Checkmate (21 page)

Corrine flipper-kicked her way into the fathomless darkness stretching before her.

As she stroked, she found her hands brushing the tunnel's sides. She went on.

Five strokes.

Then six.

But then she felt the tension rising inside of her from not having enough air.

Relax.

Think about getting out of here, about going back home.

She struggled forward another two strokes, feeling along the ceiling now. A beam. Just like the ones in the tunnel she woke up in.

Keep going.

No, go back! Now, before you use up your air!

Everything she'd been through this week seemed to swirl around her: Coming home. Finding that man waiting for her. The van ride. Waking up in the tunnel.

Justice being played out. Being postponed. Denied.

Memories. Of growing up.

Of her brother.

He loved you.

Does love you.

Hands on the ceiling, she drew herself forward.

And then realized she had gone too far. A gasp of air escaped her lips.

Go back.

Turn around!

Corrine pressed off the wall, spun around, kicked, swam.

You can make it.

Disoriented, she banged into the side of the tunnel. She tried to hold on to her air, but more bubbled out of her mouth. She went two strokes in the direction she thought was correct, but her hand found another beam.

Pull yourself forward!

Instinct took over and she tried to grab a breath but gagged on water, and then she was shaking, dreaming, drifting, but she forced herself to keep swimming and when her hands found nothing, no ceiling, she frantically kicked upward.

Up.

And up.

Her hand splashed out.

Air.

She emerged and gasped. Sucked in a breath.

A deep, urgent breath.

Trembling.

Shivering.

Corrine climbed out of the water. There was no swimming out of here. She knew that now, had to have known it all along, but she wasn't thinking clearly, no she was not, not anymore.

Her body must have gotten used to the temperature of the water when she was in it, but now, as she got out, chills writhed uncontrollably through her. Knowing that she needed to get her core temperature warmer fast, she used her cotton jeans to dry off, and then pulled her shirt on.

The jeans were too cold and damp to wear.

You'll be alright. You just need to warm up.

The shivers made it hard to stand and she dropped to her knees.

But at least you're shivering. At least your body hasn't given up.

And that's how she tried to comfort herself, but she knew that soon enough, now that her core temperature had dropped, the shivers would eventually stop.

The laughter that she heard echoing dully around her didn't sound anything like hers. It was someone else. It must be someone else. Echoing and dying.

But it wasn't someone else.

It was her. And it was always going to be her, deep and alone beneath the earth, laughing by herself until the laughter disappeared for good.

+ + + +

As I drove, I had my cell phone read me the background we had so far on Everhart—and it wasn't much. Yes, there was a spotty work history, a past address in Athens, Georgia, where he apparently worked construction and a series of odd jobs.

It wasn't the inconsistencies that caught my attention, but the consistency of it all. Nothing to raise a red flag.

Which is a red flag in itself.

Real lives are messy and when a background is too neat, it often doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I've seen fake-identity packages before, and that's what most often gives them away.

Keeping my distance, I followed Danny Everhart—or whoever he was—as he drove through Third Ward.

+ + + +

Tessa and Beck were in the living room. He was on the
couch. She'd chosen the leather recliner. Only five or six feet separated them.

Neither seemed to know what to say.

You're almost nineteen. He needs to know that, to know that you're not some little girl. But how do you tell him that? Offhandedly mention that you're packing for college?

It just didn't seem like the right time, but she wanted to, needed to say something.
He's probably got a file on you anyway. Probably already knows all about you.

For the moment she steered clear of talking about herself.

“So,” she said, “when's your partner taking over for you?”

“Agent Woods is supposed to be here at two—so I guess half an hour or so. But I'll be back tonight at eight.”

“Oh.”

“That is, unless your mom gets back and doesn't need me here.”

“Right. That makes sense.”

Even though her real mom was dead, Beck would have no way of knowing that—other than her not being Asian—and Tessa didn't mind him referring to Lien-hua as her mom. She actually did so herself. It made her feel like she was part of a family, something she'd always wanted.

