Before Cain Strikes

by Joshua Corin

  “Then who did?” asked Sheriff Fallon.

  Because whoever had selected them was their prime suspect.

  P.J. pointed a finger at his laptop computer, which was plugged into a cable modem. “It did.”

  Sheriff Fallon blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “It would take me too much time to sift through everyone who’s a subscriber. Like I said, we’re talking over a thousand people. They don’t make a hat that big, do they? Can you imagine a hat that big? Can you imagine a head big enough to wear a hat that big?”

  “So you use a computer program,” said Esme.

  “Computers run the world these days,” P.J. replied. “We just turn them on and off.”

  “Can you demonstrate this program for us?”

  P.J. shrugged and double-clicked an icon. A small window appeared. It listed a number—1,024—and next to that number was a radio button that read Select.

  “All I do is press this button,” he said. “Except the name and contact information it’s going to select now won’t be the Weiners. It chooses at random from the 1,024 names in the system. I mean, the odds of it choosing the Weiners again—ever—would be…”

  “One in 1,024?”

  P.J. nodded. “Not astronomical, but high.”

  “Click the button,” said Esme.

  He did.

  Another window popped up with a name and contact information.

  Todd Weiner, 18 Value Street.

  “Huh,” murmured P.J. “Well, like I said, the odds weren’t astronomical. That’s kind of cool, actually. Todd Weiner must be one lucky guy. Except for, you know, that whole house-burning-down thing.”

  “Click it again, P.J.,” Esme said, so P.J. did.

  Todd Weiner, 18 Value Street.

  This time, P.J.’s sunny composure dimmed a bit. He stared in confusion at his laptop screen. Then he clicked the radio button again, and again, and again.

  “Where did you get this software from, sir?”

  “I downloaded it from this business website. Lots of people use it.” His confidence was mushing into a stammer. “I’ve been using it for years and have never had a problem!”

  Which left, as Esme saw it, two options: someone had tampered with his software or P. J. Hammond was a lying sack of shit.

  Sheriff Fallon rose to his feet. “Sir, I think you’re going to need to come with us.”

  The shop door jangled open. All heads turned and saw two men and one woman, all in police browns, saunter in. The woman had a sheriff’s badge and a name tag that read Shuster.

  “Afternoon, Mike,” she said.

  “Hey, there, Betsy. I know I had one of my guys call your office to give you the heads-up that we were going to be in your neck of the woods. I hope they didn’t tell you we needed an escort.”

  “Mike, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  He stepped away from the desk and followed Betsy Shuster outside. Her two deputies remained inside, appearing uncomfortable. Something was very wrong. Esme glanced over at P.J., who had become even grayer.

  Sheriff Fallon returned.

  “Let’s go,” he said to Esme.

  “What’s going on?”

  He looked past her at P.J. “Thank you for your time.”

  By the looks of it, P.J. was as befuddled as Esme. She wanted to shout out, Wait, wait, but Fallon was reaching for her. He was eager to leave right now. And since she was only here at all as a courtesy, she really didn’t have a choice.

  That said, once they returned to his car…

  “What the fuck was that!”

  He exhaled a weighty sigh and stared out the windshield at Betsy Shuster and her deputies, who were making their way to the vet clinic several doors down.

  “Yesterday a child was abducted here. About ten minutes ago, the police received an anonymous email from the abductor. He said that if the Lynette Robinson investigation didn’t stop immediately, he was going to kill the child. To prove his veracity, he attached a very, very recent photograph of the baby’s face. So get comfortable. We’re heading home.”

  7

  When Esme relayed the news to Rafe, she was certain he was going to slam another pot against a wall. She wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. She felt like smashing a few pieces of cookware herself.

  Sheriff Fallon had notified the state police in Albany of the situation. They were conferring about the matter. But Esme wasn’t sure what they felt they could do. She wasn’t sure what anyone could do. In one move, this psychopath had checkmated them.

