Before Cain Strikes

by Joshua Corin

“I do read the papers, Tom Piper. The Galileo case was on the front page for days. Your name, right there, lead investigator. But not your picture.”

  “I don’t like having my picture taken.”

  “Who does? But I always wondered what you looked like.”

  “And now you know.”

  “Galileo was targeting you and you knew he was targeting you and you still went after him.”

  “It was my job,” replied Tom, shifting in his seat.

  They were nearing their station.

  “And I wanted to meet the man who did that. He sounded like a good man to me.”

  Again, Tom blushed. Fortunately, at that moment, the train squeaked to a stop, and so did this topic of conversation (he hoped). He and Penelope Sue trundled out into the icebox that was their subway station.

  “Do you ever worry about it?” she asked him.

  “Worry about what?”

  They approached the metal turnstiles.

  “You know,” she replied. “People reading all that Galileo stuff in the papers and thinking, well, he’s famous now, maybe I can be famous, too. Copycat killers. Does that happen in real life? Because it happens all the time in movies and—”

  He stopped.

  “Tom?”

  He smiled.

  “Tom?”

  He knew exactly who he was going to kill.

  Grover was in the shower when he heard the door to his hotel room open. He almost hadn’t heard it—he was warbling Sinatra while soaping his privates—but thought he’d heard something. When the hotel room door shut with a loud thump, he knew he hadn’t been mistaken and someone had, in fact, just illegally entered his room.

  Panicking, he searched the shower for a possible weapon. The bar of soap in his hands had been reduced to a misshapen nickel. Since he was bald as an onion, he didn’t shampoo. His razor was over on the bathroom sink, but it was electric, and its rotating blades were nothing more than slivers. The best he could do with it was give his intruder a close, personal shave. Damn it! Why had the FBI released him? Actual psychopaths knew who he was and where—because he’d told them! Psychopaths who were this very minute—

  The shower curtain was slid to the side. The two lean FBI agents who had accosted him so many days ago in the parking lot stood there, wearing the same cheap brown suits.

  “Your presence is requested downtown,” said the taller. Was he the one who’d called Grover a pedophile and shoved him into the backseat of the car? “You should get dressed first.”

  The other G-man just stood nearby, arms crossed, staring unimpressed at Grover’s dangling privates as the rapidly cooling shower water continued to jet, cascade and drool across the would-be journalist’s paunchy body.

  Having an audience inspired him. He dried off and dressed up in under five minutes. He failed to towel some of the soap off his testicles, though, and as he sat down in the backseat of the now-familiar unmarked sedan, he could feel his balls begin to itch. This was going to be a long day.

  Since traffic transformed the Long Island Expressway at this early hour into a fifty-mile-long parking lot, Grover used the downtime to reflect on Galileo’s Aim. Yesterday—Thursday, November 18—had been a very fruitful day in his literary life.

  With the manuscript now complete, he phoned several of the publishers in New York to whom he had sent his proposal months ago to update them on its status. Most of the editors he wanted to reach were in meetings, but one of them gave him the name and phone number of an agent to contact. So he contacted the agent. The agent was in a meeting. So he left a voice mail, and searched online for more publishers. He wanted an answer now. Current-events stories like this lost their interest value with every day that passed. So he compiled a list of smaller publishers that accepted email submissions and sent out query letters to them, emphasizing the block-buster potential of his exposé. His wasn’t the first book to be written about Galileo, of course—the market had been flooded with trashy tomes that had obviously been scribbled by some hack in under a week—but Galileo’s Aim was the only comprehensive examination of not only the many murders but also of the man himself. The audience was there for this book. Heck, he’d just joined a website with more than two thousand people who would love to have a copy in their home. Perhaps not on display, true, but purchased. Ka-ching.

  So far, no one had replied.

