The Chessman (20 page)

Jund finally reopened his eyes. “What’s he trying to achieve by gaining access to Elaine Kellervick’s work files?”

“Still fishing, no doubt,” Special Agent Fennell Evans said, picking up the ball. “We’re compiling a list of clients that Kellervick had contact with over the past three years. However, Kellervick was more of a behind-the-scenes analyst. Not much direct client interaction. We’re setting up to review Kellervick’s work files. Albert Banning’s not terribly pleased about that, but I’ve assured him our auditors will be on-site and that he can even sit in the room with them if he so desires. I’ve also assured Banning that all Koye & Plagans’ client data will be kept in the strictest of confidence.”

“Unless something breaks,” Jund said.

“Unless something breaks,” Evans repeated.

“On a similar note, our forensic auditors are combing through Ingram’s original purchase agreement for Sundown Point Resort,” Cady added. “The resort was purchased for Ingram with the help of a dummy front group—the SGL Group—that we’re fairly certain will ultimately point back to the Zalentines. We’ve ruled out Eric Braun—an ex-Marine and old high school boyfriend of Marly Kelch. I’m meeting with Dorsey Kelch again in the morning.” Cady didn’t mention that he’d be taking a certain visitor along with him to the Kelch household. It ran against his every fiber, but Terri Ingram had been adamant about visiting Dorsey Kelch when Cady had picked her up at Ronald Reagan National and shuttled her to the Hoover Building, where she was currently providing her statement and meeting with the auditors.

“What about expanding the search to everyone in attendance at Schaeffer’s party?” asked Agent Evans.

“Sheriff Littman out at Bergen County faxed me the list of partygoers from the old police report. He’s done some sleuthing on this, but nothing has turned up. Mostly now-married yuppies with kids and alibis.”

“Will no one rid me of this turbulent prick?” the AD said to the room, but glared at Agent Cady.

The room fell into silence a third time.

“Okay then,” the AD said, looking down at his notes. “If the Chessman isn’t completely yanking our chain, then what about this copycat in the woodpile? What’s the copycat’s motive in the Gottlieb and Kellervick murders?”

“Based on who they were, it’s got to be something to do with the financial sector, an economic agenda of some kind, something with the markets. Honestly, sir,” Cady said, broaching the topic he’d discussed briefly with Preston, “we may want to consider that the Chessman copycat is more than one UNSUB.”

“A conspiracy?” The AD frowned. “But why the headache of stealing the Chessman’s M.O.?”

“Easy,” Cady answered. “To throw us off track.”

Chapter 25

“W
orst case scenario, Dorsey Kelch screams the F-word at me, you get to say, ‘I told you so,’ and I buy you a nice lunch on the drive back to Washington.”

“She’s too much of a class act to do that, but if there’s an iota of awkwardness after you’ve said your piece, head out and grab a Starbucks. Give me an hour to compile an extensive list of the male figures that played a role in Marly’s life.”

“What if the guy was a Don Quixote, loving her chastely and from afar?”

“It’ll be problematic if it’s a nameless guy who changed the tires on the family station wagon two decades back. But there’s more proximity than that. I can taste it.” Cady hesitated. “There’s just something along the line, some gap in the chain that I’ve missed.”

It had been a quiet drive to Reading, Pennsylvania, likely to do with Terri collecting her thoughts and rehearsing in her mind exactly what she needed to tell Dorsey Kelch. The two had eaten overdone cheeseburgers and limp fries in the Embassy Suites bar last night before retiring, Ingram to her suite and Cady to a room now registered under the alias Eddie Hoover that Jund, always the kidder, had set up in order to minimize unwanted visitors.

Cady felt clumsy, put upon. They had discussed the best way to place Dorsey Kelch at ease so Terri could say her piece, get her request for forgiveness off her chest, and then immediately vamoose if the chitchat went south. Cady had been against showing up and springing it on Mrs. Kelch, but Terri had been insistent, believing that if they called ahead, she would be turned away. By the time he pulled the unmarked, a Buick LaCrosse he’d been loaned, into Kelch’s driveway, Cady had decided to play it Joe Friday—
just the facts, ma’am
. In the course of the current investigation, Bret Ingram’s death has now been ruled a homicide and Ingram’s widow, who has been devastated by the news of her husband’s probable role in the events at Snow Goose Lake, would like to have a word or two with you, if that’s okay, ma’am.

“I’m sorry to disturb you twice in one week.”

