by Joshua Corin
A student raised her hand.
“Yes?”
“How do you spell ‘Hannibal’?”
When Amy Lieb laughed, which she did with inordinate frequency, she sounded very much like a panting dog. Oftentimes when Amy had launched into one of these laughing fits, Esme felt the need to take a step back, lest she be splashed with hot air and germs. So even though she was on the phone, even though she was in her home and Amy was miles away, ensconced in hers, as soon as that breathy canine laughter began, Esme instinctively moved away from her phone receiver.
“I’m sorry,” Amy said finally, once her breathing had simmered down, “it’s just that, well, you can’t be serious.”
“I am very serious. At the very least, Amy, you need to remove the Unity for a Better Tomorrow from the fundraiser’s list of sponsors.”
“Because—and let me make sure I understand you—because this serial killer specifically targets cities where—”
“Yes.”
“Esme, honey, have you eaten today?”
Esme blinked. “What?”
“Let me bring over a casserole. I’ll have Lupe whip something up. She’s a wonder with noodles. How do you feel about scrod?”
Esme clenched her teeth. She was lying on the sofa, ice packs numbing both sides of her slowly-mending abdominal wound. She still felt pain, though, because no amount of ice or Tylenol or even Percocet could combat the anguish of talking to a fucking wall.
“Amy, listen. Even if you think I’m wrong, even if it’s inconvenient, wouldn’t you rather err on the side of caution? Galileo is still out there.”
“Oh, honey, I know he is. Do you have a pen handy? I used to see this shrink, Dr. Fleishman, back when I had that episode with my gardener, and he worked miracles for my post-traumatic stress. He’s board certified.”
Esme did have a pen handy, and she was doodling an unflattering caricature of Amy Lieb on the back of one of her Sudoku books. How could anyone be so willfully naive? Was the stereotype accurate? Was enough exposure to suburban life the equivalent of a lobotomy?
“Anyway, I hate to cut and run, but the caterer’s on the other line. Don’t ever try and order lobster bisque in April. Ta!”
Ta.
Before moving to the next person on her list—the mayor—Esme needed a few minutes to calm down. It wouldn’t do to vent her frustration with Amy Lieb at Mayor Connors. She knew the mayor a little, more from social functions at the college than anything else. He was a cleavage-watcher, but he also seemed to have the best interests of the community at heart. She would appeal to his sense of duty—but first, she needed to tranquilize herself with some TV. And if only Tom Piper would return any of her messages, she wouldn’t be feeling like she was fighting this battle alone.
She clicked on the remote and watched Fox’s talking heads gab about oil and about a minute later read along the bottom of the screen, embedded in the nonstop crawl of succinct ledes, these words: Journalist involved in Galileo case found dead near home.
For Tom Piper, the optimal dialectic wasn’t Fear-Desire but Win-Lose, and he knew exactly where this case fit on that paradigm. But that didn’t stop AD Trumbull, with whom he was on a conference call along with several other higher-ups, from reminding him.
“It’s disgraceful,” said Trumbull, and then coughed for a minute. It was an open secret that the old man had lung cancer, but if a career employee for the United States government wanted to die in his office, so be it. Everyone on the conference call patiently waited for Trumbull’s bronchial attack to subside. Tom used the time to rub his tired eyes. He was in a secure room behind closed doors at Eppley Airfield, the historic airport which served the greater Omaha metropolitan area. Most rooms of this nature—where questionable passengers were detained—had chipped paint on the walls and creaky furniture. This room had recently been repainted—eggshell white, of all colors—and the wooden chair on which he sat couldn’t have been more comfortable. It was simple pleasures like these that Tom had to embrace right now, because they were all he had. His own phone buzzed from inside his luggage. Someone was calling him. Whoever it was had to be better conversation than this. Tom was tempted to press mute on the room phone and take the personal call, but then Trumbull cleared his throat and carried on with his tongue-lashing:
“Explain to me how it is that you diverted manpower to Santa Fe and our guy shows up in San Francisco. Was San Francisco even on your radar, Tom?”
“With all due respect, sir, I asked for surveillance on Lilly Toro. I believed she might be at risk, and my request was denied.”
