by Joshua Corin
She jumped to the next paragraph.
Two victims remain in critical condition and were rushed to nearby Glen Cove Hospital. These are Paul Ridgely, 31, campaign manager for Governor Kellerman, and Tom Piper, 56, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of—
Esme didn’t remember reading the rest of the article. She didn’t remember going on Google to find the address of Glen Cove Hospital or putting on her shoes or telling Lester she was leaving or even getting into her Prius. One moment she was at her computer and the next she was on the Long Island Expressway, heading west, at ninety miles per hour.
No one pulled her over. All local law enforcement was gathered outside Port Washington, at a local business called Nassau Firearms. She cruised to the hospital in silence. The stereo remained off.
What was Tom doing there? He didn’t have a motorcycle so he hitched a ride with the future president of the United States? How had anyone been able to get past an entire security detail and Tom? Her mind briefly flitted to Galileo, but no, he was locked away in Middle America. So it found solace in Tom. She would get to the hospital and he would be in surgery and it would be hours and hours but then the doctor would come out and tell her he wasn’t out of the woods and that he couldn’t see any visitors so she would have to sneak in to see him, as he had come to see her, and he would be lying there in his bed as she had been lying in hers and she would sit beside him and he would look terrible but alive and they would trade quips, because that was how they dealt with tragedy, they would trade quips, and embedded in the quips would be granules of wisdom, and they would have a heart-to-heart, a real heart-to-heart, and she would tell him what he meant to her, and he would tell her what she meant to him, and they would work together to find this assassin, whoever he may be, and Esme careened into the hospital parking lot and sprinted into an entanglement of policemen and someone recognized her, that asshole Pamela Gould from the Long Island bureau, but she let her through the entanglement and into an alcove full of chairs and magazines and it was there and then that Esme knew that Tom was not going to make it.
“It was Galileo,” rasped Trumbull.
Esme sipped at her cold coffee.
To his credit, Trumbull came to the hospital first, before heading out to the crime scene. He actually was about to board a government plane to the crime scene in Kansas when he got the news about the massacre on Long Island. He instructed the pilot to alter his flight plan, and soon they were airborne, flying not over the Great Plains but over the great Atlantic. When he arrived at Glen Cove Hospital, the media hubbub had barely subsided; after all, it was here that the governor’s body had been brought. Trumbull took a hit from his oxygen tank, which he carried now with him wherever he went, and gruffed his way through the mob. None of the reporters harassed him. To them, he was just another dying old man going in for a checkup.
He found Esme in that same alcove. Pamela Gould was coordinating the efforts at Nassau Firearms. Esme was alone, and near catatonic. He sat beside her. They exchanged pleasantries (or a tragic facsimile thereof). And then Trumbull hit her with his bombshell about Galileo. He told her about the van, and the cover-up. He told her about his efforts to contact Tom. He told her what he knew—so he could tell her what he now wanted.
But she wasn’t emotionally ready for that. Not yet.
“I saw Tom,” she said.
Trumbull raised a liver-mottled hand to his lip to wipe away some loose saliva. “Oh?”
“Galileo shot him in the chest.”
Trumbull nodded. He’d read the report.
“Not in the head,” Esme added, pointedly.
“Our boy put up a fight. Galileo got desperate, and took the easier shot.” He coughed wetly into his fist. “Yes, he did.”
“He didn’t have his motorcycle,” muttered Esme. “Rafe took it from him last night in a…”
“I don’t know if I follow what…”
She gazed up at him. Her eyes were glassy, as if her soul had gone far, far away. “If he had his motorcycle, he wouldn’t have needed a ride with Bob Kellerman. He wouldn’t have been there at the scene….”
“We don’t know yet why he was there,” Trumbull replied. “But we’ll piece it all together.” Which provided the perfect segue to his request. He opened his mouth to speak and—
“Esme!”
Her overweight professor husband bounded into the alcove and into her embrace. Trumbull shifted in his seat and watched her cry onto his shoulder. He was never one for public displays of affection, even when appropriate.