  He hoped this new business with the FBI, whatever it was, didn’t take too long. If he got out early enough, maybe he could stop by some of the smaller publishers. Person-to-person communication was always preferable, anyway. He had made sure to interview every person in his book face-to-face. He could have settled for a phone call, but no. He needed to see their expressions. He needed to feel the texture of their hands when they said hello. It made his book matter. The right publisher would see that, and together they would make a fortune. Together they would—

  Goddamn it! There went his ear again. Ever since Esme had Vulcan nerve-pinched him, the quality of hearing in his left ear had been diminished, and sometimes plain went silent, as it did just now. Should he have climbed into her bed like that? Maybe not. But her violent reaction had far outweighed any invasion of privacy he may have committed. If he sued her for even one of her many, many offenses, that bed she had been so eager to kick him out of would belong to him. The house would belong to him. He could turn it into a museum dedicated to the life and death of infamous serial killer Henry “Galileo” Booth.

  He banged against his ear with the palm of his hand, but it did little good. At least he didn’t hear that god-awful chiming sound in it, as he had last night when he’d tried to go to sleep. He knew from one of his favorite poems what his condition was called: “tintinnabulation.” He also knew that as soon as he returned to Florida, he was going to pay a visit to the highest-priced ENT specialist he could find, and send the bill care of Esme Stuart.

  It just proved the well-known fact that one should never meet well-known people. They were always liable to be a disappointment.

  Grover discreetly attempted to scratch his itchy balls with his right hand, but the agent who was driving almost immediately spotted him in the rearview. So Grover just sat there and stewed. By the time they pulled into the parking garage, he was ready to rip off his trousers, grab the nearest rake and scratch himself with that. The agents escorted Grover up to the requisite floor, and once again he was deposited in an interview room. No handcuffs this time, at least.

  One-way mirror be damned, he used the corner of the table to go to work, running his crotch up and down the pointed-edge wood. This was what he was doing when the door opened and Tom Piper walked into the room.

  “In some states, that’s considered rape,” said Tom.

  Grover looked down. It indeed looked like he was humping the table. He returned to the chair.

  “I got soap on my balls,” he replied.

  “Of course you did.”

  Tom had a series of nine snapshots in his hand. He spread them out on the table. Each picture depicted a decently dressed man or woman, posing as if for a work ID.

  “Who are they?”

  “These,” answered Tom, “are your targets.”

  “My what?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon, you’re going to take an elevator to the roof of an office building in downtown Melville, across from the Long Island Resident Agency of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Once there, you’re going to remove an unassembled sniper rifle from its case, assemble it, load it, aim it and take out these nine agents.”

  “Take out?”

  “Kill.”

  Grover blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “I’m just kidding.”

  Grover relaxed.

  Tom turned to the door. “Bring in the gun.”

  The door opened. A young woman brought in a long leather case. She placed it on the table, unfastened its clasps and lifted its top. Inside was an unassembled sniper rifle.

  “This is an M107 .50 sniper rifle. Do you recognize it,
Grover? It’s the same make and model your hero Henry Booth used to murder over fifty men, women and children.”

  With expert precision, the young woman assembled the rifle, each piece locking with a soft, strong click.

  “At 4:44 p.m., all nine of these agents will be in a conference room on the second floor of the Resident Agency for a briefing. That’s when you’re going to take your perch and fire off every one of these blanks at that window. They’ll take care of the rest.”

  Then Grover understood.

  “The Great Hunt.”

  Tom turned to the young woman. “Didn’t I tell you he was a smart boy?”

  She nodded, and handed the weapon to Grover.

  “Go ahead,” said Tom.

  “I…”

  “You what? Don’t know if you can do this? Well, I’ll tell you, Grover, here’s the thing—you are going to do this. You’re going to do this for three reasons. One, it’ll be a service to your country. Two, it’ll be a service to helping us catch a lot of really bad people. Three, you don’t have a choice. See, the moment you started writing about all this, posting those amusing notes on those message boards, you became part of the story. This is how your part ends.”

  “Are people going to think I actually…killed these…?”

