Before Cain Strikes. Joshua Corin

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СКАЧАТЬ time Rafe had toweled himself off, those musings had carried her off to sleep, at least until the pounding began at 6:16 a.m.

      Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

      Esme bolted awake. So did Rafe. A minute passed. Silence. They looked at each other. Had they dreamed that thunderous—

      Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

      Apparently not.

      “Is it the pipes?” she asked. He’d grown up in this house.

      Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

      “No,” he replied. “That’s not the pipes.”

      Their eyes scanned the room for something to use as a weapon. But how did one defend against a sound?

      Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

      “Maybe it’s the front door,” said Rafe.

      “At six in the morning?”

      Rafe shrugged. Did she have a better idea?

      Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

      “Goddamn it,” she mumbled, and swung her legs out of bed and onto the thin mauve carpet. Her robes were at home. Her slippers were at home. So she slid her bare feet into her sneakers, tugged a navy blue sweater over her nightgown and headed downstairs to probe out the invasive racket.

      Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

      As she neared the front door, she knew Rafe’s conclusion had been accurate. Someone was on the other side, knocking. The door shook with each pound. Whoever it was at their door at 6:21 a.m. on this cold, cold Saturday morning, they were both large and insistent.

      Maybe it was that dickhead pseudo-journalist Grover Kirk. He had the size and the lack of common decency to track them down to a funeral and pay them a visit. Either way, Esme vowed to use her resources at the Bureau to learn more about Mr. Kirk, maybe pull his IRS records.

      She poked her head to one of the windows. Two sheriff’s deputies, each the size of a Dumpster, stood there on the front stoop. They appeared cold and they appeared antsy.

      She opened the front door.

      “Morning, officers. What seems to be the trouble?”

      “The sheriff told us to come get you, ma’am.”

      Of course he did.

      “Give me a few minutes. Would you like to come in?”

      The deputies exchanged glances. “No, ma’am. We’re just fine out here.”

      Sure they were.

      She closed the door in their frost-tipped faces and made her way back to the bedroom.

      “Was it the front door?” Rafe asked.

      Ten minutes later, both she and Rafe were back downstairs, fully dressed. She half expected to find two ice statues on the stoop where the deputies had been, but no, the two men remained flesh and blood. When she opened the door, one of them was doing a little dance to keep warm.

      “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

      “Just you, ma’am,” replied the dancer. “Sheriff’s orders.”

      Uh-huh.

      Esme kissed her husband goodbye and joined the deputies in their brown squad car. She noticed that the streets were almost all clear of snow and that the sidewalks had already been salted. Impressed, she reclined in the stiff backseat as they drove downtown—and then past the county station and kept on going.

      “Um,” she said.

      They took a left toward the interstate.

      “Excuse me…” she said.

      “Sit tight, ma’am. We’ll be there in a jiffy.”

      “That’s fine and all but, well, where’s there?”

      There turned out to be Stewart International Airport some forty-five minutes later. They pulled up to the terminal. The dancer got out and escorted Esme to the curb while the other deputy remained behind the wheel.

      Behind a door marked Official Use Only, Sheriff Fallon was waiting for them, a cup of coffee in his hand. His grin left little doubt in Esme’s mind; this, finally, was the cat that ate the canary.

      “Good morning!” he said.

      In an adjacent room, he went on to say, sat the Weiner family. A member of airport security was keeping them company. Their plane had finally touched down about two hours ago and he knew, just knew, that she’d want to be there when he questioned them.

      “Thanks,” she replied, and added Sheriff Fallon to her list of IRS record pulls.

      They began with the father, Todd, who could have carried the sheriff’s deputies in the bags hanging under his eyes. His hands couldn’t keep still, either twitching and fumbling with the zipper on his L.L. Bean ski jacket or fixing the part on his thinning brown hair. This was not a calm man—but then again, how often did one’s house get burned to the ground with a body left in the basement? Perhaps he was worried they suspected him. Perhaps he was worried they thought he put the body there.

      “I didn’t know her,” he insisted. “We all looked at those photos and none of us had ever seen her before in our lives. I swear.”

      The interview lasted about an hour. Most of it consisted of Todd Weiner repeating that he didn’t know her, or anything, or anyone, and asking several times if this would be covered by his homeowners’ insurance. Esme believed more and more that her hunch—about the house being the key—had been way off.

      And then Todd said something odd.

      “I knew it was too good to be true.”

      Sheriff Fallon nodded at Esme, allowing her to take the bait.

      “You knew what was too good to be true, Mr. Weiner?”

      “This contest. I told Louise I didn’t remember signing up on their website.”

      “What contest?”

      Todd Weiner looked up at them like they’d just claimed two plus two equaled an apple. “Hammond Travel Agency. That’s how we went on this trip. We won it in a contest from Hammond Travel Agency out in New Paltz.”

      6

      Finally—finally!—Timothy had found the perfect pet. Like all true heroes of myth (the Norse legends of the Viking civilization being his favorite), he just needed to recognize his own hubris before achieving success. He had been so quick to blame his previous pet, Lynette, for everything that went wrong when, in fact, some of the finger pointing belonged in his own direction. Had it really been wise to capture an adult? Don’t most pet owners start with puppies and kittens rather than dogs and cats? How foolish he had been СКАЧАТЬ