While Galileo Preys (30 page)

Esme swallowed some saliva and touched the power
button on the machine. Nothing happened. She touched it again. And again.

All eyes were on her now. Galileo’s. Lester’s. Rafe’s. Sophie’s.

“The plug must be loose,” she said.

Galileo sighed. “Then plug it in.”

She nodded and climbed behind the desk. Her left hand casually brushed against the curtains. She knelt down to the outlet. The plug wasn’t loose. But she already knew that. She’d touched the power button, but she hadn’t pressed it. Her left hand just as casually closed around the curtain fabric.

Galileo frowned.

Esme yanked down on the curtain. The heavy fabric popped off its rod and bunched onto the floor. Galileo, confused, arced the gun from the little girl to her, and in doing so caught a glimpse of the FBI sniper positioned on the roof across the street just moments before he fired his rifle and sent several ounces of copper and lead into Galileo’s lower right ventricle. His yellow Polo shirt turned red, and he fell to his knees, then to the floor.

The dozens of agents outside the house scurried out of hiding and toward the house. Esme scurried to her family on the couch, and embraced them all, even Lester. Sophie was crying again.

“It’s over,” her mother said. “It’s over.”

T
he rain fell down in soupy buckets against the grassy Eastern countryside. Esme didn’t mind. A funeral without rain was like a wedding without sunshine. Everyone stood around the fresh, muddy grave and under a makeshift tent. The rain pitter-pattered a Gene Krupa rhythm against the canvas top. Their black sunglasses concealed their wet eyes, although occasionally an errant tear would slip past the protection of the lens and appear on a cheek or lip.

A good man was in a pine box.

His body, at least, was there. That much Esme was sure of. As to questions of the soul…those were best left to scholars and poets, weren’t they? There were some puzzles even she chose to avoid.

Right now, in Ohio, thousands were gathered at a megachurch in Columbus to mourn the passing of Bob Kellerman. His funeral would be private, but his memorial service was open to the public. The fact that the country’s most famous atheist was being memorialized in a church, of all places, stirred a small grin
inside Esme’s heart. She had a feeling the populist governor wouldn’t have minded, and she
knew
it would have just infuriated Galileo.

As to this far smaller affair in the Virginia countryside…

“He loved to eat,” eulogized the old pastor, and the dozens in attendance nodded in agreement. Esme couldn’t help but smile a little. Tom, sitting beside her, smiled a little, too. A horse-faced nurse, who went by the name of Imelda and lacked all mirth whatsoever, shadowed them both. The hospital had only agreed to allow Tom to attend Norm’s funeral on the condition that he be accompanied at all times by a medical professional. On the helicopter ride down here, Tom had done his Kentucky best to charm Imelda, but she just shook her head disapprovingly and checked his pulse. He had a fresh-out-of-the-box pacemaker embedded in his chest, and these first forty-eight hours were, quite literally, critical.

The old pastor intoned his eulogy, and it was obvious he knew Norm very well. He spoke of a reckless adolescent who had notoriously egged the mayor’s house one Halloween. The mayor had launched a full-scale investigation into the matter. The sneakiest junior criminals often grew up to be the wiliest detectives. Eventually it came time to bury the box. There would be no one else stepping to the podium to share their memories of Norm. He had wanted a simple service, and a simple service was what he was going to get. The service concluded, two well-dressed cemetery workers began to wheel a well-oiled winch and Norm’s coffin slowly drifted into the earth.

Tom took out a notepad from the pocket of his black leather jacket and with a shaky hand scribbled a brief message. He indicated for Imelda to roll him forward, and she did, and he let the piece of paper fall down into the hole to be with his lost pal.

Esme placed a hand on Tom’s shoulder. He clasped it with his own, and looked up at her. They shared a lifetime in a moment, and then the crowd began to disperse.

Tom jotted a note on his pad and handed it to her:

Come with me to my car.

Esme followed Tom to the black sedan that the government had provided to transport him from the helipad to the cemetery. Imelda helped him into the backseat. It pained Esme to watch her mentor so weak, but she took comfort in the fact that this was temporary. In a week, Tom would be speaking again. In a month, he’d be up and about without the need of a wheelchair. She had recovered, and so would he, but never fully. Her kidney, his heart…such was but a fraction of Galileo’s legacy.

