WHILE GALILEO PREYS

Look for Joshua Corin’s next novel

BEFORE CAIN STRIKES

available April 2011

from MIRA Books

While Galileo Preys
Joshua Corin

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To my nephew Benji

(for when he is much, much older)

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgments

1

T he bum wore pink. A prom dress, really. Torso to kneecaps swathed in bubble-gum taffeta. His spidery limbs, black with grime and hair, jutted out in wrong angles. The bum was facedown in the basin of a puddle in the middle of MLK Drive, and lay undiscovered until 3:16 a.m.

Andre Banks (age twenty-eight) and his pug Moira (age three) were out for a stroll. Andre was walking off his insomnia. His parents were coming to visit and that never ever boded well. Andre and Moira normally kept only to Lincoln Street, the dimly-lit cul-de-sac in which they lived, but the young man had a lot more anxiety than usual to walk off. Moira made sure to baptize every hydrant on their path, and was christening her eleventh when Andre spotted the bum in the road.

Even in Atlanta, January meant freezing temperatures. The city’s homeless did not nap out in the middle of MLK Drive in January, certainly not in brand-new prom dresses. The bum was almost perfectly centered inside the milky oval of a nearby streetlight’s humming glow. Andre stared through the fog of his breath at the man in the road and then Moira, finished with her ritual, saw him too, and barked.

Prodded by his loud little dog, Andre left the sidewalk and approached the facedown man. He didn’t bother checking for traffic because A. It was 3:16 in the morning. B. This stretch of MLK Drive was cordoned at either end by wooden barricades due to (unapparent) DOT construction.

Moira skittered a few feet ahead of him, tensing at her leash, impatient to reach the mysterious pink shape. She barked again, and hopped up, giddy. The shape didn’t budge. As they entered the circle of electric-powered light, Andre wondered what circumstances led the bum to end up here, (and dressed like that!). Had the man once been successful? Did he have a family? Had his family kicked him out? Maybe the prom dress was his daughter’s and she was dead and wearing it helped the man remember her. Maybe the bum was a transvestite, and that’s why his family had kicked him out. The sins of a stubborn family, mused Andre, never forgetting that his own parents, bastions of disappointment, would be landing at Hartsfield-Jackson in ten hours and—

Moira pounced on top of the bum’s taffeta back and licked at his neck.

“Hey!” Andre tugged on the leather leash. “Bad dog.”

With a petulant whine, Moira fought back. She lapped again at the bum’s neck, savoring the salt mine she’d discovered. Andre yanked his pug off the man, and then realized the bum in the road hadn’t reacted, hadn’t even groaned, hadn’t even breathed.

“Fuck,” Andre concluded, and at 3:18 a.m. (according to his cell phone) he dialed the police.

They didn’t arrive for twenty minutes. This cordoned-off stretch of MLK Drive was not popular. The strip malls and chain stores which populated MLK down by the Georgia Dome tapered off west of Techwood, and Andre’s neighborhood was far, far west of Techwood. The grass in the local park, fifty feet from the bum’s corpse, was rusted, as if neglect had soured it to old metal. One hundred feet away, bordering the park, loomed a three-story mortar slab called Hosea Williams Elementary School. Its windows were shingled with iron bars. Andre taught physical education at Hosea Williams. His parents didn’t approve of the job, and they certainly didn’t approve of the area. No one did.

Since the police didn’t arrive for twenty minutes, Andre finished walking his dog. He knew he’d have time, and Moira was restless. He led her down the block, past the Atlanta Food Shop (boarded shut) and the redbrick Holy Life Baptist Church (gated shut). But by then Andre heard the siren. He reached the dead body around the same time the squad car circumvented the construction barricade.

Two cops emerged, eau de French fries. They clicked off their siren but left on their red-and-blues to sweep and bounce in careful rhythm over the block. To Moira, essentially color-blind, the lights were meaningless, but to Andre, the colored lights painted his neighborhood at 3:40 a.m. into a party-hearty discotheque. That just reminded him of his age, and his misbegotten teenage years, and how much his life had changed in so short a—

“You called it in?” asked Officer Appleby, arms crossed. He was the black one. Officer Harper, the white one, knelt beside the body. The cops who served this neighborhood always showed up in this demographic: one black, one white. In fact, some of Andre’s more clever students referred to them not as pigs but zebras. Yo, zebras on patrol today, watch out.

“I was taking my dog for a walk,” said Andre. He exhaled warmth onto his hands and rubbed them together. Even though he wore a fleece coat over his sweats, winter was still winter. “We just found him lying there.”

Officer Appleby frowned, uncrossed his arms, and crossed them again. His stomach was bothering him. “Did you know the deceased?”

“No, sir.”

Down by the corpse, Officer Harper did a rudimentary investigation of the bum’s hairy, muddy limbs for frostbite. In a few minutes they’d call it in and the case would belong to the detectives and medical examiner but until then, if he was careful, if he didn’t disturb the body or the scene, he could do some actual police work. Let Appleby chat up the witness, predictable waste of time that would be. In the meantime, Harper would work the case. Find a clue. Share it with the cavalry when they arrived and when his name came up for promotion, they’d remember him for this and he’d be free of this beat patrol graveyard shift bullshit forever.

Moira nudged against his ass with her nose. Harper scowled down at the pug. God, he hated dogs. They slobbered and chewed up nearly anything of value. They constantly needed attention. The county taxed you for their tags, the pet store taxed you for their food, the vet taxed you for their shots. Dogs. God.

Moira nudged again against his ass and Harper slapped her away. He glanced over at his partner and the witness. Neither of them had noticed his violent outburst. Good. The last thing he needed was yet another pissed-off civilian lodging a valueless complaint.

Andre felt Moira rub up against his sneakers. Out of habit he reached down and scruffed her behind her ears. She probably wanted to go home. It was almost 4:00 a.m. She would have no trouble sleeping.

“Now, Mr. Banks, are you usually out this late?” Appleby coughed into his fist, shifted his weight from his right foot to his left. “You and your dog?”

“Insomnia,” replied Andre.

Appleby offered a sympathetic nod. The witness didn’t seem too disturbed by the dead body, but this was Atlanta. This was MLK Drive. Death had long ago put up residence here. Appleby had worked this beat for ten years. If every person in this neighborhood was gathered together, the stories they could tell. After all, as an officer of the law, he only dealt with what was reported. What went unreported—those were the crimes that gave him nightmares.

“Well, Mr. Banks, we’ll need to get an official statement, but it probably doesn’t have to be—”

The glass bulbs atop the police cruiser exploded in a crescendo of noise. All four of them—Andre, Moira, Appleby, and Harper—glanced at the ground, now covered in shards, then at the roof of the car, then at each other. Moira cocked her head in thought.

“Someone must’ve thrown a baseball or something,” said Appleby.

Harper had his gun out. “Show yourselves, you little pricks!”

With the discotheque lights gone, the only illumination left was the milky oval of the streetlight, and that enabled them to see each other, but not whoever had shattered the glass. Harper cocked his gun, and Appleby reached for his. They relied on their ears to detect the vandal, but could only hear their own heartbeats in the cold night air.

Then Harper didn’t even hear that, because a bullet passed through his brainpan and he was dead. He collapsed like a stringless marionette, not three feet from the body of the bum.

Appleby opened his mouth to speak, scream, something, but a second bullet took care of that, and he joined his partner on the gray pavement. The blood from their wounds dripped out of their bodies and comingled, like holding hands.

A minute passed.

Andre didn’t move.

Moira trotted over to Appleby’s body and poked at his cheek with one of her front paws. She looked back at her master and whimpered.

Slowly, Andre took a step toward the squad car. He would be safe inside the squad car. They were bulletproof, right?

“Moira,” he whispered. “Come here, girl.”

She followed him as he inched away from the carnage. The car was twenty feet away. Presumably, the doors were unlocked. He would get inside and radio for help and he’d be safe. He and Moira would be okay.

Fifteen feet away, they reached the pool of glass. Moira skirted around it. She and Andre were almost out of the arc of the streetlight. Ten feet away, and Andre decided that going slow made no sense—he wasn’t walking a tightrope. He took a deep breath (as he taught his students to do at Hosea Williams) and prepared to sprint.

The third bullet dropped him before he had a chance.

And the fourth bullet took care of the dog.

Clouds shifted. The streetlight hummed. At 4:25 a.m., the squad car’s radio squawked to life. Dispatch wanted a 10-4 on their whereabouts, over. By 4:40 a.m., Dispatch got antsy and sent out Pennington and O’Daye to investigate. Pennington and O’Daye arrived at five to six. Dawn was just a commercial break away.

Pennington got out first, while O’Daye shifted the car into Park. They both saw the car, then the bodies. O’Daye called it in, tried to remain calm, but her voice trembled like a plucked string.

“Dispatch, this is Baker-82. We’re at the scene. We have four bodies, repeat four bodies. Officers Harper and Appleby are down. Request immediate backup. Over.”

Gabe Pennington scanned the area with his hazel eyes. His prescription lenses fogged up from the cold, and with frustration and panic he lifted a gloved hand and wiped them clean. No doubt about it—that was Roy Appleby. Ever since his divorce, Pennington had played poker at the bastard’s house every Saturday night. Appleby was a lousy poker player but he loved the game. Pennington hated the game, but craved the companionship. He was living out of a motel room off I75. It was Appleby who’d reached out to him. Now the man was leaking blood on MLK Drive. Damn it.

“Copy Baker-82,” Dispatch responded with the same authority as always, “Backup is on the way. Dispatch out.”

Officer O’Daye stared through the windshield. “Maybe they’re still alive.”

Pennington glanced down at her, then back at the bodies in the milky oval. Indeed, his first instinct had been to rush out to them and check for pulses. Perform CPR. But they didn’t know the scope of the scenario, and until you knew the scope of the scenario, you played it safe. Safe may not have worked for his marriage, but it had kept him clean of serious injury for fourteen years on the force. O’Daye was young. She would learn.

As he rejoined her in the car, Melissa O’Daye checked the time on her wristwatch. 6:00 a.m. Soon the block would be awake. Parents would be walking their kids, all bundled up in their woolies, across the street to Hosea Williams. The corner boys would be out soon too, and the early-bird alcoholics. None of them had to see this. No one should have to see this. She shouldn’t have had to see this. She should’ve been in bed. She didn’t need the overtime. What was she trying to—

The dog moaned.

O’Daye and Pennington popped to attention.

The little dog was half in the light and half out. They’d just assumed she wasn’t breathing, just like the others, but she moaned again, breathy, tenuous.

“Christ Jesus,” O’Daye muttered.

She opened her door.

“Wait.” Pennington held up a hand. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“Nothing I can…? That dog’s alive!”

“Are you a vet? No. So sit tight. Backup will be here momentarily.”

“We can’t just—”

“It’s not cowardice,” he explained. “It’s procedure.”

She closed her door.

They waited.

The dog, Moira, age three, wept. She was dying and she knew it and just wanted to pull herself to a dark and quiet place, away from her master. But she couldn’t move. All she could do was fill the January air with her requiem sobs.

When backup arrived, they showed in droves. Three squad cars and two additional unmarked vehicles pulled up to the crime scene. Officers were down—their brothers and sisters in blue were damn sure going to avenge their deaths. Their sirens crashed through the neighborhood like an aural hurricane. Parents and children sat up in their beds and pondered the end of the world. Some peered out their windows. Some bolted shut their doors. Even the sun peeked out over the skyscrapers to catch a glimpse of the ruckus.

Lead officer on scene was Deputy Chief Perry Roman. He was division commander over Zone 4. Appleby and Harper were his men. He climbed out of his beige station wagon, left his microsuede unbuttoned (and his paint-spattered Police Academy sweatshirt exposed), and quickly assigned roles:

“O’Daye and Pennington, tape off the area and assist in crowd control. Halloway and Cruise, Jaymon and DeWright, canvass the area. Williams, Kayless, Ogleby, take statements, someone must’ve seen something. Detectives, homicides don’t get plainer than this. You know what to do.”

