Steven James - The Knight

There. Two sides.

Close.

She worked at the cube methodically. Systematically.

“Fifty seconds.”

“Dora, shh!”

Turn, turn.

Turn.

Yes. All the numbers aligned.

There. She punched the cube onto the bed and opened her eyes. “Time.”

“A minute four seconds,” Dora said. They were both staring at the cube, which was at least as mixed up as before. “Wow.” Dora used a friendly kind of sarcasm. “Impressive. I think I’ll get a grande.”

“Dang,” Tessa muttered. “That should have worked.”

“Here.” Dora stuck the cube into the satchel that Tessa used as a purse. “Take it. It’s yours.”

“No, that’s crazy.”

“Seriously. That thing is just way too hard for me.” She waited for Tessa to take it. “Go on. It’s cool.”

Finally, Tessa accepted it. “Sweet. Thanks.”

“Oh!” Dora said. “You are not gonna believe this. We’re getting a dog!”

Dora was the queen of randomness.

“A dog?” Tessa didn’t even try to hide her disdain.

“Yeah. Dad says he thinks it’ll help. Things have been hard, you know, ever since-”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“I know it seems kind of weird to get a dog when-”

“No-no-no-no.” Tessa squeezed all the no’s together into one word. She knew that coping with grief and guilt wasn’t easy, even if something wasn’t your fault. Lately she’d turned to journaling and writing poetry to sort through her feelings, but right after her mom died, she’d been into cutting, self-inflicting on her arm, to deal with the pain and loneliness. Getting a pet was a lot better way to cope than that.

“You don’t have to explain. But it’s just, a dog? C’mon, get a cat instead.”

Dora looked somewhat deflated. “What’s wrong with a dog? Dogs are man’s best friend.”

“Well, I have a policy: whenever my best friend starts sniffing my butt and eating his own vomit, it’s time to find a new best friend.”

“Oh,” Dora said. “Wow. Thanks for that image.”

“No prob.”

“Maybe we oughtta get a cat.”

“Good choice.”

And then Dora launched into an explanation of how her cousin had gotten a cat when she was visiting her last summer in Orlando and how she’d introduced her to this really hot guy who worked at Disney World-and then Dora sighed and started talking about how much she’d miss Tessa while she was in DC this summer and how she was hoping to get a job at Elitch Gardens after they were done with finals, which she was totally not ready for…

But Tessa’s attention had drifted back to Dora’s screen saver.

She carefully averted her eyes and pretended to listen to her friend.

I was outside Taylor’s house waiting for Cheyenne when Kurt approached me. He didn’t look happy. “That call I got a few minutes ago,” he said. “It was the captain. There’s something I need to tell you.”

By Kurt’s tone of voice I was pretty sure the captain hadn’t invited us to join him for a beer after work. “What is it?”

“You know how he’s not exactly dialed into your techniques…”

Here we go. “Yes?”

“Well, last night he talked with your supervisor at the Bureau-Assistant Director Wellington.”

Great.

Ever since I’d testified in an internal affairs review a few years ago that had temporarily set back her career plans, Margaret Wellington had been gunning for me with both barrels. I braced myself for bad news.

“She told Captain Terrell that with Basque’s trial and the shooting yesterday, she’s afraid you might be distracted, not at the top of your game.”

I could feel my temperature rising. “The top of my game.”

“Her words, not mine. She’s sending someone else to work the case with us. Captain Terrell already signed off on it. He’s a big fan of those profiling TV shows, so he-”

“She’s sending a profiler?” If Margaret was sending Lien-hua, things were going to get very awkward very fast.

“Yeah.”

“Did he say who? Was it Special Agent Jiang? Lien-hua Jiang?”

“No. Some guy named Vanderveld. Didn’t mention a first name.”

Oh, that was even worse. “Jake Vanderveld.”

“So you know him.”

“Oh yeah. We’re acquainted.”

Kurt stared at me for a moment, no doubt trying to decipher what lay beneath my words. “Anything I should know?”

Margaret knew how I felt about Jake. That’s probably why she’d assigned him to the case.

“Have you noticed how I’m not exactly the biggest fan of profilers?”

“I may have picked up on that.”

“Well, he’s the reason why.” I saw Cheyenne climbing into the driver’s seat. “I’ll run it down for you later. When does he get here?”

“He’s supposed to fly in sometime around noon. I guess he’ll probably want to be briefed this afternoon at HQ. I’ll let you know when I find out more.”

Cheyenne rolled down the window and slipped her key into the ignition. “What’s up?” she called.

“I’ll tell you on the way.” I opened the car door. “Let’s go visit the morgue.”

Room 404, Investigative Journalism SuiteThe Denver News BuildingDowntown Denver 9:22 a.m.

Amy Lynn Greer sighed.

Her husband Reggie was working a crime scene, so she was the one who’d had to drop their three-year-old son off at day care half an hour ago, even though she had two articles that were both due to her editor by noon.

She would have loved to be covering the murders that Reggie was investigating, rather than writing her column on local politics or the follow-up piece on the amount of drug use in children of professional baseball players who use steroids, but her boss refused to assign her any articles that related to Reggie’s cases.

When Reggie had first gotten the job, she’d thought that in her line of work, being married to one of Denver’s crime scene unit forensics specialists might have its advantages, but Reggie was under the scrutinizing eye of Lieutenant Kurt Mason, who’d informed him when he got the job that if he ever released any details about any investigation to his wife, he would be without a job and in court facing criminal charges before her story ever ran. Period. She’d met Lieutenant Mason and could tell he was a man of his word.

She took a small break from outlining the steroids story, checked her email, and found five rejection letters, one from each of the literary agents she’d sent her book proposal to.

Five in one day.

That actually might beat her old record.

A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.

“Yes?”

The door opened, and a vaguely familiar female voice said, “I’ve got something for you.”

Amy Lynn glanced over and saw one of the secretaries, a sandy-haired, thick-wristed woman she could never remember the name of, standing in the doorway, holding an oversized ceramic flowerpot filled with a shiny-leafed plant sprouting a cluster of half-inch-long, purplish-white flowers. The pot was so large she needed to use both hands.

“What’s that?”

“Flowers.” The woman explained as if Amy Lynn couldn’t tell. Her voice was strained with the effort of holding the oversized pot. “Can I set ’em down?”

“Sure.” Amy Lynn slid some papers out of the way. She tried to remember the woman’s name but couldn’t. She thought it was maybe Britt or Brenda or Brett or something preppy and girlish like that.

The secretary eased the pot onto her desk. “So, what’s the special occasion?”

Amy Lynn gazed at the flowers.

“There is no special occasion.”

Flowers?

Who would send you flowers? Reggie would never do that.

Small clusters of stamen stuck out of the center of each of the feathery-white flowers. The leaves overlapped and grew in layers, each set of two leaves at a perpendicular angle to the ones beside them. The strong minty scent was somewhat familiar, but also unfamiliar at the same time.