Before Cain Strikes

by Joshua Corin

  “You tell me.”

  “I…”

  “You seem to have forgotten an essential fact.”

  “And what’s that, Karl?”

  “You’re no longer in the Bureau. You’re a consultant. You might think of yourself as some quasi-agent, but in reality, you belong on the sidelines and that’s where you yourself chose to be. But if you regret that decision…if you want to play, then you need to be wearing a uniform again. Otherwise, go home.”

  “Is that an ultimatum?”

  “No. Believe it or not, it’s advice. And I’ve a feeling I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Split priorities keep you from contributing all that you can. Trust me, I know.”

  “Why, Karl…are you opening up to me?”

  “You’re incorrigible.” He shook his head and opened the door. “Go enact this countermove of yours.”

  He walked away.

  “What was that about?” asked Tom.

  Esme shrugged, implying ignorance, which was a lie. She knew exactly what that was about, and worse, she knew that Karl Ziegler was absolutely right. By having one foot at home and one foot in the Bureau, she didn’t belong to both. She belonged to neither. In theory, consulting had sounded like the perfect compromise. In practice, it had eroded her family and diminished her capacity in the field. It was what Rafe had been saying all along.

  She had to make a choice.

  “So,” said Tom, “how about some overpriced New York takeout?”

  “I…can’t,” she replied. “I told Rafe I’d be home.”

  “So call him again.”

  She hesitated, then thought of Sophie, and shook her head. “I need to be there.”

  She could see the disappointment in Tom’s face, and she knew there was no way she could make him understand. She had tried so many times in the past. That was one of the reasons she’d left the Bureau in the first place, so many years ago.

  “Are you sure? I can call Penelope Sue. We could get a quick bite across the street. I know she’d love to meet you.”

  “I’m sorry, Tom. I can’t. I’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll put together what we need to do for this weekend.”

  “We can’t wait until tomorrow.”

  She knew.

  “We’ll have to start without you.”

  She knew.

  “Okay,” he said. “Get home safe.”

  He touched her on her shoulder and walked away.

  Oh, my God—Sophie loved eating out. Even though she never knew what to order, the food was always better. Now that she could read (and order for herself), she took her time. Her parents never seemed to mind. They always told her that she could order whatever she wanted (as long as it was off the children’s menu).

  Tonight, at Michelangelo’s, she ordered spaghetti and meatballs. It was always a reliable choice, although it had taken her the better part of fifteen minutes to decide. Even after voicing her order to the waitress, a smiley redhead in a tuxedo who had a cool diamond stud in her right nostril, Sophie wanted to keep the menu and continue to read and read and read. Some of it was in Italian and some of it was in English, and if she studied it enough, she could maybe remember what the Italian meant…

  …but she handed in the menu without complaint. She was a good girl. And besides, she didn’t want to upset the peace. This was the first time they had all been together in days, and it was wonderful.

  Too bad Grandpa Les couldn’t come. Something about acid reflex. It probably was an old person’s disease, like the ones they have on TV with the people on the beach. Poor Grandpa Les. Sophie hoped he felt better really soon so he could teach her some more card tricks.

  “Sophie bear, do you want some bread?”

  “Sure, Daddy.”

  He handed her the basket and she picked out one of the warm fresh-baked rolls. Why couldn’t they find rolls like this at Stop & Shop? She’d eat them all day. But maybe if she had rolls like this every day, they wouldn’t be as special. Life was complicated.

  Michelangelo’s was by the water, not too far from the lighthouse. Although the weather was too cold for them to eat out on the patio, one whole wall of the restaurant was made of glass so everyone could look out at the ocean, so dark underneath the moon, as if God tipped over a giant bottle of black ink and it ran, ran, ran.

  “Mommy?”

  “Yes, Sophie?”

  “How do fish see in the dark?”

  Her mom frowned and scratched at her chin. “I don’t know. Maybe Daddy knows.”

  “Daddy, how do fish see in the dark?”

