While Galileo Preys

by Joshua Corin

  Actually, a few of the missing were still alive. They remained in the auditorium, hiding on the slate floor. They weren’t cowards. Cowardice was shameful. What shame could there be in surviving?

  Eventually, fear became replaced by speculation, and the mood of the crowd in the parking lot shifted. Was this the same killer who had struck in Atlanta and Amarillo? What was he doing here? What was it he wanted?

  Squad cars from the Santa Fe police howled into sight, followed by a series of ambulances. The cops wore bulletproof vests. So did some of the paramedics. A barricade was set up along the front steps, and the teachers were corralled further away from the building.

  Next came the media, the TV newsmen in their labeled vans and the paper reporters in indiscriminate Chevrolets. Camera shots were set up. Tape recorders were activated. It was time to make the story a story.

  The paramedics dealt with the small injuries first, the cuts and bruises sustained in the mass exodus. One woman who had tripped had the pinky of her left hand trampled. Another received an inadvertent elbow to his throat and was having trouble breathing. The paramedics dealt with the small injuries first, while the police entered the building and began to count the dead.

  Among those interviewed by the reporters, though not on camera, was one of the school’s janitors, who had been injured, though not seriously. The reporter offered him a handkerchief for his bloody nose.

  “Thank you,” replied the janitor. “You’re too kind.”

  Policemen began to file out of the school. There were pale faces. One of the sergeants walked to his squad car, took a deep breath of air, and radioed a requisition request to HQ. They were in need of eighteen body bags.

  18

  “It’s so good to see you,” Esme lied, and wrapped her arms in a very loose embrace around Pamela Gould, the FBI bureau chief for Long Island. She had her long bottle-blond hair bound in a bun, and the makeup on her face made her dark skin appear almost purplish. Purplish seemed appropriate, though, as Pamela Gould’s office smelled vaguely of blueberries.

  Esme maneuvered herself into a copious wicker chair and Pamela perched her considerable weight on the corner of her glass desk. “Can I get you something to drink? An espresso perhaps? A cup of chai tea?”

  “Oh, I can’t have caffeine,” replied Esme, although Pamela knew that, was well-informed about her injury, and probably had offered the caffeinated beverages because of her kidney. Such was Special Agent Pamela Gould, bitch-queen of the FBI. “I’d love a bottle of water.”

  “I’m sorry. We’re all out of that.”

  Sure they were.

  Pamela Gould’s bookcase was arrayed with a myriad of seafaring paraphernalia, including an antique nautical clock. Another clock, on the opposite wall, indicated the date (March 18) and the local times in Washington (1:46 p.m.), Los Angeles (10:46 a.m.), Moscow (9:46 p.m.), Paris (7:46 p.m.), and London (6:46 p.m.). Esme had wanted to drive here alone, but a few days ago her temperature had, for a brief period, climbed to almost 103 Fahrenheit, so just to be on the safe side she still needed Lester to chauffeur. Fevers were not wholly uncommon with patients in her condition, especially those who, rather than staying in bed, were spending hours and hours each day traveling every which way across Long Island, speaking to everyone from mayors to selectmen to her local congressman to get the fundraiser changed. Everyone echoed the same pass-the-buck refrain, “Well, if the FBI feels it’s a potential hazard, I’d be more than happy to do something about it but until then…” So Esme, finally, got through to and scheduled an appointment with the FBI. She had been unaware of Pamela’s promotion. Had she known she would be facing her old rival from the Academy, would she still have come? Either way, she had less than fifteen minutes to make her case before it would be time to pick Sophie up from school, and all because Lester purposely had dragged his feet leaving the house.

  “So I see you still like sailing,” said Esme.

  “It’s a hobby.”

  “Does your husband sail too?”

  “I never married.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “Not really,” Pamela replied. “I never saw myself as the marrying type.”

  “And what’s the marrying type?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  Esme politely nodded.

  “Congratulations, by the way, Pamela, on your promotion. Your own field office. I’ll tell you, when I found out you were here I was a little surprised. I thought you never wanted to leave Washington.”

