Before Cain Strikes (17 page)

“Fag,” Briggs noted.

“You know, Briggs, you got a hateful streak in you that’s almost as ugly as your face.”

Briggs shrugged, ashed out the window and commenced a five-minute attempt at parallel parking.

“Anyway,” Vitucci continued, “the only other employee was this girl Sandra Washington. She and the dead girls all went to school together at the technical college. She was the one who got them the jobs at the store.”

“And the alibis?”

“All solid. Carolyn Harbinger and her nephew—”

“The fag.”

“—were at some… Jesus Christ, Briggs, how many bumpers you trying to hit? They were at this swank family Halloween party at night, lots of guests, and Sandra Washington was palling around SoHo with some artist types, after which she crashed at a friend’s place.”

Briggs shifted into Park, apparently satisfied with being three feet from the curb. The three of them left the vehicle and walked half a block to the former location of Hot Cotour, now an empty pair of windows and a rolling security door with a For Lease sign taped to it. The contact information still listed Carolyn Harbinger
as the owner. The other four shops and restaurants on the block were up and running as if nothing had happened here, as if the hideous deaths of three girls had been just one of those things.

“They had a camera running inside but the thing was conveniently switched off the night of the incident. Another indication of an inside job.”

“Motives?” asked Tom.

“You tell us, Dixie,” Briggs replied. “I mean, if this is the work of one of those website psychos, maybe we need to start interviewing the neighborhood dogs, see if one of them told our guy to do it.”

“Okay, Briggs.”

“You know, like the Son of Sam.”

“We got it, Briggs. Anyway, to answer your question, Special Agent Piper, there were no motives we could find. I mean, one of the dead girls had an ex-boyfriend who was a little on the angry side, but his alibi checked out, too, and besides, it’s a big leap to go from angry ex to Son of Sam.”

Tom frowned. On one hand, the ritualistic element fit in with the website’s glamorization of serial murder. On the other hand, as Vitucci noted, the evidence did suggest an inside job. The psychologist inside of him pondered the nature of the crime. Multiple beheadings were one thing, but putting those trophies on display, on top of mannequins, for all the world to see? Was the killer making a statement or was he just having a sick Halloween laugh?

“Were the bodies ever found?” he asked.

“No,” answered Vitucci.

The three men stared in silence at the empty storefront window, and at the ghosts of three dead girls waiting to be avenged. For Tom Piper, Hoboken’s charm had begun
to wane a bit. And something about this case gnawed at him. If he could only get into a room with the man (or woman) responsible for these murders…

“Do you mind if I look over your case notes?” he asked.

“You can have the whole thing for all we care,” replied Briggs. “You think we want an unsolved next to our names?”

“We’ll talk to our L.T.,” Vitucci added.

Briggs and Vitucci led Tom around an alleyway in back of the block and showed him Hot Cotour’s rear door. The only other features of the narrow, filthy alley were the six rear doors, presumably to the block’s other restaurants and stores, and an overfull Dumpster. The second, third, fourth and fifth stories were residential apartments. The Harbinger family owned the entire block.

Just for kicks, Tom tugged on Hot Cotour’s alleyway door. It was locked, of course. He sighed and followed the two detectives back out to the street.

He needed Esme.

As he took out his cell phone to dial her number, it began to ring—and it was Esme calling him. Eerie.

“Hello, Esmeralda,” he said. “I was just about to give you a call.”

“Looks like I beat you to the punch, old man.”

“Do you have news or just quips?”

“Can’t I have both?”

Tom grinned. “Talk to me.”

“Cain42 just responded to a thread that I had Grover post last night about the Lynette Robinson murder on a website called ‘Blood Read.’”

“What did Cain42 have to say?”

“And I quote: ‘Dear Galileofan, I completely agree
with your analysis here. What we need now is not a retreat from authority but a call to arms. Open-minded and intuitive people like us exist in this country to provide leadership, and I look forward to our next discourse.’ He’s so hitting on him, right?”

“Sounds like our fish has begun to take the bait,” said Tom.

“So what were you going to call me about?”