  “Fish?” He chewed a hunk of his roll and washed it down with some ice water. “I think it has something to do with, uh…”

  Sophie waited expectantly. Both of her parents were very smart.

  While she waited, she looked around the restaurant. The dominant color was red, which was logical since this was an Italian restaurant and Italian restaurants used a lot of tomatoes and tomatoes were red (except in the South, where, according to her friend Holly, the tomatoes were green). If some of the tomato sauce stained the walls, no one would notice because they were already red. Very sensible. Each of the tables had a small white candle at their center that flickered inside a glass cylinder. Sophie wondered if the cylinder in the center of her table was hot from the flame, and was tempted to investigate with her fingertips. Everyone who worked here wore tuxedos, even the women, which was funny. Sophie tried to imagine herself in a tuxedo. How silly. The owners probably were too lazy to buy different outfits for the men and the women. Did the cooks in the back wear tuxedos, too? That would have been even sillier.

  “I think, uh,” her father said, “I think at night fish rely more on, uh, vibrations.”

  “Vibrations?” echoed Sophie.

  “So they don’t poke one another!” Esme explained, and then proceeded to poke-poke-poke Sophie in her ticklish spot to the left of her belly button. She laughed and laughed—she couldn’t control herself! Being tickled made her lose complete control of her body. Her legs kicked up and her arms tried to push away her mother’s single index finger but still that single finger jumped up and down Sophie’s belly and still she laughed and laughed.

  The arrival of the salads ended the torture. Sophie still felt giggly, but that soon passed as she gobbled down her lettuce and tomatoes and cucumbers and olives, all drenched in tangy Italian dressing. She didn’t eat her radishes. She ostracized them to the side of her bowl. Not even tangy Italian dressing could make radishes taste good.

  Next came the entrées. Her spaghetti and meatballs was steaming, and she waited a few minutes for it to cool down. It smelled perfect. There were two meatballs the size of Ping-Pong balls and a steep hill of spaghetti, all as drenched in tomato sauce as her salad was in dressing. Dressing and sauce were kind of like frosting, Sophie decided.

  Both of her parents ordered the lasagna. They, too, waited a little bit before eating, but instead of sipping water, they sipped wine. Sophie tried wine once, on New Year’s Eve. It tasted like grapes mixed with paint thinner, and the only reason she knew what paint thinner tasted like was because—

  “Sophie?”

  She looked up at her father. While she was daydreaming, he apparently had asked her a question. “Huh?”

  “I said, are you excited about Thanksgiving break?”

  She nodded. Thanksgiving break started next Wednesday and lasted all the way until Monday. On Tuesday, they were having a Thanksgiving parade at her school. She wasn’t going to dress up—that was so kindergarten—but she was looking forward to the movie. Every year before Thanksgiving break, all the classes gathered in the auditorium and watched a movie projected on a big screen. Last year it had been Pocahontas. What would this year’s movie be?

  Her meal cooled to a nonpainful level, Sophie dug in, and vacuumed up her spaghetti. She knew she was supposed to wrap it around her fork and eat it like a lady, but that took too long. She didn’t want it to get cold. The heat was part of what
made it so good!

  “Slow down, Sophie. You’ll get heartburn like Grandpa.”

  “I thought he had acid reflex.”

  “Acid reflux,” her father corrected. “And that’s the same thing.”

  “So acid is burning his heart?”

  “Kind of. But it just hurts for a little while.”

  Poor Grandpa.

  After they were all finished, her mom asked if she had any room for dessert. Sophie very much wanted to try the ice cream—she’d seen another little girl eating it when they’d first arrived at the restaurant—but she was, tragically, too full. She didn’t even finish her second meatball. Just looking at it made her throat taste all sour and gross.

  So they walked back to Dad’s car. Both her mom and her dad had the same type of car. It was a hybrid. That meant it ran on gas and electricity. But she’d learned in class that all cars needed gas and electricity. Some things, she noted, were just confusing on purpose.