Dorsey Kelch held the screen door and looked at Cady’s automobile. “Wouldn’t your partner like to come in?”

“Permit me to bend your ear, Mrs. Kelch.”

An hour later, Cady was still trying to figure out how he’d lost control as he approached the rambler with the leash to Mother Kelch’s dog, the hateful Rex, in his right hand and an empty plastic bag in his left.

Mrs. Kelch grimaced as he informed her how Bret Ingram’s widow desired to have a word with her. Dorsey had reluctantly agreed, and Cady walked a visibly nervous Terri Ingram up the driveway and introduced the two. Terri looked like a million bucks, and some change if you counted her short sleeve cardigan and white linen trousers, but Cady could tell she was anxious—the have-a-last-meal-and-light-a-last-cigarette sort of anxiety.

Also, as prearranged, he asked Mrs. Kelch if he might use her restroom after drinking coffee on the long drive. In the bathroom Cady looked out the window into the backyard where Marly Kelch had played with her friends all those years ago. He noticed the toy dachshund still parked under the picnic table, as when he’d had last been there. Unfortunately, the dog noticed Cady at the same moment, stood up, and began yapping. Cady slowly backed away from the window until the dachshund ceased the racket. Evidently, Rex still harbored unpleasant feelings toward Cady. The feeling was mutual.

Cady could hear voices from the living room, but couldn’t discern what was being said. Terri did the bulk of the talking, paragraphs at a time to Dorsey’s brisk one or two word retorts. Cady heard Terri’s voice begin to waver, so he opened the bathroom door, made fake hand-washing sounds, and joined the two in the other room.

“Is everything okay?” Cady had asked, expecting to escort Terri back to the sedan.

Dorsey Kelch gave him a slight nod. He turned to Terri and, while he was blocking Mrs. Kelch’s view, Terri mumbled “ahuh” and pointed from him to the door, none too subtly requesting more time. He got the message.

“Excuse me while I make a phone call,” he said and headed out to the Buick.

In the car Cady checked his voice mail. Just a message from Agent Evans asking if he could review the list of partygoers, suggesting that they might want to delve into the family and friends of Dane Schaeffer. Cady wondered if Jund had played a role in Agent Evans’ offer to help.

Cady then dug through his briefcase until he found Agent Drommerhausen’s old profile on the Chessman and flipped to the section that chess expert Agent Hiraldi had helped the profiler compose. He had read this section repeatedly in the past and ran through it again.

The UNSUB is playing at a championship level, several moves ahead of the competition. He’s utilizing a hell-for-leather approach, brazenly taking out his opponents. Your run-of-the-mill chess players play the game cautiously, out of fear, because they don’t know what will happen if they aggressively march their pieces down the chessboard, but experience tells them that the consequences will be rather dire. Great players understand exactly why it is that sheer aggression is usually punished. However, they also realize that if their opponent is not practiced enough to position his pieces strategically, an all out balls-to-the-walls attack thus makes perfectly good sense; vulnerable spots hidden to your average player are therefore mercilessly exploited
.

Cady looked at his empty cup of gas station coffee and realized that now he truly needed to use the restroom. Upon returning to Kelch’s house, Dorsey Kelch blocked his entrance, handing him Rex on a leash and a bag for any of the dog’s exhaust and asking if Cady could take Rex for his morning walk. Dorsey’s eyes were red-rimmed. He saw Terri across the room, tears slipping down her face. Cady took the leash, the barking dachshund, the special baggy, and left.

“Rex didn’t go?” Mrs. Kelch asked upon Cady’s return as she took the empty bag and undid the leash. “He’s normally like clockwork this late in the morning.”

Cady opened his mouth but said nothing.

“Oh my God, Dorsey,” Terri said. “Look at his face. Rex went, all right, but the G-man didn’t pick it up.”

“Oh dear,” Dorsey said. “I hope it was a block or two over. The immediate neighbors all know Rex.”

“I’m going to use your restroom,” Cady said.

He hurried down the hall, away from the duet of giggles, and wondered again exactly when he’d lost control.

“…and Marly continued to wait tables at the Sea Shack whenever she was home on breaks to make tip money,” explained Mrs. Kelch. “Mike Dean, the owner, is a family friend from church and Mike would let Marly work evening shifts whenever she was in town. The Sea Shack is always packed.”

Cady scanned his list of names. “We’ve got Dean on the church list.”

Dorsey smiled. “Mike’s almost eighty.”

