The Chessman

by Jeffrey B. Burton

  “So what does that mean?”

  “It means the UNSUB is methodically stripping away the king’s defenses.”

  “That makes it crystal clear that this thing’s not over,” Jund said, “because the king is still on the table.”

  There was only one thing crystal clear in Cady’s mind at this point. And that was that Vance Zalentine certainly knew his twin boys.

  Chapter 8

  “Good morning, Senator Farris.” Cady stood in the entryway of Farris’s private chambers in the Dirksen Senate Office Building and shook hands with the senior senator from the great state of Delaware. The senator had a grip like a wood vice and a smile that said “crowns.”

  “Thanks you for meeting us on such short notice, Agent Cady,” Senator Arlen Farris said, patting the agent on the back and leading him over to his desk. “Have you met my son, Patrick?”

  “I’ve not had the pleasure, sir,” Cady said. “Good morning, Congressman.”

  The congressman stood up from the guest armchair and shook Cady’s hand. “Pleasure’s all mine, Agent Cady. Please call me Patrick.”

  Cady nodded. He remembered seeing both Farris men on the cover of Newsweek a couple years back when Patrick Farris had won the same seat in the United State House of Representatives that father Farris had vacated for his senate seat decades earlier. The story had talked about the Farris Dynasty in Delaware, with a wink toward the Kennedy and Bush families. It had been a puff piece, and two-thirds of the Farris Dynasty stood before Cady now. The third member of the dynasty, Arlen’s brother Graham, a two-term governor of Delaware, had passed away of leukemia a few years back.

  “Assistant Director Jund mentioned that you had some information regarding the Barrett Sanfield murder investigation.”

  “Terrible, terrible thing,” Senator Farris said, shaking his head, before catching Cady’s eyes. “Barry and I grew up together in Milford. The two of us, team captains, led the Muskets to state in football our senior year. Would’ve won the damned championship game except for a jackass holding call and a missed field goal on the last drive of the game—two plays I’ll be cussing on my deathbed. Barry’s been my wingman ever since. Loved the SOB.”

  “My condolences, sir. I knew you and Mr. Sanfield had been good friends.”

  “I appreciate your thoughts, Agent Cady.” The senior Farris pressed a button on his phone. “Mavis, are there three servings of that delicious sponge cake left?”

  “Yes, Senator,” a disembodied voice replied through the speakerphone.

  “Would you be so kind as to bring us three pieces—ah, hell, Mavis. Bring in whatever remains of it and three cups of Joe.”

  “Can do, Arlen,” Mavis said through the phone.

  “Senator, there’s no need—”

  “One spoonful and you’ll be pulling your gun to get her recipe. Now stop calling me senator. My name’s Arlen.”

  Senator Farris put his arm on Cady’s elbow as though they were old pals and led the agent across the room to a seat on the couch. Cady could tell that Farris was born for politics, all sweetness and molasses, about to discuss Washington’s most mysterious death since Vince Foster as though he were discussing a prize heifer at the Delaware county fair. Mavis, hair in a silvery bouffant with black glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, pushed in a cart containing cups of coffee and three helpings of her apparently famous sponge cake. On her way out she shut the door behind her.

  “Well?” The senator eyed Cady as he tasted his first bite.

  “Quite good.”

  “Tell her that on the way out. Mavis lives for praise of her pastries. Yesterday was this cinnamon streusel I’m going to legislate be mandatory in all bakeries.” Farris shoveled a spoonful into his mouth. “I’d be eight hundred pounds if I didn’t pan her yummies off on visitors.”

  Cady could easily see how Arlen Farris got reelected in Delaware landslides every six years. He had that homespun, good-old-boy schmooze down pat. But Cady sensed something lurking behind the senator’s green eyes. Perhaps a glint of don’t fuck with me, which was something General Earmarks, as some on the right side of the aisle had taken to calling Farris, would need to push through a wealth of pet projects benefitting Delaware—bridges hither and yon, wind-power construction, pre-kindergarten programs, Delaware National Guard’s counter-drug program, the new Farris Cancer Center at the U of D’s Medical Center, research and development of a Delaware Bay regional computer, mass-transit initiatives, you name it. All of which put smiles on a variety of grateful voting blocs come November. Farris couldn’t be accused of not bringing home the bacon.