  If they’d had a stronger case, if they’d had more information, they might have been able to flank him, avenging Lynette Robinson’s murder while simultaneously keeping him from harming little Marcy Harper. But they’d failed. She had failed. Rafe had imbued all this trust in her—for the first time—and she had monumentally fallen on her face. If only she’d had more time…

  P. J. Hammond obviously remained the prime suspect. In truth, he remained the only suspect. Had P.J. sent the anonymous email to the Ulster County police? It was possible. Sheriff Betsy Shuster was attempting to get a warrant to sift through his computer. Since the abduction had taken place so close to his place of business, and since time was so essential…

  But Esme knew that no judge, not even a provincial saint, would sign such a warrant, not even in antiprivacy post-9/11 America. The FBI possibly could have pushed the warrant through, and she was tempted to call the local office, but until the crime crossed state lines, this remained out of their jurisdiction. She could plant a tip that Baby Marcy had been seen in Vermont…

  No.

  Tomorrow, Sheriff Fallon would have to break the news to Lynette’s family. Better they find out from him than from a leak in the department. She felt sorry for him. This was his land and an invader had murdered one of the citizens he’d sworn to protect and now that bastard was going to get away with it. There would never be justice. There would never be closure.

  Now it was Saturday night. Rafe lay beside her in his parents’ bed. Even though his back was to her, she could tell he was awake. She wanted to say something. She wanted to make him feel better. But how could she, when she was in part to blame for his restlessness? And so she stared at the shape of her husband’s back, barely visible in the darkness of the room, barely more than the shadow of a shadow.

  She dreamed about Galileo.

  She was in her house back in Oyster Bay, on the second floor, in the hallway. All of the doors—to her bedroom, to Sophie’s bedroom, to the bathroom—were shut. Esme tried her daughter’s door first, but there was no knob. The door was really just an indented part of the wall. Even the flowery wallpaper was beginning to seep across the doors, as if its decorated ivy were real. She raised a hand to touch the design and could feel the veiny texture of the ivy. The width of the curly green stalks was oscillating, almost as if…almost as if the ivy were breathing. Almost as if it were alive. And hungry. Then the green veins bent toward her face and slowly extended, wrapping around her wrists, her forearms, her biceps. She called out for Rafe. She called out for Sophie. She called out for Tom. Her bedroom door at the end of the hallway opened. Henry Booth—Galileo—stood there. He was naked. In the center of his hairless, muscular chest was a peephole. Esme could see through it to the other side. Rafe and Sophie were on that other side, cowering, so small. Panicking now, Esme looked back at the door to her daughter’s room and her arms were no longer being held by veins of ivy but by a pair of hands, and Esme knew they were Lynette’s hands and Esme knew they were angry and would never let her go, and Galileo took a step toward her now and his hands weren’t hands at all but eels, eels with jaws and teeth, snapping jaws, and he held them out to her and the jaws snapped as they approached, snapped, snapped, and soon they would be at her left ear, snap, and soon they would be at her left eyeball, snap, and then her—

  She awoke in her own sweat. The bedroom was ablaze with early-morning sunlight. She checked her iPod. It was 6:58 a.m.
Apparently, this weekend she was destined to undersleep. Great. At least Rafe, from the sound of it, had finally achieved some semblance of shut-eye. She curled her body around his, careful not to disturb his rhythmic snoring, and forced herself back into dreamland, all the while fearful of what might come.

  They woke up together around 10:00 a.m., all warm and toasty under the wool blanket. The mesh of their body-to-body heat didn’t hurt, either. They snuggled.

  At that moment both Esme and Rafe were thinking about the same thing, and both wondering what the other was thinking about. It hadn’t always been this awkward, surely, but they hadn’t had sex in more than half a year. They knew each other’s bodies as well as any two people could but at that moment, in that bed, they might as well have been desperate strangers.

  The first, obvious step was that they needed to face each other, and since Esme currently had her face nuzzled against Rafe’s nape, that meant the pressure was on him. And he knew it. His eyes were open but he wasn’t looking at anything but what the next few minutes could become. And all the while he heard the tick-tick-tick of Dr. Rosen’s two weeks.

