He approached me.
“I can only imagine,” he said, “how hard this must be for you.” He wore a somber gray suit jacket, and his dark European good looks made him appear thirty, ten years younger than his actual age. A powerful man threaded with deep muscles, he paused less than a meter from me. “I understand you two were very close. My prayers are with you.”
Just before his retrial, he’d conveniently “trusted in Jesus.”
Good timing.
Tactics. Games.
Anger invaded my grief and I no longer felt like crying. I felt like taking Basque down. Hard.
“I suggest you step aside,” I said.
He hesitated for a moment and then did as I suggested.
During his retrial there’d been an attempt on his life by the father of one of the young women he’d butchered. I’d managed to stop the gunman, but in the process his gun had discharged and the man had been fatally wounded.
As he lay dying, he’d begged me to promise that I’d stop Richard Basque from ever killing again, and I’d promised-hoping that a guilty verdict would settle the matter so I wouldn’t have to take things into my own hands.
Then Grant Sikora died in my arms.
And less than two weeks later, Basque was found not guilty.
I could only guess that he’d shown up tonight because he knew I’d be at Calvin’s visitation and just wanted to taunt me.
He has every right to be here. He’s a free man.
I felt fire raging through me and I realized that if I stayed here in the lobby any longer, I would do something I would live to regret.
Or maybe I wouldn’t regret it at all.
I started for the door, then paused.
An idea.
Turned.
The shadows looked at home surrounding Basque.
“Who is Patricia E.?” I asked.
“Patricia E.?”
“Yes.”
His gaze tipped toward the doors to the sanctuary, where two people were exiting. It didn’t look like they noticed us. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He gave me a slow wide smile that, despite his leading-man good looks, appeared reptilian in the dim light. “That’s always been the problem between us, hasn’t it? A lack of trust. You never believed I was innocent, you never believed-”
“Quiet.”
He blinked.
Then I edged closer, lowered my voice to a whisper. “I’m going to be watching you, Richard. I know you killed those women. I’m going to find Patricia, and if she’s not the key, I’ll find whatever else I need. Don’t get too comfortable on the outside. You’re going back to your cage.”
He watched me quietly, no doubt hoping to rattle me. I denied him the satisfaction, just studied him with stone eyes.
“Prison is only a state of mind,” he said, playing the role of the unaffected. “But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Coming from him, the words sounded like a mockery of both freedom and God.
A cold and final option occurred to me as I stood here beside him in the secluded corner of the lobby.
Right now, right now. Take him down. You could end it forever.
Despite myself I felt my hands tightening into fists.
Basque seemed to read my thoughts. “You can feel it, can’t you?” His tongue flicked across the corner of his lips. “I didn’t used to think you were capable of it, but now-”
“You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
Something passed across his face. A flicker of fear. And it felt good to see.
A few seconds is all you need A slant of light from the side door cut through the lobby.
“Patrick?”
I glanced toward the door and saw my stepdaughter Tessa enter the church. “Are you ready to-”
“Go back to the car.” My tone was harsher than a father’s voice should be.
Then she noticed Basque, and in the angular swath of light, I could tell by the look on her face that she recognized him.
She edged backward.
I gestured toward the street. “I’ll be right out. Go on.”
Her eyes were large and uneasy as she backed away, letting the door swing shut by itself, slicing the daylight from the church.
Basque gave me a slight nod of his head. “I’ll be seeing you, Patrick.”
Leave now, Pat. Step away.
“I’ll look forward to it.”
I found Tessa outside, her shoulder-length black hair fluttering around her face in a tiny flurry of wind. “Was that him?”
“No.”
“Yes it was.”
I led her toward the rental car. “Let’s go.”
“You stink at lying.”
“So you’ve said.”
Only when I reached the door did I realize my hands were still clenched, fists tight and ready. I shook out my fingers, flexed them, but Tessa saw me.
“Yes.” I opened the car door. “It was him.”
We climbed in, I took my place behind the wheel, and for a long moment neither of us spoke. At last I started the engine.
“It’s not over, is it?” Her voice was soft, fragile, and made her sound much younger than she was.
I took a breath and tried to say the right thing, the noble thing, but I ended up saying nothing.
She looked my direction. “So, what happens now?”
“We grieve,” I said. “For Calvin.” But that’s not what I was thinking.
Those were the last words either of us spoke for the rest of the drive to O’Hare Airport.