Officer O’Daye wanted to check on the dog. She couldn’t hear her keening anymore—there was too much chatter now in the air—but she needed to know if the dog was still alive. It’s not that she had dogs of her own…she didn’t have any pets at all. She lived alone in her apartment. Is that why she worked the overtime? And now she was pining away for an animal (and not for any of the four human beings!). Foolish. She shuffled her neuroses to the niches of her mind, just as her therapist had taught her to do. When Pennington (who was a coward—everyone knew it) grabbed a thick roll of yellow tape from the trunk of their cruiser, she didn’t go for the dog. She went for the tape, and helped her cowardly older partner zip up the perimeter.

The deputy chief remained on the sidewalk, hands on his hips, and surveyed. Eleven cops working the scene—it would be so easy to contaminate evidence. The last thing any of them needed at this hour, for these fallen soldiers, was an example of negligence (or worse, incompetence) the shooter’s defense attorney could attack in court. And Perry Roman had no doubt they would catch the shooter. The morning shift came on in two hours. By 9:00 a.m. every street corner in southwest Atlanta would have a shield working the case. Two of their own were dead. Roman made a note to himself to warn his men, when they found the shooter, not to mortally wound the motherfucker. This was going to be a clean, by-the-book operation. The dead deserved nothing less (even if Harper was a lazy prick).

Perry fixed his gaze on the two homicide detectives. Not his most perceptive team, but they’d suffice, at least for two hours. Some administrators, he knew, would see this tragedy as a chance to piggybank to a promotion. Perry Roman just wanted to get the job done. Perry Roman was a churchgoing man, went every Sunday with his wife and three kids. If the good Lord saw fit to reward him with a promotion, so be it. In the meantime, he’d just be the best man he could be.

He felt the rising sun tickle the back of his head. The milky oval on the pavement was fading away like a dream. Perry stared past the violence to the unkempt park on the north side of the street, and to the elementary school on the other side of the park.

The sniper, on the roof of the elementary school, stared past the violence to Perry Roman. The dawn provided adequate illumination for all sorts of misbehavior. He tracked his rifle to the two gesticulating detectives; to the old cop with the yellow tape and his young female sidekick, the one who kept looking at the dog. He adjusted his scope for the day’s new brightness and fingered his gentle trigger. Yep. All sorts of misbehavior.

2

Fourteen dead in Atlanta, GA.

E sme clicked away from the New York Times and typed in the URL for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The story took up most of the front page. She read every article.

Fourteen dead. Fifteen, if you counted the dog.

The names began to become familiar. Perry Roman, the deputy chief. Appleby and Harper. Andre Banks, the bystander who first found the vagrant on the street, called it in at 3:18 a.m. Good man. Some would’ve just minded their own business. Had Andre Banks minded his own business, though, today’s newspaper headlines would have been very different.

The articles didn’t give the vagrant’s name. Police probably were still working on an ID. Hoping beyond hope that someone in the local soup kitchens would recognize his absence. Hoping the man had a criminal record so his fingerprints would match those on file. Esme knew the drill. Oh, yes, she knew it.

She surfed to the home page for the Associated Press and read their version. Then Reuters. Then USA Today.

The vagrant had been the bait; this much was certain. He had been placed there in a bright ridiculous outfit in a well-lit, controlled area specifically to attract prey. The DOT roadblocks were fake; the killer had put those up to control his trap, keep out automobile traffic. Half of this Esme read in the reports; the other half she easily deduced. Surely the task force assigned to the case had made the same deductions. Her hand drifted to her landline. She still knew people at the Bureau. One simple call wouldn’t hurt….

No. No. She was not going to turn into one of them, one of those retirement ghosts with so much free time they come back to haunt their ex-workplace and harass their former colleagues. Unlike most retirement ghosts, Esme was not in her late sixties but her late thirties, but still. No.

She put down the phone and went into the kitchen to make a sandwich. She slipped two slices of whole wheat bread into the toaster and set it to dark. While the bread crisped, she sliced up a tomato and a cucumber, broke off some leaves of iceberg lettuce, and took out a jar of low-fat mayonnaise. The jar was almost empty. She made a mental note to stop at the grocery store on the way back from picking up Sophie from Oyster Bay Elementary.

Esme Stuart, this is your life.

She deliberately kept away from her computer for the next hour and instead spent the time with an Elvis Costello biography. She put on her disc of My Aim is True for verisimilitude. No, not her disc. This one was Rafe’s. Hers was in a used CD store in D.C. When Esme and Rafe moved in together, their musical collections were so identical that they’d had to get rid of the many duplicates. Her mind wandered away from the biography. Had someone bought her old CD? What was that person like? Was it an impulse buy or had they been searching desperately for the album? Had they heard about what had happened in Atlanta?

Which brought her mind back to that.

She shut her biography and shuffled off to the bathroom. “Alison…” begged Elvis, “I know this world is killing you…” She clicked on the light and eyeballed her reflection. What was wrong with her? It’s not like this was the first murder she’d read about since she quit seven years ago. Was it the body count? Was it the fact the victims were law enforcement? She rolled her eyes. Talk about a wicked subconscious. Read about a sniper attack and put on an album called My Aim is True.

She tucked a strand of chestnut-colored hair behind an ear. Her ears were not small and dainty. When she was younger, when she was Sophie’s age, she insisted her hair remain long. But her ears always found a way to poke through. By the time she reached her twenties, she just gave up and cut her hair to her shoulders. It added years to her life, but when she was in her twenties and starting out at the Bureau, looking older was an asset. She believed it meant she’d be taken more seriously.

Christ, she had been so naive.

Esme washed her hands, padded back into the living room, and on principle switched the CD to something less substantial. Bananarama’s Greatest Hits? Perfect. She pushed Play, stared a moment too long at her computer (what new developments had occurred in the case?), and fell back onto the couch. Her hand absently reached for one of the Sudoku books strewn across the glass table. Esme opened it to her bookmark—a cheap black pen—and pondered a puzzle tantalizingly labeled Crazy Hard.

The clutter on the glass table provided Esme with her only comfortable chaos in the whole room. Rafe made sure the rest of their two-story Colonial was organized and spotless. He wasn’t a neat freak per se; he had guests over all the time from the university and, like Esme had at the Bureau with her short hair, wanted to give a positive impression. Esme didn’t mind keeping house (she recognized the value of appearances) as long as she had a nook in each room to herself. Anyway, Sudoku books were easily straightened.

The Bananarama CD ended. It took her five more minutes to complete her puzzle, then she put on her olive green parka and got ready to pick her daughter up. She reminded herself again about the mayonnaise, slipped her mittens on, and entered the cold, cold garage. Outside the windchill had to be below zero Fahrenheit, and last night’s frozen rain had doubtless left patches of black ice on every side street. Welcome to the north shore of Long Island, December to March.

Esme clicked on her Prius’s satellite radio. She loved to be surrounded by music. Music, language—anything creative, really. It charged her up like ephemeral photosynthesis. Without music, without the spoken word, she might as well remain in bed. Tom Piper once suggested she suffered from depression. But she’d just told him she was quitting the Bureau, so perhaps context had influenced his expert analysis.

Tom. Lanky-limbed Tom and his ’78 chrome Harley. Surely he was being kept in the loop about the sniper. Surely they had him (and his Harley) down in Atlanta right now. Walking the scene, sketching out what made this particular madman tick, deciphering his message. And this series of murders in particular…

Bait, trap, fourteen homicides. Patience. This madman wouldn’t want his intent to be misinterpreted.

Had he left a note?

Esme and Tom still traded Christmas cards, birthday cards…calling him to confirm her suspicions wouldn’t completely be out of the blue….

No, Esme. That’s not your life anymore. And besides, Tom Piper’s a big boy, more than capable of catching the bad guys himself. You’re a soccer mom now, Esme. Live with your decision.

She backed her crimson Prius out of the driveway. Around her, every snow-capped home glowed with young money. Her and Rafe’s black-trimmed white Colonial was no different. Good Americans lived in these here parts. Still wide-eyed enough to be Democrats and believe that the world made sense. Most days now, cloistered in the insulation of Oyster Bay, Long Island, Esme believed it too.

Her radio segued from the Public Enemy Ltd. anger anthem “Rise” to Elvis Costello’s menacing “Riot Act.” Elvis again. Must be something in the air. Esme turned left onto Main Street. Oyster Bay Elementary was just a few blocks. In warmer weather, they walked. Mothers and their children along the sidewalk like a parade. Today the sidewalk was empty, with only a parade of phantoms walking the line. A wicked breeze rolled in from the ocean, five miles to the north. Somehow the wind always got by those multi-acre mansions that guarded the beachfront.

Not that Esme lived in a hovel. Not since she’d met Rafe.

She pulled in front of the school. Usually she had to fight with the other parents for parking but she was ten minutes early. All to avoid her computer and the information it transmitted. Of course, she could easily switch to a news station on her radio….

Mercifully, at that moment, she spotted one of her neighbors committing a class A misdemeanor. Amy Lieb, she of the smallest multi-acre mansion in Oyster Bay (and mother of a doe-eyed daughter named Felicity who was in Sophie’s grade), was hammering a KELLERMAN FOR PRESIDENT placard into the school’s grassy courtyard. Either the school’s security guards didn’t know the latest electioneering statutes (unlikely) or they didn’t care (more likely). The Liebs’ money carried a lot more heft than some simple law.

“Hey, Amy,” said Esme, gooey with innocence. “Whatcha doing?”

Amy Lieb, ever chipper, squinted over and waved. She and Esme had a cordial relationship. Since both of their husbands worked in the sociology department at the college, they often attended the same book clubs, mingled at the same soirees, etc. Essentially, the Liebs were the Stuarts with a fifteen-year head start. Their daughter Felicity was their youngest of four. Their oldest, Trevor, boarded at Kent School in western Connecticut where he excelled in trigonometry and tennis.

Amy Lieb wore her long black hair bound in a white bow, as if it were a gift to the world. Her diaphanous outfits always kept her figure a mystery, and today’s flowing faux-mink coat was no exception. She smiled at Esme, and into the sun, as the younger woman approached.

“Primary election’s coming up,” said Amy. “Got to get out the word!”

Esme smiled back. “Yeah, but, you know, seven-year-olds can’t vote.”

“Their parents can!”

Esme looked around. The aforementioned parents were beginning to pull up in their station wagons and SUVs. She leaned into Amy and, as kindly as she could, whispered: “Look, you can’t put that here. It’s municipal property.”

Amy blinked at her.

“It’s called electioneering. It’s against the law.”

Amy glanced down at her sign, not harming anyone, then back at Esme. “Why?”

“It implies the school is supporting Governor Kellerman.”

“Well, he’s the best man for the job, don’t you think?”

Esme felt her good cheer beginning to waver. It appeared Amy’s convictions were as rooted as her placard. Great.

“Relax, Esme. And besides, who’s getting hurt?” The other parents were beginning to congregate. “Oh, speaking of, did you hear what happened down in Atlanta?”

That night, after putting Sophie to bed, after Rafe left to attend an evening lecture by a visiting socio-linguist, Esme finally called Tom Piper. She didn’t expect him to answer, and mentally prepared the message she was going to leave on his voice mail. However—

“This is Tom.”

Esme brought a mug of green tea with her to the computer desk. Although they’d exchanged holiday cards, they hadn’t actually spoken to each other for, what, four years? Four years. A whole election term, she mused. The Amy Lieb incident was still fresh on her brain. She felt like a swimmer returning to the sea after a long absence. After almost drowning. God, did he still resent her for quitting? Maybe calling him was a mistake—

“Hello? Is anybody there?”

