“I need to leave for the airport at about 2:30. I’m hoping to be back tomorrow evening.”
“And then we leave for DC pretty much after that.” She didn’t state it as a question.
It was possible that my testimony in Chicago would affect the timing of our trip to DC, but I decided I could deal with all that later. “We’re scheduled to leave on Wednesday. Yes.” She didn’t reply. I tapped her shoulder gently. “All right, well, fill me in when you’re done reading it, OK?”
“I will.”
Then, leaving the glass of OJ and the remains of the grapefruit behind, she took the diary upstairs to the bedroom my parents let her use when I’m out of town.
Despite her overwhelming curiosity, Tessa stared at the diary for a long time before opening it.
When Patrick had first told her about it, she’d been angry, angry, so angry that he’d kept it from her, but then when he told her that her mom hadn’t wanted him to give it to her until her eighteenth birthday, she stopped being angry and became something else.
Curious, yes.
Maybe a little afraid.
But why? What was she afraid of?
She stared at it, ran her fingers across the weathered cover.
She kept this from you. Your mom kept it from you.
She didn’t want you to know about it until you were eighteen.
But why not?
Tessa slipped the key into the lock. Her heart began to run like a rabbit through her chest as she turned the key, clicked open the clasp. Flipped to the first entry.
November 2
Dear Diary,
I’m not really sure why I’m doing this, writing to you, I mean, starting a diary. I guess I’m hoping you’ll be a place for me to just be myself, the real me, the person no one ever really seems to notice. I guess it’s good to have a place like that. I don’t know. It’s hard to be honest with people sometimes, maybe I can at least be honest with you.
A place to be real.
Nice.
Based on the date, Tessa realized that her mother had started the journal when she was seventeen-the same age that she was now.
You were conceived two years later.
She was tempted to jump around, skim over the entries, kind of like scrolling through someone’s blog to see if you really wanted to read the whole thing or not, but she already knew that she wanted to read every page, and, just like reading any book, you cheat yourself if you skip to the end. You miss all the surprises.
“Hey, Tessa.” It was Patrick, calling from the first floor. “I left my laptop at home. I have a few things to check on and then I have a meeting at 1:00. You’ll be all right?”
“Uh-huh,” she hollered through the door of her room.
“I’ll see you this afternoon before I fly out. I’ve still got your cell, OK?”
“Yeah. Just tell those two cops not to be quite so obtrusive.”
A pause. “I will. Call me if you need me.”
“OK.”
Then Tessa turned to the diary’s second entry and began to read.
71
I had a quick and rather blunt word with the two officers who were supposed to be watching my parents’ house undercover, and then I drove home to pick up my laptop.
Using Tessa’s cell I dialed in to my account and checked my voicemail, but my mailbox was empty. When I checked hers, I found a dozen text messages from her friends at school. I wanted her to be able to access them, so I programmed the phone to automatically forward all her messages to her email account.
Then I called the warden from the Waupun Correctional Institution, the maximum security penitentiary in Wisconsin where Basque had spent most of the thirteen years of his incarceration.
I caught Warden Schuler at home grilling steaks for his family, and he made sure he let me know how happy he was that I was disturbing him on a Sunday morning, but I told him it would only take a minute, and then asked if I could get a look at the letters Basque had received while he was in prison.
“Sure, if we had ’em.”
“What do you mean?”
“Basque ripped ’em up and flushed ’em.”
“Well, you made copies, right?”
“Privacy rights. We can open the mail, inspect it, but we can’t copy anything. ACLU would have a field day with that. Sorry.”
“What about outgoing mail?”
“Same deal.”
For the second time that day, I cussed.
“My sentiments exactly.”
“All right, thanks. Have a good lunch.”
“I wish I could be of more help.” As Warden Schuler said the words, his voice slipped from the annoyance I’d heard at the beginning of the call into a tense kind of uneasiness. “In sixteen years of doing this, Agent Bowers, he’s the worst I’ve seen. Put him away. At the trial, I mean. Don’t let him-”
“I won’t,” I said and ended the call.
With Basque’s letters destroyed, there was no way to verify that John had ever written to him, but still, Basque had known who I was talking about right away when I mentioned Renaissance literature so I figured that somehow, they’d been in touch.
John.
Giovanni.
Since the murders were in Denver, and Kurt had told me that the only college in the region that offered medieval literature courses on The Decameron was DU, it seemed probable to me that John-or Giovanni, or whatever his name was-would have taken one of those classes.
When I arrived home I went directly to my desk, tapped the spacebar, and woke up my laptop.
According to our information, Dr. Bryant, the professor who taught the classes on Boccaccio, was in Phoenix yesterday. It’s tough living in the twenty-first century without leaving electronic footprints everywhere you go, so I accessed the Federal Digital Database, and surfed to the FAA’s flight manifest records. Then I checked the passenger lists from all the airlines that fly into or out of the Denver International Airport and the Colorado Springs Airport for yesterday and today, but I didn’t find the name Adrian Bryant on any of them.
I expanded my search to include any arrivals or departures over the last twenty days.
Still nothing.
So unless Professor Bryant drove to Phoenix or flew under analias, it looked like our local Boccaccio expert never went to his conference.
Interesting.
It took me less than three minutes to do an online search and find out that Dr. Bryant wasn’t married, lived alone, and didn’t own a landline, so it was a good thing for me the National Security Agency keeps searchable records of all the cell numbers and subscriber names from the mobile phone companies operating in North America.
The Bureau’s cybercrime division works closely with NSA, so I called them, and a few moments later, I had Bryant’s cell number and verification that the GPS location for both his phone and his 2009 BMW 328i sedan were currently at his home address. I told them to monitor the GPS locations and call me if either moved in the next thirty minutes.
To confirm that Bryant was at home with his cell, I tapped in his number, and after he picked up I asked if he wanted to purchase a free vacation package He hung up without even pointing out that I’d offered him a chance to buy something that was free.
So, he was at the house. Good.
Sometimes I wonder how crimes were ever solved before we had computers.
A quick look at the clock-11:14 a.m. I needed to be at police headquarters by 1:00, so considering where Bryant lived in Littleton, it might be cutting it close, but I figured I’d have just enough time to drive over, meet with the professor, and make it back in time for Jake’s sure-to-be-scintillating briefing.
I made one final call from behind the wheel of my car, and after Cheyenne answered I invited her to join me, and she agreed-as long as I could swing by and get her. “All right,” I said. “This time I’ll pick you up.” And then, realizing how I’d phrased that, I added, “In my car. For the case. To catch the bad guy.”
“Right.” I heard a smile in her voice. “I’ll see you in a few.”