But they were alive.

As soon as the car door shut, Tom picked up the car phone and dialed a number. Before Esme could ask anything, he pushed the speaker button.

The phone rang once, twice, and then someone picked up: “Yes?”

That unmistakable croak could only have belonged to AD Trumbull. Why was Tom calling him? What was going on here? Why did—

“Hello?” Trumbull coughed. “For fuck’s sake, is anyone there?”

“Yes, sir,” Esme quickly replied. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s Esme Stuart. I’m here with Tom Piper.”

Silence, then: “You did good with the Galileo case, Mrs. Stuart.”

Trumbull didn’t sound surprised to hear from her. Esme looked to Tom for an explanation but he just replied with a mischievous grin and scratched at his day-old gray stubble.

“Tom’s task force was a valuable asset and the Bureau won’t find its replacement in my lifetime. Probably not even yours. We lost a lot of good people over the past few months. I don’t need to tell you this.”

The assistant director took a deep breath. Esme couldn’t tell if it was his illness or simply the weight of the deaths on his soul.

“Regardless,” he continued, “time keeps on ticking and people keep on committing acts of madness and lunacy and we need smart capable folk on our team to beat back the tide.”

Esme couldn’t help herself: “Sir, are you asking me out on a date?”

Tom laughed—or tried to laugh, but the pain in his chest quickly put an end to that. But despite it all, that silly smile remained plastered on his lips. Around them, the rain had tapered off into drizzle. What had been a steady knocking on the roof of the car became gentler tapping.

“Tom has made a recommendation to me and I’m going to follow it. Quite simply, Mrs. Stuart, we want you back in the fold.”

Esme blinked.

Tom wrote something on his pad. He showed it to her.

Ask him for perks.

Perks?

Ah. Perks. Her face lit up. Tom nodded.

“Mrs. Stuart, are you still there?”

“If you want me back, sir, you’re going to have to give me some assurances in return.”

Trumbull coughed. “Go on.”

“I get to stay in Long Island. I’m not uprooting my family.”

“That would put you under Karl Ziegler’s jurisdiction, you know. Not to mention your old friend Pamela Gould.”

“Not if I’m hired as a consultant instead of a field agent.”

“What’s the difference?”

Esme paused. It had sounded good when she said it but what was the difference?

Leave it to Tom to provide the answer with a simple drawing:

$$$

“Consultants get paid more.”

Trumbull coughed. “Go on.”

“I don’t work a regular shift. I can do most of the work out of my home, provided the Bureau sees fit to give my computer a major upgrade.”

“Is that all?”

“I don’t miss a school play. I don’t miss one of my husband’s lectures. I don’t miss Thanksgiving or Christmas or even Earth Day. I’ll close cases no one else can close—that’s what you get to keep—but my family
comes first. That’s what I get to keep, and it’s a deal-breaker.”

Silence.

Had she asked for too much?

“You’ve always been a pain in the ass. You know that, Mrs. Stuart?”

Esme grinned. Yep. She knew that.

“I’ll get the paperwork in order.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You said Tom Piper’s there?”

“Yes, sir. He’s sitting right across from me.”

“Tell him he’s always been a pain in the ass too.”

Click.

Tom leaned in toward her, almost romantically.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Her first case came a week after Easter Sunday. The phone rang at 5:33 a.m. It rang four times, before Esme cracked open an eyelid. It was on her night table. She watched it ring a fifth time and then it went to voice mail. And then it rang again, briefly, to let her know someone had left a voice mail. She let her eyelid shut and tried to recall her dream so as to best slip back into it. Rafe shifted in his spot on the bed. His elbow absently brushed against her lip.

Then her phone rang again, at 5:35. This time she kept her eyelid shut. She nudged Rafe’s elbow away from her face, grabbed the device in the abject darkness, and brought it to an ear.

“What?” she mumbled.

