Steven James - The Knight

– Kurt

P.S. Reggie told me you had a date with Cheyenne tonight. Don’t worry. I won’t spread the word.

How thoughtful.

Enough with this. I needed some sleep.

I put my computer away, crawled beneath the covers, and closed my eyes.

Sunday, May 186:13 a.m. Sunday did not start out well.

My nightmare of the slaughterhouse and the whispering corpses had returned, and when I eased my eyes open, I saw that the day was going to be bleak.

God had decided to send rain to Denver, and the flat gray sky reminded me more of a November morning in Milwaukee than a Denver day in spring.

I opened the window to check the temperature, and a brush of crisp air with some leftover winter greeted me. The temp had dropped more than twenty degrees from the night before, and by the looks of the clouds and the plummeting temperature, I wondered if we might be in for a late-season snowstorm before the end of the day.

But you won’t be here at the end of the day.

Oh yes.

Chicago.

After a quick shower I went online, hoping to switch to a later flight, but there were no openings, which meant I would need to leave for the airport by 2:30, maybe 3:00 at the latest, and that gave me less than nine hours to make some progress on this case before flying to the Midwest.

I was definitely ready for some coffee.

I’d just sent some freshly roasted Peruvian beans through my burr grinder when my unlisted landline rang. Cordless, but an older model. No caller I.D., and since I’d emailed Ralph last night telling him to call my landline if he needed me, I figured it was probably him.

I picked up the receiver. “Pat here.”

“Congratulations.” The caller spoke in a low whisper, the voice electronically disguised. “On getting to the ranch so quickly.”

My thoughts zoomed in, focused to a pinpoint. “John?”

“That’ll do.”

Play this right, Pat. Play this right.

“I’m glad you called.” Knowing how this guy had toyed with Sebastian Taylor and then killed him in his own house, I pulled out my SIG and made sure it was loaded and had a chambered round.

“Yes, well, I thought it was time we spoke.”

I hurried to Tessa’s room. Eased her door open. Walked to her bed. Yes, she was safe. Sound asleep.

I figured John would be too smart for the “So what’s your real name? Where are you calling from? What would you like to talk about?” routine, so I decided on a different approach and said, “We almost had you at the barn.”

“Yes. Almost.”

“Switching shirts was smart. It might have been the only thing that kept me from shooting you.”

“Well, then I’m glad I did it.”

Into the living room.

To the window.

I studied the neighborhood. “I saw the newspaper articles in the bedroom.”

He said nothing.

No unfamiliar cars. No one sitting in the parked cars on the street.

No movement behind the bushes next door, no fluttering curtains in the neighbors’ homes. “Why did you circle my face?” I said.

“I admire you.”

Speech is individualized by vowels, pronunciation, and the suprasegmental phonemes of pitch, stress, and juncture, so as I listened to each of his sentences I tried to catch a sense of John’s pauses, inflection, intonation, cadence, but didn’t notice anything distinctive.

I ignored his comment about admiring me. “We were able to get Bennett out of the barn in time.” As I spoke, I finished checking the house room by room. “Saved Kelsey too. You’re getting sloppy, and I’m coming for you.”

Rather than argue with me, he said, “I wanted to tell you that I’m veering slightly from the text for this next story.”

“Veering?”

As we spoke, I looked in the garage. In the car. Under it.

“Updating,” he said. “Boccaccio wasn’t as politically correct in his collection of tales as today’s audiences would demand. So I’m adapting it to better reflect the diversity of our culture.”

I had no idea what that meant, but I would remember it. I would use it.

Then he added, “Have you figured out how I’m choosing the victims yet?”

I suspected he’d call my bluff if I tried one, so I was straight with him. “Not yet.” I went to the back door of the house, looked into the yard. Clear. “But I will.”

“That would really be the key here, I think. The only way to stop me is to get out ahead of me.”

“I can think of a few other ways.”

A slight pause. “I would congratulate you on rescuing Kelsey, but let’s be honest-that was a fluke. You stumbled onto her by accident.”

“You fled south down the cliffs, didn’t you? Then probably west along that old mining road skirting the national forest. Did you grow up in the area, John? Is that how you know it so well?”

Another pause, and I had a feeling I’d nailed it.

“Remember,” he said, “Kelsey was supposed to die of grief, not hypothermia.”

Check on her, Pat. He’s going after her.

Yes, I would check on her-both her and Bennett-as soon as I was off the phone.

He continued, “And after what she went through Friday night in the morgue-all that time in the freezer with those cadavers-I think there’s a good chance she’ll die of grief after all, and the story will play out like it’s supposed to.”

His words “The story will play out like it’s supposed to” troubled me.

Remember, Pat? He was prepared in the barn. He was ready for you.

If I was reading things right, Thomas Bennett was in grave danger. “Why did you wait so long before opening the door to the cage, John?”

“Ah yes. Gabriotto’s nightmare.”

It was a dream.

It was all a dream.

John went on, “What does he really die of, Patrick?”

No, please.

I grabbed the car keys from the kitchen counter.

“You know, don’t you? It isn’t the greyhound that kills him.”

Get to the hospital. Now.

I flew toward the front door but immediately realized that if John knew my phone number he might know where I lived. I couldn’t leave Tessa here alone. I ran back to her room.

“You’ll need to be calling the hospital now, I suppose,” John said. “To check on Thomas. We’ll talk again. I’m moving up the timetable. Dusk arrives tomorrow, just like it did in London.”

Then he ended the call.

My heart jackhammered.

As I turned on Tessa’s desk lamp, I flipped through my mental catalog of phone numbers. Found Baptist Memorial’s. Punched it in.

It rang, no one answered.

I patted Tessa’s shoulder firmly enough to wake her up, but she groaned and wrapped a pillow around her head.

The phone continued to ring.

Come on. Pick up.

Since I wasn’t on a mobile phone, I couldn’t take the receiver with me in the car. I had to wait in the house for them to answer.

Pick up!

Finally, a receptionist answered, “Hello, Baptist-”

“This is Special Agent Patrick Bowers with the FBI. I need you to send a doctor to check on Thomas Bennett-I don’t know his room number-”

“Sir, I can’t just-”

“And get a doctor to Kelsey Nash in 228. And security to both rooms. Do it!”

A slight hesitancy in the woman’s voice, but she agreed. “Yes, sir.”

I gave her my federal ID number, then tossed the phone onto Tessa’s desk. Shook her again. “Tessa.”

She moaned. “Turn off the lights.”

“You have to come with me. We have to hurry.”

“What are you talking-”

I clutched her arm, and I think I might have scared her because she stopped mumbling, blinked her eyes open, and stared at me. “What’s going on?”

“I need to check on someone at the hospital and I can’t leave you here.”