Before Cain Strikes

5

When the phone call came, Tom didn’t hear it. He was too busy quite literally rolling in the hay with the farmer’s daughter. To be sure, the farmer in question was ninety-two years old, half-deaf and asleep at the time, but life had taught Tom Piper that sometimes it was best to ignore the salient details in favor of sauciness. He (age fifty-eight) and Penelope Sue Fuller (age sixty-one) groped, fondled, licked, lapped, nuzzled, squeezed, bucked, sucked and thrust against each other in the pine loft of the Fullers’ stables, several hay bales acting as their makeshift mattress. The hay was itchy, and poked a bit, but that just caused Tom and Penelope Sue to act upon each other with increased, well, assertiveness.

Through it all, Tom’s heart maintained a steady, calm rhythm. Th-thump. Th-thump. Th-thump. Damn pacemaker. It really took some of the fun out of primal, no-holds-barred sex. The pacemaker was his souvenir from Galileo. The fucker had shot him in the chest. Only emergency surgery on Long Island—and the installation of his very own personal timekeeper—saved Tom’s life. Now, six months later, his doctors here in Kentucky were impressed with his recovery. Tom was less than impressed. It was moments like this, moments with Penelope Sue, that he was reminded just how comprehensively Galileo had robbed him, because here, with a beautiful redhead and in an idyllic setting straight out of a dirty limerick, as they went at each other like a pair of id-addled bunny rabbits, Tom was having trouble maintaining his erection.

He tried everything. He concentrated on Penelope Sue, her full breasts, her perfume (peaches…oh, my!), how much she wanted him, how much he desired her. When that didn’t work, he flipped through the Rolodex of memories. Other women he’d been with, other women he’d craved, high school sweethearts, coworkers, that bubbly clerk he once chatted with in Toronto and the way he wanted to bury himself in her dimples. He had more than four decades of memories to choose from, and yet he could feel himself deflate, deflate, deflate….

Finally, between gasps, Penelope Sue asked him if everything was okay, and the sound of honest concern in her voice, of pity, was like a bucket of ice. He sighed, lay beside her and gazed up through the roof slats at the plump, indifferent moon.

She ran a hand across his long gray ponytail. “It’s all right,” she said. “We can just lie here,” she said. “This is nice, too,” she said.

“Mmm-hmm,” he replied, not meaning a syllable of it.

Soon, though, the night air made them chilly, and it was time to get dressed. They did so in heavy silence and walked back to her farmhouse, shivering. Penelope Sue made some tea.

Tom envisioned their upcoming conversation. He’d seen variations of it in every Viagra, Cialis and Levitra commercial. She’d pull out a brochure. They’d go to the doctor. Next shot: they’d be walking hand in hand on the beach and grinning ear to ear as the waves cascaded in the background. Except he couldn’t go the medicinal route even if he wanted to, not with his bad heart.

Which left them where and with what? He wanted to grow old with this woman, but he wanted her to be happy, and her sexual appetite was as gleefully voracious as his. As his was until six months ago.

She handed him his tea. Spice orange. Herbal. No caffeine for him. Hers was a special blend she bought at the farmer’s market. She cuddled beside him on the living room couch.

Commercial time, he thought. Cue the music.

“Tom,” she said, “this is why the good Lord invented vibrators.”

She winked at him lasciviously and sipped her hot tea.

God, he loved this woman.

That’s when he noticed his cell phone, which he’d left on her star-shaped coffee table, glowing on and off. He had a message.

“I should check on Mama in a bit,” said Penelope Sue. “See if she needs her sheets changed.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“I’d like that. Mama wouldn’t, but that’s her problem now, isn’t it?”

She spoke with that sugary Kentucky accent that lent itself so sweetly to bourbon and bluegrass. Tom knew it well. He grew up not fifty miles from here. Hearing her speak was like hearing his past call him home. When Tom returned to Kentucky to recuperate, the hospital assigned him a certain physical therapist with long red hair that smelled of peaches and, well, here he was, in puppy love at age fifty-eight.

“It’s past time to turn the farm over for the winter,” said Penelope Sue. “Got to recaulk the windows and get the pumps double-checked.”

“I can do that this weekend.”

Penelope Sue nodded. Weekends were her busiest times at the hospital. Tom worked a desk at the FBI’s Louisville division, but not on Saturdays and Sundays. His nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday life couldn’t have been more different from his schedule on the national task force, but that just made it all the better. Tom Piper had turned a corner. The pilgrim had finally settled down.

