Maybe, if there was some way, she could contact him.
That’s ridiculous!
Her mind was spinning, sorting through the possibilities, and she realized that first, before she did anything else, she needed to find out more about this man, Richard Basque.
An Internet search was helpful, but the details on different Web sites of what he’d done were contradictory and incomplete. She really needed to get the facts straight.
She searched for true crime books that had been written about him.
No, don’t go to this dance, Saundra. Leave this alone. Her instincts tugged her in two different directions — self-preservation and the protection of children just like her daughter.
But she and Noni were safe — one agent was outside her house, the other had gone to the school where Noni was in kindergarten.
Regardless of what she decided about communicating with Basque, finding out more about him was the smart thing to do. It would help her understand him better and equip her to better protect her daughter.
After finding the titles of four books online, she grabbed her keys and drove to the bookstore in the mall.
The agent in the black sedan followed her as she did.
32
As Lien-hua slowly worked her way through her salad, she told me that the doctor had been in to check on her and was pleased with her progress, although it was clear to me that she was still weak and tired.
“They’re planning on moving me out of the ICU this afternoon and hoping to put the cast on my leg tomorrow. That means I should get out on Wednesday.”
My phone vibrated from an incoming text message.
“Let’s just make sure you’re okay before we decide any of that.” I normally don’t like to check texts while I’m talking to someone, but with so much going on right now, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t Ralph with something important regarding the case, so I unpocketed my phone. “The most important thing—” I began, but when I saw who the text was from, I cut myself off midsentence.
“What is it?” she asked.
I turned the phone so she could see the photo of the sender that had come up on the screen. “It’s from you.”
“Basque has my phone.” Her voice was nearly a whisper.
“Yes, he does.”
I read the text aloud:
A fable:
A farmer’s wife was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. The grief-stricken man took an ax out to kill the snake. When the snake was on its way to its hole, the farmer swung at it; however, he was too slow, managing only to chop off its tail.
From then on, the snake went about biting the farmer’s sheep until the farmer tried to coax it out, offering a truce. But the snake said, “There can never be peace between us, because you will never be able to forget the loss of your wife and I will never be able to forget the loss of my tail.”
Immediately, I called Cybercrime to see if they could trace the text. While I waited for word, I asked my profiler fiancée what she thought.
“Well, clearly you’re the farmer,” she said. “I’m the wife. Basque is the snake. Thankfully, he didn’t actually manage to kill me, but he did wound me.”
Angela wasn’t in, but I got through to her department. They started a trace and said they’d call me back momentarily. After hanging up, I uploaded the text message onto the online case files. “How did I cut off his tail?”
“You did that when you first caught him, when you sent him to prison. He’ll never forget those thirteen years.”
“And I’ll never forget his attack against you.”
“Yes.”
“And in the story the snake goes after the farmer’s sheep.”
Lien-hua’s eyes got large. “Tessa.”
My heart clenched in my chest and I speed-dialed her number, but it was school hours and she was actually obeying the rule not to take calls.
Either that or…
I texted her to go to the office, then called the school to have their public safety officer find her and let me know as soon as he had — and I left word that I wanted him to shadow her for the rest of the day.
It could be that Basque’s going after Saundra Weathers. He might think of her and her daughter as your lambs.
I wasn’t going to take any chances. After hanging up with the school, I confirmed that the agents were still watching Miss Weathers and her daughter — one was with Saundra at the mall, the other was with Noni at her school.
A call from Headquarters told me they weren’t able to trace the location of Lien-hua’s phone, which didn’t really surprise me. Basque would certainly have known we’d try to track it and he would have removed the battery or destroyed the phone as soon as he sent the text.
Just moments after I set down my cell, it rang again. I looked at the number, and saw it was from FBI Director Wellington’s office.
Well, that was quick.
I picked up. “This is Agent Bowers.”
“Sir, this is Alicia Becerra, I’m calling on behalf of Director Wellington. She would like to see you this afternoon.”
This meeting might be in regard to our current progress in the Basque case, or it might have to do with the incident at the water treatment plant.
Margaret was uncompromising when it came to agents following standard operating procedures and I’d defied Ralph’s orders and gone into that facility alone after Basque.
I doubted Ralph would have brought that up to her, but the grapevine is alive and well at the Bureau and it wasn’t hard to imagine that Margaret had heard the details from someone else about what’d happened at the plant.
So I probably had an official reprimand waiting — hopefully not a suspension. That would not be good with the Basque case heating up right now.
“The Director has a meeting at three,” her receptionist told me. “She would like to meet with you before then. Can you be here by two fifteen?”
“Does this concern Saturday night? The search for Basque?”
“I’m sorry, sir, she hasn’t informed me what it concerns. So, two fifteen, then?”
Getting across town by then would not be easy, but if I left right away I could probably make it.
“Alright. Two fifteen. I’ll be there.”
33
Tessa quietly watched things unfold.
Mr. Tilson steepled his fingers and stared down at Melody Carver, who was sitting in the chair just across the aisle. From where Tessa sat, she could smell Tilson’s body odor.
“So,” he repeated, “can you tell us the difference between fiction and nonfiction, or not?”
Melody looked dumbfounded, embarrassed. “Um, well…”
Everyone knew her gift was glee club and not English Lit. Tessa had no idea how she’d ended up in the AP class, but she had and she’d struggled all semester and this wasn’t the first time Tilson had made a point to put her on the spot in front of the rest of the class. It was pretty infuriating.
Now Melody was really struggling. “I mean, some nonfiction stuff is made up, right?” she fumbled. “And, like, fiction is novels? Or… Is that…?”
“We covered all of this last week,” Tilson said condescendingly. He had critical eyes, a sharp nose, and a single eyebrow that diminished only slightly in thickness as it crossed the bridge of his nose. “Really, Miss Carver, you should know this by now.”
Tessa could feel her temperature rising.
“Fiction,” he stated, “refers to what is made up. Nonfiction refers to what is true. The first is a product of imagination, the second is always based on facts. Do you remember last week’s discussion at all, Miss Carver?”