by Joshua Corin
She handed him a dishrag.
“What’s this for?”
“Just give me your glasses.”
He did. She wiped them. He poured the boiled rice into the chili and stirred them together.
“The man who killed her took her hands.”
Esme regretted saying it the moment the words came out. In fact, she had no honest idea why she’d shared with him this information, which was both grisly and confidential. He had no need to know. He had no need to ever know.
But now he knew.
He stared at her, his turquoise eyes so small, so vulnerable, without his glasses on. At that moment he didn’t look like a sociology professor or the father of a seven-year-old girl. He looked like a boy, a broken-hearted little boy.
“I’m sorry…” said Esme. “I—”
He began to pace the kitchen, thinking, thinking. Then he wheeled on her, fists clenched. “Why would someone do that?”
Esme shrugged. “Any number of reasons. What’s important is—”
“There are reasons? There is more than one reason why someone would…?”
“Rafe—”
“This is your world, isn’t it? This is what you deal with, willfully.”
Willfully. That word harkened back to their argument in Dr. Rosen’s office. How he’d accused her of knowingly and willfully killing their family with her selfish behavior. Goddamn it, couldn’t they have made it through one day without this shit coming back up between them?
She handed him his clean glasses.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Really, I am.”
He accepted the glasses from her hands, peered through the lenses and donned them.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
They ate dinner.
They talked about the weather.
And then, while washing the pots and dishes, it all began again….
“What are these number of reasons?”
“Rafe, it’s not important—”
“You know that’s bullshit. The reason someone does a thing is an essential ingredient in… I mean, come on. What causes a person to decide, ‘Oh, you know what? I think I need to lop off a person’s hands’?”
“What you’re talking about is profiling,” replied Esme. She was avoiding his stare, but could still feel it. “That’s not really my area.”
“Then how do you expect to catch this guy when a major aspect of the work is not really your area?”
“I’m not the only person working this case, Rafe. I’m not even officially working this case at all. I’m consulting, off the books, as per your whatever. I’m sure the police have their own experts who can—”
“We’re talking about a woman’s life here!”
“Please stop yelling at me.”
“You want me to stop yelling at you? Okay. Here’s me not yelling.”
That’s when Rafe threw the pot against the wall. A stain of dirty dishwater, dotted with bits of chili, drooled down the white paint and to the linoleum floor below, where the pot had loudly clanged to its resting place, but not before soaking both of them in sodden crap.
They both stared at the mess on the wall. Then at themselves. Then back at the wall.
A minute passed.
“Did I mention,” muttered Rafe, “that everybody who watches prime-time TV is also an amateur melodramatist?”
“That would explain the crescendo of violins I just heard.”
Rafe nodded.
They continued to stare at the mess.
“I’ll clean this up,” he finally said. “Why don’t you go take a shower?”
Esme nodded and walked to the bathroom. She could feel rice in her hair. Oh, how nuptial. She quickly got undressed and turned on the shower. The water would take a minute or two to heat up.
The funny thing was, she knew Rafe was right. This case was bigger than her. There was a sinister psychology at play, and she lacked the skills to analyze it. She needed an expert, but this wasn’t an official FBI case….
Turning off the water, she wrapped herself in an oversize towel, and reached for her cell phone to call Tom Piper.
5
When the phone call came, Tom didn’t hear it. He was too busy quite literally rolling in the hay with the farmer’s daughter. To be sure, the farmer in question was ninety-two years old, half-deaf and asleep at the time, but life had taught Tom Piper that sometimes it was best to ignore the salient details in favor of sauciness. He (age fifty-eight) and Penelope Sue Fuller (age sixty-one) groped, fondled, licked, lapped, nuzzled, squeezed, bucked, sucked and thrust against each other in the pine loft of the Fullers’ stables, several hay bales acting as their makeshift mattress. The hay was itchy, and poked a bit, but that just caused Tom and Penelope Sue to act upon each other with increased, well, assertiveness.
Through it all, Tom’s heart maintained a steady, calm rhythm. Th-thump. Th-thump. Th-thump. Damn pacemaker. It really took some of the fun out of primal, no-holds-barred sex. The pacemaker was his souvenir from Galileo. The fucker had shot him in the chest. Only emergency surgery on Long Island—and the installation of his very own personal timekeeper—saved Tom’s life. Now, six months later, his doctors here in Kentucky were impressed with his recovery. Tom was less than impressed. It was moments like this, moments with Penelope Sue, that he was reminded just how comprehensively Galileo had robbed him, because here, with a beautiful redhead and in an idyllic setting straight out of a dirty limerick, as they went at each other like a pair of id-addled bunny rabbits, Tom was having trouble maintaining his erection.
