The Chessman Read online

  “It does seem odd to call it an AMBER Alert when there’s a little boy involved, doesn’t it?”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  “Now, now, Deputy Attorney General Stouder, don’t say things to which I could take offense. That little Connelly boy is in no real danger. Certainly not from the likes of you. He’s currently in a South American country—what the heck, for the sake of our chat, let’s say Guatemala—working in a sweatshop that makes Nike knockoffs.”

  “Bring him home now,” Stouder mumbled.

  “No need for the long face, sir. Consider it summer camp. He’s learning a trade, and the guards have been instructed to give him extra rice and beans.”

  All pretenses were gone; all the wind out of his sails. He was screwed, stewed, and tattooed. He knew exactly how this would play out. He’d be jailed as the lowest of the low. Stouder wilted like overcooked spaghetti flung on the wall, began to shake as if he were seated bare-assed in a drafty igloo.

  “All you have to do, Deputy Attorney General Stouder, is a little favor, for me and St. Nick and the handful of other fellows who have come to know you so intimately this past week or so, and the Connelly boy will be dropped off at the library near his house with an amazing tale to tell. But before the Connelly boy left for South America, he played a little game of hide and seek with the fellows in your house. You know, some hair here, some fingerprints there. St. Nick tells me the Connelly boy may have even pricked his finger and touched a few items before the bleeding stopped. But don’t worry about the mess, sir. St. Nick said it’d take one of those CSI lights for anyone to even notice anything amiss. So tell me, Deputy Attorney General Stouder—as a legal scholar—if that file were sent to the investigating detectives, would that be enough to merit a search warrant?”

  “What is it…you want from me?” Stouder whispered, barely audible.

  “Just a little favor, Deputy Attorney General. We need an extra set of eyes and ears. That’s all. Just an extra set of eyes and ears.”

  Executive Deputy Attorney General P. Campton Stouder then did something he’d not done in over forty years, not since he was the Connelly boy’s age.

  Stouder began to weep.

  Washington, D.C.

  Three Years Earlier

  Chapter 7

  “Let me see if I am able to wrap my wee little mind around this,” a red-faced Assistant Director Roland Jund said to a conference room full of special agents. “Alain Zalentine had the great misfortune of getting his brains blown out the back of his skull in a truck stop restroom.”

  “A rest area restroom, sir.”

  “Yes, Agent Cady, thanks for sharing your grasp of the finer nuances of outhouse semantics,” Jund said, sighing. “Then, the following day we find his twin brother, Adrien Zalentine, dead on his sailboat with his brains blown into the Chesapeake. Now these two boys are not just Leo and Schmuck Pimpledwarf from Dogpatch Lane—no, of course not. These two young lads are the heirs to the biggest fortune in North America this side of Bill Gates. And damned if both of the boys don’t have these glass chess pieces jammed deep into their wounds.” The AD tossed a stack of 8x10s down the conference room table. No one reached for a copy. They all had the same graphic pictures inside their own folders, the folders Cady had distributed to everyone before the AD’s arrival.

  “Then we have K. Barrett Sanfield, D.C.’s uber lawyer—the Magician for Christ’s sake—stabbed to death in his own office some five weeks back, to wit a case that has yet to move forward one square inch. But finally we have a clue, a link actually, and a none-too-subtle link at that, on account of a glass chess piece having been pried out of Sanfield’s solar plexus.”

  Jund looked around the table and then continued, “And now we discover, upon opening some kind of hidden wall safe in Adrien Zalentine’s kitchen, which sounds like something right out of the Hardy Boys by the way, we discover that the Zalentine twins—of the Zalentine, It Rhymes with Valentine dynasty—that these two degenerates may just be the biggest serial killers to hit the East Coast since the Boston-Fucking-Strangler!”

  There was a hushed silence. Cady knew that Jund took the deaths of women and children hard, and personally, but he had never seen the AD this intense before and suspected none of the other attendees had either. He glanced quickly around the table. There was Elizabeth Preston paging through her packet of materials as if in search of a miracle; to her right was Special Agent Tom Hiraldi. Hiraldi was young, fairly green, and involved in the Chessman investigation due to his having taken state in high school chess club two years in a row—the bureau’s resident chess expert. Before Jund had arrived, Hiraldi had been theorizing about what the queen and bishops meant, what chess moves they might signify, what clues they might provide. His dissertation on the King’s Gambit came to an abrupt end once Jund stormed into the meeting and sat down.