  A bigger mystery, though, was where they were headed. Would she be spending the night again at the lighthouse? She really loved it there. Going to sleep with the sound of the waves in the background was so peaceful. She imagined her blanket was a seashell and she was inside and she was being rocked gently by the currents. Plus Mr. and Mrs. Worth were very friendly. Mrs. Worth let her eat all the cookies she wanted, and Mr. Worth said he needed her help repairing the outdoor shingles. How could she go home when he needed her help? Someone had to hold the nails while he hammered those new shingles beside the lighthouse windows. And what if their grandson Billy came to visit? Thanksgiving was coming up, after all.

  However, if they were going home, she could sleep again in her bed, and she missed some of the dolls she’d neglected to bring with her, and she knew at least some of them missed her, too. The Amazon Queen probably was doing okay, but the others were very sensitive. Staying at the lighthouse was like a vacation, and she knew all vacations came to an end.

  Her father braked at the stoplight. If he continued straight, that meant the lighthouse. If he took a left, that meant home. Which would it be?

  The stoplight turned green.

  He continued straight.

  The lighthouse it was!

  “Where are you going?” Mom asked him.

  “We’re going to the lighthouse,” explained Sophie.

  “Rafe, why—”

  “You want to discuss this now?” he asked, obviously indicating their backseat passenger. “Do you?”

  “Were we going to discuss it ever?”

  “We should have moved out of that house six months ago. After what happened there? We should have moved out of that house the next day. But we didn’t. We pretended that we were above it all, that we weren’t going to be affected, but we all know now that was crap.”

  Sophie’s eyes widened. Dad said crap!

  “If we’re going to move forward,” he said. “The first thing we need to do is move. I’ve already started looking at a few properties. I’ve been waiting for you to return from the city to show you and Sophie.”

  Wait. Move? What? Sophie leaned forward. This was a very important conversation.

  “We can afford a nicer place,” he said. “Maybe with a sunroom. A library for all our books in the basement. An office for you. A few more bedrooms for, you know, the future. Because that’s what I’m talking about. The future. Our future. If you want to be a part of it, Esme.”

  They pulled up to the lighthouse.

  He turned to her.

  Sophie looked to her, as well.

  They both waited for an answer, as if it were another entrée in their meal, as if it needed to cool down before it could be sampled. They waited and they waited and then Esme opened her mouth, and delivered.

  21

  The first step, Tom realized, was deciding who to kill.

  But he couldn’t decide.

  He stared at the phone inside the cubicle Karl Ziegler had assigned him. Esme was just seven digits away. This was her kind of puzzle. He picked up the receiver…and put it down. No, Esme had been emphatic. He wasn’t going to pester her. She wasn’t a member of his task force anymore. There wasn’t even a task force anymore. Galileo had seen to that.

  When she and Rafe first became serious, Tom had pestered her. Sometimes he had been downright possessive. But at the time she had been on the task force. She was his employee. She was a valuable member of the team and everyone depended on her. Perhaps if she’d been with Rafe earlier, it would have been different, but they’d become accustomed to her being available 24/7 and when that flexibility, that status quo, suddenly changed…

  Tom sometimes wondered if his aggressive behavior during those months had, in fact, pushed Esme even closer toward Rafe. It was classic, in a way. Here he was, her father figure, essentially telling her not to date, and so of course her instinct would be to run into her lover’s arms. For all Tom knew, his stubborn resistance was the single greatest motivator for Esme marrying that schmuck. Rafe Stuart was the love of her life? Please. She could do so much better. She deserved so much better. But instead of helping her realize that, Tom just stood in her way.

  But he was digressing. He needed to work this plan. He needed to figure out who Grover Kirk was going to “kill” for the Great Hunt. And with what weapon. And when. And where. It needed to be a viable scenario, something that fit in with who Grover was. Pretending that he suddenly went on a knifing spree wouldn’t sell.

  Tom glanced again at the phone, then at the clock: 9:24 p.m.