He tried everything. He concentrated on Penelope Sue, her full breasts, her perfume (peaches…oh, my!), how much she wanted him, how much he desired her. When that didn’t work, he flipped through the Rolodex of memories. Other women he’d been with, other women he’d craved, high school sweethearts, coworkers, that bubbly clerk he once chatted with in Toronto and the way he wanted to bury himself in her dimples. He had more than four decades of memories to choose from, and yet he could feel himself deflate, deflate, deflate….
Finally, between gasps, Penelope Sue asked him if everything was okay, and the sound of honest concern in her voice, of pity, was like a bucket of ice. He sighed, lay beside her and gazed up through the roof slats at the plump, indifferent moon.
She ran a hand across his long gray ponytail. “It’s all right,” she said. “We can just lie here,” she said. “This is nice, too,” she said.
“Mmm-hmm,” he replied, not meaning a syllable of it.
Soon, though, the night air made them chilly, and it was time to get dressed. They did so in heavy silence and walked back to her farmhouse, shivering. Penelope Sue made some tea.
Tom envisioned their upcoming conversation. He’d seen variations of it in every Viagra, Cialis and Levitra commercial. She’d pull out a brochure. They’d go to the doctor. Next shot: they’d be walking hand in hand on the beach and grinning ear to ear as the waves cascaded in the background. Except he couldn’t go the medicinal route even if he wanted to, not with his bad heart.
Which left them where and with what? He wanted to grow old with this woman, but he wanted her to be happy, and her sexual appetite was as gleefully voracious as his. As his was until six months ago.
She handed him his tea. Spice orange. Herbal. No caffeine for him. Hers was a special blend she bought at the farmer’s market. She cuddled beside him on the living room couch.
Commercial time, he thought. Cue the music.
“Tom,” she said, “this is why the good Lord invented vibrators.”
She winked at him lasciviously and sipped her hot tea.
God, he loved this woman.
That’s when he noticed his cell phone, which he’d left on her star-shaped coffee table, glowing on and off. He had a message.
“I should check on Mama in a bit,” said Penelope Sue. “See if she needs her sheets changed.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I’d like that. Mama wouldn’t, but that’s her problem now, isn’t it?”
She spoke with that sugary Kentucky accent that lent itself so sweetly to bourbon and bluegrass. Tom knew it well. He grew up not fifty miles from here. Hearing her speak was like hearing his past call him home. When Tom returned to Kentucky to recuperate, the hospital assigned him a certain physical therapist with long red hair that smelled of peaches and, well, here he was, in puppy love at age fifty-eight.
“It’s past time to turn the farm over for the winter,” said Penelope Sue. “Got to recaulk the windows and get the pumps double-checked.”
“I can do that this weekend.”
Penelope Sue nodded. Weekends were her busiest times at the hospital. Tom worked a desk at the FBI’s Louisville division, but not on Saturdays and Sundays. His nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday life couldn’t have been more different from his schedule on the national task force, but that just made it all the better. Tom Piper had turned a corner. The pilgrim had finally settled down.
Was it the change in his health? Was it the influence of Penelope Sue? Maybe. But the greater cause, Tom knew, belonged to Galileo. Near-death experiences put life in perspective. It was a simple truism, almost trite, but accurate as a bull’s-eye. And Tom wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Ready for more?” she asked.
Tom knew she wasn’t referring to the tea or (mercifully) sex. She was referring to the room’s thirty-six-inch plasma TV and to the DVD player attached to it and the disc inside. He acquiesced, and she giddily reached for the remote control.
Two minutes later: “Space…the final frontier…”
Yes, oh, yes, the love of his life was a Trekkie.
They were in the middle of an original-series marathon, her adorable attempt to convert him to the cult of Trek. She had a uniform hanging in a bag in her closet. Her bedroom contained signed photographs. And when she’d revealed 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 sti
ll. 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 unfortunate fate. How differently people would live their lives if they knew how and when their lives would end. Esme wondered what she would do differently, if she knew, and by the 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.
