The Knight pbf-3

by Steven James

  “Sure, yeah; it’s not that hard, you just have to understand how the pieces move in relationship to each other; so when will they decide? The jury, I mean?”

  “Tessa, these things take time-”

  Dora appeared beside me. Slipped past me into the room. “He said he’s gonna do all he can to swing by and pick me up. I told him it was no big deal.” She turned to Tessa. “I can borrow some clothes, right?”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  The girls are fine, Pat. Get back to the case.

  I set the cube on the dresser next to Tessa’s jewelry box, which she must have brought from home while I was in Chicago. “I have to go. I’ll see you two later tonight. If you need anything, call me.”

  “By the way,” Tessa said, “am I ever gonna get my phone back?” “As soon as I can get a new one.”

  Both girls told me good-bye, and I turned to go but stopped mid-stride. “Wait a minute.” I spun, leaned into her room. “What did you just say?”

  “Um, that I want my phone back.”

  “No. About the cube. Just a minute ago. You said something about solving the cube.”

  She looked at me quizzically, almost defensively. “I don’t know. Just that you have to understand how the pieces-”

  “Move in relationship to each other,” I finished her sentence for her.

  “Yeah, so what? What’s wrong?”

  “Yes.” Thoughts twisting, rotating, clicking in my mind. “That’s it. You’re a genius.”

  “Yeah, right,” she grumbled. “Stupid tests are skewed toward-”

  “I have to go. I’ll call you later.” My thoughts were spinning forward as I ran down the stairs.

  I could see the pieces of the case-one side of the cube where everything fit together so perfectly: the abandoned mine… Cherry Creek Reservoir… the travel routes from Denver International Airport to the morgue… Elwin Daniels’s credit card purchase of the greyhound-one side solved.

  Yes, on Saturday, all the evidence pointed to the ranch-because that’s where John wanted it to point.

  “Have you figured out how I’m choosing the victims yet?” he had asked me on the phone. “That would really be the key, here.”

  I rushed to the car for my laptop, set it on the kitchen table. Opened it up.

  Relationships.

  Yes, that was the key.

  “What did Giovanni write to you about?” I’d asked Basque.

  “You,” he’d said.

  Yes, yes, yes. The tenth story. Someone gets buried alive.

  My mother entered the kitchen and must have seen that I was in the middle of something because she quietly returned to the living room to work on a crossword puzzle.

  It is essential for the investigator to understand his opponent’s intellect, training, and aptitude and then respond accordingly.

  But I hadn’t been doing that. I’d been investigating John the same way I do other killers: looking at the clues, the patterns, the timing and location of the crimes he’d committed. But John wasn’t like other killers. He was smart, so smart that he’d planned out everything from the beginning.

  And that’s what was going to help me catch him.

  I clicked to the online case files.

  To “Victim Files.”

  Chose “New.”

  John had always been one step ahead.

  Yesterday on the phone, he’d taunted me by saying that the only way to catch him was to move out in front of him-and now I realized that he was right, but he’d made the mistake of letting me know where he was going.

  He wrote to Basque about you.

  He phoned you.

  He chose you.

  The secret to catching him wasn’t going to be studying the victims he’d killed but the ones he’d chosen.

  And the one victim I knew about, the one piece of the puzzle I hadn’t included in the geoprofile yet, was the final victim in the story.

  Me.

  100

  Giovanni left Amy Lynn’s unconscious body, now tightly bound, on the kitchen floor, and carried his duffel bag to the master bedroom.

  He didn’t want their evening together to be interrupted, so he turned on the police scanner he’d brought with him and dialed it to the dispatch frequency.

  Then he pulled ten Chantel candles out of the duffel bag, set them on the dresser.

  Laid the knives that he would be needing next to them.

  And began to light the candles.

  Using FALCON, I brought up a map of Denver and overlaid the crime scene locations and victimology information from all of the other victims so far.

  Then, just like I would have done for any other victim, I plugged my personal data into the geoprofile: my home and work addresses, typical travel routes, routine activity patterns, everything. And since I knew the scope of my geographic patterns better than any other victim I’d ever analyzed, I had the most detailed victimology information of my career.

  At the trial on Friday, I’d told Richard Basque’s lawyer that the more locations, the more accurate the geoprofile can be, and now, by including my data, I hoped I might just have enough information.

  You have to understand how the pieces move in relationship to each other.

  On the flight, when I’d run the numbers, the computer had identified four hot zones, but now when I pressed enter, only one geographic area came up. According to the software’s calculations, there was a 71.3 percent probability that the offender worked in, lived in, or frequented a four-block radius downtown.

  That was good enough for me to roll with.

  I tapped the mouse, and a 3-D image of Denver’s downtown appeared on the screen. Using the cursor like an airplane, I cruised between the buildings. They tilted, pivoted, and slid past me like they would have in a high-end, three-dimensional video game. I studied the orientation of the businesses, apartment buildings, streets.

  Nearly all of the victims’ travel routes-including mine-intersected on the southeast corner of one of those downtown blocks.

  I zoomed in.

  Reviewed the routes again.

  Everything revolved around that one location.