  “Some people thought the same about you.”

  “Well, yes, but I left the Bureau. Being sent to mind the farm in Long Island isn’t exactly a step up the bureaucratic food chain, is it?”

  “That’s true. Actually—” she leaned in confidentially “—sometimes, Esme, I get so bored here. It’s hard to fill the day when your jurisdiction’s nothing but cookie-cutter suburban housewives.”

  Esme politely nodded.

  “I actually was thinking about you recently, Esme. When I heard about all that poor unfortunate business with Tom Piper. I hear the Bureau may even bring him up on charges of negligence.”

  “Everyone needs someone to blame.”

  “I hear you’re going around the Island blaming the Unity for a Better Tomorrow.”

  “Whether you agree with me or not,” said Esme, “why take a chance? Ask them to remove themselves from the Kellerman fundraiser and, sure, maybe you’ll piss them off. Allow them to remain as sponsors, and what if I’m right, and two months down the line you have dozens of victims right here in your cookie-cutter jurisdiction. And you could have prevented it. Who do you think the Bureau will blame then?”

  Pamela politely nodded.

  “I definitely will take what you’ve said under advisement.”

  “Under advisement?” The clock tallied 1:51 p.m. 11:51 a.m. in the aforementioned Santa Fe. She had ten minutes before she and Lester had to leave this town and return to Oyster Bay to pick up Sophie from school. A pit opened in her stomach. “That’s it?”

  Pamela Gould’s large phone trilled. She held up a finger, as if to shush Esme, and picked up the receiver.

  “This is Gould.”

  Esme wanted the snatch that phone out of her hand and slam it into the special agent’s face—and she contemplated doing so—when Pamela Gould suddenly let out a long sad sigh.

  “When did this happen?” Gould barked into the receiver.

  Whoever was on the other line provided the details. Esme tried to listen in. When did what happen?

  “Thank you,” murmured the bureau chief, and she let the receiver slide back into its cradle. Her gaze fixed on Esme. There was hatred there, but something else as well… “You need to leave now.”

  “What happened?”

  “That wasn’t a request, Mrs. Stuart.”

  “What happened?”

  Pamela Gould pressed down on her intercom. “Jeff? Can you escort Mrs. Stuart out?”

  As Jeff, an extraordinarily wide agent, shifted into the room, Esme felt her gut do a backflip, and she knew—oh God—what had happened. “It’s Galileo, isn’t it?”

  “See Mrs. Stuart out.”

  “He struck again, didn’t he?”

  Jeff reached for Esme’s arm, but she pulled away. The fact that this gloating woman was refusing to answer her simple question…

  “Was it Santa Fe? Jesus Christ, how many did he…?”

  Jeff grabbed her now, forcefully. “Don’t make this difficult, please.”

  “Now you have to do something about the fundraiser! Don’t you see? Now you have no choice!”

  “Please,” repeated Jeff, and he tugged. Hard. Her right side exploded in sparks of pain, and she almost buckled to the floor then and there.

  “Goodbye, Mrs. Stuart,” said Pamela Gould. She’d turned her back.

  Esme stood back up, and let Jeff escort her to the stairs. She actually was glad he was there. The past five minutes had left her light-headed, and each step brought a wav
ering sense of balance. Soon she was gripping Jeff’s arm not just to keep from tripping, but to keep from falling over. She finally made it to the bottom of the staircase and out into the parking lot and her wristwatch read 2:04 p.m.—and the Cadillac was gone.

  Not only had Tom’s phone been confiscated, but he and Norm Petrosky hadn’t been allowed to e-mail, fax, or even open a window. It was all for their protection, et cetera, et cetera. They were even restricted on what shows they could watch on the TV. No CNN, no MSNBC, no Fox. The more insulated they were from the world, the more insulated they would be from the world. Tom had to give them credit. The FBI excelled at circular logic. His one comfort was that at least, according to Trumbull, Esme’s name had not been on Galileo’s list.