“I read your request,” piped in another assistant director. “You had twenty-two names on that list. How are we supposed to prioritize when you give us twenty-two names?”
“I’m sorry, sir.” Tom stared at the bright wall. “I wasn’t aware there was a limit on the number of people the Bureau is supposed to protect.”
“There is a limit on the number of resources the Bureau has at its disposal, as you well know. And when those resources are squandered in the middle of New Mexico—”
“We have credible evidence that Santa Fe is on Galileo’s list. What happened in San Francisco doesn’t—”
“And how long is that list, Special Agent Piper? Twenty-two names?”
Tom sighed.
“I’ve also looked at this so-called ‘credible evidence’ and it is awful flimsy, Piper. “
“Except what happened today, sir, confirmed the connection between Galileo and the Kellerman campaign, which was the lynchpin of Esme Stuart’s hypothesis. It stands to reason—”
“The Kellerman campaign is off-limits, Piper.”
“Beg pardon?”
“They don’t want federal intrusion on their day-today operations. They seem to think we’re beholden to the vice president since he used to be Bureau director and that we’d report everything back to him. That’s their paranoia, not mine.”
“Sir, paranoia’s not really a defense against obstruction of justice.”
“It’s an election year, Piper.”
“It’s always an election year,” Tom replied.
“We need to tread carefully, especially given your—our—recent performance. We need to reassure the public that contrary to popular belief our heads are not up our asses. We’re going to have ourselves a press conference, gentlemen. The people want someone to blame for this clusterfuck, and since we can’t seem to get the son of a bitch who’s actually responsible, whether he’s in San Francisco or Santa Fe or Timbuktu, we’re going to have to throw one of our own to the lions.”
Tom knew this was coming, but it still hurt to hear.
Trumbull’s hoary voice hammered in the nail: “That means you, Tom. You and your team are going to take the fall here. I’d apologize, but with the body count this perpetrator is accruing, which includes police officers and firefighters not to mention one of our own, I’m not sure if the media crucifixion you’re about to suffer is entirely undeserved.”
The SWAT team descended on the car. They wore ceramic body armor over bulletproof vests. Thick black helmets protected their skulls. As they were well aware, Galileo was partial to head shots. Each member of the 12-man squad carried an assault rifle in his hands and had a pistol strapped to his left leg.
It was a beat cop named Mary Chu who had found the blue Ford sedan—license plate JG3-94Q—parked in an alleyway in the urban Mission District. This was miles outside the canvass area, but nevertheless, the vehicle matched the description. Mary had maintained her distance, called it in, and waited inside a nearby bodega. The SWAT van had showed up twenty minutes later, at exactly 6:16 p.m. Lilly Toro and the three cops on the stairs of the substation had been dead for almost ninety minutes.
As the SWAT team slowly approached the Ford, Mary Chu watched from the grocery store. The bodega’s owner stood beside her, sipping from a hot cup of Mexican coffee. Both were thinking the same thought: this could be a trap. Hadn’t Galileo lured his victims in Atlanta a
nd Amarillo much the same way these twelve men and women now were being lured to this abandoned car? Mary knew their body armor was bullet-resistant. She knew these were the city’s finest. Nevertheless, she took a step back from the bodega window and into the shadow of a shelf.
The car sat in a dark alley. The falling sun’s fiery light failed to provide the slightest illumination. The SWAT team activated their helmet lights. Twelve beams of bright blue shot forward, and passed across the Ford like a kaleidoscope of long fingers.
It was a stolen Ford. Its owner, a Mrs. Harriet Rehoboth of Oakland, had reported it missing yesterday. She’d gone into her neighborhood Safeway to spend her social security check on some groceries and when she returned to the parking lot, her shopping cart stuffed with oranges and lamb chops and two-for-one bottles of Pert, her Ford was gone. Mrs. Rehoboth was upset, but she was also confused. The parking lot was dotted with Saabs and Jaguars and Mercedes. Why would anyone steal her crappy eighteen-year-old blue Ford? Who would do such a thing?