  That’s where our lives touch his. That’s where he’s choosing his victims.

  Oh yes.

  That was it.

  The business on the corner.

  The place the cube clicked together.

  A coffeehouse.

  Rachel’s Cafe.

  101

  I yanked out Tessa’s cell. Ran to the door. Punched in Cheyenne’s number.

  She answered as the door banged shut behind me. “Hey, I’m on my way, I just-”

  “Meet me at Rachel’s Cafe. Remember?” I was sprinting to my car. “Where we went the other night. We need to hurry.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “It’s all about the pieces-how they move in relationship to each other.”

  “The pieces? What are you talking about?”

  “How long will it take you to get there?”

  “I don’t know. Fifteen minutes.”

  “Make it ten.”

  I jumped into the car, floored the accelerator, and peeled away from the curb.

  Tessa heard the front door slam, and a moment later Patrick’s car roared into the street. She wondered what was up and headed down the stairs with Dora close behind her. “Does he always act this way?” her friend asked.

  “No. Sometimes he can be a little impulsive.”

  “Oh.”

  Tessa looked around the kitchen, saw Martha in the doorway to the living room. “He took off?”

  “Yes.” A motherly sigh. “Typical. Do you girls need anything?”

  “No, we’re fine,” Tessa said.

  After a light nod, Martha returned to her crossword puzzle in the living room, and Tessa saw Patrick’s computer on the kitchen table. He must have been in such a hurry that he left it.

  He never left his computer behind. Ever.

  Wait a minute.

&nb
sp; Martha had already started on her crossword. Tessa put a finger to her lips to tell Dora to be quiet, then she picked up Patrick’s laptop and surreptitiously returned to her room.

  Very surreptitiously.

  After they were inside and the door was closed, Dora asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Maybe I can’t find my father,” she said. “But Special Agent Patrick Bowers can.” She opened Patrick’s email program, found the email address for the FBI’s cybercrime division,

  and typed in an urgent request for them to locate the current residence of Paul Lansing, former resident of 1682 Hennepin Avenue East, Minneapolis, MN 55431.

  She glanced up.

  Dora’s mouth was ajar, a glob of gum perched on her tongue. “You’re not seriously going to-”

  Tessa signed the email “Special Agent Patrick Bowers.” She didn’t know his federal ID number but figured that a message coming from his personal laptop would be verification enough.

  Pressed “send.”

  “OK,” Dora said softly. “So, I guess you are.”

  “Now,” Tessa said, “all we have to do is wait. They’re good at their job. Patrick calls them all the time. I’ll bet within an hour we know where my dad lives.”

  102

  Giovanni had used a gag on Amy Lynn Greer without asking for her permission.

  Now, he stared at her, lying so still on the kitchen floor, hands and feet tied securely behind her back. And he thought of his grandmother on another kitchen floor long ago.

  With sunlight seeping from her.

  He’d seen so much sunlight over the years.

  He knelt beside Amy Lynn and slapped her face to wake her. It would leave a bruise, but in a few hours that wouldn’t matter.

  It didn’t do the trick, though, so he hit her again, harder, and this time she woke with a start. Blinked. Widened her eyes.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’m not going to kill you.” As he said the words, a thought, a terrible thought, must have crossed her mind because she shrank back as much as she could. Tried to move away from him. “No, I’m not here for that. I’m not going to touch you.”

  Rapid breathing. Eyes searching, hoping for a way out.

  “But although I’m not going to kill you, I’m afraid you will have to die tonight.” She made sounds that might have been her way of trying to cry for help, but because of the gag he couldn’t understand her words. “I chose you to play a lead role in story number nine. You know what that means, don’t you?”

  More muffled sounds. She struggled, but he’d tied her well. A tear squeezed from her left eye.

  “Yes, that’s right. You’ve read the story. You do know: tonight you’re going to kill yourself after you eat the heart of your dead lover.”

  She shook her head desperately, frantically.

  Giovanni looked at his watch. “I sent him an urgent text message on your behalf a few minutes ago telling him to hurry over, so I think he’ll be arriving any minute now.”

  Then he grabbed her ankles and dragged her toward the bedroom. She twisted and struggled; couldn’t pull herself free.

  “I won’t be able to let you hold your hands over your ears, so you’ll probably hear some of the sounds. I’m sorry about that. I apologize in advance.”

  He situated her on the floor of the closet, closed the door, and then went to the kitchen to preheat the oven.

  I burst through the door to Rachel’s Cafe.

  Smelled the familiar scent of freshly roasting coffee, saw Janie working behind the counter-a sophomore journalism student. Trendy glasses, retro clothes. Newspaper spread in front of her across the counter just like usual.

  A man in his early twenties wearing earbuds sat at a table near the coffee roaster, slowly swaying his head to the beat of his music. A pile of college textbooks in front of him. Apart from the two of them, Rachel’s was empty.

  Janie must have wondered why I was scanning the room. “You all right, Dr. Bowers?” She knew I was a doctor, knew I worked for the government, but that’s all I’d ever told her. “Come in to get some work done?”

  To get some work done. Yes.

  No!