Shit. What was she, twelve years old?

“Hi, Tom,” she exhaled.

Silence.

Esme hugged her knees.

Then, finally: “Hello, Esmeralda.”

His Kentucky baritone engulfed her. Esmeralda. Not her full name, but always what he called her. As if she had somersaulted out of Quasimodo’s bell tower and into the bowels of Quantico. Tom Piper. The mentor she never deserved.

“So…” said Esme, quashing her insecurities, “how’s the weather?”

“In Atlanta, you mean?”

“For example.”

“I had a feeling you’d call.”

Esme couldn’t help but smile. Of course he had a feeling. His instincts bordered on psychic. When she started seeing Rafe, when she would come into work after a night of lovemaking that left scratch marks, she always made sure to avoid Tom until at least 10:00 a.m., lest he somehow zero in on her less-than-virginal proclivities. What he thought of her meant the world. But what did he think of his Esmeralda now?

“It’s bad,” he said. “We’ve got maybe six people down here who think they’re in charge, and that’s not counting the mayor, the governor, and the president of the United States, all of whom have weighed in.”

“So the bureaucrats have their tantrums and meanwhile, the adults skulk back into the shadows and actually work the case. Maybe some of the adults even make sure the bureaucrats keep fighting so they don’t suddenly interfere.”

“You make it sound so Machiavellian.”

She chuckled. “Hey, if the ends justify the means…”

“It’s bad, though. The case.”

Esme let go of her knees and reclined into her chair. “Can you talk about it?” She sipped her hot tea.

Tom didn’t reply.

Damn it. She’d gone too far. Fuck. Best to back-pedal, and fast…

“Tom, I’m sorry. I know you can’t…I probably shouldn’t have called. But anyway, so…how are you? How’s Ruth?”

“My sister is still gardening. We even built a little greenhouse for her out back so she doesn’t have to worry about squirrels messing with her daffodils.”

“That’s nice. You built it together?”

“And it took practically a whole month. Neither Ruth nor I are what anyone would call ‘mechanically inclined.’”

“I know.” Esme felt the tension ease out of her shoulders. “I remember that one time your engine wouldn’t start. I can still see you standing there with the hood open in the parking garage. You just stared and stared at that engine block like it was a murder suspect you could make blink.”

Tom chuckled. “We all have our faults and foibles.”

“And some of us even have jumper cables.”

“Ha-ha.”

Esme smiled, stared out the window. Snowflakes tumbled in the moonlight. It was probably balmy down in Hotlanta. She’d been there once, in August. Humidity was a living breathing organism in the South, and Atlantans had no nearby body of water for respite. No wonder their crime stats spiked in the summertime. The heat cooked people’s brains.

But this was January, and fourteen people were dead.

“Are you still there?” he asked.

She held her palm to her forehead and sighed. “I’m sorry, Tom, it’s just…I read about what happened last night and…it’s been almost seven years since I left the Bureau. There have been other high-profile murders. But this one has just…crawled under my skin…and I don’t know why.”

“You don’t?” He sounded surprised. “How do you think I knew you’d call?”

“What do you mean?”

“The homeless man. As soon as I learned about him, how the killer used him as bait, I knew this case was going to stick to you like a bad dream. I almost called you.”

“The homeless man? Why would he…?”

“Because of your parents, Esme.”

Oh.

Esme shrank down in her seat to a little girl.

Her parents.

Who’d lived on and off welfare all their life. Who falsified addresses to get their daughter into the best public schools. Who pushed her every day to rise above their situation and, when she did, when she got that scholarship letter to George Washington University, when she said goodbye to them and went off to start her freshman year…

There was a shelter in the south side, Coleman House. Lead paint on the walls but walls were better than the open air in December in Boston. Eighteen-year-old Esme came home from her first semester in D.C. full of stories but home was no longer there. Coleman House was there, yes, but her parents had gone. All they had left her was two blue ink words—her mother’s careful cursive—on a piece of yellow paper.

BE FREE, it said. BE FREE.

She spent the entire two weeks searching the city for her mom and dad but they didn’t want to be found, and when you didn’t want to be found in the cross-streets of Boston, you might as well have been vapor.

She almost didn’t go back to school, but her friends urged her. They insisted it’s what her parents would have wanted. Still, every break she returned to Coleman House, and the Congress Ave. YMCA, and searched every shelter and underpass in the whole city for her family. Until the day she got into Quantico, when she decided to never go back.

Rafe didn’t know.

Almost all of her friends didn’t know.

Tom knew only because he knew everything.

“The man’s name was Merle Inman,” said Tom. “He grew up in Macon, moved to Atlanta in his twenties to be an architect, fell into drugs…every story’s the same story. He was forty-two years old. We’re going to release his information tomorrow, but, well, there it is.”

Esme realized she was crying, and wiped her cheeks. “Thanks.”

“The guy who did this—he’s something else. Using people as clay pigeons. Fancies himself a gamesman. Thinks he can beat the house. Nobody beats the house. Not my house.”

“Go get that fucker,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

After she hung up, she remembered her musings about whether or not the killer had left a note. But it just didn’t seem as important to her anymore. Maybe what she’d really needed was to talk with Tom. Mentor, profiler, friend, therapist. That she couldn’t have connected the relevance of the case herself—forget about God, it was the human mind that worked in mysterious ways.

Esme prepared a bath. Rafe wouldn’t be home for another hour. Sophie was fast asleep in her bed, perhaps dreaming of the man made out of balloons. That had been a recurring dream of hers for a few days now. The man made out of balloons. All different colors. And tomorrow morning she’d saddle up to the table and declare, “I dreamt about the balloon man again.” Apparently it was a happy dream.

Her daughter was having happy dreams. Esme lowered herself into the hot, hot bathwater. Life was good, wasn’t it? She thought again about Amy Lieb. This was the high drama in her life now. Hundreds of miles away, Tom Piper was searching for a madman. She hoped he caught him. She hoped Rafe returned home soon. She clicked on her bath stereo (Joy Division this time, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”), shut her eyes, and allowed her mind to finally, finally, exhale.

3

O n February 11, someone lit the Amarillo aquarium on fire.

In the days that followed the conflagration, security tapes confirmed police suspicions of arson. FBI investigators went frame by frame over footage of the night janitor, a new hire named Emmett Poole, mopping up the third floor, twenty minutes before the fire began on that floor.

It was Tom Piper who figured it out.

“That’s lighter fluid,” he said. He pointed at the freeze-frame of the mop bucket, then at the broad-shouldered back of Emmett Poole. Upon further review, they couldn’t find any footage of the janitor’s face, none at all. Employees described him as nondescript. He’d only been on the job about a week. He’d answered an ad in the paper. His references had checked out. The authorities gathered to raid the address he’d listed. But it was a church. Emmett Poole, like the aquarium he’d ignited, had gone up in a puff of ash.

Tom Piper and his task force weren’t in Amarillo, though, because of the arson.

He was there because of what had happened shortly thereafter.

Station 13 had responded to the blaze at 9:55 p.m. Most of the crew had been watching the Democratic debate between Jefferson Traynor and Bob Kellerman. Up in his home state of Ohio, Kellerman was a volunteer fireman, so the boys in the firehouse (thorough Texas Republicans one and all) were rooting for one of their own. They watched the debate up in the bunk room on a soot-smeared fifty-two-inch LCD they’d rescued back in September from the toasty remains of a Best Buy. Then the call went out, and the TV went off, and the men grumbled into their gear.

On the way to the aquarium, Lou Hopper declared, “Kellerman kicked his ass.” Lou Hopper was the shift’s resident pontificator. Every workplace in America sported (at least) one. The self-educated expert. The know-it-all. The bar in Cheers had Cliff Clavin. Station 13 had Lou Hopper. He even had a gray mustache like Clavin, although not a wisp of hair on top. He claimed it had been singed off in a fire; somehow the flames had slipped their hot tongues underneath his helmet and licked off his hair.

Three other firefighters crowded the back of the engine with Lou. The chief sat up front with Bobby Vega, who always drove the truck.

It didn’t take them long to reach the aquarium from their home base off of Third Avenue. Amarillo was a city of daylight and most businesses closed shop by six o’clock, so the chief didn’t bother to activate the engine’s blaring siren. The few still on the road at 10:00 p.m. either knew enough to get out of the way or deserved to get run over. The three boys in the back, though—they had a tradition to uphold: feline-faced Roscoe Coffey popped a well-worn cassette into a boom box (acquired in 1989 from the toasty remains of a Conn’s—which the aforementioned doomed Best Buy had replaced) and pressed Play. As they neared the aquarium, a crown of streaming smoke rising from its brick skull, Johnny Cash and his mariachi horns warbled to life.

“I fell into a burning ring of fire…”

Never let it be said Station 13 lacked a dark, dark sense of humor.

Bobby Vega navigated the engine up North Hughes toward the aquarium. His family had settled in Amarillo when he was three years old. Everyone had assumed they were originally from Mexico, so that’s what they’d claimed. Coming from Mexico meant fewer questions than coming from Colombia. They had left Colombia in the middle of a drought and the year after they came to Amarillo, the city suffered its longest dry spell in one hundred years. Even today, water conservation remained a major concern; the fire department had been chastised on more than one occasion for their “extravagant use of water.”

The same moronic bigwigs who had chastised the fire department for their extravagant use of water later funded a three-story aquarium in the heart of a parched city. Bobby’s parents, who still attributed Amarillo’s meteorological bad luck to their arrival, read the news and laughed. Bobby didn’t laugh. He never found the government’s foolish behavior all that charming. Fools endangered. Fools led to an alarm at the firehouse and his brave friends risking their lives.

Bobby Vega was an angry young man, true, but driving the rig helped him vent. There was something about controlling that wide wheel and guiding his brothers to their destination which sated his fury. The usual tightness in his jaw went away. He kept the engine on a straight line toward the aquarium and enjoyed these few minutes of solace, not even minding that asinine country song on the tape deck.

“I fell down, down, down, but the flames went higher…”

For Tom Piper and his task force, reviewing the events leading up to the second massacre, much of the information about Station 13 and its actions on February 11 was circumstantial at best (and anecdotal at worst). They had no definitive proof the six men took North Hughes to the aquarium, or even that Johnny Cash had accompanied them on their trip. All Tom Piper had to go on was what he later learned about the men’s habits. He assumed what they did that night on the way to that fire was what they did every night they went out on a job. He interviewed Station 13’s other firefighters, many of whom had served at one time or another with the boys on the night shift. He interviewed their families. He put together a composite.

It was like figuring out the universe from a handful of photographs.

Amarillo had one firehouse. Some decades back, a forgotten politician had labeled it Station 13, because Amarillo was in the Thirteenth Congressional District and the constituents should be reminded. Lucky #13. At their first charity football game vs. the local police force, way back in the early ’80s, when the firefighters had marched out onto the field at Amarillo High, rather than having individual numbers stenciled on the backs of their jerseys they had each borne the same two red digits: one and three. The crowd ate it up.

The chief had been on that inaugural team. 1982 had been his rookie year, so the vets kept him on the bench for most of the game. He knew it wasn’t a comment on his playing ability; after all, every grown man in West Texas knew how to throw a football. He just didn’t have the seniority, and in public service (even on the football field), seniority trumped everything. The chief accepted that.

They finally put him in for the last quarter. He took his position as a tailback (he lacked the size for anything else) and readied for the snap. The play called for him and the fullback (#13) to fake left while the QB (#13) readied a forward pass to the wide receiver (#13), who would charge right, hopefully receive the pass, rush forty-six yards for the touchdown, and bring the game out of its 21-21 deadlock. The cops, impatient at being on the defense, blitzed the line. So instead of charging right, the firefighters’ wide receiver got trampled.