“Actually, it’s a tangential case. I’d like your opinion. Here are the details…”

C
ain42’s invitation arrived on Wednesday at 12:55 p.m. Esme read it, showed it to Grover and then promptly forwarded it to Mineola (who immediately ran a back trace on it, which led absolutely nowhere), Tom (whose reply was “!”), Karl Ziegler (who immediately instructed her to accept the invitation, which she did), and even forwarded the invitation to herself. And then she read it again. And then she frowned.

This was all too easy. Here was a man (probably a man) who had not only outsmarted two government agents but had also managed to collect the uncollectible—society’s loners, malcontents and crazies—into a working group. Cain42 was clever, and it would be foolish to believe they had so easily bested him.

Underestimating Henry Booth had cost many good people their lives.

Esme sighed. Why couldn’t she get the dumb criminals? Most career felons, statistically, were of lesser-than-average intelligence. But no, the cases she got involved in always seem to revolve around some monomaniacal polymath. Then again, stupidity offered less of a puzzle to solve. Stupidity was stupidity. Had Cain42 been some
run-of-the-mill whack job, her interest level in the case might have been, well, lower. Scary but true. Then again, had Cain42 been some run-of-the-mill whack job, he wouldn’t have been able to supply Timothy Hammond and countless others with the tools and know-how to murder.

And the wheel spins around and around.

“You going to be on the computer for long?” Lester hovered over her shoulder, encroaching on her personal space and obviously attempting to spy on her activity. “I need to check my email.”

Behind them, on the living room sofa, Grover Kirk was taking a midday nap. The man slept more than a newborn kitten, or at least pretended to sleep. Working with him on these message board posts had proven as thrilling as she’d expected. Every suggestion she offered him somehow got twisted around into a question about Henry Booth. Grover was relentless. He was also about to complete the first draft of his book, and wanted her to be the first to read it. It would be an honor, he said.

Part of her considered how easy it would be to “accidentally” delete the Word document containing his book. But no, as much as she loathed the man, that would have been vicious. This was America. He was entitled to write whatever he liked, and she was entitled to hate it. Free speech, of course, only went so far. The anarchic, potentially deadly advice Cain42 doled out on his website crossed the line.

“If you’re just going to sit there, Esme, sit somewhere else. Some of us have work to do.”

Esme sighed. Her father-in-law: as treasonous to the law and order of her marriage as Cain42 was to the law and order of this country. An exaggeration? Maybe, but not by much. And she could tell by the old man’s
recent boost of energy that his subversive behavior was winning.

Today was Wednesday, one week left on Dr. Rosen’s deadline, and she and Rafe had barely spoken two words in two days. He spent Tuesday night at the lighthouse with Sophie, and didn’t even come home to shower and change. For all she knew, he had taken their daughter and driven overnight to Williamsburg.

Damn it all to hell.

“Esme,” grumbled Lester.

“Okay, fine.” She exited the chair. “By the way, in the future, when you surf the web for divorce lawyers for my husband, you may want to refrain from bookmarking the websites.”

He scowled at her, which was satisfaction enough. Or at least it would have to suffice. Savoring her tiny victory, she left Lester to his browsing and trotted outside to retrieve the mail. A cold wind scattered brown leaves across her worn-out sneakers. She reconsidered going back inside to grab a pullover, but concluded that a little chill out here was preferable to the emotional Antarctica currently settling inside.

As she approached the mailbox at the end of her driveway, she was reminded of the Weiners’ mailbox, the only part of their property that had survived Timothy Hammond’s arson. That poor family. More victims of a little boy’s rampage. Forgotten victims. The Weiners, the Robinsons, the Hammonds. The community at large, really. Cain42 taught Timothy how to toss a pebble into a pond and these were the ripples.

This got her thinking about Tom, and the case in Hoboken.

If they nabbed whoever decapitated those women, and he had, in fact, uploaded that picture to the website, he
was a member, and the more members they could compromise, the more access they could achieve, the better chance they would have at snagging Cain42.

No more ripples.

At least until the next psycho came along.