“Um . . .” She was right where she wanted to be—alone in the house with Beck—and her feelings thrilled her but also frightened her. A catch-22.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “A root beer? Some chips?”

“I'm good. Thanks.”

“Sure.”

Silence, silence, silence. Awkward, awkward silence.

Finally, he said, “Um, there is one thing you might be able to do for me.”

“Yeah?”

“There's something I've always been wondering and you seem like the kind of person who might be able to help.”

“What is it?”

“It's sort of philosophical.”

“I like philosophical.”

“Okay. Here it is: If a blue box was invisible, would it still be blue?”

“You've always been wondering that?”

“Well . . . Okay, you got me. It's only been a month or so, ever since I was at a party and someone asked me what superpower I would choose if I could have one, and I said I'd like to be able to be invisible. It got me thinking about what color my clothes would be. What about you?”

“Me?”

“What superpower would you want?”

To actually know what to say to guys so I don't sound like a complete moron.

“I'd need to think about that.”

“Yeah, of course. That's fine.”

“But as far as your blue box goes, we could approach it from Plato's forms or from modern quantum mechanics, in which the presence of a conscious observer is requisite for existence.”

“A conscious observer? So someone there to watch things unfold?”

“Exactly,” she said.

“Let's start there and see where it leads.”

“Let's do.”

+ + + +

Corrine stopped shivering.

This is it. You need to end this.

The shaft at the far end of the tunnel.

All you need to do is jump. Just walk over to the edge and step into the darkness. It'll all be over. No more wondering. No more questioning.

You won't be cold any longer.

You'll finally be free.

Justice.

Yes, she should have been able to tell that something was wrong with her brother. She knew him as well as anyone. If only she could have seen where things were heading, all those people might not have died.

You should have stopped him.

It's not your brother's fault.

No. It's yours.

Finally be free.

She started to make her way through the tunnel toward where it met up with the shaft that dropped off into the unknown depths of the earth.

Everhart pulled into a deserted street behind a long-neglected warehouse.

Doing my best to keep my distance, I parked down the road and used the video function on my phone to zoom in and record him. The bruises and swelling were gone, but it was the same guy from the DMV photo.

He unlocked a padlock on the swinging gate on the edge of the property and drove through.

I hadn't finished listening to the background information on him, and now I quickly scrolled through it and found no evidence that he owned the place.

I put in a call to find out who did.

Everhart locked the gate behind him, so if I was going to follow him I would need to get over that fence. I've climbed over razor wire before and it's not very fun.

A stout oak tree with thick, sweeping limbs grew beside the fence near the northeastern corner where it angled along the edge of the property.

Just climb the tree, get on that limb, and jump down on the other side of the fence.

Voilà!

If I were careful, maybe I could even pull it off without ripping those stitches out of my side.

Yeah, well, probably not.

But was that the right course of action?

I could certainly call for backup; however, at this point
Everhart hadn't done anything wrong—unless he was trespassing, but that wasn't really a big deal.

However, it was enough of a reason to follow him.

He was carrying a large duffel bag.

It won't hurt to have a look around.

I didn't necessarily need to enter the building, but there were windows surrounding it and I could take a peek inside.

Just a little peek.

He disappeared out of sight.

I've never been good at sitting around waiting for things to happen.

Just not my thing.

I opened the car door and headed for the oak tree.

+ + + +

The bard emptied the contents of the duffel bag onto the table near the shaft.

He spread out all of his climbing equipment—headlamps, a couple of harnesses and rappelling devices, some Prusiks, and an ascender.

He had a small hip pack with the items he needed to use to check the Semtex.

Yes, it would have been possible to do his readings from the tracks that led past the stadium by using the pressure-release mechanism he'd buried up there in the ballast of the track, but doing so from down here allowed him to also visit Corrine.

After putting on one of the harnesses, he positioned a headlamp on his forehead, then grabbed the ascender and Prusiks he would need to get back up the rope. He clipped in for a rappel and, after confirming that he had his folded up blade in his pocket, lowered himself into the shaft.

+ + + +

After all my years of rock climbing, scaling the tree was
no problem, but keeping those stitches intact in my side was.