Was it the change in his health? Was it the influence of Penelope Sue? Maybe. But the greater cause, Tom knew, belonged to Galileo. Near-death experiences put life in perspective. It was a simple truism, almost trite, but accurate as a bull’s-eye. And Tom wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Ready for more?” she asked.

Tom knew she wasn’t referring to the tea or (mercifully) sex. She was referring to the room’s thirty-six-inch plasma TV and to the DVD player attached to it and the disc inside. He acquiesced, and she giddily reached for the remote control.

Two minutes later: “Space…the final frontier…”

Yes, oh, yes, the love of his life was a Trekkie.

They were in the middle of an original-series marathon, her adorable attempt to convert him to the cult of Trek. She had a uniform hanging in a bag in her closet. Her bedroom contained signed photographs. And when she’d revealed this part of herself to him, there hadn’t been one ounce of hesitation. There never was, with Penelope Sue. And so he snuggled with her and watched hour after hour, and maybe through her infectious enjoyment he actually began to like this thing. Science fiction was far removed from his own interests, but Penelope Sue simply had a way about her that opened doors.

Around 10:00 p.m., he collected their mugs and washed them out in the ceramic sink. They had three more episodes to go, and it was time for a break. Besides, by now her mother upstairs was undoubtedly in need of a visit.

“It was Esme,” said Penelope Sue, trotting into the kitchen. Tom put the mugs down. “She’s the one who called.”

Penelope Sue handed him his phone.

Tom clicked on the voice mail. He put it on speaker phone.

They listened to Esme’s message.

“I’ll go take care of Mama,” said Penelope Sue, and without waiting for him to object, she walked away. So be it.

He dialed the number. He knew it by rote.

“Hello, Esmeralda,” he said. He was the only one who called her by her full name. He’d done so for almost fifteen years. It was a sign of affection, and they never, ever talked about it. “It sounds like you’ve got yourself a case.”

“I’d love to hear your take on it.”

He sat down at the kitchen table. “I’d love to hear yours first.” No matter how much his life had changed in the past six months, he would never stop being her Socratic mentor.

“The removal of the hands suggests a trophy. The fire could be some kind of funeral pyre.”

“Or you could be giving more meaning to his actions than he is,” he said.

“Everything has meaning, whether it’s intended or not. All accidents have explanations. We can’t help ourselves.”

Tom glanced out the window at the barn in the distance. “No. We can’t.”

“I’m missing something important, aren’t I?”

“We’re all missing something important.” He looked away from the window. “We can’t help ourselves there, either.”

“He didn’t burn her, though. He torched the whole house. That’s significant.”

“Everything has meaning.”

“You know the answer, don’t you?”

He had a notion. It was rudimentary, of course, and without seeing the report and visiting the crime scene it was purely speculative, but yes, he had a notion. He often did.

“I think you need to trust yourself,” he told her.

“I’m off the books up here, Tom. I could use your help.”

The ceiling boards above him creaked. That would be Mama, stubbornly fighting off Penelope Sue’s attempts to deliver her nightly shot. Talk about rituals…

“I have faith in you,” he said to Esme. He stood. His knees were a bit stiff from the cold. “You can do this.”

“Don’t make me beg, Tom.”

He could tell by the tone of her voice that she was teasing him. She knew he’d fly up there. He was reliable. He was ever her instructor. He was Tom Piper. Together they’d solve this case, and another in a long line of deranged scumbags would be in custody.

But that wasn’t him anymore, right?

He looked out again at the barn, bathed in cold moonlight.

“Come on,” she replied, still playful. “What’ll it take? A tantalizing email?”

That was how, last winter, he’d coaxed her out of her early retirement. She’d already been intrigued by the Galileo case, still in its infancy, and he’d sent her a note that Henry Booth had left at a crime scene, and soon she was saying goodbye to her family and boarding a plane for Texas to meet up with Tom’s task force. He’d pushed her buttons and she’d allowed them to be pushed and how was this, now, any different? Surely he owed it to her, if not to that poor girl Lynette. The Galileo case had nearly gotten Esme killed, and he knew the effect it had had on her marriage.

But what about the effect it had had on him?

Penelope Sue padded into the room, a look of curiosity on her brow. He held out his hand to her and she clasped it.

“I’m sorry,” he told Esme. “I’m already home. Best of luck, Esmeralda. I know you’ll do just fine.”

