Checkmate (19 page)

It took me about fifteen minutes to find what I was looking for.

But it wasn't an employee entering the premises that caught my attention.

Instead, it was a delivery man from a vending machine company. He arrived ten minutes before the doors officially opened and was allowed in by one of the staff members. He left again only a few minutes later, pushing a hand truck with the same number of crates of soda as he'd pushed in.

So, he hadn't actually delivered any, just rolled them in and then rolled them back out.

The dolly was tall enough so that he could have hidden the arrows and the tomahawk along one side of it. With the elevator he could have accessed that floor and without any guests here yet to see him or cameras to catch him, he could have gotten the weapons down to the break room.

The museum's software for analyzing video wasn't very good so I sent the file to my phone. When I zoomed in I was able to make out four initials on the side of the delivery van: NVDS.

A quick online search brought up the name of the company: National Vending Distribution Services.

Their regional shipping center was located about halfway between here and Matthews, North Carolina. The
map app on my phone told me it would be a fourteen-minute drive with current traffic conditions.

Perfect.

It's usually best to show up unannounced for these kinds of discussions so I decided not to call ahead.

Before leaving, I used my laptop to pull up the video we'd gotten of the exterior of the NCAVC of the man who'd been driving the semi that delivered the lawnmower that blew up.

We had no visuals in either case of the man's face, and, while I couldn't be certain enough to confirm it was the same man, his height and build did appear to be consistent for a possible match.

There are some people who are invisible in a workplace—like the maid from a few years ago who took care of my room at a hotel in Miami. On the first day of the conference she wasn't wearing a name tag and the detective I was working with on the case asked her what her name was, then later thanked her by name. She stared at him, bewildered, and you could tell she'd rarely had anyone do that, remember her name like that.

That incident stuck with me.

I was the one who was supposed to notice things and she'd slipped right past me, just like so many people have over the years. Custodians, same deal. Migrant workers. Cabdrivers. Homeless people. Delivery men. They pass namelessly through so many people's lives.

And if you're someone who's trying to steal something from a museum, that's what you would want: to pass through unnoticed.

I sent the footage of the delivery guy to Angela to have Lacey take a closer look.

“I was just going to call you,” she told me. “The phone number you gave me that was on the back of the
painting, well, I had Lacey analyze it, searching for any instances of any phone number mnemonics, and I found one that relates to Charlotte—or at least it might.”

“What is it?”

She spelled it out for me: “R-U-D-I-S-I-L. Apparently, there were gold mines in the area and one of them was named that—or at least that's an alternate spelling of the name. Normally it appears with two
l
s—I even came across a couple of other spellings as well. In any case, I thought that with the Charlotte connection it might be what we were looking for.”

“If it's the name of a gold mine, it very well may be. See what else you can find out about this mine.”

“Actually, I did,” she replied. “Unfortunately, there's not much online. I'm guessing that maybe the layout and specific location would appear in old land deeds, local surveying maps—that sort of thing—but we're talking about information from a century or two ago. I doubt those documents would ever have been scanned in or posted on the Web—if they even exist anymore.”

“Alright. Well, let me know if you come up with anything.”

After the call, my thoughts returned to the delivery guy who'd arrived before the museum opened.

Someone had opened the door for him.

I replayed the video, paused it when the employee's face appeared. “Who is that?” I asked Ms. Sharma.

“Bryan Anders. He works the front desk on Tuesdays.”

I called Voss at the Charlotte Field Office and asked him to get a couple of agents over here to review the footage from before July 5th when the staff rotated the exhibits. “We're looking for someone who stared at that painting long enough to memorize the Latin, write it down, or someone who might have taken a picture of it.”

“Do we have video of that floor?”

A few minutes ago Ms. Sharma had mentioned to me that we did. “Yes,” I told him. “I'm having the curator draw up a list of the board of directors, staff, and volunteers. I want someone to talk with each of them. Start with Bryan Anders. I'll have her e-mail them to you. I'm taking off here in a minute.”

“Where are you going?”

“The National Vending Distribution Services warehouse. There's a certain delivery man I'd like to have a word with.”

Before heading to the car from the Library of Congress, Tessa and Beck stopped to grab some sandwiches for lunch.

The sign on the window read:

Bill's Psychedelic Café
Your place. Your pace.
Come. Relax. Enjoy.
Exist in Bliss.

As they entered the neo-Bohemian, vegan-friendly restaurant, she thought of her comments about history and how they so easily could have offended Beck.

She didn't want to take the chance that she might start ranting against something that he actually did like and decided she needed to be a little more careful next time around.