I felt a tight, searing pain as they tugged free.

The blood on the shirt was no big deal. I could change later.

I edged out on the limb and leapt to the ground on the inside of the razor-wire fence.

Before looking in the warehouse's window, I decided to have a peek in Everhart's van to see if there was anything there that might implicate him.

Inside: a computer bag next to a pair of handcuffs.

Okay.

Now that's interesting.

I crossed the scraggly grass growing between the van and the building.

Most of the windows were covered with a film of dirt, but there was one that was cracked. A centimeter-wide triangle of glass was missing.

I leaned close and peered
inside.

Nine wide holes had been burrowed through the concrete floor of the expansive three-story-tall warehouse. A backhoe sat in the corner of the building.

Guido had mentioned the gold mines in this part of the city from back in the early 1800s.

Everhart is searching for the shafts.

Immediately I thought of the mnemonic from the back of the painting: R-U-D-I-S-I-L.

Yeah. I liked where this was going.

There was no sign of him, but there was a rope that led from one of the holes out to the leg of an abandoned conveyor belt on the right side of the warehouse.

Two words came to mind: “exigent circumstances.”

We're allowed to enter a premises if there are exigent circumstances—which is generally interpreted as when a reasonable law enforcement official would believe that delaying entry to obtain a warrant would increase the likelihood of the destruction of evidence or allow a suspect to cause severe harm to himself or another person.

Corrine is missing.

Handcuffs in the van.

That van spent the night in her neighborhood.

The likelihood of severe harm to another person . . .

It worked for me.

I'm not too bad with locks so I pulled out my lock pick set, knelt beside the door, and got started.

+ + + +

Corrine's foot tapped only at empty air. The ceiling above her ended.

Okay.

This was it.

The shaft.

It would be so easy.

She just needed to step forward. Not even that, really—just lean, lean out into the darkness.

Into the future.

She stood there on the brink of life, of death, and wondered what it would be like to slip into nothingness, or everythingness, if you believed in the afterlife.

So do you?

What do you believe?

Do you believe in the eternal? In the soul?

It struck her that if there really was such a thing as justice, true justice, it would need to be meted out in the afterlife, because all too often it doesn't happen in this one.

Like with your brother. Like with Richard.

And if there was an afterlife, then there must be a God. And he would not let people enter into eternity without administering justice for deeds done on the earth.

It couldn't be one or the other. It was both. An afterlife and justice.

Or neither.

Only nothingness.

Our secrets always find us out, in this life or in the next.

She took a deep breath.

If there is justice, there is a God.

If there is a God, there is justice.

Both or neither.

Closed her eyes.

Opened them.

No difference.

The darkness around her.

Within her.

The laughter had stopped.

The shivering had stopped.

Now, Corrine. Do it.

Justice.

Everythingness—

She spread out her arms as if she were going to fly, as if she were going to dive into the sea of eternity.

And heard something in the shaft above her.

+ + + +

The bard paused in his descent.

A moment ago he'd knocked a rock loose and he could hear it now, clattering off the beams crisscrossing the darkness far below him as it plummeted to the bottom of the shaft more than 250 feet past the entrance to the tunnel where he'd left Corrine.

+ + + +

She felt her heart hammering in her chest.

A rock. Someone had jarred a rock loose.

There's someone here!

But who?

She listened.

Heard nothing more.

“Hello?” She said the word softly, unsure if she was actually speaking it aloud. Her voice was so light and airy it didn't even bring an echo.

No one answered.

Holding on to the support beam beside her, she leaned out as far as she could and peered uncertainly up the shaft.

Oh.

There was a dot of light
—
more than that, a narrow beam that swept through the shaft.

Someone was there.

Someone was definitely there.

No, no, no. It's just your imagination.

She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, the light was still there.

It's someone else. It's not him. It can't be him. It's someone coming to help you.

“Hello?” she yelled. And this time the sound reverberated upward through the shaft, loud and fervent and strong.

And then she heard the reply, echoing down to her: “I'm coming, Corrine. I'll be right there.”