  Tom had never worked witness protection himself, but his old partner Bobby Fink had spent six years in the “babysitter corps,” as he called it, and had many a story to tell. No one wanted to be held under lock and key, essentially grounded, sequestered from everyone you know and subsisting on a diet of frozen food and takeout. According to Bobby, the average witness secluded in a safe house gained ten pounds a month. That didn’t include the panic-anorexics (“panorexics,” in Fink-speak), those who dealt with their situation through appetite loss.

  They also were restricted in wardrobe to what they brought in their suitcases. Tom and Norm had only planned on staying in Omaha overnight. Agents Dwyer and Casey used the tiny stipend they had been given to procure additional shirts, pants, etc. from the neighborhood Salvation Army. On the afternoon of the 18th, Tom sat on the burlap couch, which also had been acquired from the Salvation Army, in an Ivar’s Crab Shack T-shirt and a pair of beige shorts. He felt like he was wearing a costume in a play, and he was portraying the character of the idiot nephew.

  Norm just wore his briefs all day. He had no shame at all.

  Tom and Norm were watching As the World Turns when a Breaking News chyron rolled across the bottom third of the screen: 18 confirmed dead at a high school shooting in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

  “Jesus,” muttered Norm. “One kid gets picked on so he borrows his dad’s Uzi and here comes Columbine Part IX. I got picked on in high school. Who didn’t? You didn’t see me walking the halls with a—”

  Tom shushed him. Santa Fe? It had to be a coincidence, right? Please God, let it be a coincidence….

  More information now:

  At this time, police are refusing to rule out any connection to similar recent incidents in Atlanta, Georgia and Amarillo, Texas.

  Tom moderated his breath. This wasn’t some angry kid on a shooting spree. If so, that’s what the ticker would have said. No. This was Galileo. Tom had warned them about Santa Fe and they hadn’t listened and now eighteen people were dead.

  Enough was enough.

  Tom walked from the den to the bathroom. Agent Casey had been in there for a while now. Agent Dwyer was out on an errand. Tom pounded on the door.

  “Agent Casey?”

  “I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” replied Casey.

  Norm joined Tom at the door.

  “What’s going on?”

  “He’s on the phone,” said Tom. “He doesn’t want us to hear the conversation.”

  “How do you know?”

  Tom kicked open the door. Casey stood in the middle of the bathroom. He was in fact on his cell phone.

  “What the hell do you think—”

  Tom grabbed the phone from his grip.

  “Hi, this is Special Agent Tom Piper. Who am I speaking with?”

  Click.

  Agent Casey went to reach for the phone. Norm shoved his bulk in the way.

  “Thanks for the phone,” said Tom.

  He and Norm exited the bathroom and shoved a chair up to the doorknob, essentially barricading Casey inside.

  “Who was on the phone?” asked Norm.

  “It’s not as important as who’s about to be,” Tom replied, and after dialing a number held the receiver to his ear.

  “AD Trumbull’s office. David speaking.”

  Who was David? Either Trumbull had hired a new assistant or he had some academy cadet screening his calls.

  “Yes, hi, David, I’d like to speak with the AD Trumbull. This is Tom Piper.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but AD Trumbull is currently in a meeting. If you leave your name and contact information—”

  “David, can you give him a message for me?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “Tell him that in thirty seconds Tom Piper is going to tell the Washington Post that the FBI knew about Santa Fe and decided to ignore the warnings. Can you do that for me, David?”

  “Uh…one moment, sir…”

  As Tom waited for David to scamper down the hall and retrieve the officious assistant director, he suddenly found himself ruminating about Lilly Toro. It must have been his threat to go to the press. It was right up Ms. Toro’s alley. It was almost identical to the threat she had posited to him when they first met back in Texas.

  It seemed so very long ago.

  The AD came on the line: “Tom? Is that you?”

  “I saw the news.”

  Trumbull’s cancer-cough was worse, and rattled with shards of glass. Tom walked over to the window and peered out at the street. Two boys were playing stickball with a Rottweiler. The boys avoided the puddles. The dog did not. It just scampered to and fro, not a care in the world.

  “Tom…”

  “What was in the shoe box?”

  Another pause. No coughing this time. Just silence.

  “Was it another videotape? Was it a message?”