  “Absolutely,” Tom replied. “We’re going to make sure everybody knows. We have to, for this to be believable. ‘Galileo Writer Snaps, Copycats His Subject, Nine Dead.’ Everyone in the country is going to know what you did. That’s how we’re going to get Cain. That’s how you’re going to help us get Cain. And then the truth will be revealed and you can go home to your Florida bungalow with a cleared reputation. Who knows? It may even help sell copies of your book. Now sit back and relax. Would you like a cup of coffee? Agent Ramirez here is going to show you how this rifle works.”

  22

  Esme wasn’t there for Grover’s latest interview. She’d overslept.

  Or rather, she hadn’t slept—and when she finally was able to close her eyes and approach some weak imitation of slumber, it was almost 7:00 a.m. And so she hadn’t heard the alarm, hadn’t even needed to slap the snooze button. She just slept and slept and then, around 10:00 a.m., her eyes finally crusted open. The alarm had long since tossed its hands in the air and shut up, so for a moment, she thought she’d actually awoken early. She could take her time, enjoy a long, hot shower, maybe stop for a casual bite to eat on the way to the city…

  And then her bleary vision cleared and she beheld the actual time and all thoughts of taking it slow went bye-bye. With a vociferous “Shit!” and an equally adamant “Fuck!” she bolted into the shower, nearly slipping on the bath mat and breaking her neck.

  Wonderful. It was going to be one of those days.

  One benefit of all her rushing about was that it helped to distract her mind off the fact that, less than twelve hours ago, she was essentially disowned by her husband and daughter. She had told them she wasn’t going to cut and run. Rafe got angry, which made Sophie cry, and so Esme kissed her little girl goodbye, promised to visit tomorrow, walked to her own car and drove back to the house that Rafe melodramatically no longer called a home (despite all the warm years they’d spent under its ceiling). How he could let six months counterbalance all those years was beyond her comprehension.

  Also beyond her comprehension: how she was going to explain her tardiness to Tom. But one thing at a time. First get dressed. She chose a sensible sweater-pants combination and matched them with a pair of soon-to-be-dead shoes (because the leaden sidewalks of New York City sapped the life out of even the most comfortable footwear). She grabbed a muffin from the fridge and almost made it out the door before bursting into tears.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  She needed music. She needed pop music. She needed the Spice Girls.

  She started up her Prius, checked her sob-smeared makeup in the rearview and on her iPod she dialed up Spice, the premiere album by the British purveyors of froth and “girl power.” Too bad there wasn’t a Doomed Spice. At that moment, she would have been Esme’s soul mate.

  Halfway to New York, she followed up the Spice Girls with pretty much the same group, the all-female quartet All Saints, and their self-titled debut album. Once she’d reached the George Washington Bridge, it was time for yet another album. Pop music evaporated so quickly. She cycled to the trio Sugababes and welcomed the next wave of studio-enhanced harmonies to buffer her from the twisting-down-the-drain realities of her life.

  As she spotted the Federal Building, looming like the emotionless twenty-first-century skyscraper it was, part of her wanted to just keep driving, follow the traffic through the Holland Tunnel, and take the Jersey Turn-pike down to Atlantic City. She had never been to Atlantic City. She heard the boardwalk was nice. It was at least valuable in Monopoly. Maybe if she resettled to Atlantic City, her life could become as simple as a board game. She’d get a job as a croupier, dealing out luck to eager tourists. At night she’d walk the old wooden planks by the Atlantic Ocean and— No, the Atlantic Ocean would just remind her of the lighthouse, and Rafe, and Sophie. Go west, young woman. Santa Fe or San Diego. Guam. Hong Kong. Dubai. Christ, had it been only ten days ago that she’d, tongue firmly in cheek, suggested during their session with Dr. Rosen that they move to Iceland?

  Ten days. Six months. Seven years. Not to mention the 2,037 active members belonging to Cain42’s website. She was drowning in a pool of mathematics.

  She arrived on the FBI’s high-altitude floor in time to run smack-dab into Grover Kirk, who was on his way out. He backed away, covering his left ear with a protective hand.

