Before Cain Strikes (16 page)

Though not Halley Worth.

Halley Worth, age sixty-two, was a genuine old-school snob-bitch. Her husband, Nolan, had made a killing in the stock market while she’d played house, and now it was her turn to run the show while he spent his days playing poker with his right-wing buddies. The Worths suffered fools gladly, if those fools shared the correct politics, and so Esme’s father-in-law got along very well with them. In fact, as Esme and Halley broke their almost-embrace, a toilet flushed, and moments later Lester stepped out to join them.

“She’s on the fourth floor,” he said.

No
hello.
No
sorry about your situation.
Ah, Lester.

Esme bid farewell to the lovely pair and ascended the winding stairwell up, up, up to the fourth floor. There were two doors here, one of which led to the restroom and one of which led to the bedroom. Esme knocked on one, opened it, waved to the WC, closed the door, knocked on the other, opened it and beheld her beautiful daughter, asleep in bed, dreaming.

Sophie was safe here. What better setting than a lighthouse to protect her from the darkness of the world? And there was so much darkness in the world. Esme faced it daily. It was inevitable that some of that darkness would creep across the threshold of her own home, and so if this was the temporary solution they had, so be it, right? The child’s welfare needed to be prioritized over lesser concerns like a mother’s love….

Esme thought about P. J. Hammond, and what he’d done for his flesh and blood, and what he’d ultimately done
to
him. So much darkness in the world to keep at bay, and if that darkness came from within, the responsibilities of the parent did not change. Protect the child. P.J. had protected Timothy for so long. Esme would protect Sophie, even if it would drive her daughter to despise her for her absence. Why couldn’t she have a normal mother like everyone else?

She probably still resented Esme for not being there today at the museum, and rightfully so. If Esme had been there, Grover wouldn’t have. If Esme had been there, there would be no nightmares for Sophie’s fragile imagination to conjure. Because as she lay there on the fourth floor of the tower by the sea, it was obvious to Esme that Sophie was experiencing a nightmare. Her fists were curled up around her blanket, and her lips were twitching toward a frown. Loose strands of hair were beginning to stick to her wet forehead.

Not even the lighthouse could shield her from the darkness of her own making.

Esme crossed the threshold of her daughter’s room, knelt down beside her borrowed bed and gently rocked her exposed shoulder until those perfect eyes of hers flickered open, already shiny with tears.

“Mommy…?”

“I’m right here, baby.”

The girl’s small arms rose up and wrapped themselves around her mother, tightly, tightly, because if they were tight enough, if she were strong enough, maybe she could keep her mother from ever, ever leaving.

T
he FBI put Tom up in a two-star hotel not far from the Federal Building. It was a prewar building, and the hotel’s four elevators were still operating at their original speed. Tom waited ten minutes for one to open and lift him up to the twelfth floor. An assortment of giggling teenagers crowded in with him, and one of them, a spiky-haired girl with braces, felt the impulse to push all of the buttons on the brass panel. Tom felt the impulse to knock her unconscious with a carefully placed uppercut to the back of her right ear. Unlike the teen, he practiced self-control. But it was difficult.

Tom ached. He ached in his temples. He ached in his shoulder blades. He ached in his biceps and his triceps and his forearms and thighs and calves and especially, especially, the soles of his feet. He had managed to keep the ailments of age at arm’s length for so long, but his convalescence over the past six months seemed to invite it all, every joint inflammation in the medical dictionary. They all ended in
-itis
and they all hurt like hell and he wasn’t even sixty years old. So what if he’d pushed his body for decades, as if it belonged to one of these obnoxious teenagers rather than that of an
aging man who’d survived not one but two motorcycle accidents, not to mention a long history of work-related injuries (stab wounds, bullet wounds, punctures from a staple gun, multiple gashes from multiple box cutters, just to name a few). But it was Galileo who had finally beaten him. Penelope Sue, bless her heart, had done her best to build him back together, but not all the pieces fit, not anymore. He was becoming a relic, just like that motorcycle in Esme’s garage.

And he was kind of okay with that.

He slipped his electronic card key into the door, pushed his way into his room and willed himself to stay awake and mobile long enough to undress and step into the hot propulsive shower. God bless the water pressure in New York City. It didn’t quite melt away the soreness in his muscles, but it did liquefy them a little, and returned some much-missed flexibility to his neck. By the time he’d toweled himself off, he was warmed, massaged and oh-so-ready for sleep.

His head had barely tapped the fluffed hotel pillow when his cell phone buzzed. He considered ignoring it, but his abject curiosity curtailed that option.

“Hello?” he murmured.

“Oh, shit, did I wake you?”

Tom smiled. “Not at all, Penelope Sue.”

“You’re such a liar.”

“Then you’re in love with a liar,” he replied.

“So I am.”

Tom spotted the digital clock. It was 12:32 a.m.

“Why aren’t you asleep?” he asked her.

“Why aren’t you?”

“Because you called me, you adorable lunatic.”

“We haven’t talked all day,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”

“We talked a couple hours ago.”

