Before Cain Strikes

by Joshua Corin

  And even when it finally stopped, it didn’t kindly stop for her. And so she didn’t hear Tom calling out her name because all sound had become a choir of tonal ringing. As she lay there, underneath the second-to-last car of the train, as Tom finally spotted her with his flashlight, her subconscious resumed its fanciful associations, and she thought about the ear-swatting she’d performed just the other day on Grover Kirk. Was this fate reminding her of what comes around?

  Then she felt a hand touch her right foot, and she opened her eyes and tried to lift her head to see if Grover was there in person, perhaps to drag her to hell, but that simple effort of raising her head an inch apparently tipped the scales of her sanity too far, and Esme passed out.

  She woke up on Grover’s cot.

  Detective Rowling had transferred his witness to the station, in the hope that a different setting might ease the poor fellow’s stress level and elucidate a coherent statement. In fact, it was when the paramedics shifted Esme to the now-vacant cot that Tom first learned Grover Kirk was still alive.

  He learned a few other things, as well….

  “Tom?” Esme’s brown eyes shifted left to right, full of confusion. “What are you doing here?”

  He sat down beside her. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I got run over by a train.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  She tried to sit up, and that was when she noticed her left arm was in a sling.

  “When you fell, you busted your shoulder.”

  “Fell?” Then she remembered. “Oh.”

  She noticed the rest of her body appeared intact. There were cuts and bruises every which way, and her outfit was in filth-stained tatters, but she spotted no broken bones or missing limbs. Her hearing, though, remained fuzzy, as if her ears were stuffed with seawater.

  Tom went on to tell her about Grover, and that, according to the security tapes, a man fitting the description given by Detective Rowling of her assailant had nonchalantly walked out of Penn Station with everyone else and was long gone.

  “Why did they lift the lockdown?” she asked. There were still people here on the platform, but she recognized most of them. These were her fellow passengers from the second-to-last car of the A-train. Everyone else had apparently been allowed to leave.

  “The manager of one of the clothing stores upstairs was shot,” replied Tom. “When one of the store’s sales associates staggered into the crowd, screaming, it created a panic. So the bosses made a decision.”

  “And let Cain42 slip away.”

  “From their point of view, they lowered the temperature on a pot of boiling water.”

  “Yet another reason never to eat a meal prepared for you by a politician.” Then she asked him about Hoboken, and he told her what had gone down with Jefferson Harbinger.

  “You always get your man,” she said.

  He chuckled. “I don’t know if you’re implying I’m gay or a Mountie.”

  “A gay Mountie.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  She smiled up at him, this woman who was the closest thing he had in the world to a daughter, this woman who he’d almost lost only a few minutes ago, this extraordinary woman.

  “There’s a long line of detectives waiting to interview you,” he said. “Not to mention Ziegler.”

  She released a stoic sigh and nodded. Duty called.

  To which Tom added, “So what do you say we get the hell out of here?”

  “But…”

  “You’re in no condition to argue. Or drive, come to think of it. Hand me your keys, young lady.”

  “But…”

  “Listen to me.” He looked her in the eye. “Every man, woman and child with a badge is out there right now looking for him. Two more sets of tired eyes won’t make a damn bit of difference. We’ve done our bit for king and country today. And besides, they’ve invented these devices now called telephones. You think your statement would be any different if you were at One Police Plaza versus on your sofa at home?”

  No more protests. She handed over her car keys. And that was that.

  Next stop: Oyster Bay.

  Grover Kirk had made peace with his own mortality. It wasn’t that—when he realized what Cain42 was doing, he wanted to die. But he’d expected to. Once the tear gas filled the train car, and once the gunshots and the screams joined the tear gas, Grover had waited for death to arrive. Would it be heaven? Would it be hell? Would it be oblivion? He was about to enter the Undiscovered Country. So be it. His life had been one of constant battle, and finally he was to be at rest.

  But Cain42 had spared him. He had taught him a lesson, and he had done so by forcing him to bear witness to a massacre. Now, surely, he would be able to treat the subject of serial murder with freshness and vigor.

  No, thank you.

  Not a chance.

  Never again.

  He had located his car in the overpriced lot. As soon as he returned to his room, he was going to load up all the research on his computer, all of the audio files and interview transcripts and the book—of course, the book—and he was going to delete it. Then he was going to delete the bookmarks from his web browser. Then he was going to find the nearest seminary and…what? Run away? Hide? That was surely an attractive option. Not for nothing had mankind honed a superior survival instinct. Would his family wonder about him? Would they worry about where he might have vanished to and why? No. And hiding away had the added advantage of hiding away from them. He booted up his car’s GPS. He would ensconce himself in some ecumenical retreat and he would know peace and he would be able to wash away the mistakes and misconceptions of the past. Retreat—what a perfect word!

  Retreat, yes, but what about responsibility?

  Someone had tipped Cain42 off, and although it was probably someone inside the Bureau, probably someone Grover had never even met, there was the niggling possibility that it was someone he had met, someone not inside the Bureau at all, someone perhaps who had sat at that poker game in the strip club and learned about the ruse from Lester’s unstoppable mouth. What were the odds? How unlucky would he, Grover, have to be?