  “You get away from me, you kung fu bitch!”

  Esme looked to Tom, who was trailing behind the dickhead like a tall shadow. What was Grover doing here?

  “Let’s go, Grover,” said Tom. “Remember, 4:00 p.m. tomorrow. The case will be on the roof exactly where I told you.”

  Grover nodded, glared at Esme and shuffled past her to the elevators.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Tom.

  Tom motioned for her to follow him, and she did. He led her back to the conference room, still ornamented with all of those ghastly photographs. Almost three-quarters of them, though, now had victims identified, the locations highlighted and the murderers’ user names labeled. Although it was, as she’d told Mineola, reactive rather than proactive, it remained a tremendous achievement. These poor men and women were close to receiving the justice for the lives that had been so brutally stolen.

  Tom closed the door, giving them some privacy. It was a visual echo of her brief heart-to-heart with Karl Ziegler, and it left her feeling even more unsettled.

  “What’s going on?” she repeated.

  Tom told her. It didn’t take very long. She stood there, silently processing the information, nodding now and then, and out of respect to this man, whom she loved like a father, she waited until he was finished before she opened her mouth.

  “Are you fucking nuts?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re giving that man a rifle?”

  “This can’t be done without him. You knew that yesterday.”

  But Esme couldn’t shake the image of Grover, who had invaded Sophie’s life at the museum, who had slimed into bed with her, holding a sniper rifle. It roused bile to gurgle up her esophagus. “There has to be a better way than this.”

  “This needs to be done this weekend. We had to have a plan in place and you—”

  “This is bullshit,” she replied, and began to pace.

  “It’s a good plan.”

  “It’s lunacy.”

  Tom shrugged. “You can’t be objective.”

  “Next you’re going to tell me I should go home.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  Esme wheeled to face him, her face burning with a week’s worth of fury. She wanted to take a swing at the man. Maybe she should go home? No matter what they had been through, he had never treated her as if she were expendable—un
til now. Maybe she should go home? And where, pray tell, was that, Tom, huh? Where was home? She wanted to punch him and kick him and take him down but she couldn’t see him through her tears and she couldn’t raise her arms because what little strength was left in her sleep-deprived, joy-deprived, love-deprived body seemed to vanish away and she was left with nothing. And that was the word that summed her up, that was her destination of all these weeks and months and years—nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Sometime after, she realized Tom was hugging her to his chest and her tears were staining wet shadows across the shoulder of his chamois shirt. She heard sobbing and wondered what poor woman could be making those sounds, so reminiscent of…what? P. J. Hammond, after he’d murdered his son. That’s where she’d last heard these sounds, and here they were again, in of all places this emotionless twenty-first-century skyscraper. How odd.

  And now she was sitting in a chair, with a glass of water in front of her. When had that happened? Had she asked for some water? She was thirsty, actually, and sipped from the glass. Her hands were trembling. She watched them vibrate in the air. She thought about the fish in the moonlight. She thought about Sophie.

  But she looked around the room, and Sophie wasn’t there. Only Tom. Always Tom.

  “Esmeralda,” he said, “talk to me.”

  And she did.

  A bruised and battered cloud formation hovered overhead, and left a dreary pall over Long Island. But that didn’t change the fact that it was still Saturday, and so the playground at McCoy Park in Oyster Bay, Long Island, was bustling with the noise of hyperactive children sliding down the slides, swinging on the swings and Tarzan-ing across the jungle gyms. On the outskirts of the playground sat their vigilant parents and/or nannies. The Weather Channel meteorologists had predicted a cold rain by 4:00 p.m., and many of the adults were keeping one eye on their raucous offspring and the other on the time. It was now 4:06 p.m. Once the promised storm arrived, they’d be provided with the perfect excuse to go home, but for now, it was wait and watch and wait.

  Esme wasn’t with the other adults. Esme was with her daughter, and they were bouncing up and down on the seesaw.