Before Cain Strikes. Joshua Corin

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СКАЧАТЬ this part of herself to him, there hadn’t been one ounce of hesitation. There never was, with Penelope Sue. And so he snuggled with her and watched hour after hour, and maybe through her infectious enjoyment he actually began to like this thing. Science fiction was far removed from his own interests, but Penelope Sue simply had a way about her that opened doors.

      Around 10:00 p.m., he collected their mugs and washed them out in the ceramic sink. They had three more episodes to go, and it was time for a break. Besides, by now her mother upstairs was undoubtedly in need of a visit.

      “It was Esme,” said Penelope Sue, trotting into the kitchen. Tom put the mugs down. “She’s the one who called.”

      Penelope Sue handed him his phone.

      Tom clicked on the voice mail. He put it on speaker phone.

      They listened to Esme’s message.

      “I’ll go take care of Mama,” said Penelope Sue, and without waiting for him to object, she walked away. So be it.

      He dialed the number. He knew it by rote.

      “Hello, Esmeralda,” he said. He was the only one who called her by her full name. He’d done so for almost fifteen years. It was a sign of affection, and they never, ever talked about it. “It sounds like you’ve got yourself a case.”

      “I’d love to hear your take on it.”

      He sat down at the kitchen table. “I’d love to hear yours first.” No matter how much his life had changed in the past six months, he would never stop being her Socratic mentor.

      “The removal of the hands suggests a trophy. The fire could be some kind of funeral pyre.”

      “Or you could be giving more meaning to his actions than he is,” he said.

      “Everything has meaning, whether it’s intended or not. All accidents have explanations. We can’t help ourselves.”

      Tom glanced out the window at the barn in the distance. “No. We can’t.”

      “I’m missing something important, aren’t I?”

      “We’re all missing something important.” He looked away from the window. “We can’t help ourselves there, either.”

      “He didn’t burn her, though. He torched the whole house. That’s significant.”

      “Everything has meaning.”

      “You know the answer, don’t you?”

      He had a notion. It was rudimentary, of course, and without seeing the report and visiting the crime scene it was purely speculative, but yes, he had a notion. He often did.

      “I think you need to trust yourself,” he told her.

      “I’m off the books up here, Tom. I could use your help.”

      The ceiling boards above him creaked. That would be Mama, stubbornly fighting off Penelope Sue’s attempts to deliver her nightly shot. Talk about rituals…

      “I have faith in you,” he said to Esme. He stood. His knees were a bit stiff from the cold. “You can do this.”

      “Don’t make me beg, Tom.”

      He could tell by the tone of her voice that she was teasing him. She knew he’d fly up there. He was reliable. He was ever her instructor. He was Tom Piper. Together they’d solve this case, and another in a long line of deranged scumbags would be in custody.

      But that wasn’t him anymore, right?

      He looked out again at the barn, bathed in cold moonlight.

      “Come on,” she replied, still playful. “What’ll it take? A tantalizing email?”

      That was how, last winter, he’d coaxed her out of her early retirement. She’d already been intrigued by the Galileo case, still in its infancy, and he’d sent her a note that Henry Booth had left at a crime scene, and soon she was saying goodbye to her family and boarding a plane for Texas to meet up with Tom’s task force. He’d pushed her buttons and she’d allowed them to be pushed and how was this, now, any different? Surely he owed it to her, if not to that poor girl Lynette. The Galileo case had nearly gotten Esme killed, and he knew the effect it had had on her marriage.

      But what about the effect it had had on him?

      Penelope Sue padded into the room, a look of curiosity on her brow. He held out his hand to her and she clasped it.

      “I’m sorry,” he told Esme. “I’m already home. Best of luck, Esmeralda. I know you’ll do just fine.”

      Click.

      Esme wasn’t angry.

      She expected to be angry. She expected to feel wounded and betrayed. But she didn’t. She wasn’t relieved or happy. She wasn’t quite sure what she felt about Tom’s refusal.

      So she compartmentalized it, stepped into the shower to wash off the chili and rice and ruminated about other matters.

      More specifically: why did the unsub burn down the whole house?

      By all accounts, the fire started with a bang. Electrical fires often did. Some appliance shorts out, goes kablooey, and it’s time to call your insurance provider. The unsub undoubtedly set the fire on purpose, which meant he rigged an appliance to blow, which meant he knew there was going to be a bang, which meant he knew it was going to draw attention to the house—and to him, making a rapid and hopefully burn-free getaway. So he wanted the body to be found. And given that there were no signs of accelerant on or near the remains, he wasn’t particular about the body being identified or not.

      Esme moved on from body wash to shampoo, and thought about the victim herself. Maybe Rafe and the sheriff and most everyone else working the case were right. Maybe Lynette was the gateway. It made sense. It was the obvious choice. She rarely favored the obvious choice, true, but that didn’t make it any less valid.

      So: Who would want to cause Lynette harm?

      No. Better question: What was significant enough about Lynette for someone to go through all this trouble?

      Esme didn’t mean to imply that it was difficult to believe that someone found Lynette significant. Her tattooed boyfriend was obviously enamored. And then there was the matter of Rafe’s overcomplicated emotional relationship to her….

      Rafe!

      Christ, how long had she been in the shower while he waited, soggy foodstuffs still splattered over his hair and cheeks and neck? Granted, he’d done the splattering, but still. Esme hastened her ablutions and hustled out of the shower. She opened the door for Rafe while she was drying her hair. The door wasn’t locked, and he could have come in at any time, and he would have come in during the first year of their marriage, joined her in the shower even, but that was a long time ago.

      As her husband soaped and soaked, Esme climbed into a nightgown, rolled her iPod to Roxy Music and snuggled under the covers. Her mind drifted back to the case, back to Lynette Robinson and those teal earrings and her СКАЧАТЬ