“Any sons?”

“No.”

“You said Marly gave private tennis lessons, but mostly to females, right?”

“She’d help out her old high school coach, Curt Wently, with some of the girls on the team that had potential but needed some additional one-on-one play. Mostly fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds trying to make the varsity cut. Once in a while Curt would have her play against one of his new tennis stars, just to gauge how good they were.”

Cady added a checkmark next to Coach Wently’s name and then went back to a timeline he’d developed. “You mentioned that Marly sometimes worked at the Pet Mart when in town?”

“She started helping them clean out the cages and fish tanks when she was fourteen. Loved animals. Marly worked there part time until she was seventeen, when she realized more college money could be made waiting tables. But right up to the end she’d stop by the pet shop and visit. If a manager was out sick, they’d sometimes call to see if she could watch the store. If she was free, she’d cover the shift.”

“Your daughter was very pretty.” Terri had been quietly paging through the family photo albums as Cady constructed his chart and discussed names with Mrs. Kelch and, upon closing the final album, had gotten up to look at the portraits lining the hallway. “Where was this picture taken?”

“Her father snapped that shot of Marly on our trip to Yellowstone. Peter liked that close-up so much he had it enlarged.”

“Such a special person, Dorsey,” Terri whispered, touching the frame lightly. “It’s a heavier world without her.”

“That’s almost exactly what Jakey said on one of his last visits.”

“Jakey?” Terri asked.

“Jake Westlow. Marly babysat him when they were kids.” Cady thumbed through his notes. “Westlow took his own life after his mother passed away.”

“Such sadness.” Dorsey spoke more to herself than to her visitors. “It seems as if it were only yesterday that Jakey said that. He stopped by a week or so before Lorraine lost her battle with cancer. She was in hospice at that point. We were paging through pictures in some magazine and something reminded us of Marly, and Jakey said, ‘The world is a much heavier place without her.’ A decade later and it brought tears to my eyes.”

The room sat in silence for several seconds.

“You must have seen a model in a fashion magazine that looked like Marly,” Terri said.

“No.” Dorsey pointed to a stack of magazines on her coffee table. “I get
Newsweek
and, come to think of it, they had this story on father and son Farris—the elder senator and his congressman son.”

“The two were pictured together on the cover.” Cady had read the human interest piece of fluff years back. Repeatedly. There was likely a photocopy of the Farris Dynasty
Newsweek
article in an old file in his cube at Hoover.

“You’re right,” Dorsey said, nodding. “We paged through
Newsweek
and I told Jakey that Marly had known Patrick Farris when they were students at Princeton, before he followed in his father’s footsteps. Jakey hadn’t heard that before and asked if he could borrow the magazine.”

“When was the last time you saw Jake Westlow?” Cady asked.

“I was with him at his mother’s funeral a couple weeks later. A small affair. Lorraine didn’t have many friends. Jakey also stopped in a final time to say goodbye a week or so later. He’d made arrangements with a real estate agent to sell the house and had finished wrapping up his mother’s…life…and was heading back to his place in San Diego, where he was living at that time. Jakey was pretty broken up.” Dorsey shook her head. “If only I had known what was coming.”

“Did you attend his funeral?”

“As fate would have it, Agent Cady, I found out too late. It happened in California. I heard about it a month after the fact from a neighbor of a neighbor. I looked up Jakey’s obituary online. It was a short listing; the kind they have for young people where you get to thinking that it may have been a suicide. It broke my heart. There was no one from home there for him.”

Terri did the math. “Jake couldn’t have been that much younger than Marly. No more than five years.”

“Jakey was three years younger. Marly was about ten and he was seven when they first met, you know, kids playing in the neighborhood. But Marly acted older and soon Lorraine would grab her whenever she went out on a date and needed someone to watch little Jake.” A smile returned to Dorsey’s face. “Marly was three years older, but as Jake used to joke, he caught up with her.”

“He caught up with her?” Terri asked, confused.

“He took these tests they have, went through some special programs, and he wound up graduating from high school in Marly’s class. Jakey was this boy genius. At his request, Peter and I pulled some strings to get him into Reading Central Catholic. We had to go a few rounds with Lorraine over the Catholic thing, but she knew her son was an extraordinary boy and feared he might get lost in the public school system. He was extremely bright in math and English, but a true prodigy in the sciences. Reading Central had never seen anything like him. Nor since. Aced any test you set in front of him without breaking a sweat.”