  I realized what I’d done: left my computer at home.

  No! How could you be so stupid?

  Wait.

  Tessa’s cell. Yes.

  “Dr. Bowers?”

  You can access the online case files with the cell phone.

  “Janie.” I pulled out the phone. “This might sound like a strange request, but I have a few pictures to show you and I need you to tell me if you’ve seen any of these people in here. If any of them are regulars.”

  “If they’re regulars,” she said brightly, “you’d know them.”

  I shook my head. “I’m only here late in the day. I brew my own coffee in the mornings.” I tapped the screen of the cell, brought up the online case files. “Can you look at the pictures for me?”

  Confusion ghosting across her face. “Sure.”

  Quickly, I clicked to the “Known Victims” section of the case files and downloaded the photos for Chris Arlington, Brigitte Marcello, Benjamin Rhodes, and all the others. Then I dragged them into the phone’s photo suite so Janie wouldn’t see the word victims.

  “It’s really important that you look at these carefully,” I said.

  The front door opened. Cheyenne. “Pat. Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Come here.”

  Janie’s eyes flicked from me to Cheyenne to the cell phone. She no longer looked uneasy but frightened, and I figured it might be best to just tell her what I did for a living. I didn’t want the college guy in the corner to hear me if he unplugged his earbuds, so I lowered my voice. “I work for the FBI, Janie. And I think maybe you can help us with a case.”

  “You work for the FBI?”

  “Please. Just look at the pictures.” I handed her the cell, showed her how to slide her finger across the screen to scroll through the photographs. She stared at the phone for a moment, then began to view the photos one at a time.

  Cheyenne stepped closer to me, piecing things together. “Are you thinking this is where John chooses-”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  Janie tapped the screen. “This woman. Yeah. I’ve seen her. And this guy too.” She flicked back and forth between the two photos, pointing first at the headshot of Heather Fain and then at the picture of Ahmed Mohammed Shokr, the man who’d been poisoned on Wednesday.

  “So, this is it,” I breathed. “This is-”

  “Who is he, Pat?” Cheyenne asked. “Do you know?”

  I shook my head.

  Janie tapped the screen again, moving to the next two pictures. “This guy’s a priest, I recognize him… and sure, Dr. Bryant teaches one of my classes. He comes in here sometimes…” She flipped through the remaining pictures. “That’s it. That’s all the people I recognize.”

  It was a start, but I needed more. I looked around the cafe and ran through everything in my mind. The timing. The connections. The locations.

  Taking the phone, I surfed to the list of fifty-one names, and began to pore over them, looking for someone I might have run into at Rachel’s Cafe.

  From where she lay bound and gagged in the closet, Amy Lynn could hear the noise of pots and pans clanging in the kitchen and the indistinct garble of police dispatch codes being called out through a radio.

  She was trying to convince herself that the man who’d hit her and then tied her up was not the Day Four Killer. He was the last person on earth she would have ever suspected.

  But it was him, there was no denying She heard the doorbell ring and she tried to scream, to yell for help, but was barely able to make a sound.

  The sound of the dispatch radio stopped.

  The doorbell rang again.

  Then, heavy footsteps pounded through the house. She strained to get free.

  The front door opened. She heard a cry. A short scuffle.

  A thud.

  And then the
voice of her attacker, “Well, this isn’t quite what I had in mind, but you’ll do.”

  I whipped through the fifty-one names, but I didn’t remember seeing any of the men at Rachel’s and I didn’t have enough information to figure out which of them might be John.

  Then a thought: John sent the pot of basil and the handwritten note to Amy Lynn. She was the only other person besides myself whom he’d personally contacted.

  He chose her, Pat. Just like he chose you.

  Janie’s newspaper lay on the counter. I flipped to Amy Lynn’s political column and pointed at her headshot just beneath the title. “Janie, does this woman ever come in here?”

  She nodded. “Sure. I’ve seen her.”

  “Did you ever see any guys checking her out? Watching her? Maybe following her?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “What about guys meeting her here?” Cheyenne said. “Flirting with her? Coming on to her?”

  “Usually, she’s with this one blond guy. But he wasn’t in any of those pictures you showed me.”

  “Reggie has brown hair, Pat,” Cheyenne said. “It’s someone else.”

  I’d only shown Janie pictures of the known victims, not the fifty-one men.

  I suspected that many of the government personnel files would be incomplete and lack a photo, so I copied the names, surfed to the Department of Motor Vehicles records and quickly downloaded the driver’s license photos for all of the men. I handed the phone to Janie again. “OK, one more time. The guy she came in with; see if he’s one of these men.”

  “I’m not sure I’m really being very helpful-”

  “Please,” Cheyenne said. “You’re doing great.”

  Finally, with Cheyenne’s encouragement, Janie accepted the cell. And I closed my eyes and rotated the cube in my mind.

  Desperately, desperately, Amy Lynn tried to think of a way to get free. But the only things in the closet were shoes, hangers, dresses, blouses.

  Something. There had to be something!

  Dim light seeped beneath the door.

  She peered around the closet.

  No. Nothing.

  She twisted. Repositioned herself.