  “Now, the reason I called Roland last night,” Farris said—the senator seemed to be on a first-name basis with everyone north of the equator—“was to follow up on some questions he’d asked of me back at the time of Barry’s murder. Sad to say that I wasn’t much help. And that pained me.” The senator put his coffee cup down and held out his hands. “Because when you find out who pig-stuck my best friend, Agent Cady, I’d like to strangle them with their own entrails. Hell yes, Barry had enemies, many political if you follow the news. This is Washington, D.C. for Christ’s sake, but all’s fair in love and war, shake hands, give a great concession speech, and live to fight another day. I told Roland at the time that it had to be some petty theft run amok and that Barry happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “But something has since come to mind?”

  “Actually, it’s more my son’s insight that clicked the light bulb on over my head. It may mean something, but it may also mean absolutely nothing.” The senator looked at his congressman son. “Patrick, tell the agent about the shitbirds at the Ivy.”

  “I knew Alain and Adrien Zalentine at Princeton.”

  Cady reached into his breast pocket and took out a notebook. “How well?”

  “Kinda-sorta.” The congressman tilted his hand back and forth. “I was a year or two older, but we were in the same eating club. T.I.—Tiger Inn.”

  “What’s an eating club? A frat house?” Cady asked. He’d gone to Ohio State and eaten dorm food.

  “No. Fraternities had been banned from Princeton until the 1980s, so these eating clubs cropped up for dinner and socializing. Great fun on a Saturday night.”

  “Have you kept in contact with them?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. Farris is a politician up for reelection every other year; of course he’s going to mine the Zalentines for campaign donations,” Patrick said, flashing a broad grin. “He’d be daft not to. That would make sense, right?”

  Cady nodded.

  “I never approached either for funding. Not once. Haven’t kept in touch, either. Quite frankly, they were odd ducks to be around, even back in the T.I. days.”

  “How so?”

  “For one thing, I don’t remember ever seeing either of them alone, separately that is, without the other twin an arm’s length away. Another thing, they always had this peculiar manner of examining things. I swear you could drop a cup full of Jell-O right in front of the two of them, and they’d both stare at it for several seconds, inquisitively, as though dissecting it, before glancing at each other for verification or something. Once I was heading out of T.I. after lunch and…you know the feeling you get when you realize someone is watching you?”

  Cady nodded again.

  “Well, I had that feeling to the power of ten. I actually got goose bumps. At the door I turned around. Sure enough, the twins were sitting there, side by side, staring at me.”

  “Did the Zalentines have any close friends at Tiger Inn?”

  “Not that I recall. T.I.’s a bit exclusive in that you have to go through this pain-in-the-ass bicker process to get in. Interviews, bullshit games, that kind of stuff. The Zalentines never really had that camaraderie thing going. They were all but impossible to bond with, seemed to live on a different plane of reality, so I assumed they greased some palms here and there.”

  “Tell Agent Cady about the part
y,” Senator Farris said, moving it along.

  “Yes.” The congressman folded his hands and looked off into the corner of the room, collecting his thoughts. “Dane Schaeffer’s family owned a lake house near Hillsdale in Bergen County, on Snow Goose Lake. Dane’s a fellow Princeton alum and an old T.I. chum of mine. His father did a lot of business in Italy, industrial laser systems or something. Anyway, Dane’s father would periodically need to zip off to Milan or Naples for weeks on end, and he’d take with him whoever his girlfriend was at the moment. That freed up the lake house and Dane would throw these wild Friday-to-Sunday parties. Fully catered, booze around every corner, single malts, Dom Perignon, imported ales.” Patrick flashed the Tom Cruise grin again. “And you’d better knock before entering any room. Think Gatsby with condoms. If you couldn’t get laid at one of Dane’s to-dos, there must be something seriously wrong with you. Everyone was invited, and everyone had a wonderful time…until the final bash.”