  Her hands were near his paunch. How easy it would be to simply guide them a few inches south. He would enjoy that. She would enjoy that. She always said she enjoyed that. She had always been honest with him. She was a good person. He’d married a good person. Why did he always let all of this extraneous bullshit get in the way? Hell, why was he ruminating about his wife, who was lying there right beside him, instead of making love to her? Why not just—

  “I’m going to put on some coffee,” she said, and he heard her walk away.

  Way to go, Hamlet, he mused. Overanalyzing has won you yet again. He rolled over and buried his face in her pillow. He was his own cold shower. Shortly thereafter, he roused himself out of bed and joined Esme in the kitchen for some Sunday morning joe. Had Lester subscribed to the newspaper, they could have at least spent those few minutes perusing the headlines, trading entertainment section for sports section, but the old man had, of course, since relocating to Oyster Bay, let his subscription lapse, and so the only news Rafe and Esme had to occupy them was their own.

  So they sipped in silence.

  When they were through, Esme called home. She spoke to Sophie for a few minutes, assured her they would be back soon, and yes, she would be there tomorrow to chaperone the trip to the science museum. Then she handed the phone to Rafe.

  “Hi, cupcake.”

  “Hi, Daddy!”

  Esme started packing.

  “So what did you and Grandpa Les do yesterday?”

  “We built a snowman and it was tall except he added two pieces of snow to the front so it became a snow-woman.” Sophie giggled. Her father didn’t. “I miss you, Daddy.”

  “I miss you, too, cupcake. Very much. Do you have any homework to do for tomorrow?”

  “Just some math. But I’m waiting until you come home because I know you like to help me with my math.”

  He smiled. “I think you waited because you don’t want to do it.”

  “I hate math. It’s boring.”

  “I know. But sometimes we have to do things we don’t like so we can do the things we like to do.”

  “Like watch TV after my bedtime?”

  “Maybe,” he replied. “We’ll see. Put your grandpa on the phone, okay? I love you ten times infinity.”

  “I love you ten times one hundred plus infinity and twelve!”

  Once Lester got on the phone, Rafe informed him when they expected to be home. Lester chided him about the condition of his old house and warned him to make sure everything was left in good working order and that the faucets were still dripping and the windows were all shut, etc. Finally, Rafe was able to get to the goodbyes.

  It was shortly after eleven.

  Both Rafe and Esme were hungry for brunch, so they stopped at a twenty-four-hour diner that was on the way to downtown. Rafe didn’t need to look at a menu. As a teenager, he must have eaten at this place, well, ten times one hundred plus infinity and twelve. The food was cheap and the service was quick. This was a no-nonsense establishment and, even as a teen, Rafe had been a no-nonsense type of guy. The kind who’s too indecisive to get laid by his own wife, he noted, and paid for the check with a credit card.

  Their next stop was the Robinson house.

  They were still receiving visitors, of course. Many relatives had arrived from out of town to pay their respects. Misery may have loved company, but it was company which kept misery at bay.

  Lynette’s mother hugged Rafe.

  “She was always very fond of you,” the woman said.

  And Rafe shattered into a million pieces.

  Once he’d regained his composure in the bathroom, which took some doing, he found Esme in the corner of the den, noshing on an Asiago bagel. She had never been one for mingling. Back in Oyster Bay, he had to push her to get involved in local civic activities. For all of her toughness and acumen, his wife could be astonishingly shy.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  She finished her bagel in two bites and they headed outside to the Prius. Around them trickled the sound of melting snow. It had to be in the low fifties already, and probably was going to climb half a dozen digits more by midday. The highway would be clear of ice and Rafe wondered if they might even get to spend some of the drive with the windows down.

  He checked his mirrors and shifted into Drive. He was eager to get the hell out of here.

  “Can we stop at the station before we go? I want to say goodbye to Sheriff Fallon.”

