Steven James - The Knight

And as every defense attorney knows, discrediting even one of the prosecution’s witnesses-especially the arresting officer-is enough to raise questions in the minds of the jurors. And since our court system requires a jury to unanimously find a defendant guilty beyond reasonable doubt, a few questions were all you needed for an acquittal.

When Emilio finished, Judge Craddock called for a brief recess for lunch, I stepped from the witness stand, and my duties in Chicago were officially over.

12:28 p.m.

As I collected my things and got ready to leave, Emilio came toward me. “Well,” he said. “That was a little rocky, but I think we’ll be all right.” He was putting his best spin on what had just happened, and I could tell. “And I don’t think you need to worry about Basque pressing charges. The statute of limitations in Wisconsin for physical assault have-”

“Run out. I know. That isn’t really what concerns me.” I noticed that Richard Basque was watching me, shaking his head slowly as if to reprimand me for telling the truth.

And then he called to me, “No one is beyond redemption, Agent Bowers.”

The old, familiar anger churned inside of me, searching for an opportunity to get out. I didn’t reply, just turned away before I found myself giving in to my urges and attacking him like I’d done the night I arrested him.

He didn’t say anything more.

Why did he ask you to lie?

I still had no idea.

Emilio was watching Ms. Eldridge-Gorman, who was chatting amiably with her legal team. “However,” he said, “it is true that things have become a bit more complicated.”

I thought of the weight I’d been carrying all these years, the subtle power Basque had exerted over me by knowing my secret. Now, there were no secrets. “No,” I said to Emilio. “Things were complicated. They just became a lot simpler.”

Then he stepped away, and I checked my watch.

12:32 p.m.

My flight left in less than ninety minutes and I still had a forty minute drive to O’Hare. It would be cutting it close.

On the way to the hall I called Kurt, asked him about Calvin, and he told me rather bluntly that he would have let me know if he’d found out anything and that I didn’t need to keep bothering him about it.

OK?

I wasn’t sure how to take his sharp tone, and for a moment neither of us spoke, then I said, “Kurt, what is it? What’s up?”

“Yeah, it’s the…” Kurt was a tough man, but I could hear defeat creeping into his voice. Whatever was bothering him was something big. “It’s Cheryl,” he said finally.

I felt a rush of concern, and I paused beside the door. “What happened?”

Silence.

“Is she all right?” I said. “Did something happen to-”

“She left me.”

The words slammed into me. Left me groping for what to say. “Kurt, I’m so… I’m so sorry.”

“She went to her sister’s place up in Breckenridge.” It seemed like there was more he wanted to say, but he left it at that.

I wanted to encourage him, to tell him it would all work out, but I knew how long he and Cheryl had struggled to make things work, and there are no easy fixes when things got to this point. Finally, I asked him if there was anything, anything at all, I could do.

“I need some time,” he said. “I’m not trying to bail on you, but I need to go up there, maybe take a couple days, see if I can salvage this thing. I can’t just let everything-”

“Go. We’ll be fine. We’ll get John. And if there’s anything you need, call me. OK?”

He told me that he would. “Cell reception up there in the mountains is terrible, but yeah, I’ll give you a shout.” We ended the call, and I was left wishing there was more I could do, but since I didn’t have a direct flight, I wouldn’t land in Denver until almost six.

Maybe Cheyenne could check in with Kurt before he left. I decided to call her, but first I needed to get a cab, so as I headed to the security checkpoint to collect my SIG and my knife, I phoned for a cab and arranged for it to meet me two blocks from the courthouse. Then I punched in Cheyenne’s number.

“Pat,” she answered. “That’s weird, I was just picking up the phone to call you.”

“Did you hear about Kurt and Cheryl?”

A brief silence. “Yeah,” she said. “I hate that this is happening.”

“I thought maybe you could stop by, see him before he leaves.”

“We just spoke in the hall.”

Silence spread between us. It was clear neither of us knew what to say.

At last, Cheyenne took a small breath. “I need to tell you: we found the bodies of Benjamin Rhodes and Adrian Bryant at Bryant’s house.”

Something heavy and dark sank inside of me. “It was the toothpaste, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. They died after scrubbing toxins against their teeth, just like Simona and Pasquino did in the seventh story. And they didn’t just die. You know how 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin are psychedelic drugs?”

“Yes.” I remembered an excerpt from the research notes in the case files: “Often characterized by hallucinations of bugs crawling across the subject’s body.”

“Based on the smears of blood on the wall”-her voice was strained and somber-“Bryant must have pounded his face against it twenty or thirty times before he died. Rhodes got hold of a knife and… well

…”

She left it at that.

More death. More faces to haunt me. More guilt for what I might have done if only I’d pieced things together faster. “OK, let’s-”

“Wait,” she said. “How did you know John had targeted them?”

“When he called me yesterday he said dusk would arrive like it did in London. This morning Calvin told me he suspected John killed England’s leading Chaucer expert last year in London on May 19th-one year ago, exactly, today.”

“What? You’re kidding me!”

“No, I’ll fill you in later. I’m just saying, that’s what made me think of our Boccaccio expert, Professor Bryant. Last night, I logged into his Internet browser, and it was pretty clear what his sexual preference was. I put that together with John’s pledge to make Boccaccio’s story more politically correct.” I arrived at the security checkpoint, picked up my knife and gun, and headed for the back door of the courthouse. “Then, when you told me Rhodes went to Bryant’s house last night, I remembered they had the same screen saver.”

“The same screen saver?”

“An aquarium-the point is, I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“And the toothpaste?” she asked.

Our exchanges were quicker now and marked with urgency.

“The hypodermic needles and toothpaste tubes at the ranch. John must have been practicing his delivery method. We never had the toothpaste from Elwin’s house checked for bufotoxins, did we?”

“No. I can’t think of any reason we would have.”

“John was probably counting on that.”

“But all those details are a little sketchy, aren’t they?” Her tone had turned the question into its own conclusion. “Even with all that, you still needed to rely on your instincts.”

I hesitated. “I guess so. A little.”

As I waited for her to respond, I thought about Bryant and Rhodes-fatally poisoning themselves simply by brushing their teeth. I would never look at a tube of toothpaste the same way again.

“One more thing,” she said. As she spoke I realized that during our conversation, for the first time since I’d met her, Cheyenne Warren sounded rattled. “I wondered if I should wait until you got here but-well, here it is: John left you a note in Bryant’s medicine cabinet.”

I paused, stared out the window at the razor wire fence encircling the nearby Cook County Jail. “Read it to me.”