  Across the table sat Bryce Drommerhausen, a top profiler yanked hastily from his BAU at NCAVC—his Behavioral Analysis Unit at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime—to help the agents get a bead on the Chessman’s motivations. Drommerhausen had previously submitted the Chessman’s modus operandi into the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program’s database for comparison, but, not surprisingly, ViCAP had come up snake eyes—that is, no pattern was found. Drommerhausen stared fixedly at Jund.

  Special Agents Arty Gonzalez and Maggie Fitzwilliams, the forensic specialists who had examined both Zalentine crime scenes, looked white, stricken. Special Agent Dan Kurtz, likely quite happy not to be there in person, was on speaker phone from Quantico. Cady had brought Allan Sears, the Cambridge detective who had been so helpful at the Dorchester Towers, along for what appeared to be a turbulent ride. So much for Sears’ blood pressure.

  “Sir,” Cady began, “the fireproof wall safe hidden in the island of Adrien Zalentine’s kitchen contained six female purses. One belonging to a Sarah Glover of Wilmington, Delaware. Sadly, Ms. Glover’s body had been found in a shallow grave in a wooded area on a side road off 270 near Rockville. Her murder has remained an ongoing investigation and, quite frankly, more of a cold case for nearly three years now.”

  “Well, Agent Cady, I don’t imagine the Glover strangling remains a cold case any longer.”

  “No, sir.” Cady realized the AD had read the file. “Originally, the detectives investigating the Sarah Glover slaying believed she’d been kidnapped and raped repeatedly by the same UNSUB. However, lab results now indicate that the semen taken from her vagina and anus matches DNA from the Zalentine brothers.”

  “Which one, Alain or Adrien?”

  “Quite likely both, sir.” Cady looked down at his notes in front of him. “When a single fertilized egg splits in two, the two embryos develop into identical—or monozygotic—twins. Since these twins come from the same egg and sperm, they have shared DNA, their genetic makeup is a match, thus indistinguishable to a standard DNA analysis. In some cases they use fingerprints to tell identical twins apart.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes, sir, and here’s where it gets interesting. Sarah Glover’s body was found by a trucker hauling plasma screens to Frederick. He got off 270 to check a tire, got that sorted out, then ducked behind the tree line to take a leak and noticed a pale hand sticking up out of the dirt. Said he made a mess of himself sprinting back to the truck for his phone. At that point Sarah Glover had been missing for three weeks. She’d been hitchhiking to Catonsville to catch some grunge band in concert and hadn’t been heard from since.” Cady pointed at the Cambridge investigator and continued, “Detective Sears and I have created a Glover-Zalentine timeline. It’s labeled A-7 in your packet. We believe the Zalentine twins panicked. They’d badly botched a shallow grave, caught the story about Glover’s body being found when it broke in the news and, that very next day, traded in their three-month old Mercedes-Benz CL600 for a Ferrari 575 M Maranello.”

  Cady felt his cell phone vibrate in his front pocket, knew it was his wife Laura calling about tonight’s pla
ns, and knew he would disappoint her once again.

  “Glover had been in the Mercedes?”

  “The CL600 was the only sports car the Zalentines owned that had sufficient trunk space. They’d probably seen enough CSI episodes to know how screwed they were if they’d transported Sarah Glover in the trunk to the burial spot off 270. Then, the day after trading in the Mercedes, the twins are on an Airbus to France.”

  “They knew they messed up so they put an ocean between themselves and the investigation,” Detective Sears said.

  “Exactly,” Cady replied. “The twins follow the news of the investigation over the Internet from some five-star in Paris. The management company at the Dorchester Towers held their mail. The woman in the Dorchester office mentioned that the only time she’d ever spoken in-depth with the Zalentines was that month they were in Paris, when they kept calling her every other day to remind her about the mail. Of course they were feeling her out, trying to see if anyone had been poking around their home front. Phone records indicate that they kept calling their own answering services during that timeframe, checking daily to see if any police investigators were trying to contact them.”