The police now had their answer. The SWAT team advanced on her car, every step measured, every breath modulated. They had spotters on the lookout for Galileo, but he was a crafty bastard, and could be anywhere. Like Mary Chu, most of the officers on the scene were assuming the worst—that this was another one of Galileo’s bait-and-hooks. But what was the alternative? Leave the car alone? They had a job to do, and none of them joined SWAT for the stylish uniforms.
They approached in a modified phalanx formation. It was the most defensive stance they could take. This was why Sgt. Tyler Murphy, who was at the fore of the column, was the first to spot the shoe box on the passenger seat. To better facilitate matters, the window to the passenger seat was already down. Galileo wanted the shoe box to be seen. Murphy reported his discovery to Captain Rodriguez. Rodriguez ordered the SWAT team to retreat, and sent in the bomb dogs.
Mary Chu nibbled on her lower lip.
Three German shepherds were escorted into the alley and sniffed the car for several minutes. The K-9s were specially trained at detecting explosives. All it took was a bark, and the bomb squad, on the standby, would march in. But the dogs didn’t bark. They didn’t even growl. The car was safe.
Rodriguez himself took out the shoe box and looked inside.
“What the hell?”
Someone had to claim the body. It wouldn’t be released until an autopsy was performed—standard operating procedure for a homicide—but claiming the body at least set into motion the other requisite task—finding a mortician, etc.—which accompanied death. As the police were busy tracking Galileo, the coroner’s assistant, a fidgety man named Chiles, took it upon himself to locate the next of kin. He took out the deceased’s cell phone, found the number, traced the number to an address, and hopped into his SUV. Due to the manhunt, many streets were cordoned off, making evening traffic a bitch, but Chiles managed to get to his destination by 7:00 p.m. His stomach growled for sushi. Dinner would have to wait. Someone had to claim the body.
The deceased’s next of kin lived on the sixth floor of a walk-up in Oakland. Chiles, ever impatient, took the stairs two at a time. By the time he reached the apartment door, 6F, his hamstrings were displeased. He located the doorbell and pressed it.
A middle-aged Asian woman answered the door. She wore a flower print dress. From her apartment came the smell of boiled cabbage. Once again, Chiles had to ignore his appetite. Someone had to claim the body.
He took out a photograph from a pocket of his wind-breaker. She looked at the photograph and then nodded. Her face became wet. Chiles informed her that she would have to come with him to the morgue. She nodded again, and got her coat. On her way out, she left a note for her husband. He was working late.
On the way down, they took the stairs one at a time.
Because return journeys are always quicker, they arrived at the morgue shortly before 7:30. The rain clouds from that morning had come back, and provided a steady drizzle to their walk from the parking lot to the deliberately featureless building which housed the M.E.’s office. As the M.E. herself often put it, death needn’t advertise.
Next to the meat locker was a small quiet room set aside especially for purposes like this visit. The body was already on the table, and covered with a clean white sheet. They used an industrial-strength bleach to get the sheets that white. Appearances were important.
Chiles made sure the woman was ready and then he folded back the top of the sheet to the body’s bare shoulders. Its eyes were open, and dark. A hole the size of a thumbtack dotted its forehead, which appeared to the woman, herself a devout Buddhist, to resemble a Hindu tilak. She reached out her hand to touch the hole, then stopped. Her fingertips instead grazed the body’s right cheek. The flesh was cold. A slab of beef from the grocery store felt exactly the same. There were other, tinier holes, in its earlobes and nostrils and lips, but the jewelry that ornamented those parts was gone. The woman’s fingertips touched those lips too. They were spongy.
Chiles handed her a clipboard (pen attached) with some forms to sign. The woman read the top form. The first question asked what her relation was to the deceased. “Mother,” she said aloud, softly. “I’m her mother.”
Instead of flying to Santa Fe, which would have been a quick jaunt from Omaha, Tom and Norm were instead rerouted to D.C. By the time they touched down at Dulles, it was after midnight. Half the cabin was asleep. Norm was asleep. Tom was not.