So when she saw the guy dressed in surgeon's scrubs who was adding some sugar to his coffee, she kept her mouth shut.

But still, it was hard not to be annoyed and, despite herself, she sighed.

“What is it?” Beck asked her.

“Nothing.”

“I don't know you very well yet, Tessa Bowers, but I can tell it's not nothing. Go on. What are you thinking?”

“It's just . . .” She'd kept her mom's last name, so her full name was actually Tessa Bernice Ellis, but she didn't correct Beck when he naturally thought her last name was Bowers. “What's the deal with doctors doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Wearing their scrubs in public. Okay, so are they showing off that they're so busy they can't spend thirty seconds slipping off their scrubs, but they can sit for half an hour sipping a latte, reading the paper? Do they have any idea how idiotic they look wearing scrubs in public? It would be like me wearing my pajamas in here.”

“I don't know that they look all
that
idio . . .”

She was staring at him beneath two raised eyebrows.

“Okay,” he admitted. “They do look idiotic.”

*   *   *

After they had their food, Beck chose a place in the back where no one would be behind him and he could monitor the restaurant and assess any potential threats, just like Patrick would have done.

Not long after they'd started eating, Tessa caught him looking at her.

“What is it?” she asked self-consciously.

“I was just . . .” Beck seemed embarrassed. “That's a pretty necklace.”

“Yes. It is.” She held the stone loosely in her hand. “It's my birthstone. Tourmaline. Patrick gave it to me for my seventeenth birthday.”

“Huh,” he said.

“What?”

“Well, most people, when you compliment them about something—maybe, ‘Nice shirt' or ‘That's a cool sweater,' you know, stuff like that—they say ‘Thank you,'
but when I said your necklace was pretty you just said, ‘Yes. It is.'”

“Uh-huh.”

“That's not . . . It's just not the common response.”

“Thanking you wouldn't have made any sense.”

“Why not?”

“Because I have no control over how the necklace looks and unless I set the gem, it's not me that you're complimenting, but the person who actually did the work. Why on earth would I thank you for complimenting something that someone else should get the credit for?”

“You know, I've never really thought about it like that before. I have to say, you have a unique way of seeing the world, Tessa Bowers.”

“You know, it's no big deal, but my last name is Ellis. I kept my mom's maiden name.”

“Sorry, I—”

“No problem. So, ‘unique' as in ‘fresh and intriguing,'” she asked, “or as in ‘weird and anomalistic'?”

“Fresh and intriguing.”

“Well, thank you, Beck.”

“You're welcome.”

As he ate and scanned the room, he sometimes let his eyes linger on her for just an instant longer than he needed to.

And that was just fine by her.

+ + + +

We hadn't eaten yet, so I was grabbing a quick lunch at a drive-through on my way to the distribution center when my phone rang.

When I answered, Lien-hua jumped right in: “Pat. Listen, Corrine Davis never showed up for her flight on Tuesday morning.”

“What?”

“She was supposed to fly to Miami, Florida, from Columbia, South Carolina, for a business meeting. She didn't make it to the airport and no one's seen or heard from her since Monday night. The story hit the news cycle this morning and they're not letting it drop. Do you think it's possible her brother took her?”

Corrine was the one person, the only person, I'd ever known Richard Basque to care about.

I'd spoken with her a few times over the years and gotten to know her a little when we contacted her a couple months ago after we failed to find Richard's body, when I shot him and he tumbled backward into the Potomac. She'd been cooperative and promised to let us know if he got in touch with her, but we hadn't heard anything from her.

I processed things. “It wasn't him.”

“How do you know?”

“I know Richard. She's the last person he would ever go after.”

“But when he first started out, didn't he kill women who looked like her?”

“Yes. I can't explain it, but he cares about her. That much I know.”

According to Freud, pretty much every motive can be explained by someone wanting to have sex with someone else. So Freudian psychologists would have probably had a field day psychoanalyzing Richard's relationship with his sister, no doubt finding all sorts of hidden sexual meanings in his choice of preferred victims.

But neither Lien-hua nor I went there.

She wasn't Freudian.

Neither was I.

Without jumping to conclusions, I had to acknowledge the obvious. “The timing points to her
disappearance as being related to this case. We need to add the search for Corrine to the mix.”

“I'll talk to Gonzalez, get a team down to Columbia to work with local law enforcement, look into her disappearance.”

“Good. And I want to know who saw her or talked to her last before she disappeared. Check her phone records. Let's see if we can pin down a time and place where she was still accounted for.”