The chief saw panic in the QB’s eyes. Hell, the crowd saw panic in the QB’s eyes. If he didn’t get rid of the ball in the next five seconds, he’d meet a fate worse than his receiver. So the chief, as he interpreted it, had two options: use his small body to run interference and get pummeled or attempt a charge through the mass of blue uglies and pray for a pass reception.

The chief charged. His minimal size helped him shuttle through a needle’s eye of a hole. He rushed past the line of scrimmage and glanced back. Had the QB noticed? Would the ball come his way?

Yes.

In his last moments before getting walloped, the QB tossed off the ball. It didn’t spiral so much as wobble…but it was wobbling in the right direction. The chief outstretched his arms. He was wide open. The defense was all up field. Thousands watched from the stands. The chief’s young wife, Marcy, watched from the stands. If he completed this play, he’d become legend. If he dropped the ball, or tripped, or if half a dozen other common errors occurred in the next ten seconds, he’d be jeered forevermore.

The chief ruminated every day about the game. He ruminated about it now, as they passed Amarillo High on the left. The aquarium was within view, but the chief glanced over at the high school stadium. That’s where he really wanted to be. That’s where he’d caught that wobbling pigskin and sprinted forty-six yards to score the winning touchdown. Him. The little rookie.

The chief loved firefighting and had numerous accolades and recommendations but when he died, he knew what would appear in the first paragraph of his obituary.

“That’s why everyone called him Catch,” Jed Danvers told Tom Piper. Danvers had been a rookie, too, during that game (for the other side). Now he was lieutenant governor of the state. Jed and Tom were sipping coffee on the fifth floor of Baptist St. Anthony’s on Wallace Boulevard, not far from the crime scene. For security reasons, they’d made sure to get Catch a room here all by himself. Two Texas Rangers were posted outside his door.

Catch’s head was double-wrapped in gauze. His eyes were shut. Tubes were glued every which way to his arms and face. He still hadn’t awakened, and thus was unaware he was the sole survivor and only witness to what had happened.

Station 13 had arrived in front of the glass-and-brick structure at 10:09 p.m. Plumes of gray-white smoke tunneled from the roof into the sky, but so far the fire appeared contained. The aquarium didn’t have many windows—like most museums (and casinos), the architectural objective was one of timelessness, and this meant blocking the outside world. However, there were a few narrow panels along the stairwell. The panels appeared intact.

Daniel McIvey and his son Brian were the first out of the engine, followed by Roscoe Coffey and, lastly, Lou Hopper. Daniel and Brian looked like a project in time-lapse photography; same moppy red hair, same ruddy fat cheeks, only the father was a little taller, a little heavier, had a few more lines on his brow. Like twins they spoke in shorthand.

“Do you want to…?” asked Daniel.

“Yeah,” Brian replied. “I’ll get the thing. I’ll meet you where you’ll be.”

Brian hustled together two Halligan pickaxes out of the truck while Daniel met up with the chief, who was interrogating the aquarium’s security guard.

“…was just doing my job!” wept the guard. Big man named Cole. Six foot six. 300 pounds. Bawled. “I smelled the smoke and checked the monitors and that’s when I called you! I swear!”

The chief nodded, feigning sympathy, and then asked the most important question of all: “Is there anyone left in the building?”

“The night janitor…name’s Emmett Poole…I didn’t abandon him! But I think he’s still on the third floor…”

Daniel and Brian were the designated rescue team. Brian handed his father one of the Halligans and they rushed into the building. They knew the layout of the aquarium. They went here every summer. Family outing. Daniel and his wife Margie. Brian and his wife Emilia. Brian and Emilia’s twins.

Roscoe and Lou grabbed a pair of extinguishers and ran in after them. Soon they were in the lead, and heading up the stairwell. Roscoe illuminated their path with a flashlight. By the time they reached the second floor, the yellow emergency lighting kicked in. By the time they reached the third floor and smelled the smoke, they knew they’d arrived.

Brian touched the door.

“We got a cooker,” he said.

Roscoe and Lou readied their extinguishers. All four men were swathed in fire retardant bunker gear, but still—fire was fire. Prometheus stole it out of heaven and it’s been pissed ever since.

Outside, Bobby Vega sat by the radio. If the chief gave the word, he’d call the boys left at the station to get the ladder truck. They always always always left at least two men at the station. Reinforcements were the saviors in any war. The two boys back at Station 13 had changed the station on the fifty-two-inch LCD from the boring debate and were now watching something more relevant: a WWE title bout. Not that they were lounging; relaxation wouldn’t be an option until their brothers returned from the battlefield.

Cole, the aquarium’s gigantic night watchman, leaned against the fire truck and wiped wet salt from his eyes. He’d taken this job as a low-stress alternative. His life coach told him his chi couldn’t deal with anxiety. His life coach told him fish were supposed to bring good luck. The next day, Cole saw the job opening at the aquarium.

He steadied his breath with a yoga exercise. What had he done so wrong in a past life that his karma would be so toxic? Had he been a serial killer? Cole blew his nose on his sleeve.

Back inside the aquarium, Roscoe and Lou were foaming the third floor, to little effect. Although the fire appeared localized to knee level and lower, residual smoke clogged all visibility.

“Mr. Poole!” called Daniel.

“Mr. Poole!” called Brian.

The third floor was arranged like a glassy labyrinth. The four firefighters crouched their way through the maze. They had no idea where the point of ignition was and they saw no sign of Emmett Poole. Lou offered his usual uninformed hypothesis.

Then one of the exhibits exploded.

Its water (and exotic fish) spilt onto the conflagration. Instead of being extinguished, though, the fire tracked the water back to its source and filled the exhibit orange-green.

This was a chemical fire. Class B.

“Shit,” said Roscoe.

The four men quickly backed out of the third floor. They needed different equipment. Roscoe radioed the chief with their status. No response. The old man was probably dealing with the cops, the press, who knows what. Roscoe took the lead and the firefighters hustled down the stairwell to the lobby.

Daniel and Brian thought about their previous trip to the aquarium. The twins adored the seahorses. What floor had the seahorses been on? Please. Not the third.

Lou Hopper thought about his knees. He needed to lose weight. Running up and down these stairs was taking its toll.

Roscoe thought about nothing at all. He operated purely on instinct and muscle memory. Otherwise he probably would have been concerned that the chief still hadn’t replied on the radio.

The four men ran out of the lobby into the open air and went down like ducks in a gallery. Roscoe, Lou, Daniel, Brian. Pop—pop—pop—pop. The bullets easily pierced their helmets, muscles, and, yes, cartilage.

Bobby Vega sat hunched over his beloved steering wheel. His blood puddled on the dash.

Cole the giant lay sprawled on the pavement.

The chief, full name Harold Lymon, nicknamed “Catch,” had tried to push Cole out of the way of the gunfire, then had run to save Bobby when the bullets found him. Catch, though, had been an object in motion. Hard to stop. Just as in 1982. The bullet grazed his left temple and left him bleeding and, mercifully, unconscious. He never saw Roscoe, Lou, Daniel, and Brian go down.

And two days later, Catch was still unconscious. He’d lost a lot of blood at the scene. Meanwhile, the third story of the aquarium collapsed into the second story. Thousands of sea animals were dead. The local paper actually listed the different species. Some of the national outlets had arrived. Connections were already being made between this attack and the one in Atlanta. The bastard had assassinated twenty people now and left a trail as cold as the Long Island Sound.

And he was just getting started.

4

“H aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaappyVaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalentine’s Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!”

Sophie hopped into her parents’ king-size bed. It was 6:03 a.m.

Esme groaned. Forced open her eyelids. Her daughter stared back, her blue eyes (identical to Rafe’s, who was still asleep) full of energy.

“I made breakfast!” Sophie declared and ran out, presumably to the kitchen.

Esme groaned again. 6:03 a.m. Love was never ever easy.

But that didn’t mean she had to suffer alone.

Esme slapped her husband on the ass. Twice. Hard. Finally, he stirred. Glanced over at her as if she’d stolen his baby blanket.

“Our daughter made breakfast,” said Esme.

Rafe’s blue-eyed gaze (far from identical at this moment to his daughter in that they conveyed No Energy Whatsoever) shifted from Esme to the clock on her nightstand, then back to Esme.

“Do I know you people?” he muttered.

She poked him playfully in his paunch.

“I love you, too,” she replied. “Now let’s get to the kitchen before Sophie burns it down, okay?”

Esme’s concerns proved unwarranted. Sophie had made cereal. And by made, she had poured her favorite brand (Count Chocula) into two bowls and soaked the bowls in milk. She had even provided napkins, forks, and spoons. She would have provided knives too, but she was forbidden to open the knife drawer.

As Esme and Rafe shuffled into the kitchen, their daughter was already at the table, placing folded sheets of red construction paper on their wicker seats. She wore her red-and-white Cupid pajamas, with its little hearts and arrows and diapered cherubs. Red clothes always made her chestnut hair appear auburn, as if she had on a hat of autumn leaves.

“Do you want orange juice or grapefruit juice?” Sophie asked.

“Huhwhahuh,” Rafe replied.

“Grapefruit juice,” said Esme. “I’ll get it.”

Soon they were all three enjoying their breakfast. Esme and Rafe’s cereal had gotten soggy, but soggy chocolate was still chocolate. The construction paper Sophie had left on their seats were Valentine’s Day cards, lovingly Crayola’d. She drew Rafe with his glasses on and with his beard trimmed. Neither applied to Rafe at the moment. Crayola Esme had small ears. Sophie knew how sensitive her mother was about her ears.

“Come here,” said Esme, and hugged her daughter close.

Rafe finished his cereal first. His breakfast was normally comprised of a stale doughnut and a cup of instant coffee, both procured from the social sciences department faculty lounge, so this was a huge improvement. True, he continued to act half-asleep—mumbling answers, exaggerating every yawn—but in actuality Rafe was having a wonderful time. He absently ruffled through his thinning black hair and wondered how he could make this moment last the rest of his life…or at least until the end of the semester.

Ah, the work of the day beckoned. Rafe lumbered into the shower while Esme remained in the kitchen and helped Sophie finish filling out the Valentine’s Day cards for her classmates.

“But, Mom…I don’t want to give one to Thad Crotty…he’s gross.”

“What makes him gross?”

“He smells like the garbage disposal.”

“We shouldn’t judge people, Sophie. Everyone is unique and different. Like a snowflake.”

They sealed tiny candy message-hearts into each of the miniature red envelopes—one for each of her classmates and one for Mrs. Leacy. Sophie deliberated extensively which message-hearts went to which classmates. By the time Rafe had rejoined them in the kitchen, dried off and spectacled and in full professor-mode, Esme and Sophie were only half done.

“Better hurry up, kiddo,” said Rafe.

He was Sophie’s morning chauffeur. They usually left the house at 7:15. Esme hustled their daughter into her bedroom and helped her select The Perfect Outfit for Valentine’s Day.

Meanwhile, Rafe contributed to Team Sophie by finishing up the cards. Before departing for her bedroom, Sophie gave him strict instructions. As he attempted to follow them, he also attempted to recollect his elementary school valentines. He couldn’t even recall the names of his instructors. He would be forty years old this July. This fact, unfortunately, he never seemed to forget.

Esme joined him back at the table.

“Sophie’s brushing her hair,” she said. “She wants privacy.”

“Well, sure.”

They kissed. Briefly—but briefly then lasted a minute. Two minutes. Hands touched cheeks. Mussed hair. Three minutes.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” whispered Rafe.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” whispered Esme.

Sophie marched into the kitchen. “I’m ready!”

At 10:00 a.m., Esme texted their babysitter, Chelsea, reminding the slightly scatterbrained but quite responsible teenager to come by the house no later than six o’clock. Rafe and Esme had strict dinner reservations at 6:30 p.m. at Il Forno.

