Before Cain Strikes Page 17

  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.”

  Grover opened his mouth to rebut, to defend Esme or at least declaim Lester for, well, spouting out classified information, but the looks of sympathy from the men at the table silenced all protest. These men—these strangers, really—actually cared about his plight. They were friends. And it wasn’t as if Lester had lied. The FBI had, for lack of a better word, conscripted him. Only they didn’t send him overseas to fight the Vietcong. They sent him to Long Island.

  Nolan flipped the turn card. Nine of hearts. Grover now had four of a kind. The hand was his to win. He slow-played it at first, tossing in the minimum bet, but Lester swallowed down a finger of Scotch and raised him. The other three gentlemen at the table still in the hand matched the raise. The pot was getting sizable, and there was still another card to go, and no one at the table could possibly have a hand better than Grover’s. Life was good.

  It was time to step out of the shadows.

  He added twenty dollars to Lester’s raise, leaned back in his chair and let the four other players fight among themselves. By the time the river card—an ace of clubs—was revealed, only Lester remained in the hand with him.

  Grover Kirk knocked.

  Lester, perhaps sensing weakness, splashed all of his chips into the pot. Grover, sensing victory, casually moved his own stacks to the center of the table. Lester flipped over his ace-high flush. Grover flipped over his four of a kind. The gentlemen erupted in shock and applause. Grover leaned back in his chair, basking in their adoration. Had Esme spotted his act of glory? He hoped so. And if not, one of these comely waitresses must have…

  Nolan Worth collected the cards and passed them clockwise to the man to his left. “Nice hand,” he said, and flashed Grover a child-eating grin. But the writer was too busy trading verbal jabs with poor, humiliated Lester. Ah, well. Nolan excused himself from the table, shuffled off to the men’s room to relieve himself of the quart of Guinness he’d consumed since arriving, and while at the urinal activated his BlackBerry to locate the email he needed. Cain42 had sent out a bulletin to all members in the New York City area to check out the veracity of a prospective member’s application. Nolan, who first connected with Cain42 on, of all places, a bed-and-breakfast listserv, certainly hadn’t expected Grover Kirk to fall into his lap so neatly, but when Lester had started gabbing the other night at the lighthouse about his new houseguest and how poor Sophie had been forced to spend the week before Thanksgiving at their bastion tower, well…was it possible this was the same Grover Kirk? Apparently, it was.

  Nolan whistled as he washed his hands, and then emailed back with the news of his discovery. Cain42 was going to be so proud of him. Maybe he’d be selected to do the deed. What an honor that would be for his first kill. He’d do Grover, then that blowhard Lester and his bitch of a daughter-in-law, and then maybe spend some quality time with that cute brown-haired granddaughter of his, Sophie, before doing her, too. The thought of his claw hammer crashing into Sophie’s wrinkle-free prepubescent forehead made him hard, and he tried to think about bunny rabbits and dandelions before he could return to the table, but decided the hell with it—they were at a strip club, for Christ’s sake—and sauntered back to his friends, his cock, as always, leading his way.

  18

  What to do, what to do.

  It’s not that Cain42 was overly surprised by Nolan’s information. The FBI had already tried to plant two moles into his organization. Perhaps they’d assumed the third time would be the charm.

  Perhaps it would be.

  The surest way to trump one’s enemy was to give them what they wanted, and Cain42 had been so negligent of late in catering to the FBI’s egos. No, it was time to boost their confidence. Instill the G-men with a little pride. Make them think they’d bested him. The closer they got, the easier it would be for him to cut out their overinquisitive brains.

  Cain42 needed to think. So he went to the nearest hardware store.

  Oh, how he loved hardware stores! Even as a little child, barely able to reach above the shelf, the sheer variety on display held him rapturous. He could spend hours simply peering into a plastic container of nails. Like people, they came in all shapes and sizes. Like people, they served a purpose. Like people, they could gouge and cut.

  Cain42 preferred local hardware stores to the big box chains, and in this particular town, he found a dandy of a place right on the main street, nestled between a barber and a pharmacy. The barber even had the vertical-striped pole o
ut in front of its screen door. These modern-day salons, the kind one often found inside cavernous malls, never displayed a barber’s pole. This country was in danger of losing its history. The red stripe in the barber’s pole symbolized blood. Up until quite recently, barbers used to perform surgeries. After all, they had the tools for the job.

  How appropriate, then, to find a barber’s shop next to a hardware store.

  This hardware store was called Mitch’s, but the punk-haired teenager behind the counter most certainly was not Mitch. She wore a red apron and little else, not that there was much else to see given her anorexic frame. Nevertheless, Cain42 flashed her an all-American how-do-you-do grin. She responded with an all-adolescent leave-me-alone glare.

  So he made his way to Aisle 1 (of 5), momentarily distracted by the thought of crushing the glasslike bones of her clavicles with the balls of his thumbs. The sight and smell of fresh-cut lumber carried him back to reality. Here, arrayed by length and width, were long strips of pine and cherry and oak, each sanded as smooth as a human cheek. Cain42 ran his fingertips along these, the carved bones of forests, and his mind swooned in memory of porches built in backyards and of cages built in basements. Historians demarcated ancient civilization into ages of Stone and Bronze and Iron, but wood—wood was mankind’s oldest earthborn friend. On his website, Cain42 posted instructions on how to manufacture a longbow and arrows out of hardwood ash. Longbows were excellent for long-range, silent kills. Cain42 preferred intimacy in murder, but he was aware that some of his online friends were shy, and so he did what he could to accommodate them—accommodate all types, really.

  As webmaster, he did not tolerate discrimination.

  Aisle 2 housed plumbing supplies. As Cain42 ogled the curlicues of pipes and a dangling assembly of toilet seats beside them, and a wall of faucets in every style from simple steel to stenciled gold, he reminded himself that he was here to ruminate on a problem. But it was so easy to become distracted! He marveled at the creativity of it all. So much in this aisle, once installed, became the stuff behind the walls, out of sight, ignored—and yet look at how much time and effort had been spent in making even these drains and traps and washers not only functional but beautiful. Indoor plumbing was taken for granted, but the era of chamber pots and bedpans was not too long ago. Cain42 once put an elderly woman’s head in her own bedpan and then put the bedpan in the woman’s gas oven. He didn’t turn the oven on, of course. That would have been overkill.