Then I told her about the search for Guido and the possibility that the vending-machine-supply worker was involved. “I'm on my way to their distribution warehouse now.”

“Keep me informed.”

“I will.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you from here?”

“Hmm . . . maybe look into traffic cameras near Corrine's house. There might be something there—you know, an unaccounted-for car entering or leaving the neighborhood around the time she disappeared.”

“Good call.”

“And why don't you pull up Basque's files. Last year there was an attempt on his life in Chicago during his retrial. The father of one of his victims went after him. Let's see what other threats have been made against him.”

“You think someone might be trying to hurt him by going after Corrine?”

“It's worth looking into. Also, any more word on establishing who it was who looked up the location of the surveillance cameras?”

“Debra's on it. I just spoke with her. With Allie at camp this week she's been working on this nonstop. The minute I have anything I'll call you.”

Debra had mentioned to me earlier that her daughter was at her dad's this week. Maybe the guy had sent her to camp.

“I'll let you know what I find out at the distribution center,” I told Lien-hua.

+ + + +

Corrine knelt and swirled her hand through the chilled water.

She told herself that the sediment would have drifted to the bottom. Yes, this water would be safe to drink.

Trying to put out of her mind how muddy it might be or how polluted it might have gotten from minerals or chemicals that had seeped into it, she used one hand to cup the water and took a drink.

It tasted gritty and coarse and sour and she had to spit out the first mouthful.

You have to drink. You have to!

She readied herself, dipped out some more water, and drank it.

Swim.

You could go for a swim.

Just take off your clothes and—

Stop it, Corrine! What are you even thinking about here?

—to safety. You could swim to safety.

Think about something else!

She forced herself to mentally shift gears and ended up moving on from the water to the man who'd left her down here.

Why is he doing this to you? Is it because of Richard? He said he knows him, but is this his way of getting back at him? Did he know one of Richard's victims? Is this revenge?

Revenge.

Justice.

The concepts cycled around each other in her mind. Where does one end and the other begin?

Revenge exists. There's no question about that. But does justice? Does it really?

When you look at the natural world there's no evidence of justice; there's only the struggle for life, the inevitability of death.

Life.

Death.

Injustice.

Yet we naturally know that there are things that are right and things that are wrong and that people should be punished for the wrongs they commit.

Punished for their wrongs.

Like Richard.

Like you, for not noticing what he was becoming.

Is that what this is now—punishment? Divine justice? Divine retribution?

She thought of her brother. Was he still alive? How would he react when he heard his sister was missing? Did he even know yet? Certainly—if he even was alive—he wouldn't chance coming to her funeral.

If your body is ever found.

If—

Stop!

She thought again of the man who'd left her down here.

Corrine didn't know what frightened her more: the thought of that man returning or the thought that he might never return.

If he came back, she could only imagine the kinds of things he might do to her.

But if he didn't come back and if no one else was able
to find her, she would eventually die down here, starve to death or die from hypothermia.

Maybe it would be better if he came back.

At least then it would all be over sooner.

Swim.

Corrine couldn't shake that thought.

The water leads somewhere.

Down. It leads down.

Where else?

To another tunnel. To a way out!

But how? How could it lead out?

The voices inside of her vying for attention became more and more distinct. In fact, they became undeniably audible until she realized she was saying the words aloud, arguing with herself about whether or not she should get into the water.

And that frightened her almost as much as the thought of what might happen to her if that man returned.

You need to get ahold of yourself.

Relax.

But as she passed her hand through the water again she couldn't help but wonder if it was more than just a shaft that had filled with water over the years, and, if so, where the water might actually lead.

+ + + +

The bard had left work an hour ago.

He was at his apartment now, reviewing dosages and delivery mechanisms for insulin. Subcutaneous would be quicker. But using an IV would be a little more surreptitious, if the circumstances allowed for it. So he would have to see how things played out.

Taking a sedative with him was also a good idea, in
case he needed to make sure the character in his story was unconscious while he administered the insulin.

An insulin overdose was not something the medical personnel would be looking for.

At this point he was planning to give her the drug himself, but if necessary he would have his person in DC do it for him. From the information he currently had, there didn't appear to be any rush to make that decision.

As for right now, after he wrapped up some research here, he would go check the Semtex placement in the mine. However, on the way to the Saint Catherine tunnels and shafts he would need to pass through the Rudisill Mine, and while he was there he could visit Corrine.

Yes, he was attracted to her.

He hadn't fully satisfied himself with her the other night.

It would be ideal if she were still alive, still warm, but she didn't need to be breathing for him to meet his needs with her.

So.

Finish up here.

And then head to the
mine.