  But that was a self-answering question, wasn’t it.

  Grover envisioned the poker game in his mind. He could remember who played what hand, who flopped into the pot, who folded early, who bluffed, who won big. All his life, he had been attuned to the behavior of small groups. It had allowed him to ingratiate himself with the survivors of Galileo. It had allowed him to become one with the denizens of the message boards. So, during the game, what behavior, if anything, was out of the ordinary? This was a challenge. He had just met these gentlemen. Who was he to say what was ordinary and what was unusual?

  He needed assistance, and certainly not from the authorities. Where was it that Lester said he was staying? At a lighthouse? Yes. Nolan Worth ran it as a B and B. If Lester couldn’t help him, perhaps Nolan could.

  Grover drove east through the wild birth pangs of a late-autumn rainstorm. The lighthouse, the storm—all the requisite Gothic ingredients for the end of his mystery.

  28

  “Mother of Christ,” mumbled Nolan Worth. He’d just banged his thumbnail with his hammer. Again. He was attempting to hang a mural that Halley bought at a charity auction. She wanted it above the front desk. But that’s where he had his genuine Saginaw M1 carbine rifle on display. He bought that rifle at a flea market when he was fourteen years old. He bought it with his own allowance money and he prized it above all his possessions.

  Halley told him he could keep it under the desk, out of sight. If someone tried to rob the place, they would be in for a surprise. She said it with a wink and then returned to her sewing. She knew she didn’t need to say any more. He would do what she wanted. In the end, he always did.

  Standing on a stepladder he’d built himself, on the second floor of the lighthouse he’d renovated himself, he gripped that hammer in his hand so tightly that he was convinced the wooden handle would split open. These days, he was rarely witho
ut his hammer. He even snuck it under his pillow one night. Just as he’d drifted off to sleep, it fell behind the bed with a loud clunk. Halley slept right through it. He reached behind the mattress and picked it up. When Halley slept, her lips were curled in a perpetual frown. He imagined driving the claw end of the hammer down and shattering that frown into a million pieces.

  He sucked on his throbbing thumb and took another look at the nail in the wall. He’d had to go to the hardware store and buy heavy-duty nails that would support his wife’s mural (which must have been painted on some special canvas that was interwoven with steel). The nail’s head was almost as wide, and nearly as dense, as the male end of his trusty hammer. And this was just the first nail. He had two more to put up to properly support a mural of this size and weight…not to mention ugliness. It was folk art, which to Nolan Worth was just some salesman’s phrase for marketing childish doodles to rich wives. Halley’s expensive mural, for example, was ostensibly an oil painting of a lighthouse by the sea, only the lighthouse curved like a ripe banana and the sea was the color of snot.

  Oh, what improvements he could make to the painting with his hammer…but who was he kidding? He was never going to actually harm anyone or anything. He was just a geriatric Walter Mitty living in a world of pipe dreams. He would for the rest of his pathetic life be nothing but a—

  Bzzzt!

  That was the front door. Were they expecting guests?

  “Are we expecting guests?” he called out to Halley. Lester Stuart and his granddaughter were upstairs in their rooms. Rafe Stuart already had a key. He was certain there were no reservations scheduled, not for this time of year. That had been one of the reasons he and Halley had been so eager to take Rafe and Sophie in. They enjoyed the company. “Halley, are you expecting anyone?”

  Bzzzt!

  With a sigh, Nolan dismounted the stepladder and descended the spiral staircase to the ground floor. The ratatatat of raindrops echoed and abounded throughout the stairwell. Millions of watery nails, mused Nolan, shooting down from the sky. He put on his innkeeper face and opened the front door.

  The man who stood there at the threshold was sopping wet and pale. His puffy black coat appeared to be at least two sizes too big for his slim frame, but maybe that was the fashion these days. Nolan never understood fashion. The man was in his late thirties, maybe, but possessed such alertness and wisdom in his eyes that Nolan felt immediately laid open and dissected.

  “They say once you’re wet, you can’t get wetter,” the man told him. “That’s not true.”

  Nolan stepped aside and allowed him entry. “Of course. I’m sorry.” He closed the door. It locked automatically. “How can I help you?”

  The man wandered the round room, nodding at the historical artwork on the walls. “Ever since we first spoke, I’ve wanted to come here. How often does one find a fellow connoisseur in one unusual hobby, let alone two? I’ve wanted to meet you for a while now. I just wish it were under better circumstances.” Yes. This was him. Nolan knew it. He was tempted to fall on one knee and pledge his life to his liege. Instead, he offered his hand in greeting and asked, “Better circumstances?”

  Cain42 shook off his coat. His shoulder wound no longer ached. This wasn’t good news. “I appear to be leaking,” he said. “Can you fix me up?”

  Penelope Sue insisted on tagging along. What an ideal opportunity, after all, for her to finally meet the famous Esme Stuart! And besides, as poor condition as Esme was in, Tom, with his two hours of sleep, wasn’t much better off. Begrudgingly, Tom acquiesced, and occupied the backseat while the two women sat up front and chatted. His mind desperately wanted to nap, but his ears wouldn’t let him.