So he decided to make their public display a private one. “I’ll be right back,” he muttered, and lolled toward the restroom. Halfway there, he stopped, and turned. “Don’t go anywhere, please, Special Agent—forgive me—Mrs. Stuart. I need to talk to you about something.”
Once he was gone, Rafe took his seat.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. Her hands were in his. “I’ve been in class and in meetings, but as soon as I heard, I swear, I got in my car and hightailed it as fast as I could, except traffic was insane. I mean, I’ve never seen traffic like this, not even on the Taconic. The police had set up barricades and were searching every car on the highway in either direction. By the time I got to the house, Dad told me you were here. I should’ve called, but in all the chaos I must have left my cell in my office. He picked up Sophie from school.”
“Sophie…oh, God…”
“She knows something’s wrong, but he didn’t tell her what it was, and he’s not letting her watch the TV. She’s too young to be exposed to anything like this. We’re all too young to be exposed to anything like this.”
He held her again. He could feel the right shoulder of his shirt becoming moist with her tears. He let her cry. He didn’t know what else he could do—what could he possibly do at a time like this but be with her—so that’s what he did. For his own part, his feelings were definitely muddled. There was shock, of course, and bewilderment, and anger, anger at whoever committed this horrible crime. And yet…deep down…though perhaps not that deep…some part of him had learned that Tom Piper was in critical condition and was…not happy but…relieved. Did that make him a bad person? Did that make him selfish? These were questions best ignored, for the time being.
“Rafe…” she said, and caressed his adorably soft cheekbones.
“Come on. Let’s go home.”
He got up.
She didn’t.
“What is it?” he asked. And maybe he knew what was coming. Maybe he knew what she was going to say. He wasn’t a fool. “What is it, Esme?”
“Trumbull’s going to ask me to help. He thinks I don’t know what he’s thinking, but I do. I always did. That’s what he needs to talk to me about.”
“Help? With what?”
“Rafe…”
He sat back down. “We’ve had this argument already. You lost, Esme, remember?”
“Things are different now….”
“Yes, you said that too. You said that to me a few weeks ago. When you finally were able to get off the couch. After almost dying. ‘Things will be different now,’ you said. Things were falling apart between us but you made everything right. You did it. And now you want to, what, throw all of that away?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It’s always been that simple! Jesus Christ, even with one foot in the grave, I’m still battling Tom Piper for your attention.”
And she slapped him across those adorable soft cheekbones she had caressed only minutes earlier. He winced, but didn’t apologize.
“You’re either one thing or you’re something else. Black or white. You want to make your choice? Make your choice. Right here. Because I can’t keep doing this, Esme. It’s not fair to us and it’s not fair to Sophie.”
She shook her head. She wasn’t upset with him. She was, simply, sad.
Finally, she asked: “Do you love me?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“It’s your favorite kind.
It’s black or white. Do you love me?”
“Of course,” he replied.
“Why?”
“What is this? Esme, if I didn’t love you…”
“When we met, what was I doing for a living?”
“Is this a test?”
“Sure. It’s a test. What was my job when we met?”
“You worked for the FBI.”
“Did I enjoy my job?”
“I don’t know….”
“Yes, you do.”
Rafe shrugged. “Yeah, I guess you enjoyed your job.”
“Yes, I did. And then we met and I fell head-over-heels in love with you. I think if you’d asked me to fly to the moon, if you told me that would make you happy, I would have done it. But you didn’t ask me to fly to the moon. You just asked me to quit my job.”
“So we could start a family—which you said you wanted.”
“But here’s what I’m getting at, I guess, Rafe. Here’s what’s bothering me. You knew I loved my job. You knew I was good at it and that it was important. If you care for someone, why would you ask them to give up something like that?”
“Esme, we both made sacrifices….”
“Oh? What have you sacrificed?”
She looked him square in the face. Her brown irises had regained their intimidating potency. His jaw unlatched. Words tumbled down the tip of his tongue—and stayed there.
What had he sacrificed?
“Just because…I mean…it’s not necessary for…”
She cocked an eyebrow, waited.