Click.

Esme wasn’t angry.

She expected to be angry. She expected to feel wounded and betrayed. But she didn’t. She wasn’t relieved or happy. She wasn’t quite sure what she felt about Tom’s refusal.

So she compartmentalized it, stepped into the shower to wash off the chili and rice and ruminated about other matters.

More specifically: why did the unsub burn down the whole house?

By all accounts, the fire started with a bang. Electrical fires often did. Some appliance shorts out, goes kablooey, and it’s time to call your insurance provider. The unsub undoubtedly set the fire on purpose, which meant he rigged an appliance to blow, which meant he knew there was going to be a bang, which meant he knew it was going to draw attention to the house—and to him, making a rapid and hopefully burn-free getaway. So he wanted the body to be found. And given that there were no signs of accelerant on or near the remains, he wasn’t particular about the body being identified or not.

Esme moved on from body wash to shampoo, and thought about the victim herself. Maybe Rafe and the sheriff and most everyone else working the case were right. Maybe Lynette was the gateway. It made sense. It was the obvious choice. She rarely favored the obvious choice, true, but that didn’t make it any less valid.

So: Who would want to cause Lynette harm?

No. Better question: What was significant enough about Lynette for someone to go through all this trouble?

Esme didn’t mean to imply that it was difficult to believe that someone found Lynette significant. Her tattooed boyfriend was obviously enamored. And then there was the matter of Rafe’s overcomplicated emotional relationship to her….

Rafe!

Christ, how long had she been in the shower while he waited, soggy foodstuffs still splattered over his hair and cheeks and neck? Granted, he’d done the splattering, but still. Esme hastened her ablutions and hustled out of the shower. She opened the door for Rafe while she was drying her hair. The door wasn’t locked, and he could have come in at any time, and he would have come in during the first year of their marriage, joined her in the shower even, but that was a long time ago.

As her husband soaped and soaked, Esme climbed into a nightgown, rolled her iPod to Roxy Music and snuggled under the covers. Her mind drifted back to the case, back to Lynette Robinson and those teal earrings and her unfortunate fate. How differently people would live their lives if they knew how and when their lives would end. Esme wondered what she would do differently, if she knew, and by the time Rafe had toweled himself off, those musings had carried her off to sleep, at least until the pounding began at 6:16 a.m.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

Esme bolted awake. So did Rafe. A minute passed. Silence. They looked at each other. Had they dreamed that thunderous—

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

Apparently not.

“Is it the pipes?” she asked. He’d grown up in this house.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“No,” he replied. “That’s not the pipes.”

Their eyes scanned the room for something to use as a weapon. But how did one defend against a sound?

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“Maybe it’s the front door,” said Rafe.

“At six in the morning?”

Rafe shrugged. Did she have a better idea?

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“Goddamn it,” she mumbled, and swung her legs out of bed and onto the thin mauve carpet. Her robes were at home. Her slippers were at home. So she slid her bare feet into her sneakers, tugged a navy blue sweater over her nightgown and headed downstairs to probe out the invasive racket.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

As she neared the front door, she knew Rafe’s conclusion had been accurate. Someone was on the other side, knocking. The door shook with each pound. Whoever it was at their door at 6:21 a.m. on this cold, cold Saturday morning, they were both large and insistent.

Maybe it was that dickhead pseudo-journalist Grover Kirk. He had the size and the lack of common decency to track them down to a funeral and pay them a visit. Either way, Esme vowed to use her resources at the Bureau to learn more about Mr. Kirk, maybe pull his IRS records.

She poked her head to one of the windows. Two sheriff’s deputies, each the size of a Dumpster, stood there on the front stoop. They appeared cold and they appeared antsy.

She opened the front door.

“Morning, officers. What seems to be the trouble?”

“The sheriff told us to come get you, ma’am.”

Of course he did.

“Give me a few minutes. Would you like to come in?”

The deputies exchanged glances. “No, ma’am. We’re just fine out here.”

Sure they were.

She closed the door in their frost-tipped faces and made her way back to the bedroom.

“Was it the front door?” Rafe asked.

Ten minutes later, both she and Rafe were back downstairs, fully dressed. She half expected to find two ice statues on the stoop where the deputies had been, but no, the two men remained flesh and blood. When she opened the door, one of them was doing a little dance to keep warm.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

“Just you, ma’am,” replied the dancer. “Sheriff’s orders.”