As soon as Esme returned her cell phone to the counter, it buzzed. Was that Chelsea already, sneaking a text message back to her from some high school classroom? Esme checked the screen.

Tom Piper.

Her phone buzzed again.

Like most Americans, she had read about the attacks in Amarillo. The 24-hour news channels were still filled, three days later, with footage and interviews and expert opinions, not the mention rampant speculation. Was this attack related to the one in Atlanta? Was there a serial killer on the loose? It made for compulsive TV.

Except for Esme. After her initial obsession about the Atlanta shootings, after Tom Piper had deconstructed her obsession into simple displacement, her interest in the story quickly faded. One might even say she became just as obsessively uninterested. Instead, Esme concentrated her days on her Sudoku puzzles, her books (she’d moved on from the Elvis Costello biography to a schmaltzy novel her reading club had selected), and her ever-surprising daughter. She’d even started paying attention to the presidential elections. It was unavoidable, really. Amy Lieb was roping all of Oyster Bay into her campaign for Bob Kellerman and now that it looked like he’d be the nominee, her efforts (in her mind) had ascended to Great Importance. To not be involved would be un-American. So Esme found herself volunteering on weekends with the other housewives at Oyster Bay’s KELLERMAN FOR PRESIDENT campaign headquarters (i.e. Amy’s mini-mansion). She licked envelopes, cut decals and traded gossip with everyone else.

Bzzzzzzzzzzz!

Tom Piper, calling to snatch her from the jaws of mediocrity.

Bzzzzzzzzzz!

“Let it go to voice mail,” she muttered. She was content, damn it.

Bzzzzzzzzzz!

There were men and women at the Bureau far more in the loop than thirty-eight-year-old Esme Stuart from Oyster Bay, Long Island. Tom had no right to call her, really. The responsible thing for him to do would be to go to his own people. Yes, she’d called him last month, but as Tom himself had pointed out, that had been a moment of temporary lunacy. She was retired now. She was a housewife.

Bzzzzzzzzz!

“Just go to voice mail!” she growled. How many times did it have to ring before—

It stopped. Finally. She felt her shoulders slacken, and ambled to the stereo and pondered a distraction. Joy Division? Too morose for right now. Pavement? Too loud.

The Kinks. Ideal for any mood and setting. She popped in the CD. Bless you, Ray Davies.

And her phone buzzed again.

“Jesus, what the hell?”

She stomped back to the counter and checked the screen. It was just a note from her voice mail. One new message.

One new message.

Damn it, Tom.

It was Valentine’s Day, for fuck’s sake.

Esme slipped her phone into the utensils drawer (out of sight, out of mind) and lay down on the sofa with her water-damaged paperback. “Lola” strummed in the background. She thought about lighting some peppermint incense, decided against it, and forced herself into the book.

Six people had died in Amarillo…

No. No. People die every day. Read the book.

Fourteen in Atlanta, six in Amarillo. Someone had to speak for those victims.

And they would. Why her? She had done her bit for king and country, hadn’t she?

More would die. This sniper had a purpose.

He must have left a note.

Esme closed her novel.

“Fuck,” she concluded.

She dialed down the volume on her stereo, went in the kitchen, and retrieved her phone. Didn’t bother listening to Tom’s message. Just dialed him direct.

“This is Tom.”

“Hi, Tom.”

“I just called you.”

“I was in the shower.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“How are you?”

“Busy.”

“I can imagine.”

“I know you can. That’s why I called.”

“For my imagination?”

“Have you been following the case?”

“I’ve actually been a little busy.”

“Oh?”

“I’m campaigning for Bob Kellerman.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I’ve become very civic.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“How can I help you, Tom?”

“You don’t seem as enthusiastic as you were before.”

“What can I say? Love fades.”

“He’s going to kill again.”

Esme closed her eyes, then opened them.

“I’m sure you and your team are more than capable of stopping him. Our tax dollars at work, right?”

“He left a note in Atlanta.”

The cell phone trembled in her hand. No—it was her hand that was trembling.

“What did the note say?”

“I thought you weren’t interested.”

“What did the note say, Tom?”

“He left it in a shoe box. We found the shoe box on the roof of the school. It was just lying there. We also found the spent shells from his rifle. Sixteen shells.”

Sixteen shells. Fifteen dead in Atlanta, including the dog, plus the squad car’s red-and-blues, which were the first target. Sixteen shells. The sniper hadn’t missed, not once.

“We opened the shoe box and found the note.”

“What did the note say?”

“I just scanned it and e-mailed it to you. Call me back after you’ve read it.”

Click.

Esme introduced the phone to her middle finger, then clomped to her computer and turned it on. The Kinks segued into “Waterloo Sunset,” one of the sweetest rock and rolls songs ever recorded. Esme didn’t notice.

Windows took two minutes to boot up.

Fuck you, Bill Gates. Esme plopped down in her seat and clicked on her e-mail client. Another thirty seconds for that to boot up. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.

And what did it matter if she read the note, anyway? Why was she making such a big deal out of this? She could read it, give Tom her two cents over the phone, and be done with it. What was the big deal?

Finally. Three new messages. One from Amy Lieb, one from Hallmark (Rafe must have opened one of the e-cards she’d sent him), and one from TPiper@fbi.gov.

Esme double-clicked on the message. The note the sniper had left in Atlanta loaded in the body of the e-mail:

IF THERE WAS STILL A GOD, HE WOULD HAVE STOPPED ME.

—GALILEO

Esme felt her adrenaline turn to ice. This was not the rambling, incoherent manifesto she expected. In her time at the Bureau, she had encountered more than her share of rambling, incoherent manifestos. But this—this was just a direct statement. Yes, he chose a colorful moniker like so many of the other lunatics, but what insight could she possibly…

He had to have left another note in Amarillo.

Bzzzzzzzzzz!

She rushed to the phone.

“What was in the second shoe box?” she asked.

“What shoe box?” Rafe replied.

Esme swallowed hard. She suddenly felt like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “What shoe box?” she echoed innocently.

“You said something about a shoe box.”

“What’s up?”

“I just read your Hallmark card. The one you sent me online.”

Esme tapped her fingers on the countertop. “Did you like it?”

“It made me laugh.”

“Good.”

“I’ll see you tonight at six. Wear something slinky.”

“How risqué.”

“Love you.”

Rafe hung up.

Esme sat down on the floor. Why did she feel so guilty? When she got pregnant, they’d agreed her lifestyle—shuttling about the country working on violent crimes—was not conducive to raising a family. She’d made a pact with Rafe to leave the Bureau and move to Long Island. Gloria Steinem might not have approved, but Esme savored the time she got to spend with her daughter while the other mothers had to hire nannies or ship their children to day care. Surely a few phone calls with her old boss wasn’t a betrayal of her family. It wasn’t as if Tom was asking her to fly down to Amarillo….

But he would.

She knew it even before she’d answered the phone. Whatever he was dealing with was too much for him to handle. There was only so much help one could offer from Oyster Bay, Long Island. Elect a president—perhaps. Catch a sniper—you’ve got to be kidding. No, to really help, she’d have to walk the crime scene and examine the evidence. Not scanned images of the note, but the note itself. What paper had he used? What typeface? What kind of shoe box was it? What was the pattern the shell casings made when they left his rifle and landed on the rooftop asphalt? Any of these could be clues to locating the guy, but they couldn’t be judged from a thousand miles away. If she walked the crime scene and examined the evidence…who knows?

All modesty aside, she had been very, very good at her job. Where others saw randomness, she recognized patterns, and patterns always led back to the perpetrator. Tom Piper could read anybody, even over the phone line. She read patterns. They were, so to speak, life’s intelligent design. She just filled in the blanks (thus her affinity for Sudoku puzzles). Even the entropy of madness, given the proper data, could be divined. Effect always followed cause. All actions carried context.

She knew there had to have been a second shoe box, one in Amarillo. It fit the pattern. And if she only knew what was inside it…

She stared at her cell phone. Tom was waiting for her call.

He was counting on her.

But so were Rafe and Sophie.

5

S ix deaths meant six separate funerals, but Amarillo, like Atlanta, held one memorial service to honor them all. There was much debate over where the service should be held. The Amarillo metropolitan area boasted over 1,000 churches, and almost all of them jockeyed for the opportunity to host the service. Mayor Deidre Lumley, however, insisted the memorial service remain non-denominational (although many of Amarillo’s more prominent clergymen were assured seats on the dais).

The memorial service in Atlanta had been held at the 4,500-seat Fox Theatre and every seat had been filled. Amarillo had Dick Bivins Stadium, which seated 15,000, but Mayor Lumley A) didn’t want to associate tragedy with sports, and B) didn’t expect 15,000 people to show up. All those empty seats would look very bad on national TV. After much deliberation, many pots of coffee, and a quid pro quo from the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper, Mayor Lumley and her staff decided upon the Globe-News Center. It was relatively new, seated over 1,000 quite comfortably, and was very media-friendly (as it was named, after the local newspaper, the Amarillo Globe-News).

By the time Tom Piper arrived at the Center, about an hour before the service was scheduled to begin, there already were 5,000 people milling in the parking lot. Law enforcement did their best to conduct the traffic, but sheer numbers forced new arrivals to turn back; park their cars three, four, five miles away, and walk. Children and elders were dropped off, and with a half hour to go the crowd had surpassed 6,000.

Some carried candles. Some carried billboards with the names of the fallen handwritten on them in Magic Marker. All carried grief—in their hearts, in their eyes. Their community had been attacked. A demon had singled them out. Six of their heroes had died trying to protect them. And there was no closure—the demon was still at large.

He might even be one of the 6,000 here at the service.

Tom Piper surveyed the men and women. Despite what he considered frankly outlandish claims about his ability to decipher minds, he knew the probability of his detecting an irregularity, especially in a mass of people this enormous, was astronomically low. Detection was the justification he’d offered his team (while they remained behind and worked the evidence—what little of it there was) for his attendance here today, but this was bullshit.

The truth was far simpler and quainter: He was here out of a sense of duty.

He secured his helmet and protective leggings to his Harley, adjusted the feeling of his baggy black leather coat on his slim shoulders, and joined the throng. Tom wanted to maintain his anonymity here, in this vigil, but that was the easy road. Twenty people were dead. He hadn’t yet earned the easy road.

He displayed his badge.

The questions came almost immediately:

“Do you have any leads?” “Who could have done this?” “What are you doing to keep this from happening again?” “How did you let this happen at all?”

The questions pelted him, pricked at him. He felt every one. The sight of his badge, though, forced everyone, friendly or not, to let him pass. He silently made his way to the red sandstone building, showed his badge to the cops at the gate, and entered.

Inside the auditorium, Tom identified the four distinct cliques. The family members, mostly culled from Amarillo’s lower middle class, wore black polyester. They all knew each other, and chatted freely amongst themselves. Tom picked out the genetic resemblances—these giants over here must be kin to Cole the night watchman, those fair-skinned redhead variations over there must belong to Daniel and Brian McIvey. Among the firefighters in attendance, the genetics varied wildly, but as a group they were easily distinguished by their Class A’s, the black-and-gold uniform each wore in honor of their fallen brethren. The third pocket of attendees, smaller than the first two, was the politicians. Here were the $2,000 suits and the once-a-week haircuts. Tom recognized the state’s congressmen and senators.

The fourth, final, least significant clique was the press. They sat in the rear, set up their cameras. Here was the widest variety of humanity. They carried on their faces bleary evidence of two-hour naps in tiny motel rooms, and their clothes looked shopworn. Some attended funerals for a living. It was part of their job.

Tom took a seat in the back, with the press. After all, he identified most with the press. He too, it seemed, attended funerals for a living.

The service was scheduled to begin in five minutes.