  Fuck it. He’d tackle this tomorrow. If Esme came in, great. If not, so be it.

  He phoned Penelope Sue and told her he was on his way home. She was, predictably, still out, exploring the Upper West Side. They agreed to meet up at a brightly lit diner on Broadway and Ninety-ninth—if only because that was a landmark in front of her while they were on the phone.

  By 10:00 p.m., they were in a corner booth, sharing a six-dollar plate of nachos. Every now and then, the wind smacked against the windowpane beside them, shaking it slightly. Penelope Sue held her palm to the glass to feel the vibrations. She closed her eyes and imagined she was a fish and the wind was the waves in the sea.

  “I love this city,” she said.

  “Want to live here?”

  She opened her eyes. “Hell, no. I love nachos but I wouldn’t want to eat them every day of the week.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “Okay, man of a thousand grunts, why don’t you like New York?”

  “I never said I didn’t like it.” He picked at the nachos, dragging a line of cheese from one end of the plate to the other. “I just prefer where we’re from.”

  “Even though you’ve been to all fifty states…”

  “I’ve never been to Hawaii.”

  “You went to Alaska and you didn’t go to Hawaii? What kind of a tourist are you?”

  “Alaska wasn’t a vacation,” he replied, and left it at that.

  Their main courses arrived—a pair of burgers. Penelope Sue dove into hers, but Tom barely lifted a finger. Finally, she asked him what was wrong.

  “Nothing.” He picked up his burger and took a bite. And put it back down.

  “Tom Piper, look at me.”

  He looked at her.

  “You tell me what’s wrong or so help me you’re sleeping on the floor tonight.”

  “It’s my hotel room.”

  “You think that makes a difference to me?”

  He knew it made no difference to her. This was a woman who ran her own physical therapy business, dealing every day with clients whose emotional states ranged from depressed to suicidal, not to mention the holier-than-thou doctors she had to put up with day in and day out. This was a woman who sometimes wore a Starfleet uniform to the grocery store. No, the fact that the hotel room was under his name made no difference to her.

  And he couldn’t help but grin.

  She smiled back at him. “Okay, then. Now that your wall’s down, tell me what’s wrong. Is it this c
ase?”

  “No. Maybe.”

  “Are you afraid of change?”

  His eyes found hers. What made her say that?

  “When I get a new client, a car accident victim or someone recovering from a stroke, you know what the first thing I ask them is? Do you remember the first thing I asked you?”

  He thought. Those first few weeks of recovery were such a blur. His only real memories of that time were of attending the funerals of Galileo’s victims, and of being unable to breathe without the aid of a respirator. He had never felt so old, or so alone. And then she had come into his life.

  “You asked me what scared me the most,” he said.

  “That’s right. Do you remember what you answered?”

  He didn’t. “Do you?”

  “You don’t remember what you’re most scared of?”

  “Change?”

  Once again, the wind shivered the glass. She didn’t feel it with her palm this time. Her attention belonged to Tom.

  “No,” she replied. “Failure.”

  Ah, yes. Failure.

  “But that’s all fear of change is, anyway. Failing to prevent the inevitable. Failing to beat the clock. The clock always wins, Tom. The trick is to not be alone when it happens.”

  She clasped his hand in hers.

  They finished their meal with innocuous chatter about the weather (she was praying for snow) and about the upcoming holiday (deep-fried turkey, ahoy!), and by the time it came to pay the bill, they both were a little sleepy. To keep themselves from dozing off on the train, they played a game of I Spy.

  “I Spy with my little eye…”

  “Your adorable little eye…”

  Tom blushed. “Will you stop that?”

  The train, sparsely populated on this Thursday evening, careered southward. At the Forty-second Street stop, the few passengers on the car with them got off. They were alone. The train recommenced its rickety journey.

  “Did I ever tell you,” said Penelope Sue, “that I knew who you were before we met?”

  “No, you most definitely did not.”

  She replied with a smirk.

  “How did you know who I was?”