She removed several envelopes from the mailbox, sifted through them (bill, bill, junk mail, bill,
Penny-saver,
bill) and glanced around the neighborhood. The morning-session kindergarteners would be home by now, devouring their macaroni and cheese in the company of (in this neighborhood) their nanny or au pair. A few of her neighbors were work-at-home moms, but for the longest time, she was the only housewife. And now she wasn’t even that…

Stop it. Christ.
Back to the case in Hoboken.

Esme knew how dangerous and counterproductive rampant speculation would be, especially since she hadn’t even visited the New Jersey crime scene, but something struck her as odd about the crime itself. It was her reflections on the Weiners that brought this thought to the fore. Since the bodies of the three women remained missing, where were they? If he’d committed the murder in the store, how had he smuggled the bodies out without being noticed? According to Tom, the shop lay on a busy street. Only the foolhardy and the stupid would risk transporting the bodies out the front door. This meant that if the murders had been committed in the store, he must have parked his vehicle by the alley entryway and transported them out the rear door. Still, though, that risked exposure, and it also would have left a tremendous amount of physical evidence—namely, blood, gore and skin—trailing from the shop and into the alley, and no such evidence was found. And October 30 had been a clear night, so no amount of rain had washed it all away.

Which indicated that he murdered the women elsewhere, disposed of the bodies beforehand and then arrived at the shop with their heads. The only flaw in that argument was the lack of trace evidence found on the heads themselves. With decapitation, the head either rolled off, in which case it gathered whatever fibers lay along its path, or, if the act were performed on a horizontal plane such as a bed, the head remained still, in which case at least the wound itself would sponge up whatever fibers lay at its base. And the fibers that Hoboken forensics had identified at the women’s necklines were consistent with the carpet of the store. Which indicated that he murdered the women there.

Argh.

Esme carried the mail, useless as it was, back to the house. She half expected Lester to lock her out, but the knob turned and the door opened. Sleepy-eyed Grover was now awake, and he and Lester were chuckling about something, probably a ribald joke. It seemed only natural to Esme that these two miserable human beings would enjoy each other’s company so much.

As she shut the door, their smiles faded a bit.

“So, warden, my pal Lester and I were thinking…”

“Don’t be shy,” the old man encouraged. “Just say it.”

“Since I’ve been a model prisoner, we were wondering if I might be allowed a, what’s it called, furlough.”

Esme raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“It makes sense,” Lester added. “If you’re trying to make them think that everything’s on the up-and-up, won’t it be more suspicious if Grover here never leaves the house?”

Her lips curled southward. The old man had a point, and that in itself was unnerving. She asked where they
were planning to go, even though she knew she would hate the answer.

And she did.

“Angel Eyes,” said Lester.

The strip club he frequented. Of course.

“You want to go now? It’s not even one in the afternoon.”

“It’ll just be for a few hours, boss,” Grover added. “I’ve been very respectful of this situation. I haven’t complained or tried to undermine you, and I’m the one who’s taking the biggest risk here. I don’t want to be in Cain42’s crosshairs. All I ask in return is a few hours with my pal Lester. We’ll be back before dark. What do you say?”

“I say…let’s go.”

Her eyes sparkled mischievously.

And Lester’s eyes lost their sparkle altogether. “Us?”

Angel Eyes was surprisingly busy for one-thirty in the afternoon. Various customers of all ages, sizes and genders occupied the large room’s assortment of booths, round tables and bar stools. The overall ambience lent itself more to a sports bar than a strip club, and Grover might have thought he was in T.G.I. Friday’s were it not for naked (natural) blondes dangling upside down on the steel pole. Unlike most strip clubs he had attended—and he had attended many down in Florida—the stage here was in the center of the room. This made so much logical and practical sense to him that he wondered what all of the other owners were thinking.

Lester led them over to a large round table, where a group of retirees had already gathered. Green felt was being laid across the wooden surface, and poker chips
were being distributed. Grover glanced over at Lester, who replied with a crafty wink. So this was the surprise he had promised. Grover was tempted to bear hug him then and there.

In truth, the past few days had driven Grover Kirk stir-crazy, and this excursion had been necessary. True, the home confinement had allowed him to finish his book, but he hadn’t been allowed to celebrate the occasion…until now. He and Lester sat down in the two empty seats at the table.