  The conversation began idly, as most introductory conversations did. They compared childhoods, somehow finding equivalences between Esme’s urban upbringing in Boston and Penelope Sue’s rustic early days on a Kentucky farm. What really hit it off between them, though, was their common guilty pleasure: Ringo Starr.

  Tom did his level best not to groan.

  Esme and Penelope Sue rooted for the session man, the humble professional. They spoke on and on about Ringo’s underrated skills as a drummer and his place in history, and Tom, humble professional that he was, had no idea they could easily have been justifying their affection for him.

  As they merged onto the L.I.E., Esme scrolled through her iPod and played Ringo’s “Don’t Pass Me By.” By the time they’d moved on to “Octopus’s Garden,” they’d entered the rainstorm. Dark clouds were massed like fat vultures over much of Long Island. According to Penelope Sue, the meteorologists on NY1 expected it to freeze over by morning, and were warning commuters about black ice—a phrase she had never heard before in her life.

  “Don’t get much frost down in Kentucky, huh?”

  “Oh, we get frost,” she replied. “We just shoo it away before it gets comfortable.”

  “You must miss it.”

  “Miss it?”

  “Well, I mean, how long have you been up here now? A week? And I know Tom’s been too busy to properly show you around New York, not that he’d be the best tour guide. He hates the city.”

  “I love it.” Penelope Sue smiled at her. “I do. I love that the weather’s different and the people are different and the shops are certainly different. We’ve got a Macy’s at the Red Fork Mall down near where I live. As soon as I fly back, I’m marching straight into that store and I’m going to ask them to change their name. That store at the Red Fork Mall may call itself a Macy’s, but I’ve been to Macy’s, the real Macy’s! Please. In fact, I’m hoping me and Tom can attend the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’ve seen it on TV but to be there in person, to see a fifty-foot-tall inflatable Spider-Man floating over Fifth Avenue? I love my home. I do. And I do miss it. But I am very, very happy to be here. With my man. Isn’t that right?”

  She glanced in the rearview at Tom.

  “Hmm?” he replied.

  “Exactly.”

  Now Esme checked the rearview. The scowl on her mentor’s face was priceless.

  “Does Sophie like the parade?”

  “She’s never been,” said Esme. “We almost took her last year but she had a sore throat and with the weather being this cold…”

  “So take her this year! I know me and Tom would love the company. Then afterward we can go to the ice rink at Rockefeller Center. Because if you’re going to be a tourist, you might as well be a tourist, right? What do you say, Tom Piper? Think we can get you into a pair of ice skates?”

  Tom grumbled something in response, but neither Esme nor Penelope Sue heard him. They were too busy giggling at the image in their minds of their latter-day John Wayne in ankle-high laces.

  Once they reached the turnoff for Oyster Bay, Esme directed Penelope Sue first toward the house. She was desperate to see her little girl, but she wasn’t so desperate that she would let Sophie see her like this. Her clothes and face remained an utter catastrophe. She let them into the house and told them to help themselves while she hopped into the shower. Before she left, though, Penelope Sue stopped her and asked discreetly, “Where’s his crotch rocket?”

  Esme blinked. “Beg pardon?”

  “You know. The motorcycle.”

  “Ah. In the garage. Aren’t Harleys called cruisers?”

  “Take your time in the shower, dear,” said Penelope Sue. “We’ll be in the garage.”

  The older woman waggled her eyebrows and let Tom lead her. They looked like two spin-the-bottle teens on their way to a dark private closet. Esme watched them go, and then mounted the stairs to her bedroom.

  Halley did not like her husband’s friend, not one bit.

  “And how did you get a hole in your shoulder?” she asked him.

  “Will my answer determine whether or not you sew me up?”

  “That’s for me to decide, isn’t it?”

  He was sitting on the edge of Nolan and Halley’s bed. Or rather, he was sitting on a brown towel that Halley insisted be place
d on the bed before he even entered the room. This strange man was not going to bleed on her silk sheets.

  Halley had her sewing scissors in one hand and a spool of black thread in the other. “Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to put this away and call the police?”

  Nolan reappeared with the bottle of rubbing alcohol he’d left to get.

  “What are you waiting for?” he asked Halley.

  “I’m waiting for a logical explanation,” she replied.

  “I told you. He’s a friend from B and B USA.”

  She cocked a mascara eyebrow. “Do you think I’m a moron?”

  “Of course not…”

  “And why are you still carrying that goddamn hammer? Is it your security blanket, Nolan? Is that what it is?”

  Nolan glanced down at the hammer. He hadn’t even realized he was still holding it. He handed the rubbing alcohol to his wife. She didn’t take it. “For Christ’s sake, Halley, you’re always going on about your charity work and what a humanitarian you are. Well, are you, or aren’t you?”

  She glared at him, but took the bottle. Cleaning the wound was a simple matter. Halley had cleaned enough cuts when her rambunctious children were growing up. Certainly none of them ended up pierced straight through, though. With every application of rubbing alcohol, he winced as if being jabbed by a cattle prod.

  Nolan watched from the corner of the room. Nervous. The hammer in his hands. A security blanket? Might as well be for all the good it was to him.