  So instead of taking a left, toward the interstate, they took a right and pulled into the now-familiar parking lot, crowded if only because of the church across the street.

  “Want me to stay in the car?” he inquired.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  They locked the car and mounted the steps to the weather-beaten brick-and-cement building, and were halfway across the front hall, which also led to the county’s many other offices, but neither of them spotted the man by the door until he called out her name.

  “Hello, Esmeralda,” said Tom.

  “But I thought…” said Esme.

  “So did I,” Tom replied. “And then my girlfriend slapped me upside the head for being a fool and got me on the next flight here.”

  “I can’t wait to meet her.”

  “She can’t wait to meet you.”

  Rafe didn’t want to meet any of them. He stood off to the side while his wife and her erstwhile Svengali reconnected. No, he was not a fan of Tom Piper, special agent extraordinaire, still wearing that ancient black leather jacket even though there was no way he rode a motorcycle here, not in his condition, and especially not since his motorcycle was, due to a swindle, busy collecting dust in their garage in Oyster Bay. It had been Rafe’s small victory and it had done very little to diminish the personal disdain he felt for this ridiculous John Wayne wannabe.

  “Too bad you came all this way for nothing,” said Rafe.

  Tom and Esme looked at him.

  “Oh, didn’t you tell him, Esme? The investigation’s been closed.”

  Esme sighed. “The unsub sent an untraceable email demanding the investigation be closed or he would murder a kidnapped infant named Marcy Harper.”

  “Are we sure he can make good on his claim?” asked Tom. “And that the email is untraceable?”

  “He attached a jpeg to the email. And the address it was sent from is a bunch of nonsense.”

  Tom frowned.

  “Well, it was good seeing you, Tom!” Rafe held out his hand. “Have a safe trip back home.”

  “Excuse me,” Esme said to Tom, and led her husband several yards away where the two of them, well, traded words.

  “Esme, there’s no reason to waste his time, is there?”

  “What is it with you? Whenever Tom comes around, you suddenly turn into a two-year-old brat.”

  “Me? I’m just trying to do what’s best for everyone.”
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br />   “What about Lynette? What about what’s best for her?”

  “There is no best for her. Some unconscionable prick saw to that.”

  “And I’d think you’d want that prick brought to justice.”

  “Of course I do, Esme, but that ship’s sailed and we both know that. You couldn’t catch him in time.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “After the way you treated the poor girl, I’d think you’d put aside your pigheadedness and consider anyone’s help, even Tom’s, but I guess I underestimated how much of a horse’s ass you really were!”

  “Call it whatever you’d like, Esme. I call it disrespect.”

  “You’re a quitter.”

  Rafe blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “The going got tough here and so you’re running back home. Our marriage got tough so you threw in the towel.”

  “I’m the one who suggested we see a counselor!”

  “You’d made up your mind about us months ago. And once your mind was made up, the best marriage counselor in the world couldn’t have put us back together. Apparently, you were like this back in high school so how could I expect you to be any different today?”

  “What could I have done differently back then? Huh? I gave Lynette everything—”

  “—that you were prepared to give. But sometimes, Rafe, sometimes you just got to go beyond that. Sometimes you have to push yourself, rather than other people.”

  “The investigation is closed!”

  “Those are his rules, Rafe. I don’t play by his rules.”

  He stared at her. She stared back at him.

  Then he started for the front entrance.

  “Where are you going?” she called.

  “To get your stuff out of the car. If you’re staying, you’re staying. Our daughter needs at least one of her parents at home. Remember her? Our daughter.”

  “Of course I do, Rafe. She’s your favorite excuse.”

  Rafe’s left hand tightened on his keys. The iron edges bit into the soft flesh of his palm.

  It took all of two minutes for him to heft Esme’s suitcase out of the trunk, carry it back into the county building and set it with exaggerated gentleness on the thick oak floor. Then he looked up at Tom, who was standing there, stoic as a stone, as always.