  “What happened?”

  Patrick lost the movie-star grin. “A girl died, Agent Cady. She drowned in Snow Goose Lake. She and her boyfriend were down near the boathouse and, evidently, they went skinny-dipping. Not too uncommon a site at one of Dane’s parties, but it was well after midnight. Dark outside. I imagine they were both drunk and the poor girl drifted away and drowned.”

  “You were at the party?”

  “Not for long. I had a paper due that Monday morning that I hadn’t begun…and a certain someone who shall remain nameless was having conniptions, grand mal seizures actually, over a certain dip in my GPA.”

  Senator Farris chuckled. “I wasn’t paying for Cs.”

  “Some of my father’s constituents wish he’d be just as frugal with the taxpayers’ dime.”

  The senator chuckled again.

  “Anyway, I drove up Friday afternoon, sipped some Laphroaig and ate two servings of roast hen or whatever Dane had brought in for that soiree. Then I pounded a few cappuccinos and snuck out before Dane could give me any shit about leaving.”

  “But the Zalentine twins were at the party?”

  “Yes. They’d arrived just as I was leaving, maybe nine o’clock. Everyone used to park in this field across the gravel road from the Schaeffer lake house. Alain had recently picked up an Alfa Romeo, a Spider I think. So I mooned over it before I left.”

  Cady scribbled in his notebook. “What was the girl’s name?”

  “Marly something or other. She was fairly attractive, if I remember correctly. May have had her in a class or two, but I only knew her enough to nod or say hello in the hallway. I can get you her name. Or Google may have newspaper articles from ten years back.”

  “I can find that out. How about the boyfriend, do you know his name?”

  “Sorry. I don’t think I ever knew the gentleman.”

  “But you believe the Zalentines had something to do with this girl’s death?”

  “After hearing the news about Alain and Adrien this past week, what they’d been doing to those poor women, I really don’t know what to believe.”

  “Tell him what the shitbirds wanted,” Senator Farris said.

  “Dad and I were hitting eighteen at Chevy yesterday afternoon and talking about Uncle Barry. I still can’t believe he’s dead. The newspapers have hinted that his death and the Zalentine homicides are somehow connected. Same M.O. or something, right?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss the investigation.”

  “Understood,” the congressman replied. “Anyway, I mentioned to Dad that I’d referred the twins to Uncle Barry over a legal matter they had some concerns about.”

  Cady’s head perked up. “This was back then, at Princeton?”

  “Yes. In fact, it was that following Monday morning, the Monday after the accident at Dane’s party. I’d had about three hours of sleep after finally finishing that term paper for Poly Sci before Alain and Adrien woke me by banging on my door at about seven o’clock that morning. I knew they weren’t early risers and they’d never been to my apartment before. It was odd, but they knew who my father was and thought I’d be able to refer them to a good trial attorney. They wanted a real street fighter and thought I might know someone.”

  “This wasn’t for speeding tickets or driving under the influence, was it?”

  “No.” The younger Farris shook his head. “This was something big. They never told me what it was about, but I got the distinct impression that it had to do with the family business, that they felt their father was screwing them over financially, denying their birthright or whatever. I assumed there was going to be legal Armageddon over the diamonds, so I referred them to Uncle Barry. I figured if it turned into a cash cow, maybe I’d get a commission.”

  “Did they meet with Mr. Sanfield?”

  “I assume so. I left a message at Barry’s office. He called me back while we were finishing our coffee. I made an introduction, then handed the phone to Alain and went off to brush my teeth and throw on some sneakers. When I got back to the kitchen Alain said something about having set an appointment.”

  “The Sanfield & Fine records only indicate having represented the Zalentines over a string of relatively recent speeding tickets.” Cady looked from the congressman to the senator.