Six large black-and-white photographs hung like flags from a pipe above the stage, as if to remind the attendees the reason they were here. As if anyone needed reminding. Underneath the photographs were eight black chairs and a miked podium. Tom wondered if Mayor Lumley and the other seven distinguished guests (which included Catch’s pal Lt. Governor Jed Danvers) were milling in the green room, eating cubes of cheese.

Tom fixated on the photographs.

Cole Kingman.

Bobby Vega.

Lou Hopper.

Daniel McIvey.

Brian McIvey.

Roscoe Coffey.

Names forever added to his memory. Names, like the fourteen in Atlanta, forever associated to a madman with a gun.

And Esme still hadn’t called him back.

He’d sent her the e-mail around 10:00 a.m. EST. It was almost 12:30 p.m. now in Amarillo, which meant it was almost 1:30 p.m. in Oyster Bay. She hadn’t e-mailed him back—he had his BlackBerry set to notify him when he received new messages at his work account. What was she doing? Surely she wanted to help out…right?

Perhaps the seven years had changed her more than he’d expected. Perhaps he didn’t know her anymore at all.

And yet she’d called him…

The speakers took the stage. Gradually, the attendees settled, and sat. Mayor Lumley approached the podium. The shoulder pads in her dark blue pantsuit made her look like a transvestite.

“Good afternoon,” she began…and then Tom tuned her out. He’d met the woman the previous night at city hall, and she’d seemed to possess the trait of being both ignorant and condescending at the same time. It was a trait most commonly found in politicians and actor-activists, and there actually was a psychological term for it. The Dunning-Kruger effect: the dumber you are, the smarter you think you are. Tom’s father, a lawman in Jasper, Kentucky, had a better phrase to describe them: “arrogant fuckwits.” As in: “there’s that arrogant fuckwit on TV again, vomiting at the mouth.”

Tom pursed his lips in a small grin.

“Special Agent Piper,” whispered the young Asian woman to his left, “what’s so funny?”

She was an itty-bitty thing, with spiky faux-black hair. Twenty-two years old, if that. Her dark V-neck cardigan went down to her knees. Her right nostril was pierced. Who is she, thought Tom, and how does she know my name?

As if psychic, she held out her hand. “Lilly Toro. San Francisco Chronicle.” She had the body of a child but the croak of a chain-smoking octogenarian.

Tom shook her hand, didn’t notice nicotine on her fingertip. “You’re a long way from home, Ms. Toro.”

“So are you, Special Agent Piper.”

They spoke in hushed tones, so as not to disturb those around them, who were apparently enraptured in the mayor’s oratory.

“I sat next to you on purpose,” she said.

“Are you asking me out on a date, Ms. Toro?”

“Not unless you’re hiding a vagina.” Her breath smelled of spearmint and menthol. “And call me Lilly.”

“Why did you sit next to me?”

A pasty gentleman to Tom’s right stopped jotting notes onto his steno pad and gave them an accusatory look.

“Sorry, Roger,” said Lilly.

“Sorry, Roger,” echoed Tom.

Up on stage, Mayor Lumley wrapped up her remarks and turned the helm over to Pastor Manny Jessup. Both Roscoe Coffey and Bobby Vega had been congregants at his church. He stepped up to the podium, took a deep, steadying breath, and spoke.

The service lasted another hour. By the time it was over, much of the mighty crowd outside had dispersed. Plastic cups and candy wrappers were strewn across the parking lot, as if the fair had just left town.

Tom made his way to his Harley.

“Special Agent Piper…”

Lilly Toro, more than a foot shorter, hustled to catch up.

“I’m in a bit of a hurry, I’m afraid, Ms. Toro…”

“Lilly.”

“Lilly.” He fastened his protective leggings over his slacks, lest he crash his motorcycle, shatter his bones, and accidentally bleed on his clothes. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I gave my statement yesterday at the press conference.”

“Okay.”

Tom offered her a sympathetic shrug and mounted his bike. The engine started with a tiger’s roar. He petted it. Good boy.

“I was just wondering,” she yelled over the roar, “I was just wondering why you haven’t disclosed anything about the shoe boxes!”

Tom sighed. He hated press leaks.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who your informant is?”

“No,” replied Lilly. “But thanks for confirming his story. Or her story. Maybe their story…”

“You don’t really want to know why I haven’t disclosed that information, because you already know why I haven’t disclosed that information. You understand the principle of withholding key evidence because you’re doing the same thing now with me.”

She lit up a Marlboro, blew smoke away from his face, and grinned.

“Okay, so now, Ms. Toro, I guess I’m going to ask you what your price is for your discretion. What is it your newspaper wants to keep any mention of shoe boxes off the front page?”

“An exclusive.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Not an exclusive on the whole case. I know you can’t give me an exclusive on the whole case. I want to report about your team.”

“Me.”

“‘What’s it like, firsthand, to track down a serial killer?’ I want to be embedded.”

“Uh-huh. That’s very much not going to happen.”

He revved the Harley.

“You know,” she yelled, “once we print the story, you’re not going to have any leverage to tell the difference between the fake leads and the real ones! I imagine that’ll make your team’s lives a lot more complicated!”

He gritted his teeth. Before she even said it, he knew she was right. By keeping some elements of the crime a secret, his team could sift out the crazies and the wannabes. Once those elements became public, his task force would have no easy way of confirming or denying the validity of any call they received. Their time and resources would be wasted while the real killer remained at large.

He really hated press leaks.

He killed the engine. Again.

“Let me give you my number,” Tom mumbled.

“Don’t worry,” Lilly replied. “I’ve already got it.”

“Of course you do.” When he discovered which cop/flunky/politician was slipping information to the press… “Goodbye, Ms. Toro.”

“Special Agent Piper, please. Call me Lilly. After all, we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other.”

On his way to the hospital, Tom grabbed a bite to eat at Whataburger. He ate out in the restaurant’s parking lot. Eating outside, come rain or shine, was one of his private pleasures. The quality of the food itself rarely mattered—right now he was at a fast food joint, for Christ’s sake—but the combination of environment and nourishment offered Tom his few fleeting moments of peace.

As it turned out, by midafternoon the day had become unseasonably warm, and Tom, atop his bike, gratefully shrugged off his heavy leather coat. The breeze tickled at his neck. Although the sun remained hidden behind gray clouds, it was most assuredly up there, somewhere. Trying. One couldn’t help but admire the effort.

Esme still hadn’t called.

Tom was tempted to phone her back, but refrained. If she didn’t want to get involved, she didn’t want to get involved. He had to respect that. He didn’t respect it—just as he hadn’t seven years ago—but he had to at least pretend. Pushing only created distance.

She would be such an asset on this case. There were so many variables, so many questions unanswered. This was a killer who thought outside the box, and Tom knew his capture would only be achieved by a detective who thought outside the box. And Esme flourished outside the box. So what in the hell was she doing in cookie-cutter Long Island…?

Tom washed down the last of his burger with a swig of tangy lemonade and tossed his refuse in a nearby bin. Across the street was a superstore which specialized in hats. Sometimes Amarillo reminded him of his childhood back in Jasper. Only Jasper wasn’t as flat. Nothing was as flat as the Texas Panhandle. The landscape was populated, as it were, with forests of shrubs that rarely rose above Tom’s ankle. The rest was desert, and went on for infinity.

Tom motored up Wallace Boulevard to Baptist St. Anthony’s. Chief Harold Lymon, nicknamed “Catch,” was situated on the fifth floor. Since no one from the hospital had left Tom a message, he assumed the man was still, sixty-five hours after being shot, unconscious. The doctors had insisted that Catch’s condition wasn’t critical, that he had been extraordinarily lucky, that his brain functions appeared normal and he could awaken at any moment. However, that likelihood decreased with each passing hour. Catch—and what he might have seen at the aquarium—was their best hope—their only hope—in identifying the sniper who called himself Galileo.

So imagine Tom’s relief when he received a text message, just as he pulled into the hospital lot. CATCH AWAKE, it read. It was from Darcy Parr, the youngest member of his task force. She’d drawn the morgue assignment, and since the morgue was situated in Baptist St. Anthony’s, it made sense she’d be the first to learn any status change in Catch’s condition.

Three minutes and thirty seconds after reading the text, Tom had locked up his motorcycle, secured his gear, and was riding the hospital elevator up to floor five. Darcy met him at the nurses’ station.

“The doctors are in with him right now,” she said. “They said he may be too weak to talk, but I convinced them to give us five minutes as soon as they’re done.”

Darcy was Tom’s little blond-haired puppy dog—hyperactive, always eager to please, sidling up beside him. She was twenty-six years old. Her youthful energy sometimes drove Tom insane. Today it helped stretch his lips into a cheek-to-cheek grin.

Two different Texas Rangers were stationed outside Room 526. The door was closed. As soon as Catch had arrived at the hospital, the Texas Rangers had stepped up and volunteered their time. Everyone wanted to help. Well, except Esme Stuart.

The Rangers—two tin-starred linebackers topped with cream-colored cowboy hats—stood at attention on either side of the door. Tom offered them a salute. Darcy followed close behind.

“How long have they been in there?” he asked.

“About fifteen, sir,” replied Sgt. Conwell.

“Catch called out to us, sir,” added Sgt. Baynes. “He knew where he was. He knew what had happened.”

Tom’s grin filled his whole face. He paced the hall, eager to chat with his star witness.

“How was the service?” Darcy asked.

“It was nice. Very respectful.”

He glanced at Room 526’s closed door. Any minute now.

“Has his family been notified?” Tom asked her.

“As far as I know,” Darcy replied. “I’m sure they’ll be here soon. I’m sure they’ll want to talk with him, too.”

“Well, then, they’ve just got to wait in line.”

Any second now…

“He’s had a lot of visitors, sir,” said Sgt. Baynes. “We only let immediate family in to see him. And the lieutenant governor.” Perhaps he was just trying to occupy the silence. Perhaps he was crowing his achievements. Tom didn’t care.

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

“There was one reporter who tried to see him a few minutes ago,” Baynes added. “Rude little bastard. Even tried to take a picture of Catch with his camera phone. We got rid of the scamp right quick.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

Any second now…

The rude little bastard Sgt. Baynes was referring to was now on floor four of the hospital, in the men’s room. Underneath the sink was a briefcase, secured there with duct tape. He peeled the tape away and hefted the briefcase into his arms. It was not light.

Back on the fifth floor, the door finally opened. Four doctors filed out.

“Two minutes,” the eldest doctor warned. “He’s still weak.”

Tom nodded eagerly and, with Darcy in tow, entered Room 526.

Room 426, in the primary care ward, was occupied by two patients. One was off having tests. The other, a rotund fellow with red mullet named Curly McCue, was watching Jerry Springer on the TV fastened to the wall. The rude little bastard entered Room 426 and wedged the door shut with a small piece of wood from his pocket.

“Hi there,” said Curly, happy to have a visitor, “can I help you?”

“My name is Special Agent Tom Piper,” Tom said, one story up. Although the room’s blinds were drawn (safety precaution), the fire chief’s hazel eyes seemed to glow with daylight and vitality.

“I saw him,” he told the agents. His voice was raspy. He took a sip of water from a paper cup the doctors must have given him. “He was on the roof of a building across the street.”

Tom kept his ever-bourgeoning excitement in check. This was a man who had almost died, whose team of firefighters had been murdered. “Did you get a good look at him, Chief?”

Catch nodded.

Back in Room 426, the rude little bastard was assembling his M107. From barrel to stock, it was twenty-nine inches long and weighed almost twenty-nine pounds. A certain symmetry, that. It could accurately fire .50 caliber rounds at a distance of 6,561 feet, or over one mile. His target today, though, was only twenty feet away. Vertically. Galileo double-checked the snapshot he’d taken on his cell phone to verify the corresponding location in the room of his prey.

