For a moment I hesitated, wondering if there was something I should say, but finally, I joined them and held them both and didn’t say anything at all.
And that was much better.
EPILOGUE
After a few minutes, Tessa stepped back, wiped away a smudge of tears, and said to her stepdad, “It’d be nice if we could maybe be alone for awhile. Detective Warren and I.”
“Sure.”
“I’ll bring her home,” Detective Warren offered.
“You’re good to drive?”
“I drove home from the hospital. I’m fine.”
“Okay.” He looked at them awkwardly for a moment. “Have a good talk. I’ll see you both soon.”
“Yeah,” Tessa replied, and at last he made his way outside. Detective Warren invited Tessa on a walk to the Potomac. “It’s only about a half mile away,” she said.
Tessa noticed her copy of Jekyll and Hyde on the end table. Above it hung a crucifix. “You probably shouldn’t be walking around.”
“I’m fine.” Detective Warren gestured toward a table where a chessboard and a small leather bag that presumably held chess pieces lay. “We can talk while we play.” She picked up the book and chess set. “I’ve been lying on my back for a week; I need to move. We’re going on a walk.”
I was almost to my house when my phone rang. I answered.
Ralph.
“Hey,” I said.
“How did the meeting go with Cheyenne and Tessa?”
“There’s a lot of healing that needs to happen. But I think things will work out.”
“You still at Cheyenne’s place?”
“No. They wanted some privacy.”
“Good, because I’ve got some bad news. Renee Lebreau is dead. I need you to get over here, right away.”
Tessa could tell that Detective Warren was still in pain so she slowed her stride.
“You don’t know how many times I’ve gone over that night in my mind,” Cheyenne said with deep regret in every word. “Playing through everything, wishing I could make things turn out differently.”
“Me too.”
It was a long time before either of them spoke again. They’d almost made it to the river. Detective Warren held up the book. “I think I know why you wanted me to read this story.”
“Why?”
She flipped to a bookmarked page and then read the words of Dr. Jekylclass="underline" I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both… It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together-that in the agonised womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be continuously struggling. How then were they dissociated?
“They’re not,” Detective Warren said. “Not dissociated. That’s the difference between us and animals. The incongruities. The ‘thorough and primitive duality.’”
Tessa thought about that.
The shell of good… the fractures…
They walked in silence for a few moments until they made it to the trail along the Potomac. Detective Warren motioned to a picnic table.
As they were setting up the board, Tessa was thinking about the last ten days, and when she picked up her bishop she said softly, “I forgot.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way it moves.”
Detective Warren looked at her curiously.
“Back when everything happened, on that night, I was thinking about how we shift from black to white just like chess pieces do.” She gestured toward her pieces. “But I forgot about the bishop.”
It took Detective Warren only a few seconds to make the connection. “It’s the only piece that stays on its color the whole game. No incongruities.”
Tessa set the bishop on the black square beside her queen. Remembering Sevren Adkins, how dark, how evil, how stained his soul was, Tessa asked, “Did you ever meet one? I mean a person who never changed colors at all? Who had no duality?”
Detective Warren reflected on the question for a moment. “Just one.”
Tessa figured she was talking about the killer in Denver, Giovanni, who’d been the reason EAD Wellington had allowed her into the National Academy program-to help give her some distance from Denver, from the case. “Giovanni?” Tessa said.
But Cheyenne shook her head. “No. A carpenter. From Nazareth.” Considering the detective’s faith, the answer didn’t really surprise Tessa. She was quiet. “Yeah,” she said at last. “My mom met him too. Before she died.”
Darkness and light.
Back and forth.
Every move of the game.
You killed a man.
The thorough and primitive duality.
Tessa stared at the board. The white pieces in front of her, the black pieces in front of Detective Warren.
“White starts,” Cheyenne said, stating what they both already knew. “It’s your move.”
Yes, it is.
It’s your move.
Trying to turn from the fractures she’d seen all too clearly in herself, Tessa reached for her king’s pawn to begin the game.
Ralph met me at the door to the condo where, apparently, Professor Lebreau had been staying. His words were tight with anger. “It was Basque.”
“Confirmed?” I stepped inside.
“Oh, yeah, it’s confirmed.” He turned his head to the side, revealing a massive contusion. Most people would have been flat on their backs in a hospital bed.
“Are you all right?” No one beats Ralph in a fight!
“They had baseball bats.”
“They?” I thought again of the unidentified DNA at the crime scenes thirteen years ago.
An accomplice?
“I recognized Basque,” Ralph said, “but it was too dark to see the other guy’s face.” He shook his head, obviously frustrated with himself for not taking out both baseball bat-wielding assailants. “The second guy got me from behind. At least I managed to break Basque’s arm. Fast and clean. But they both got away.”
So Basque was back and he had a partner.
Perfect.
I was observing the evidence of the fight in the living room. Overturned furniture. Blood spatter. Broken lamps.
Dozens of handwritten letters were scattered across the floor, each signed “Love, Richard” and I remembered what Ralph had told me about how quickly Renee went through boyfriends. The pieces began to fall into place. “He seduced her?” I said. “From prison? Is that it?”
“Yeah.” Ralph motioned toward the letters. “He wrote to her for over a year. She found the evidence to help get him free. Then he turned on her.” Apparently Basque’s conveniently timed conversion in prison hadn’t changed his true nature one bit.
“Do we know if she faked the DNA evidence to get him released?”
“Believe me, we’re looking into it.”
I wondered how Rodale fit in with all of this-if he did at all.
Ralph gestured toward the kitchen. “Renee’s in there. Or at least most of her is.”
Lien-hua emerged from the doorway and I was glad when Ralph went on ahead to let us talk for a second. She’d spent a lot of time with Cheyenne over the last week, helping her recover, and we’d put our relationship on hold for the time being. “Cheyenne likes you,” Lien-hua had told me. “It’s obvious. But she has enough to recover from right now. I don’t want to hurt her any worse.”
I couldn’t argue with that, even though distance from Lien-hua was not what I wanted.
It’ll work out, I’d told myself. We just need to get past this. Settle in. It’s going to be okay.
Now Lien-hua walked toward me, and behind her I saw four members of the Evidence Response Team, including Cassidy and Farraday, moving around the kitchen.
I couldn’t see much, but the refrigerator door was open, and Cassidy and two agents I didn’t know were gathered around it. He held up a jar. From where I stood it was impossible to make out what was inside, but the woman next to him grew pale, hurried out of my line of sight. I heard vomiting.