  “After about five weeks of seeing and hearing nothing,” Detective Sears said, picking up the narration, “they wiped the sweat off their brows and returned home. Probably peeked around every corner before stepping back into the Dorchester Towers. After another couple of weeks pass, they get an idea, something a little brighter to facilitate their new hobby. A sailboat.”

  “That’s how they got rid of the other five, isn’t it, the ones that haven’t been found?” Agent Preston asked quietly.

  Cady nodded his head. “A-12 in your packet is a list of the items found aboard their boat, The She-Killer.”

  “Brazen name.”

  “Yes, it is,” Cady responded. “Note on A-12 the barbell weights. Also note the forty feet of three-strand marine rope.”

  “It’s a giant bay, Agent Cady,” the AD said. “Will we be able to find the remains of the five missing females?”

  “Let me bring you up to date on that, sir. Their boat had one of those depth finders, the kind fishermen use.” Cady looked again at his notes. “A Humminbird Matrix 97 Combo, a high-end jobbie that has the capability of hitting depths of several hundred feet. However, I don’t suspect they used the unit for fishing. The Zalentines had no fishing gear, poles or tackle, stored onboard or at their condominiums. Neither Zalentine twin has ever purchased a fishing license in their lives, and, after a painfully awkward call with Vance Zalentine, I learned they never went fishing as children.”

  “The Humminbird had a dual purpose. They were fishing all right, but for the perfect watery grave.”

  “Exactly, sir,” Cady responded. “And here’s where we got lucky. The Nav station onboard The She-Killer held a wireless Bluetooth GPS for electronic charting—fishermen can set coordinates so they can return to a successful spot at a later date. We believe the Zalentine twins used it to get a navigation fix, a waypoint if you will, on a couple of desired deep spots in Chesapeake Bay.”

  “What’s being done with the GPS coordinates?”

  “Bear in mind the Chesapeake averages about twenty-one feet of depth. That’s just the average, there are much deeper spots. The Zalentines had two waypoints programmed into their Bluetooth. Unfortunately, one of the waypoints is in the deepest part of the bay, off Bloody Point near Annapolis. It’s called The Hole and it’s 174 feet below sea level. Searching The Hole will be a bit more problematic, more time-consuming. However, the other waypoint is about sixty feet down. The Coast Guard currently has divers sifting that area.” Cady turned to Detective Sears. “Allan and I received a call from the officer in charge of the dive right before this meeting.”

  Sears cleared his throat. “Coast Guard divers just discovered two female bodies at this GPS setting. The preliminaries indicate that both are without clothes and are wrapped in some kind of camping tarp, wrapped tightly with the exact same brand of three-strand rope found onboard the Zalentine boat. The rope was threaded through 160 pounds of barbell weights; again, the exact same type of barbell weights found in a compartment onboard The She-Killer. The Guard is expanding the perimeter of their search at this dive site, but I suspect the other three victims are in or near the other set of GPS coordinates—The Hole.”

  “What about all of these other women the Zalentines took sailing on their death boat,” Agent Preston asked. “Why were they permitted to live?”

  “My thought,” Detective Sears addressed the FBI agent’s question, “is that these were for appearances. Diversionary dates paraded across that marina so nothing would stand out in any of the other boaters’ minds. The brothers likely got their rocks off drinking wine and eating cheese and crackers with these for appearance dates, knowing full well what they’d been doing aboard The She-Killer.”

  “Plus,” Cady added, “these for appearance dates were linked to the brothers and would be easy trace-backs if one disappeared. Of the five missing females with their purses in the Zalentines’ souvenir chest, Claire Townley and Jenny Granger were teenage hitchhikers, Meagan Wright was picked up in a crowded nightclub in Virginia Beach, and Dayna St. Claire was a prostitute who worked out of Richmond, Virginia.”

  “Based on the mileage put on the twins’ sports cars,” Sears said, “I suspect Alain and Adrien spent time cruising the interstate, looking for lone female hitchhikers, young women they could charm into a meal and some drinks, perhaps a place to stay for a night or two, and then possibly, if they’d like, a pleasant night ride on their sailboat. A-1 in your packet lists the names, ages, and home addresses of the victims. Meagan Wright, the pick-up at the meat market in Virginia Beach, was the oldest. She was twenty-three. Jenny Granger, the youngest at age sixteen, was likely picked up off Highway 81 near Scranton, Pennsylvania. You can see how the Zalentines put miles on their cars so the disappearances wouldn’t all occur in a concentrated area.”

