Free Checkmate by Steven James

tortured.”
    Even though he delivered to the back of the building and didn’t come past the reception area much, she knew him. We all did.
    â€œYeah.” Man, she really did not look good. “You should go home,” I suggested. “Spend some time with Allie.”
    Debra didn’t answer right away. “She’s at her dad’s this week.”
    â€œRight.” I wanted to reassure her but I wasn’t sure what else to say. “We’ll catch the guy who did this.”
    There I was, making promises to people again.
    â€œYes,” she said. “I know.”
    Then I left with my daughter to swing by the pharmacy on our way home.
    *   *   *
    3:04 p.m.
Charlotte, North Carolina
    The bard parked his van in the slot closest to the elevator in the northwest corner of the Schaeler Parking Garage near the intersection of 4th and Tryon.
    The Bureau still hadn’t released the names of those killed in the explosion, so he didn’t know whether Special Agent Patrick Bowers had survived.
    He hoped that he had.
    Stepping outside the parking garage, the southern summer air hit him full force.
    Upper nineties. Humid.
    He walked to Independence Square at the intersection of Trade Street and Tryon, the most famous intersection Uptown.
    Charlotte was a city in love with the future. Some people have called it the next Atlanta or the emerging capital of the South, but those descriptions missed the point. Charlotte wasn’t striving to be the biggest city or even the most influential city in the South. Instead it was carving out its own unique space as a center for science and the arts, for thinkers and dreamers.
    It was a city that wasn’t ashamed of its conservative religious roots, but neither was it afraid to welcome the neoliberals flowing in from the Northeast. It was a city with a broad heart, open arms, and a spirit bent on being ahead of the curve.
    He was here to snap photos of the four statues on the four corners of the intersection, to get them in this light,at this time of day, before driving down to Columbia, South Carolina, to spend some time with Corrine.
    Each twenty-four-foot-tall, five-thousand-pound sculpture signified a chapter of Charlotte’s history. From the first time he’d visited this corner two months ago, he’d been interested in their symbolism and how they portrayed the history of this city and this region.
    He faced the first one.
    Commerce—the statue of a prospector panning for gold. Back in 1799 gold was discovered near Charlotte, and for fifty years North Carolina was the gold capital of the United States. The region was dotted with literally hundreds of gold mines, a few of whose abandoned shafts and tunnels still ran under sections of the city.
    In the statue, the man was emptying his pan of gold over a likeness of the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan to celebrate the city’s banking and finance interests.
    That was, admittedly, odd, but Charlotte was the second-largest banking center in the U.S., trailing only New York City, and at the time the statues were dedicated in 1995, Greenspan ended up being the natural choice to represent that part of the city’s identity.
    The bard centered the statue on his phone’s screen, snapped the photo, and then turned to the next corner.
    Transportation—an African-American man holding a sledgehammer that resembled those used to build the railroads of the region. The eagle that most people miss seeing when they look at the statue represented air travel.
    He took the picture.
    Next: Industry—a female mill worker, to pay homage to the textile industry, which created the boom that resulted in the banks being established in the area. A childbeside her knees stood for the children who also worked in the mills before child-labor laws were passed to protect them from abusive work conditions.
    Snap.
    And, finally, number four.
    Future—another woman. The