Steven James - The Knight

However, I heard background noise on both recordings. As I was considering what it might have been, Cowler asked me, “What are you hoping to find, exactly?”

Rather than sound arrogant by listing the phonetic and intonation identifiers, I simply said, “I’m trying to listen for anything distinctive, individualized. Anything that could help us match the caller to a suspect.” Then I asked Ari to play them again.

Yes, there was definitely something there, although it was a different sound on each tape. “Do we know what those background noises are?” I asked Cowler.

“Background sounds?”

“It sounds like murmuring on the first tape and something else-I’m not sure what-on the second.”

“All right, Ryman,” Cowler said. “Let’s hear ’em one more time.” He handed me and Cheyenne headphones, grabbed a pair for himself, plugged them into the system, and then nodded for Ari Ryman to play the audio again.

After we’d listened to the calls again, we all removed our headphones and Cowler shook his head. “It can get loud in here. It just sounds like background noise from the other dispatchers. It’s probably nothing.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it’s this: when someone says “it’s probably nothing,” you should never believe him.

I knew CSU had studied the tapes, but I needed to have them analyzed a little more carefully. However, before I could request a copy of them, a call came in, and the man with the Star Trooper action figure took a quick gulp from a well-worn mug filled with gray coffee and spoke into one of his two headset microphones. “911. Please state the nature of your emergency.”

We stepped away.

Apart from the ambient noise, I didn’t notice anything unusual about the audio messages.

“Well,” Cheyenne said to me on our way to the door. “What do you think?”

I tried to hide the discouragement in my voice. “The phonemes seem to match the ones used by the man who called me earlier in the day, but with the voice distortion the caller used, I doubt I’d be able to recognize the speaker’s natural voice if I heard it. I’m still wondering how the author of the online article found out the wording from the calls.”

“So am I.”

Cowler led us to the door, and I was about to hand him my card and ask him to email me a copy of the audio files and transcriptions but realized that would just take more time-something we didn’t have. So instead I asked him if I could use one of the computers for a minute.

He shrugged. “Sure, we have one set aside for DPD use. Right over here.”

He led me to one of the empty work stations at the far end of the room.

After I’d taken a seat, Cowler showed me how to pull up the audio files. I clicked past the hyperlinks to the Federal Digital Database’s GPS and address locators until I came to the audio archives, then I emailed a copy of both the files and transcriptions, to myself and to Angela Knight at the FBI cybercrime division.

I added a request for Angela to run the audio for the calls through a voice spectrograph. “See if you can isolate that background noise for me,” I wrote. “And as usual, I need this ASAP. -Pat.”

I thanked Cowler, and as Cheyenne and I entered the hallway, I glanced at my watch and realized I needed to get moving if I were going to have time to grab my luggage from home, say good-bye to Tessa, and then catch my flight.

“I have to go,” I told her.

“Wait,” she said. “Swing by my car first. It’ll only take a minute. There’s something I’ve been wanting to give you.”

Amy Lynn was putting another video in for Jayson to watch when a call came through on her BlackBerry. She dug it out. “Yes?”

“They came by.” It was Ari. He sounded frantic. “What did you write?”

She turned on the television and set a box of snack crackers on the floor for the boy to eat. “Who came by?” She’d lowered her voice. “What are you talking about?”

“Some detectives. You wrote something about-”

“Just calm down. OK?” She stepped away from the television.

“I just don’t want anyone to find out that we talked.”

“I know.”

“Mommy,” Jayson said. “Can I watch-”

“Shh!” she quieted him. “You should know better than to interrupt me when I’m talking on the phone.” Then she spoke to Ari again. “I’ll do some checking, make sure there’s no way to link things to you. I’ll call you later.”

She ended the call without waiting for his reply.

And she smiled.

So, her article was stirring things up. Good.

Time to start working on the second installment.

Three minutes after leaving the dispatch office, I was standing beside Cheyenne’s Saturn and she was handing me the St. Francis of Assisi pendant that she’d had hanging from her rearview mirror.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“St. Francis is the patron saint of the archdiocese of Denver,” she explained. “And last year I found out he’s also the patron saint against dying alone. I think that’s the worst way to die, so I keep this as a… well, it helps me remember why I do what I do. No one should have to die alone.”

She paused for a moment and then recited the words I’d read the day before from Keats’s poem about the pot of basil: “‘For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die; will die a death too lone and incomplete.’ When you read that yesterday, I thought of the pendant, but I kept forgetting to give it to you.”

“I can’t take this, it’s-”

“Please. I thought that if you had this at Basque’s trial, it wouldn’t hurt. I don’t know… I just… As a reminder. I want you to have it. I can get another one easy enough.”

Even though she’d mentioned yesterday that she’d gone to Catholic school, I could see now that she was much more devoted to her faith than I would have guessed. She must have noticed my surprise because she said, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m just a little… I didn’t know you were so religious.”

“Hard to pigeonhole, remember?”

“Right.” I didn’t really believe in relics, praying to saints, or good luck charms, but the gesture meant a lot to me. “Thank you.” I slipped the pendant into my pocket.

A moment passed. “Well,” she said. “I’m going to swing over to visit Kelsey Nash, see how she’s doing; then maybe check in with the officers who are keeping an eye on Bryant.”

I realized that my feelings for Cheyenne were growing stronger and more intense by the hour, and I began to wonder how much the stress from the case might be affecting my attraction to her-maybe my heart was reaching out to her because it needed something she seemed to offer-comfort, strength, intimacy. Probably all three.

“I’ll have Tessa’s cell with me,” I said. “Keep me up to speed, OK?”

“I’ll call you in the morning.”

I gave her the number, and she programmed it into her phone. She looked like she wanted to say more.

I hated to consider the possibility that I was using her as a crutch, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was.

“I should go,” I said hastily.

“Yeah.”

Then, before the conversation could slip into anything more personal, I said a hurried good-bye and left for my car.

And I didn’t look back because I was afraid she might be watching me, and even though part of me hoped that she was, another part of me had started to wonder if it might be better for both of us if she wasn’t.

Tessa reached the entry dated November 15 of her mother’s sophomore year at the University of Minnesota-just two months before she was conceived.

And her mom was still seeing Brad.