  Senator Farris nodded once. “I think we all know about Bar’s reputation. There were certain things Barry worked on that were better left unspoken and without a paper trail. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, that type of shit.” The senator’s eyes were moist. “But I’ll tell you one thing you can take to the bank, Agent Cady. Barry sure as hell never covered up any girl’s death, not for those two shitbirds.”

  Chapter 9

  “Damn it, Agent Cady, I dotted every i at the inquiry. Crossed every t. There was no reason to suspect foul play.”

  “I have no doubt, Sheriff Littman.” Cady had the Bergen County Sheriff on speakerphone in his cramped two-chair office at the Hoover Building.

  “Situations like this, a family’s wealth works against them. The Schaeffers may have money growing on trees, but that itself guaranteed no preferential treatment. If anything, that inquiry took the long way around the pond.”

  “Thanks again for faxing me the findings summary and pathologist’s report. I’ve got one or two remaining questions.”

  “Fire away.”

  “The ME placed Marly Kelch’s blood alcohol content at .058. That’s under the legal limit.”

  “I wouldn’t advise anyone to drive a car with that BAC level, but what’s your point? We didn’t pull her out of a car wreck. We pulled her out of a lake.”

  “My point,” Cady said to the Bergen County Sheriff, “is here’s a very athletic young woman, a hotshot on the Princeton women’s tennis team—who, by most accounts, isn’t much of a social drinker. And she goes for a quick swim off the dock by Schaeffer’s boathouse and manages to get herself drowned.”

  “Now there you go again, implying I don’t know how to do my job. I had Bev send you those materials yesterday, I just walked you through the case step-by-step, and here you go again second-guessing me.”

  “Look, Sheriff, I’m only playing devil’s advocate, probing for weak spots, to find if there are any holes in what happened that night at Schaeffer’s mansion.”

  “Holes?” Sheriff Littman said. “What the hell are you investigating ten years down the pike that circles back to this poor girl’s death?”

  “I’ll tell you what little I know, sir, but I don’t want to taint your answers at this point.”

  “I’ll bounce your ball for another minute, Cady. First off, as you said, Marly Kelch didn’t drink much, so Schaeffer’s shindig, with hooch bussed in by the truckload, had to be a novel concept for her. And Kelch weighed all of, let me see, I’ve got the full report here in front of me.” Cady heard papers rustling through his office phone. “Kelch weighed 115 pounds. Second, several witnesses at the party saw Kelch drinking wine that night, walking around with a glass of Merlot. Golly, Agent Cady, a skinny young
woman who doesn’t know how to handle her liquor…someone get me the president on the phone.”

  “Good one,” Cady said.

  “Third point, that very athletic girl has just come off a round or two of very athletic sex with her boyfriend, and then they get the bright idea to take a naked dip in the dark and cold waters of Snow Goose at two in the morning. Kelch likely gets a cramp or becomes disoriented or begins inhaling water. The boyfriend, who blew a .11 when we arrived on the scene, was completely worthless. He dogpaddled to shore, passed out for an hour, then woke up and wondered where his date went.”

  “Bret Ingram was not Kelch’s boyfriend. I talked to Dorsey Kelch, her mother, and several of her old tennis mates. They said she hadn’t been seeing anyone on a steady basis.”

  “Well, if her mother says so, I guess that’s that, then. Now, actual witnesses at Schaeffer’s party made noises about those two acting awfully friendly before they both disappeared down to that boathouse around midnight together. Do you understand the very nature of the parties that the Schaeffer boy threw? Booze drains inhibitions, couples pairing off left and right as the sun goes down, switching pards the next day—young people in heat, going at it like rabbits. What’s that term that’s so endearing amongst today’s youth—fuck buddies. You know, the Schaeffer boy’s basically a good kid. I heard he spent all Saturday in his pontoon boat circling Snow Goose, checking the banks and docks to see if Kelch had made it ashore and passed out. Anyway, I took the Schaeffer kid aside, before the body was pulled out of the lake, and told him in no uncertain terms no more. The parties end.”