He reviewed the past four weeks. What could he have done differently? What could anyone have done differently? Bringing in Esme was a solid idea. The theory she came up with fit so well. But what if her instincts had dulled over the years? What if his had too? He knew he was getting older, slower. He knew it every morning he pulled himself out of bed. He knew it every time the joints in his legs reminded him that rain was coming.
Two FBI agents met Tom and Norm at the gate. They identified themselves as Agent Dwyer and Agent Casey, waited a few minutes for their baggage to arrive, became impatient, and escorted the senior agents into the back seat of a new model Crown Victoria. Its windows were tinted.
“Someone will take care of your luggage,” explained one of them. “You’ll get it back.”
Tom and Norm took their seats and exchanged a glance.
“Look,” said Tom, “I know you think this pick-them-up-at-the-airport bit is all meant to be intimidating, but it’s almost 1:00 a.m. and my colleague and I just want to get to sleep.”
Agent Dwyer had the wheel. Agent Casey, in the passenger seat, turned around.
“We’ve been instructed to take you and Special Agent Petrosky to a nearby safe house.”
“A safe house?” This roused Norm from his half sleep. “Why?”
This time it was Casey’s turn to exchange glances with his associate. Dwyer nodded permission. Casey reached into his valise and handed both Tom and Norm a sheet of paper. On it were the names, social security numbers, and addresses of everyone on the task force.
“A few hours ago, police found a shoe box in a car in San Francisco. We’re almost certain the car was left there by Galileo.”
“That doesn’t explain why we’re—”
“What was found in the shoe box, sir,” said Agent Casey, “was this list. The other members of your task force are being gathered as we speak. Please sit back.”
Tom took out his cell phone. Enough was enough—he needed to speak with Esme. If anyone could make sense of this, it was her. Would she be mad at him for dodging her calls? She had every right to be. Bringing her down to Amarillo had been sanctimonious, and avoiding her ever since had been every bit as—
Agent Casey’s meaty hand suddenly snatched the phone from his grasp.
“No calls. Bureau policy.”
Tom seethed. “Mmm-hmm.”
“It’s about a forty-minute drive to our destination, sir.” Casey showed some teeth. “We’ll wake you when we arrive.”
Tom didn’t sleep, and, this time, neither did Norm.
The ba
r closed at 2:00 a.m. Rafe splashed down his last glass of scotch, paid his tab, and strolled out to his car. His friends—fellow professors, mostly—had left long ago for their spouses and their beds. How fortunate for them.
The bartender, locking up, asked him if he was okay to drive.
“I’m not drunk,” replied Rafe.
He wasn’t drunk, but was a little buzzed. He started up his car without a problem and, reluctantly, headed home.
It’s not that he was avoiding his home. It’s just…
He switched on WCBS-AM to distract him from his thoughts. The on-air reporter was recalling the latest March Madness highlights. Rafe had watched the last few minutes of the Syracuse game at the bar.
He didn’t need to hear the news, and turned off the radio. Like everyone else in the country, he’d watched the reports from San Francisco on the TV. Galileo had struck again. His tally now neared thirty. A press conference with the FBI was scheduled for 11:00 a.m. Rafe hoped they raked Tom Piper over the coals. The irresponsible bastard had almost gotten his Esme murdered, and for what? They weren’t any closer to finding the sniper. If Tom Piper could be crucified over this, well, maybe Rafe’s day-to-day existence wouldn’t be quite as miserable.
Rafe had been paraphrasing Freud in his freshman lecture with his “fear-desire” dialectic. He knew exactly where he fell on that line. His life had become overwhelmed with desire, desire for change, desire to turn back the clock and return life to the way it was on February 14. But the best he could do was stay out late, drink his beer and scotch, and make believe.
He pulled into his driveway. The garage door always seemed so much louder when everyone was asleep. Could machines be spiteful or was that a characteristic solely reserved for people? He quietly got out of his car and entered his home.
The TV was on in the living room. Esme must have fallen asleep without turning it off. Again. Rafe found the remote control on the coffee table and clicked it off. His wife lay beside him on the couch, most of her body wrapped in a multicolored afghan. She said she couldn’t sleep in the bed. Her right side was still bandaged, wrapping from the small of her back to her belly button, and she said the mattress aggravated her soreness.