“There’s been a murder in Albany,” said Karl
Ziegler. Despite her requests—or perhaps because of them, as one final ha-ha before he shuffled off this mortal coil—Trumbull had assigned the bureau chief to be her handler until Tom returned to active duty. “We need you to come in.”

“Aunt Harriet, is that you?”

“This isn’t funny, Mrs. Stuart. A young woman was stabbed forty-six times on her way home from work. Her wounds are consistent with three other victims in the Albany metro area.”

“Albany has a metro area?”

“When can you be here? 6:00? 6:15?”

Now she had to open an eyelid. Damn you, Ziegler. She checked the glowing digits on her alarm clock.

“6:30,” she replied. “Going, going, gone.”

She hung up, was tempted to go back to sleep, but mustered her wherewithal and crawled out of bed. After the world’s quickest shower, she poked Rafe until he woke up.

“I need to go to work,” she said.

Ever since the incident with Galileo, things had been pleasant between them. Not good, not healthy, but pleasant. They had a lot of issues that needed resolving, but like every other suburban couple they were keeping their issues shut away, for now. Someday soon, though, they would need to have a serious talk. She had no idea what would happen after that. She hoped for the best. It was all she could do. For now, she had to settle with poking him in his cute paunch, even after he heard her, nodded and went back to sleep.

“I love you,” she added, and planted a kiss on his lips.

“Love you, too,” he echoed.

She slipped into a T-shirt and jeans and headed out into the hall, stopping for a minute to check in on Sophie. There was no reason to wake her, but it was nice just the same to stand and watch her daughter while she slept. Few sights in this world provided her with such complete…optimism. She took a mental photograph of her daughter, curled up with Bugs Bunny, quietly adrift in dreamland. She knew she would need that image to counter whatever horrors Karl Ziegler had waiting for her at the Federal Building in NYC.

Downstairs, Lester was already awake, and watching TV. The old man didn’t sleep like other human beings. He napped on and off, sure, but more often than not he was awake and in front of that TV. His temporary visit was becoming more and more permanent. Esme hadn’t objected. She needed someone to babysit Sophie while Rafe was at work and she was…well, doing whatever she was doing. This was her first case as a “special consultant.” She wasn’t quite sure how things were going to work. But she was hopeful.

“Where are you off to?” asked Lester, glancing away from a news report about Macao. “Jogging?”

“Work,” she answered, and grabbed a strawberry Pop-Tart from the cupboard and her iPod from her computer desk.

The curtain rod, almost defiantly, had still not been replaced.

“‘Work?’” Lester offered a judgmental grunt. She gave him the middle finger as she passed and entered
the garage. Tom’s motorcycle greeted her from the corner. They had finally managed to retrieve it from Amy Lieb’s property. Esme was tempted to ride it into the city, but Tom had only given her a few lessons and that had been years ago. She looked forward to the day that Tom would show up to ride it again. She hoped that day would be soon.

She backed her Prius out of the garage and hooked her iPod into the car stereo. Perhaps it would be a warm and sunny end-of-April day, but right now the sky was dark, and starless, and cool. Esme reflected for a moment on the metaphor, then cranked up the Rolling Stones and let Mick Jagger croon her troubles away.
“Ti-i-i-ime is on my side….”

Yes it was.

T
his time, I’ve decided to divide my thank-yous into three categories.

People whose last name is Corin
: Alan (my dad), Sharon (my mom), Shiela (my stepmom), Heather (my sister), Seth (my brother), Noah (my other brother), Kelly (Noah’s wife), and Michele (Seth’s wife). Thank you all for your love, your kindness and your leftovers.

People whose last name isn’t Corin
: Amber Hutchison, Jordan White, Meghan McAsey, John Russo, Kristy Hamer, Jud Laghi, David Cromer and Ted Wadley. Thank you all for your friendship, your support, and your patience.

Organizations
: MIRA Books (esp. Linda McFall), Georgia Perimeter College (esp. Alan Jackson), the Mystery Writers of America (esp. Margery Flax) and the International Thriller Writers (esp. the 2008-2009 Debut Authors). Thank you all for taking into your arms an insecure writer and making him feel welcome.