“That was Monday. Today is Tuesday.”

Tom checked the clock again: 12:33 a.m. Dear Lord, he was in love with a dork. In spite of himself, his smile widened. “Mmm-hmm.”

“So are you in bed, Tom?”

“It’s almost one o’clock in the morning, woman.”

“Well, I’m not in bed.”

“That’s because you’re a weirdo.”

“No, it’s because I’m walking in a hallway.”

“Why are you walking in a hallway?”

“Because it’s the only way to get from where I’m going to where I need to be, silly.”

“And where is it you need to be at almost one o’clock in the morning?”

“I’m almost there, actually.”

“The refrigerator?”

“Tom Piper, are you calling me fat?”

“No, love. I’m calling you insane.”

“Insane for you, maybe.”

Tom audibly groaned. “Mmm-hmm.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you about this wonderful client I had today. Well, yesterday. He was about your age and—”

There was a knock at his door.

“Excuse me a minute,” he told Penelope Sue, and he wiped a hand over his face to clear away any nap-goo that may have accumulated, whipped the covers off his long body and ambled to the door, not even bothering to put on a T-shirt. The Big Apple bellhops had probably seen a lot worse than the late-night topless body of an over-the-hill gunslinger from Kentucky. The real question was, why would a bellhop be buzzing him at 12:34 in the morning?

Tom hesitated. The door didn’t have a peephole.

The stab wounds, bullet wounds, punctures from a staple gun and the multiple gashes from multiple box cutters had made him a wee bit paranoid.

He still had his Glock. It was in his shoulder holster, hanging with his black leather jacket in the sliding-door closet to his right. He could have it in his hands and ready in seconds, and cause some hapless bellhop to wet himself. Because although the local clerks were undoubtedly used to all variations of undress, nobody, no matter how seasoned, reacted well to the sight of a gun.

“Tom?” called Penelope Sue’s voice from the phone. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Just a second.”

He held the Glock behind his back with his right hand and with his left hand, still holding the phone, he reached for the knob. The door was heavy, thick. Practically soundproof. Great.

He took a breath to steady himself.

“Okay, Tom,” continued her voice, “in the meantime, let me tell you about this client. He’s kind and sweet…”

He opened the door.

“…and as handsome as can be,” she finished, staring him straight in the eye.

He blinked.

“Hello, sexy,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss him full on the mouth. Her arms smoothly wrapped themselves around his body.

He remained awkwardly unresponsive.

She stepped away from him, confused. Was he not happy to see her?

“I…” he replied, and then, “One second.”

He shut the door in her face and quickly returned the Glock to its holster. By the time he’d reopened the door,
any semblance of seductiveness or gleeful surprise had vanished from her face. Penelope Sue appeared ticked off.

“Are you kidding me?” she asked.

“It’s not like that. I didn’t know it was you.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Were you expecting someone else?”

“I didn’t know who it could be! It’s almost one o’clock in the morning!”

“I know. I’ve been on a plane for two hours.”

“And that’s wonderful! And I am so glad to see you! Come here.”

He held out his arms.

She didn’t budge.

“Please?”

She budged. And, finally, they embraced, both of them, chest against chest, lips against lips. They parted, but only an inch, and stared into each other’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“
I’m
sorry,” he said. “With the day I had, and being back in New York for the first time since… I was just…jittery.”

“I know.” She held her hand against his heart. She could feel its rhythm echo into her palm, and let its music fill her. “That’s why I’m here. Let Penelope Sue take care of you.”

He nodded, and she led the way to the bed. The heavy door shut by itself.

The following morning, after a lengthy shared shower (which both of them required for a variety of reasons), Tom took Penelope Sue to a bagel shop he knew down the block from the hotel. In true New York fashion, though, the bagel shop had become a Starbucks. After
a momentary grousing, Tom and Penelope Sue then did what any other New Yorker would have done if faced with this disappointment—they tossed away their plans and went inside the Starbucks for some coffee, pastries and Enya. Halfway through their scones, their conversation took its inevitable detour from idle to serious.

“I’ve got to head to the office soon,” he said.

She nodded, sipping on her hot apple spice cider.

“I feel bad about it,” he added, “leaving you alone after you came all this way.”

“Tom Piper, will you please get over yourself? No woman with a charge card is alone in New York City.”

“You’re going to rent a male escort?”

That she didn’t expect him to say. As the laughter spilled out of her body, the hot cider spilled out of her mouth and nose. She reached for a napkin to clean herself up, but for whatever reason, that just made her laugh harder and louder. This being New York City, nobody paid her much attention, except Tom, who nearly swooned at the sight. He was so head over heels in love with this goofy woman.

They made plans to meet up for lunch and went their separate ways, he to the bureaucracy of the Federal Building and she to the cash registers of Macy’s. The line at the security checkpoint snaked all the way across most of the lobby floor, and Tom patiently waited his turn. Most of these people, he knew, were here for their visas. New York’s USCIS was by far the busiest in the country. In many ways, it had become the new Ellis Island.