Uh-huh.

Esme kissed her husband goodbye and joined the deputies in their brown squad car. She noticed that the streets were almost all clear of snow and that the sidewalks had already been salted. Impressed, she reclined in the stiff backseat as they drove downtown—and then past the county station and kept on going.

“Um,” she said.

They took a left toward the interstate.

“Excuse me…” she said.

“Sit tight, ma’am. We’ll be there in a jiffy.”

“That’s fine and all but, well, where’s there?”

There turned out to be Stewart International Airport some forty-five minutes later. They pulled up to the terminal. The dancer got out and escorted Esme to the curb while the other deputy remained behind the wheel.

Behind a door marked Official Use Only, Sheriff Fallon was waiting for them, a cup of coffee in his hand. His grin left little doubt in Esme’s mind; this, finally, was the cat that ate the canary.

“Good morning!” he said.

In an adjacent room, he went on to say, sat the Weiner family. A member of airport security was keeping them company. Their plane had finally touched down about two hours ago and he knew, just knew, that she’d want to be there when he questioned them.

“Thanks,” she replied, and added Sheriff Fallon to her list of IRS record pulls.

They began with the father, Todd, who could have carried the sheriff’s deputies in the bags hanging under his eyes. His hands couldn’t keep still, either twitching and fumbling with the zipper on his L.L. Bean ski jacket or fixing the part on his thinning brown hair. This was not a calm man—but then again, how often did one’s house get burned to the ground with a body left in the basement? Perhaps he was worried they suspected him. Perhaps he was worried they thought he put the body there.

“I didn’t know her,” he insisted. “We all looked at those photos and none of us had ever seen her before in our lives. I swear.”

The interview lasted about an hour. Most of it consisted of Todd Weiner repeating that he didn’t know her, or anything, or anyone, and asking several times if this would be covered by his homeowners’ insurance. Esme believed more and more that her hunch—about the house being the key—had been way off.

And then Todd said something odd.

“I knew it was too good to be true.”

Sheriff Fallon nodded at Esme, allowing her to take the bait.

“You knew what was too good to be true, Mr. Weiner?”

“This contest. I told Louise I didn’t remember signing up on their website.”

“What contest?”

Todd Weiner looked up at them like they’d just claimed two plus two equaled an apple. “Hammond Travel Agency. That’s how we went on this trip. We won it in a contest from Hammond Travel Agency out in New Paltz.”

6

Finally—finally!—Timothy had found the perfect pet. Like all true heroes of myth (the Norse legends of the Viking civilization being his favorite), he just needed to recognize his own hubris before achieving success. He had been so quick to blame his previous pet, Lynette, for everything that went wrong when, in fact, some of the finger pointing belonged in his own direction. Had it really been wise to capture an adult? Don’t most pet owners start with puppies and kittens rather than dogs and cats? How foolish he had been to think he could improve on centuries of domestication.

In short, Timothy needed to think younger, and he found his ideal in, of all places, his mother’s veterinary clinic. As the first snow fell Friday morning, he walked the familiar two miles from their house to her clinic, which was in the same strip mall as his father’s travel agency. He enjoyed the taste of the snowflakes, and made sure to catch as many as he could with his tongue.

On his way to the clinic he passed the middle school, where the rest of his peers (and that was the right word—as loath as the old Timothy had been to admit it, these were his peers; he was not a young god) were crowded inside. Timothy hadn’t stepped foot in that building in more than a year, ever since that incident in the cafeteria with Mr. Monroe’s earlobe. His parents had filed the appropriate papers for him to be homeschooled and that was that. Still, as Timothy passed by it, his heart filled with a sense of longing. He was, after all, the new Timothy, person of the world, no different from anyone else. Well, hardly different.

The purpose for his snowbound stroll to Mother’s clinic was to get his wrist reexamined. It had been three days since Lynette had bit him, and although his wound had been properly mended and treated, a bite mark was a bite mark. Perhaps Mother was going to give him a rabies shot.

The other businesses in the strip mall, besides the vet clinic and the travel agency, were a take-out Chinese restaurant, a discount shoe store and a nail salon. The nail salon always had its front door open and emitted such an overpowering reek of ethyl acetate that one whiff of it made Timothy gag. He had tried in the past to circle around and approach the strip mall from the back, but somehow that stench waited for him there. Lynette’s fingernails hadn’t smelled like that. He’d made sure to check each one before removing her hands.