Curly McCue didn’t budge. His bed was soaked with urine. On TV, two scantily-clad pregnant women were wrestling. Curly McCue tried to recall the words to the Lord’s Prayer.

Tom leaned into the bed. Catch’s parched voice made his words difficult to understand. Darcy mimicked her boss and stood at the other side of the bed and also leaned.

Catch swallowed down another gulp of water. Smiled at the agents. And then his heart splashed Valentine’s Day blood against the ceiling of the room, across Tom and Darcy’s faces, and the world.

Tom and Darcy recoiled from the bed. Catch’s face still displayed that patient smile, frozen now in time and spattered scarlet. The plastic cup was squeezed in his left fist. Water trickled down the side of his hand and drip-dropped against the tiled floor below. Blood soon joined.

The Rangers burst into the room, pistols at the ready.

“Seal the exits!” Tom demanded. “Go!”

BAM! Catch’s body jumped again. The assassin had taken a second shot, just to be sure. The bullet angled off a rib and nabbed Tom in his left shoulder.

“Stay here,” he ordered Darcy, who was leaning against the wall. Possibly in shock. “Keep everyone outside the room.” In case the shooter fired again.

Darcy nodded, catching her breath. She was wiping Catch’s blood from her nostrils and irises when she noticed Tom’s wound. With his right hand he unsheathed his Glock from its shoulder-holster and dashed out to the nearest stairwell to intercept the sniper. He took the steps three at a time, emerged on the fourth floor, and didn’t have to worry about getting lost—he just followed the sounds of the screaming.

The wound in his left shoulder screamed in unison. He knew it wasn’t just a flesh wound. The bullet was lodged inside his muscle. Blood soaked his inoperable left arm. Tom, left-handed, did his best to ignore the pain and briskly walked to the nurses’ station.

The nurses were on the floor—uninjured, but seeking shelter. The screams came from the patients on the ward. Hospital security wasn’t there—the Rangers had undoubtedly commandeered them to help man the exits.

The door to Room 426 was wide open.

Chunks of ceiling panel crumbled on to Curly McCue’s bed. Curly had a single gunshot wound to the forehead, close range. His eyes were closed. He had known what was coming.

The sniper was gone.

“Which way?” Tom barked at the nearest orderly.

“I…”

“WHICH WAY?”

But no one replied. They either didn’t know—or were too afraid to say. Tom approached the nurses’ station and dialed security.

“Did you get him?” he asked. But he already knew what the answer would be.

6

F or their Valentine’s date, Rafe bought his wife a wrist corsage. He spent most of his office hours in line at the florist’s down the block from the university. Apparently every married man in Long Island was both a romantic and a procrastinator.

“A kelly green carnation,” he requested. That’s what she’d had in her wedding bouquet, so he knew he was on safe ground. He didn’t want to screw anything up, not today, not for Esme. The florist secured the delicate flower, still dappled with water droplets, in its plastic container.

He stored it in the fridge in the faculty lounge. He made sure to stick on a Post-it with his name on it, and hoped that would be enough to dissuade thieves (although he knew in academia no property—especially intellectual—was ever sacred). Fortunately, the corsage remained undisturbed, and by 5:30 p.m. he was carrying it (and a valise heavy with student papers) to his Saab.

It was a long walk. Rafe was out of breath by the time he reached his car. The arctic weather didn’t help; he could feel his ears and bare hands ache with each blast of wind. How peculiar, he thought, that both extreme heat and extreme cold turned bare skin red. He surmised it had something to do with blood. But Rafe Stuart was an associate professor in cultural sociology. He dissected demographics and memes. Anatomy was two quads away, in an oblong, curvaceous building shaped roughly (and somewhat appropriately) like the starship Enterprise.

Rafe tossed his valise in the trunk but very, very gently placed the corsage on the passenger seat. He was a little nervous. Big romantic evenings were not his forte. He much preferred a quiet night at home where he wasn’t under pressure to be Casanova. He loved his wife dearly, desperately, but loathed the typical dinner-and-a-movie rituals that society demanded, especially on days like this. Romance, he always had believed, should be a private affair. But today was Valentine’s Day, and so a corsage (for charm) and Il Forno (for pasta by candlelight). All for Esme. Anything for Esme.

Stuck in traffic on the way home, Rafe adjusted his rearview mirror to verify his necktie’s knot. He’d changed into a suit before leaving campus but hadn’t felt confident about his knot. Sure enough, it canted to the left. As soon as he exited the expressway, as soon as he reached his first red light, he tried to fix it. Loosen—straighten—tighten. Nope, try again. Drive another mile. Next red light. Loosen—straighten—tighten. Close, but still a bit askew, no? Drive another half-mile. He’d reached downtown Oyster Bay. Sophie’s school was to his left. He braked at a red light by the school and gave the knot one last go. Loosen—straighten—tighten. Some of his colleagues in social sciences wore ties year round. How could they breathe?

He angled his Saab into his subdivision. While questions like why one’s skin turned red were well beyond his field of knowledge, the matters of appearances and social perception were very much in his reach and grasp. Although he rarely wore a tie to work, he always wore a long-sleeved, iron-pressed, button-down shirt, even in the summer. Neutral colors, nothing flashy or flamboyant. Respect had to be earned, and man was the most superficial of God’s beasts. When they first met, Esme would have been happy attending a cocktail party in a T-shirt and jeans. He’d shown her the error of her ways.

Butterflies zipped around inside him. Did what was left of his black hair look adequately flat? Were his eyeglasses clear of specks? He shuffled out of his Saab and headed to the front door. He adjusted his tie knot one last time and rang the doorbell to his own house. Their teenage sitter greeted him with a mouthful of braces.

“Hello, Mr. Stuart. You look very nice tonight.”

“Thank you, Chelsea,” he replied. He didn’t want to come in. That wasn’t what he’d planned. Esme would meet him at the door. It would be like a prom date. That’s what he’d planned. That’s what would have been romantic. He was sure of it. But instead here was their brace-faced babysitter—

“Daddy!”

Sophie rushed from her homework to the doorway and slapped her arms around her father’s belly (well, as much of it as she could circumnavigate) in a snug embrace.

“Hi, sweetness.” He kissed her scalp. She gleamed up at him with blue eyes. For a moment, he forgot about his plans, his tie, Valentine’s Day, brace-faced Chelsea, the corsage he’d left in the car, the papers he needed to grade, the chill of the wind, the tilt of the earth’s axis, everything. Rafe’s little girl could induce amnesia, yes, she could. But ah, only temporarily. “Where’s Mommy?”

On cue, Mommy strolled down the stairs. She wore a form-fitting evening dress, red for the occasion. It brought out the freckles on her nose. For the second time in two minutes, Rafe’s mind went ecstatically blank.

Esme, responding to the awed expression on his face, shyly tucked a loose strand of hair behind an ear. Even after eight years, he still found her beautiful. She took his hand, they bid good-night to Sophie and her sitter, and walked out into the night.

They arrived late at the restaurant, but after a minimum of fuss the cheery mâitre d’led them to their table. Il Forno rested on a cliff and overlooked the dark blue Long Island Sound. Esme and Rafe took their seats by the window and stared out through the glass at the undulating waves.

Her right wrist sported the green carnation. She’d almost sat on it when she’d opened the car door, back in their driveway, but a last-minute warning from Rafe averted disaster. Rafe hurried to her side of the car and placed the corsage on his wife’s wrist.

Esme grinned. Was anyone more adorable than her husband? She kissed him full on the lips and whispered into his ear, “Thank you.”

Their tuxedoed waiter introduced himself—but needn’t have, as he was one of Rafe’s Meme Seminar students.

“Great to see you, Professor!” Nate said. “I didn’t know you came here!”

Rafe maintained his friendly smile. Had he known any of his students would be here, no, he wouldn’t have come. If romance couldn’t be a private affair, it at least could and should be shielded from his college girls and boys. While students were often cavalier in class about their personal lives, an instructor’s personal life was sacrosanct.

Once Tuxedo Nate took their drink orders and left, Rafe leaned in to his wife and casually inquired if she’d prefer to go somewhere else. But Esme laughed it off. “Because of our waiter? I think it’s funny. Why—is he failing your class? Are you worried he’s going to poison your food?”

Rafe winced. This was not the evening he had planned. But at least Esme had loved the corsage. And hopefully the food would be good. He gave the rest of the restaurant a cursory scan. No other students, either waiting on table or on dates with their significant others. Good. Il Forno was a little out of their price range, anyway.

Nate arrived with their merlot. He poured each their glass and left them the bottle in its decanter.

“Are we ready to order?” he asked.

They were. They did. He left.

“So,” Rafe inquired, savoring his wine, “what did you do today?”

“Not much. Did some laundry. Finished that crappy novel I had to read.”

“Sounds like a peaceful day.”

“Oh, and Tom Piper called.”

Rafe gently steadied his wineglass back on the table. “To wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day?”

Esme sighed. “Rafe…”

His azure gaze fixated on the waves in the moonlight. They followed the dark water as it lapped against the shore, then back into the void.

“He just wanted to talk to me, you know, about what’s been going on down in Atlanta and Amarillo. Get my take on it.”

“Did he get it? Your take, that is.”

His eyes shifted from the ocean to his wife. Sometimes she could make him forget about the world, true. But sometimes she could make every memory caged in his brain explode at once into searing clarity…

“I didn’t call him back,” she replied, and clasped his thick hands in hers. “My responsibilities are here now. Aren’t they?”

Romance should be a private affair? Fuck that. Rafe reached over and in the presence of the entire restaurant (including Tuxedo Nate) kissed his wife full on the mouth.

When they got home, Chelsea was sprawled across their divan, gabbing on her cell and noshing on carrot sticks. She said her regretful goodbyes to whoever was on the other line (her boyfriend, probably—today was Valentine’s Day) and hopped to her feet.

“Sophie’s asleep,” she said.

Esme nodded. Sleep was not a bad idea. She’d consumed more than her share of the merlot and was feeling its hypnotic tingle all through her body—but especially in her legs. She leaned against the kitchen counter, aiming for nonchalance and achieving full-out drunken goofiness.

If Chelsea noticed, she didn’t say anything. She seemed too intent anyway on the greenbacks Rafe was counting out from his wallet. Not a bad salary for carrot stick noshing and divan sprawling. Rafe offered to drive her home, but she lived only a few blocks away.

And she just wants more alone time with her boyfriend, mused Esme. Oh, to be young and in love. Although being in love in your late thirties wasn’t so bad either…

Esme’s lips stretched into a loopy grin. She wandered toward her daughter’s bedroom and peeked inside. Sophie slept curled up like a corn chip. Her small fists had her pink comforter pulled up to her chin. Esme knew she used to sleep like that, when she was younger. She would wake up with her bed sheet wrapped around her body like a protective cocoon. But Sophie had many cocoons protecting her. Esme suddenly felt the urge to embrace her daughter, but relented. Better to let her sleep, she decided. Sleep, dream and grow.

Esme strolled back into the living room. Chelsea was gone, and Rafe was returning the carrot sticks to the fridge.

“I’m just going to check my e-mail for a minute,” said Esme. She hoped he caught her subtext: and then we’ll retire to the bedroom for some appropriate Valentine’s Day sex games. But if he noticed, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he was sniffing the milk for freshness.

She sat down at her desk. It was time to reply to Tom’s e-mail. As the computer booted up, she went over in her mind how she would phrase her rejection. Above all, she needed to remain compassionate but firm. Of course she recognized how horrible his situation was. Of course she would help if she could—but she couldn’t. Her heart went out to all those victims’ families…but her heart then was obliged to come back here, to her home.

As she waited for the e-mail software to load, she occupied her mild ADD by also opening her Web browser. What was happening in the world today? Her browser went to its MSNBC home page and she scanned the headlines. Earthquake in Pakistan, rally for Governor Kellerman in his home state of Ohio, Congress reinvestigating farm subsidies in Nebraska and Wyoming…

Her eyes then found the story about the shooting at the hospital.