Once at the head of the long, multicultural line, Tom showed his credentials to one of the security guards, passed his firearm and wallet onto the conveyor belt and stepped through the metal detector. He then approached
a second guard, showed his badge and was allowed to proceed to the elevator bank. His destination lay almost a hundred yards skyward, on the building’s twenty-third floor.

Judging by the empties stacked in her borrowed workspace, Mineola Wu was already on her sixth can of Mountain Dew. She waved him over. Cain42’s website, or at least the cached version they’d acquired off Timothy, lay open on her desktop computer.

“So I’ve been feeding the details from these photographs through VICAP, Google, whatever, hoping to get a hit…and I got a hit.”

“Show me.”

She showed him by blowing up one of the thumbnails off the “Photographs” page. It featured a storefront window with three mannequins, each draped in a froufrou autumnal sweater-pants ensemble. In place of their three plastic heads, though, were three human heads—three blondes, all with their eyes open in horror. A good amount of blood ran down from their open throats and over the froufrou autumnal sweater-pants ensembles.

Mineola clicked another button, which brought up an AP news article from October 31. An early-morning jogger named Marie McConnell, age twenty-six, spotted the display in the window of Hot Cotour, a local high-end clothing store for women. Police were called to the scene, and quickly cordoned off the area. The remains were identified as belonging to Summer Sholes, age nineteen; Lydia Patel, age twenty-two; and Rosalind Becker, age twenty-four. All three had been employees of the store. There were no suspects at this time. The location of the incident: Hoboken, New Jersey, just over the river from the island of Manhattan.

“Let’s go,” said Tom.

Mineola downed some Mountain Dew. “You have fun there, chief.”

“We need to coordinate with the Hoboken P.D., maybe shed some light on their investigation.”

“Maybe, but I’m staying planted right where I am.”

“You don’t want to come?”

“Do I look like a field agent to you?”

He gave her high heels and geek-chic attire a once-over.

“Have fun in Hoboken,” she said. “Give my regards to Ol’ Blue Eyes.”

Tom opened his mouth to retort, perhaps convince her to come along, but changed his mind. He could have done it, too. He had a good idea which buttons he needed to push to get her out of that chair. Instead, he asked her to call ahead to Hoboken to give them a heads-up, and he headed back toward the elevators. Technically, he was supposed to clear this trip with Karl Ziegler, but in the half second Tom spent looking around, he just couldn’t spot him. Oh, well.

New Jersey meant the PATH trains, and the PATH trains meant Penn Station, which was practically across the street from Macy’s. He could pop into the department store and surprise Penelope Sue. It would take only a few minutes out of his already-flexible schedule.

No, he’d do it when he returned. Take care of Hoboken, get that out of the way and then spend as much time with Penelope Sue as they wanted, with nowhere they needed to be and nothing they needed to do.

Eight cities had a Pennsylvania Station, leftover hubs from nineteenth-century America’s vital railroad network. There were three in Pennsylvania itself (Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Pittsburgh), one in Baltimore, one in Cleveland, one in Cincinnati, one in Newark,
and the oldest, busiest of them all: New York’s Penn Station, occupying more than ten acres of commercial real estate underneath the west side of Manhattan. Tom joined the steady mob as it flowed underground, purchased his ticket from one of the many electronic kiosks and boarded his train.

Fifteen minutes later, he was in Hoboken, New Jersey, birthplace of baseball, soft-serve ice cream and, yes, Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, Francis Albert Sinatra. Tom had never been to Hoboken before, and wasn’t quite sure what to expect. He also didn’t know where the city’s police departments were located, but he was sure one of the many uniformed cops patrolling this end of the PATH line could be of service.

Apparently, One Police Plaza was just a short walk west on Hudson Place and then a brief stroll north along Hudson Street. It was a much more scenic trip than Tom had anticipated. Years of old jokes at Hoboken’s expense—not to mention endless reruns of
On the Waterfront
—had given him a lopsided and by all accounts incorrect opinion of the place. The view of Manhattan on this clear cool day was nothing short of majestic, and the shops he passed along the way to his destination possessed an ethnic charm he associated more with Brooklyn than New Jersey. He even spotted a red phone booth. He thought of Penelope Sue. In addition to
Star Trek,
she also loved
Doctor Who.

Once he’d arrived at One Police Plaza, he produced his badge, explained his business and shortly thereafter was introduced to detectives Paolo Briggs and Antwone Vitucci, keepers of the murder book for a certain triplet of Halloween decapitations. They signed out an unmarked car (a Crown Victoria, to match the stereotype) and drove out to the crime scene.

“Yeah, we got the email from what’s-her-name,” said Briggs. He was behind the wheel, and alternating each sentence with a drag off a brown cigarette. “Don’t know how it’ll elucidate our dead end.”

Vitucci made a show of fanning the smoke out of his face. “There was no sign of forced entry so we assumed it was an inside job. That narrowed it down to the owner and manager, a Mrs. Carolyn Harbinger; the assistant manager, her nephew Jefferson—”