his grip on me loosened. I dropped the flashlight, grabbed his wrist and wrenched it backward, but he didn’t stop squeezing the nozzle, and as we rolled again the stiff jet of water ripped across the front of his neck, stripping right through the skin and muscle.

  A hot spray of blood shot from his throat, and though I lurched to the side, I wasn’t able to stop it from splattering across my own face and neck.

  As Basque struggled to breathe, his hand fell away from the trigger and the hose writhed backward briefly until the trigger locked in place and the water stopped shooting out and the hose fell lifelessly to the ground.

  I pushed myself to my feet and looked at Richard.

  The harsh stream had ripped through his external carotid artery. He was choking, bleeding out, drowning in his own blood.

  As I stood there, I thought of death, of life, of justice and darkness and of how they all affect us. I thought of funerals and clarity, of integrity and choices about who we will become. We all have the same inclination for the darkness. We all need to keep ourselves at bay.

  Behind me, someone shut off the generator and when he did, I could hear Basque gasping for his last few wet, useless breaths.

  Then his body quivered.

  And then it stopped.

  He lay there unmoving, the blood pooling out of his shredded neck.

  I could hardly believe that after all this time it was really over, that after all this time he was finally dead.

  I thought that maybe his death would bring me some sort of satisfaction, but it didn’t.

  However, it did give me a sense of closure.

  No, I’m not like him. He lived to see others die. I would die to see others live.

  The construction worker Basque had attacked a few moments earlier was on the ground, holding his shoulder.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He was staring at Basque’s corpse, then looked at the blood splashed across my clothes, at the red streak where the water had scored the back of my hand. “You?”

  “I will be.”

  I heard a car horn and when I glanced past him, I saw Beck rushing to position himself in front of a sedan that was about to exit the parking lot. He had his weapon drawn, and even from here I could hear him shouting for the driver to stop and put her hands on the ceiling.

  The car screeched to a halt less than a meter from him.

  As I started toward them, the woman exited the car.

  It was Agent Debra Guirret, the woman who had served as the receptionist at the NCAVC building.

  And she was holding a baby.

  93

  I could see things ending badly here, very badly.

  I sprinted toward them.

  “He took my daughter!” she cried. “He told me he’d kill her unless I did as he said. Please, he took my Allie!”

  “Just calm down, ma’am,” Beck said.

  The baby she was holding was wailing. I recognized the pink hat. Tryphena.

  To my left, Ralph was shouldering his way through the crowd of people who’d gathered outside, crossing the parking lot toward us.

  “Debra,” I called, “give Ralph back his daughter. Allie is going to be okay.”

  “Where’s Mason?”

  “It’s over.” Ralph shouted. “He’s gone. He’s dead.”

  “No!” A terrible look shadowed her face and I was afraid she might do something desperate.

  “Debra,” I said, “your daughter is going to be alright.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I do. You love Allie. You’d do anything for her. Mason just asked you for the location of the camera and the work schedules. You didn’t know anything about the explosives, did you?”

  “No, I . . .” She trembled. “I had no idea it would . . . I mean . . . And he said he wouldn’t just kill her, but that he would . . . She’s only nine.”

  She began reaching for her weapon.

  “No!” Beck shouted.

  Debra paused. She was weeping, repeating the name of her daughter over and over. “Allie, Allie, I’m sorry.”

  She was losing it.

  Things were spiraling off sideways fast.

  “Take it easy, Debra,” I said. “It’s—”

  She cut me off: “But Mason is the only one who knows where she is. He’s the only one. He said he would lock her up and leave her to die.”

  Beck still had his gun trained on her. He hadn’t even flinched when the car was speeding toward him. Still hadn’t.

  On the one hand, with Tryphena there, I wanted him to lower his weapon, but I knew Debra was armed. She was despairing and maybe suicidal and I didn’t know where things were going to go from here. He needed to keep that weapon out.

  “Check your phone,” I said to her.

  “What?”

  “Check your phone for a message.”

  Slowly, Ralph approached Debra. “I’m coming for Tryphena. Don’t do anything to hurt her. I’m—”

  “Stop!” she screeched.

  He did.

  My heart was still pounding hard and harsh from chasing Basque, from fighting him, and I tried unsuccessfully to calm myself, to catch my breath.

  “Check your phone,” I repeated. “Please. Before anyone gets hurt.”

  Did the text go through? Was there enough time?

  I hoped so. Prayed there was.

  Holding Tryphena to one side, Debra drew her cell phone out of her pocket and checked her messages. “How did . . . ?” she said disbelievingly. “Is this a trick?”

  Oh, thank God.

  “No. It’s not a trick.”

  She stared at me. “So Allie’s okay?”

  I anticipated what the text message had been. “She’s with the police now.”

  “But h
ow did you—?”

  “It was an address: 669 Pine Street. I called dispatch on the way to the hospital. I gave them your number.”

  Ralph held out his hands and Debra was trembling as she handed over his daughter.

  “Get down,” Beck commanded. Debra knelt and held her hands out. I promptly relieved her of her weapon and Beck cuffed her. He was on top of things. Professional. He impressed me and I was glad he’d been here watching Tessa this week.

  Until we could get a police cruiser here, Beck kept an eye on Debra, although moments later when the dispatcher put Allie on the line, he held the phone to Debra’s ear so she could talk to her daughter.

  I took a breath.

  So, the girl was okay.

  Tryphena was safe.

  I thought that Ralph being out here was a good sign. “So, what do we know about Brineesha?”

  “They’re treating her, giving her something called D50. She’s gonna be alright. Mason gave her an overdose of insulin.”

  “How did you get him to tell you that?”

  “I found a couple syringes in the lab coat he was wearing. They were empty, but I used to be an Army Ranger.”

  “You used to . . . ? Oh. You know how to get people to talk.”

  “When necessary. Yes. Let’s just say I got him to open up.”

  I didn’t ask him to elaborate. I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to know the details.

  An officer from the hospital arrived, and as we handed Debra over into his custody, Tessa found her way to Beck’s side. “Not bad work there, Agent Danner. You ran right in front of that car. You didn’t even hesitate.”

  “I’m not paid to hesitate, ma’am.”

  “Did you just come up with that line or have you been waiting to use it?”

  “It just came to me.”

  Then he took her in his arms and kissed her.

  And she kissed him back.

  Hmm.

  Well.

  How about that.

  This was a night full of surprises.

  Ralph was staring across the street at Basque’s body. “So, he’s dead?”

  “Yes.”

  He watched one of the guys move the hose away from Basque and he pieced things together: “I guess you could say the pressure got to him.”