“Boys, this is that winemaker I told you about,” said Lester. “Grover Kirk, these are the boys. Keep one hand on your wallet at all times.”

The boys—none of whom was less than sixty-five years old—all laughed and welcomed Grover with handshakes and waves.

Then Esme cleared her throat.

A few pairs of eyes glanced in her direction.

“The bitch hovering behind us is my daughter-in-law. On the count of three, let’s give her the gentleman’s salute, okay, boys?”

On the count of three, most of the men chivalrously displayed their middle fingers for her benefit.

“I’ll be at the bar,” she murmured, and wandered away.

“If that’s all it took to get rid of her,” said Grover, “I’d have flipped her off days ago.”

This inspired the appropriate laughter around the table. Grover smiled, at peace with himself, and ordered a Seven and Seven from the scantily clad waitress. He, of course, hadn’t wanted to get rid of Esme—in his mind, she was as much a celebrity as Galileo—but he knew the words would raise his likability with the men.

“Fifty dollars up front, no buy-ins,” explained Lester, and Grover reached into his pocket for the easy cash.

The game was Texas Hold’em, as Grover expected it to be, and he quickly gauged the skills and personalities of the other seven players at the table. He also enjoyed the floor show, of course, but most of his energy was devoted to the woman at the bar. In the past few days, he felt that he had gotten to know Esme Stuart very well, and he was fascinated by her. Here was a woman who had survived repeated adversity, retired at the top of her game to start a family, put an end to one of the most vicious mass murderers in American history and had absolutely no idea of how special she was.

Or how beautiful she was. Because despite the obvious assets on display in the center of the room, Grover’s libido remained fixated on Esme. His eyes traveled along the strands of her light brown hair as they ran down, down, down, past earlobes, past jawline and came so close to those kissable shoulder blades. He could glimpse her face in the mirror at the bar and even though he couldn’t make out the faint freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks, he knew they were there, and adored each and every one. And even though she wore a bland sweatshirt and jeans, he was confident that underneath those clothes lay a shapely, athletic body perfect for—

“Hey, Grover, you in or out?”

He peeked at his hold cards. A pair of nines. He tossed in a one-dollar chip to match the big blind. The betting continued around the table.

“So, Grover, how long you up here for?”

“A little while longer,” he replied.

“Lester here tells us you’re working on a book about Galileo?”

Grover nonchalantly glanced at the three cards on the
flop—two of clubs, nine of clubs, king of hearts—and limped into the pot with another dollar. The flush draw scared him. “I just finished it, actually.”

“That was one fucked-up son of a bitch.”

“Yes, he was,” Lester said with authority, as if to remind everyone that he had been a hostage when the fucked-up son of a bitch went down.

The table went quiet for a moment, each gentleman imagining what they would have done in that situation. Then Nolan Worth, the snow-haired proprietor of the lighthouse bed-and-breakfast and the card dealer for this round, broke the silence.

“So whereabouts you staying while you’re up here, Grover?”

Lester chuckled. “Tell him.”

“What’s so funny?” asked Nolan.

Grover squirmed in his seat.

“Get this,” Lester said. “My daughter-in-law has Grover here under house arrest.”

“For writing a book?”

Lester elbowed Grover. “Tell him.”

“Lester, maybe we shouldn’t—”

“No, these guys know how the world works. How the government reaches into our lives and forces us all to dance.”

“Here, here,” said Nolan.

“Relax, Grover. You’re among friends here. Why else would I hang out with these douche bags?”

The men at the table gave Lester the gentleman’s salute, and then all laughed and laughed. A chesty waitress refilled their drinks.

“You’re under house arrest because you wrote a book?”

“Well…”

“He’s under house arrest because our government, including that Jodie Foster–Clarice Starling wannabe sitting at the bar, can’t do their jobs. He’s under house arrest—and I negotiated this little shore leave, I might add—he’s under house arrest because the government are using him, an ordinary citizen, to help ensnare some Henry Booth–Galileo wannabe off the internet. You heard it right, boys and girls. They conscripted the poor SOB.”