“You quit your job so we could start a family.”
“There are families in Washington D.C. Good neighborhoods. Dozens of colleges. You could have gotten a teaching job at any of them, but you didn’t even apply. I quit my job because you asked me to. We both know that’s true. So when I tell you, now, that I need to do this, I’m making that decision as a wife, a mother, and an adult, and you need to swallow your pride and shut the fuck up.”
28
Henry Booth had gone to ground. That much was obvious.
Twelve hours after the murders at Nassau Firearms, police checkpoints set up along all major highways and bridges across Long Island and New York City had only resulted in a nervous and/or irate civilian population. There was no sign of the killer, but anyone who had followed the case this far wasn’t particularly surprised by this latest lack of development, and a cursory glance at Nassau Firearms’ inventory confirmed their worst suspicions. No weapon was missing, not a rifle, not a shotgun, not even a box of shells, and the Heckler & Koch used to perpetrate these acts had been left on the countertop. Henry Booth didn’t need it anymore. He was finished with his spree, and now, like any good operative at the end of an assignment, he had disappeared into the ether. Henry Booth. Esme insisted on referring to him by that name, not Galileo. Henry Booth was the name of a man, and men were fallible. Men got caught.
Esme dialed up the Clash’s apocalyptic London Calling on her iPod and walked the crime scene. Will Clay’s two-story store was made mostly of shaved maple. This created a homey rustic ambience, but it also made the invasion of police tape and chalk outlines that much more disconcerting and garish. Despite the gun paraphernalia on the walls, the magazines, despite everything in the store that pointed innately toward violence, what had happened here felt like a violation.
Esme and the forensics experts had pieced together a chronology, and it went something like this:
The chauffeurs paid their bill at the Shoney’s down the road at, according to their receipts, 11:31 a.m. They then sat down to eat, and walked back to the store, arriving there at 12:01 p.m. This was confirmed by the 911 phone records. It was Bella McDeere, one of the chauffeurs, who called it in. The other chauffeur, Gary Swingole, had a thing about blood and had passed out.
As the chauffeurs claimed in their statements that, on their walk back to Nassau Firearms, they didn’t see anyone drive off, Henry Booth must have shown up around 11:30 a.m., committed the killings, and driven away by 11:55 a.m. at the latest. In the span of twenty-five minutes, he murdered ten people. Aside from Tom, Paul Ridgely was the sole survivor, and he was being kept alive only by a combination of a ventilator, a defibrillator and his wife’s philosophical opposition to euthanasia.
The bodies of Lisa Penny, one of Kellerman’s bodyguards, and Kyle Gooden, a ne’er-do-well passerby who was apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time, were discovered in the back of the store. They appeared to have been carried there, and preliminary lab work showed the presence of fibers on them consistent with the interior of a car. This contrasted with the bodies of two of the other guards, which were found in the parking lot, and the blood spatter was consistent where they were found. Another glaring inconsistency: both Lisa and Kyle were bludgeoned to death, while the two bodyguards in the parking lot and the one inside the store had been shot.
This suggested to Esme that Lisa and Kyle were struck first and hidden in a car, perhaps the backseat or the trunk. Henry probably used some kind of homemade club to take them out quietly. But why not just pick them off from afar? After all, that was his modus operandi. Why? Because to get from Kansas to New York overnight, he must have flown, and he wouldn’t have been allowed to bring anything even resembling a rifle on the plane.
Esme stopped, frowned. Henry had flown. Something was niggling her about that. She filed away her unfocused suspicions and walked up to the front counter.
5. But why stuff their bodies in the car if he was just going to dump them behind the store? The answer stared her in the face. Henry was a control freak. He would want his targets to be exactly where he wanted them when he took aim. He lured them out to the car. Maybe he deliberately left the trunk open to make it look suspicious. The guards approached the car. They found the bodies. And Henry took advantage of their momentary shock to nail them. With one guard left inside, he proceeded into Nassau Firearms, took out the guard, then Will Clay, then his wife, whose body was found by the door to the back room. The wife must have heard the gunshots and come out to investigate. Then Henry had ascended the stairs to the second floor.