  Agent Preston looked at the assistant director. “So when we catch the Chessman, do we arrest him or give him a gold medal?”

  “I’ll make damn sure he gets two desserts before his injection,” Jund told Preston and turned to Cady. “How exactly does the Chessman intersect with these Zalentine thrill killings?”

  “Agents have been interviewing the families of the six victims. At this point there is no evidence that the Chessman was involved with the Zalentine thrill-kills. Boaters at the marina never saw any males on The She-Killer besides the twins. Fingerprints on the souvenir purses are heavy on Alain and Adrien with smeared prints from the various victims.”

  “Do the fingerprints tell us anything else?”

  “Agents interviewing the victims’ families have been meticulous in lifting prints off old yearbooks or photo albums or CDs to help us eliminate the fingerprints on the purses and various IDs, credit cards, and keys inside the Zalentines’ trophy safe. After eliminating the victims’ prints, there are the periodic prints here and there, consistent with a gas station clerk or cashier swiping a debit card. However, Alain and Adrien’s fingerprints are everywhere. The two must have taken these purses out frequently to look at the wallets, driver’s licenses, cosmetic cases, you name it.”

  The room sat in silence, which Jund eventually broke.

  “I know we’ve named him the Chessman—a singular individual—based on the surveillance recording at the Sanfield killing, but the twins…this homicide double-header indicates meticulous planning. Any thoughts on the Chessman being more than one person?”

  “Two things, sir. First, Adrien was dead within two hours of taking his boat out that morning. By 10:00 a.m. There’d be no difficulty for a single shooter to be back at Dorchester Towers to tail Alain by noon. Second,” Cady continued, “it had been five weeks since Sanfield’s death. A lot of time to shadow the twins, memorize their routines, set them up. Whereas if you’ve got a team of killers, why not hit both condos at night? Stormtrooper it. Hell of a lot easier.”
r />   “With the precision and intricate plotting involved in these three murders,” Bryce Drommerhausen spoke for the first time, “as well as having—forgive me, Elizabeth—the cojones to pull it off, I would suggest that the UNSUB has a military background. Ex-Special Forces, ex-Navy SEAL, you know, that type.”

  “An interesting point, Bryce,” the AD said. “Something to keep in the back of our minds as the investigation proceeds.”

  Heads nodded around the conference table.

  “Another thing, we need to bang on the Chessman’s M.O. like a drum. Find out how Sanfield intersects with the Zalentines.”

  “Interestingly, something of a connection exists,” Cady said. “Sanfield & Fine represented Alain Zalentine on a couple of speeding tickets. Rainmaker Sanfield brought Alain into the firm, but handed him off to Stephen Fine to make the tickets go bye-bye. By the way, Stephen Fine is suffering anxiety attacks and heading to an undisclosed spot in Bermuda for an extended stay.”

  Detective Sears began laughing and rubbed a knuckle against the corner of his eye. “I apologize for being inappropriate, but I just remembered that my wife’s wedding ring is a Zalentine. I think they’re going to have to change their tagline.”

  “Zalentine,” Agent Kurtz piped in from the speakerphone, “It Rhymes with Frankenstein.”

  Detective Sears struggled to keep from laughing. “Next quarter’s earnings may be a bit in the red.”

  “Thanks for the levity, gentlemen,” Jund said curtly, bringing the meeting back into focus. “We need to bang on the Sanfield-Zalentine connection. I guarantee there’s more to that relationship than a handful of speeding tickets.” The AD frowned. “Anything more on the significance of the chess pieces?”

  “The UNSUB bypassed any low-level pawns, dove straight into the deep end by taking out the queen, first, and then the bishops. The queen is the most powerful piece on the board, can move in any direction, so the UNSUB considered Sanfield to be some kind of Grand Poobah.” Agent Tom Hiraldi had been ready for Jund’s question. “Though not as powerful as the queen, obviously, or even the rooks, bishops are effective in their own right and can move diagonally across the board. They are considered, strategy-wise, about on par with the knights. Each game begins with two bishops. The UNSUB equated the Zalentine twins with bishops and has taken them off the board.”