  “It was a message.”

  “What did it say?”

  “Tom…”

  “I think I’ve the right to know, don’t you?”

  Trumbull sighed. “The note said, ‘None of this is my fault.’”

  “Mmm-hmm. Well, at least he’s correct there. None of this was his fault. Not this time. This time it was the fault of the FBI for fucking up so damn spectacularly.”

  “Which part pisses you off the most, Tom? That we ignored you or that we threw you under the bus? The fact of the matter is, your names were still on that hit list and—”

  “And you fell right into his hands! Don’t you see? He knew we were on to him so he had to take us off the playing field. He never was going to hunt us down individually. He goes after crowds. He’s had this whole thing planned for months. He only went after Darcy when he ran into her at Walmart, and he didn’t go to Amarillo city hall to kill anyone or Esme would be dead. He just needed us off the playing field. And you obliged him.”

  “He hunted down that journalist in San Francisco.”

  “But that’s not why he was there. He was there to give a message to Bill Kellerman. Just like Darcy, Lilly Toro’s death was…circumstantial. She was collateral damage.” Tom felt nauseous just speaking the words, despite how truthful they were, but he needed Trumbull to see. So many more lives depended on making this old, dying man see.

  Tom could hear Trumbull’s labored breathing. The assistant director wasn’t a bad guy. And he didn’t have blood on his hands any more than Tom had blood on his own. Playing the guilt card was an act of desperation, and Tom was desperate. He wouldn’t call the Post. They both knew that. And despite Esme’s prescience about Santa Fe, Trumbull wasn’t obligated to put Tom’s task force back on the case. There were other agents in the field, good agents, maybe not as experienced, but certainly qualified. And other than Esme’s contributions, what exactly had Tom and his task force done to advance the case anyway? Perhaps the smartest move would be to keep the task force off the radar, just in case Tom was wrong and Galileo did try to track them down.

  Finally, the assistant director spoke.

  “The next location on the list is Kansas City?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that’s where we’ll catch the son of a bitch. In the meantime, I would imagine you’ll want to meet up with your team in Santa Fe?”

  Tom
glanced over at Norm.

  Well? gestured Norm.

  Yes, smiled Tom.

  19

  “I need you to pick me up.”

  Rafe cupped a hand over his free ear so he could better hear his wife’s voice. “Where are you?”

  She told him.

  “Okay,” he replied, and hung up.

  Melville was a forty-minute drive from the college—but he wasn’t at the college. He was at a bar deliberately located in the middle of nowhere. When Esme phoned, he had been flirting semi-harmlessly with a doe-eyed townie named Gladys. As he bid farewell to doe-eyed Gladys and ambled out the door into the glaring accusation of the sun, he calculated the speed he would need to travel to arrive in Melville without garnering suspicion.

  A beer buzz at 2:00 p.m. was bound to make anyone a little paranoid.

  Rafe slid behind the wheel of his car, popped an Altoid under his tongue, and found his way back onto the main road. At this time of day, he couldn’t speed too much—but he could speed a little. He watched the needle climb to 60 mph (15 over the limit) and clicked on the radio for some tunes.

  What was she doing in Melville? He hadn’t bothered asking, because he knew he wouldn’t have liked the answer. Undoubtedly, it was related to her obsession with Galileo, and he wanted that joyful Coors tingle in his brain to last just a little longer before he would have to deal with his wife and her tilting at windmills.

  He felt sorry for her, of course, but more than that he felt pity—and a man wasn’t supposed to pity his wife, was he? And what did Sophie think? Children were more perceptive than most gave credit. She had to be wondering where her mother had gone to, and who was this woman who had taken her place?

  With Tom Piper being eviscerated in the press, Rafe had assumed she would have given up, but instead his public failure had caused her to redouble her crusade to protect Long Island from foul beasties. He knew what his father wanted. His father wanted him to call it a day and send her packing, at least until she stopped trying to save the world and started trying to save her marriage. Sometimes people needed to have their lives jostled in order to gain perspective. Maybe a trial separation would help her see how embarrassing her behavior really—