Esme, too, ascended the stairs to the second floor. The maplewood creaked so loudly underneath her feet that she could hear it over her rock music. But Bob Kellerman and Tom Piper hadn’t heard the gunshots or the creaking stairs. Why? She flicked on the light switch and revealed the obvious. The firing range was soundproofed. She felt the punctuated padding on the walls. Then she saw the two outlines on the floor. The white tape had caked over with dried blood. One of these outlines belonged to Tom. Her eyes flitted from the outlines to the targets dangling 100 yards away, then back again. The similarities sent a chill down her spine.
6. Henry shot Kellerman first. Not only was he closest to the door, but his body didn’t show signs of struggle. Tom’s did. Henry shot Kellerman first, then Tom reacted and the struggle commenced. According to the hospital reports, Tom sustained severe contusions to his left shoulder. He also had some burst capillaries in his hand, but no bruising on his knuckles or his palm. Tom didn’t punch Henry, although he may have kicked him. The burst capillaries suggested that Tom had slapped something hard, perhaps a gun or a wall or even maybe Henry’s skull. Then came the two shots to the chest. One nicked his right coronary artery and the other lodged itself in his aorta. The doctors treated the artery first. When she left the hospital, they had moved on to the aorta. But he wasn’t a young man….
Esme sat down on the mat, beside the outline of his body. She pressed Pause on her iPod, and traced the tape with her fingertips. So many victims over so many years. Tom spoke for those who had been silenced and avenged their untimely deaths, and now he’d become one of them. If there was a Heaven, surely he would go there….
But Esme’s own conclusions about the existence of an afterlife were at best mixed. Did she believe in God? Yes. Some power must have created the universe. Science and math were too beautiful to be an accident. But the existence of, for lack of a better wo
rd, God, did not necessitate the existence of an afterlife. The well-spring of Heaven was hope, and hoping, as Esme sorely knew, rarely made anything so.
Plus she had her own abandonment issues to work out, and oh, my, were they in full force today. There were her own parents, of course, but now on top of that there was the probable departure of her surrogate father, Tom Piper, not to mention whatever was going on between her and Rafe. Maybe they needed a vacation, just the two of them. When all this was over, she would use the money the FBI was paying her to surprise him with a trip to Spain or Costa Rica or Easter Island. Anywhere but here, just the two of them. They would get away from it all and talk—really talk. No more barbs or soliloquies but actual conversation. She had her own credit card, so she could book everything online and it would be a surprise and—
Wait.
Her spider-sense, niggling before, went into over-drive. She got up off the floor and bounded down the stairs. Her file was still on the countertop. She flipped through the timeline, then flipped through it again.
There it was.
She took out her cell and placed a call to AD Trumbull and relayed to him the mistake Henry Booth had made—the mistake she’d just now discovered, hidden in plain sight—and how they were going to use it to ensnare him.
It’s not that he had had a choice. Carelessness out of necessity isn’t really carelessness at all. He had been in Kansas and needed to get to New York. He needed to board the next flight into Islip or LaGuardia or wherever and he needed to do it now.
“In the past he probably traveled by car,” said Esme, “but now he had no choice. And airlines only accept credit cards.”
She was making her pitch before Karl Ziegler, bureau chief for the Manhattan field office of the FBI and de facto foreman in charge of the new shootings; despite the fact they occurred in Nassau County, the resident office in Nassau was technically a substation to the Manhattan field office—and Karl Ziegler wasn’t one for acquiescence. And although AD Trumbull had the higher pay grade, this was Ziegler’s jurisdiction, and Esme required his approval before any new operation was employed. Ziegler, however, was busy with the mayor (who was a second cousin) at an evening function, and so she had to schedule an appointment for later that night. This gave Esme time to increase the document density of her file. After paying twenty dollars for a parking spot on Broadway, she carried the now-thick folder close to her chest and met him and the assistant director on the eleventh floor of Jacob Javits Federal Office Building, a skyscraper which resembled nothing less than a giant cheese grater.