In the kitchen, Rafe had poured himself a glass of milk. His chicken marinara had been a bit too spicy and he was hoping a cold glass would soothe his indigestion. Or perhaps, he pondered with amusement, indigestion was just symptomatic of the warm glow he had felt ever since the restaurant.

And then his wife said, “Fuck,” and began to fumble through her purse. She took out her cell phone and began dialing.

“Who are you calling?” he asked calmly. The kitchen clock read 8:26 p.m. Not terribly late. Maybe she was calling Amy Lieb. After all, they both were in that silly book club and—

“Tom,” she said. “It’s me.”

That’s right. She hadn’t called him back yet. Rafe tried not to eavesdrop, but his better angels were asleep on the job. Make sure you let him down easy, babe. We don’t need to piss off the federal government.

Esme was fiddling with her computer. “No, I just read the story. I was out with Rafe.”

Rafe sipped his milk. Good girl. Name-drop the husband.

Wait—just read what story?

“I’m checking the flights now,” she said. “The earliest I can take is a 6:05 a.m. flight out of LaGuardia. I’ll have to change planes in Dallas, but I should get into Amarillo at 11:45 a.m.”

Rafe placed the glass of milk in the sink. “Esme.”

She didn’t look at her husband, but instead put up her hand to shush him. “No, Tom. I’ll pay for it. The Bureau can reimburse me.”

“Esme.”

Rafe marched into the living room.

This time she looked at him.

“Tom, I’m going to have to call you back. Okay. Talk to you soon.”

She hung up.

Rafe stared at her. Then:

“Esme, what the hell was that?”

“Rafe, listen, there’s been another shooting. At the hospital in Texas. The fire chief, the one who survived the thing at the aquarium—the sniper walked right into the hospital and shot him.”

“So—”

“He shot Tom, too.”

Rafe could swear there were tears in her eyes. He threw up his hands in exasperation. “Tom has a very important and dangerous job. People in dangerous jobs get hurt. It happens.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a—”

“Then don’t act like one! Your going down there isn’t going to make him heal any faster, Esme.” He cocked his head, studied his wife for a moment. “But that’s not why you’re going down there, is it?”

She stood up. “Listen…”

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long do you plan on being away? A week? A month? Sometimes it takes the FBI years to catch these guys. Are you going to be gone a year, Esme? I need to know so when our daughter asks, I can tell her.”

“That isn’t fair.” She balled her hands into fists. “I fly down there and—what? What do you expect is going to happen? I’m going to rejoin the fucking Bureau? I’ll be there as an extra pair of eyes. I’ll be there to put in my two cents—which shouldn’t take very long—and then I’ll be on the next plane back home. I promise.”

“What about Sophie? Who’s going to pick her up after school?”

“We can let Sophie stay after school with the Kleins or the McKinleys. It’s not a big deal. I’ll call Holly McKinley right now to make sure.”

She started dialing.

Rafe wanted to smack the phone out of her hand. A part of him even wanted to smack her—and that’s what gave him pause. He would not be the villain here. He was not the one who…

But being stubborn would accomplish nothing. Correction: being stubborn would just carve out an abyss between them which would widen and deepen with time. Sophie would notice. Their neighbors would notice. He was a sociology professor. Inflexible societies eventually snapped like twigs. Was he so implacable? Was he willing to risk so much?

“Three days.”

She stopped dialing. Looked over at him. “What?”

“You can have three days. Anything more than that and you’re not just putting in your two cents. Anything more than that and you’re on the task force. And then your responsibilities will be even more divided than they already are. You’re there three days and you’re a consultant. You’re there any longer and they’ll start counting on you. I’m pretty sure I’m right.”

She shook her head. No, he wasn’t wrong.

“But just so we’re clear,” she added, “you don’t get to ever—ever—give me an ultimatum like that. You don’t think I’m torn up over this? You made your point and you’re right. Three days it is. But that’s my choice.”

7

O n the evening of February 14, whilst young lovers kissed and old lovers spooned, Darcy Parr went looking for drugs. Claritin, Zyrtec—any antihistamine would do. Finding a drugstore still open in Amarillo after 10:00 p.m., however, was proving to be a chore, and so she ended trolling the luminescent tiles of Walmart.

Also, it provided her with an excuse to leave the hotel. Not that she was getting stir-crazy. But Tom Piper was two rooms down, and his vicinity reminded her of this afternoon.

She blamed herself.

The hospital had been her responsibility. Her primary assignment had been to coordinate with the M.E.’s office, and the M.E.’s office was at Baptist St. Anthony’s. That the fire chief was also under her jurisdiction went without saying. No one else from the task force was stationed at the hospital. No one else was even close. The sniper infiltrated the place on her watch. Their witness died on her watch. His blood was on her hands.

And face…and hair…

No. She had gotten all of it off in the shower. Right? Yes.

She found the nearest mirror—glued to an endcap for sunglasses—and double-checked. Yes. No more blood. Pores clean. Blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She looked like a coed in a sorority, not someone who’d just…

Shake it off, Darcy. Get your allergy medicine. Maybe send an e-mail to Pastor Joe when you return to the hotel. He never slept, and he always knew exactly what to say. Pastor Joe ran her parish church back in Virginia. Much of the congregation consisted of spooks, spies and Bureau instructors. It had been Darcy’s home church growing up. These were the people she knew. A career in the FBI had pretty much been predestined. It was these connections which enabled her to join Tom Piper’s esteemed task force.

She found the pharmacy aisles near the racks of get-well cards. How appropriate. It didn’t take her long to stock her basket with antihistamines. She even tossed a box of Sudafed in there, just in case.

It’s not that Amarillo contained an unusually high pollen count or that February was a particularly bad month for allergens. That’s why she hadn’t brought any medication with her on the trip from Virginia. But her symptoms, as she well knew, had nothing to do with the environment. They were induced by stress, and she’d suffered their effects since early childhood. Nobody said being an overachiever was easy.

And then there was the matter of Esme Stuart.

Darcy pressed down on her swollen sinuses, sniffled and coughed. Esme Stuart had left the Bureau long before Darcy Parr left the Academy, but her legend resounded up and down every wall at Quantico. She had been Tom Piper’s prodigy, and now she was coming back. It’s not that Darcy was jealous. It was silly to be jealous of someone so far out of your league. But Darcy was the newest member of the task force, the youngest, the greenest, and if Esme Stuart were to come back for good, if her return proved permanent…well, it didn’t take a Vegas bookie to foretell whose place on the team was most vulnerable.

Adding what happened today at the hospital to that little fact and Darcy was fortunate her stress hadn’t flared into the full-blown anxiety attack. The irony, of course, was that she could do the job. She had been at the top of her class at the Academy, and not because the instructors had offered a local girl special treatment. The reality had been exactly the opposite, but Darcy had persevered and now she was here in Amarillo, on her first case as a member of the most elite task force in the entire FBI. Her first case. And possibly her last.

She detoured to the Hallmark greetings. A get-well card for Tom wasn’t totally out of line. It was thoughtful. After all, her boss had been shot. And he wouldn’t very well tell her to pack her bags after she gave him a get-well card, would he? Would he?

“Miss, are you all right?”

Darcy glanced to her left. A sandy-haired man in his forties stood there, a kind smile on his face. He wore ranchers’ gloves, and held out a handkerchief in one of his gloved hands.

“I’m fine. It’s just allergies.” She chuckled a bit to herself. “I know that’s what people say when…but, really, I’m fine.”

He pocketed the handkerchief in his weather-beaten jean jacket and added, with a chuckle of his own, “Valentine’s Day takes its toll on us all.”

Darcy nodded. With all that had happened, she’d completely forgotten today was a holiday. Not that she had a sweetheart back in Virginia. A social life was, well, low on her list of priorities. If she got lonely, she had relatives she could visit in almost every county in Virginia. She wouldn’t be like Esme Stuart. Her commitment to the FBI would be permanent. Surely Tom recognized that about her.

“But I see you’re not even looking for Valentine’s Day cards, are you? How foolish of me to jump to that conclusion. But that’s what I do. Look before I leap. That’s me. But someone you know is ill.” He offered a look of sympathy. “That’s why I’m here too, actually.”

“Oh?”

The sandy-haired man shrugged humbly. “It’s unfortunate, really. The ways things happen in this life. We do what we do and meanwhile people get hurt, every day, and that’s just the way the universe works.”

“I don’t know if it’s as bleak as all that,” replied Darcy. She noticed the man wore a shoulder-holster. What was that tucked inside, a Beretta? Normally she’d be concerned, but this was Texas. The Second Amendment was as beloved here as any of the Ten Commandments. “God only gives us what we can handle.”

He mumbled something in response, probably in agreement, then looked around the aisle. He suddenly seemed weighed down with despair.

“Who are you getting your card for?” she asked him.

“It’s not someone I know very well. But sometimes the message is really more important to the messenger than to anyone else. You know?”

Darcy reflected on her own semi-selfish reasons for card-shopping. “Yeah,” she said, and felt a bit ashamed.

“The unfortunate part of it is—her condition’s terminal and she doesn’t even know it. I mean, all of us are dying in increments, but…”

“That’s terrible.”

He nodded sadly. “It is.”

He picked out one of his cards and, with impressive dexterity considering the thickness of his gloves, was able to take a pen out of one of his jacket’s many inside pockets and scrawl a message on its inside. All the while his eyes appeared moist. Not from allergies. Darcy wanted to give the man a hug.

“Ah, well,” he sighed.

He returned the pen to its pocket, took out his silenced Beretta, and with it shot Darcy twice in the forehead. He placed the get-well card (a Shoebox Greeting) on her chest and strolled away.

It was Lilly Toro who picked the parking garage for the clandestine meet, not out of any affection for Woodward and Bernstein but because it was, at this late hour, so reliably vacant. She perched on the hood of her VW Beetle and smoked her fifteenth Marlboro of the day.

Spending Valentine’s Day outside of her hometown blew.

Her informant showed up an hour late, but he was a cop, so his tardiness was not entirely unexpected. As soon as his metallic gold Crown Victoria whipped into view, she flicked the nub of her cigarette into outer space and took out her notebook. The guy didn’t like to be tape-recorded. Few snitches did.

He parked across the painted lines. He didn’t leave his car. He motioned for her to join him inside.

With a sigh, Lilly hopped off her VW and wandered to the passenger side of his Crown Vic. So this was how it was going to be.

The cop’s name was Ray Milton. He’d served on the Amarillo Police Department for eleven years. He worked in Property/Evidence and had known two of the slain firefighters personally. He bummed a Marlboro off her an hour before the memorial service.

Five minutes into the conversation, he was bitching about how the feds had stolen the case. Ten minutes into their conversation, they’d agreed to a quid pro quo: Ray would supply her with the leverage she needed to infiltrate the task force (namely, the bit about the shoe boxes). In return, once on the inside, she would funnel back to him updates on the case’s status. If the Amarillo P.D. was going to be benched, it at least was going to get to watch the game.

And so, upon learning from a very gabby receptionist in city hall about Esme Stuart’s impending arrival (11:45 a.m. tomorrow morning), Lilly phoned Ray. She zipped her VW to the meeting spot she designated, the abandoned parking garage, and so, here they were, at 11:45 p.m., in Ray’s twenty-year-old metallic gold Crown Victoria.

Which smelled like cinnamon.

This confused Lilly to no end. She’d expected the familiar tang of slow sweet death she inhaled every time she lit up, but no. Cinnamon. Then she noticed the red cardboard leaf dangling from Ray’s rearview mirror. Ah. Cinnamon. The man probably had kids and didn’t want to reek up the car pool on the way to Little League. Had he mentioned kids? After the memorial service, Lilly had done a background check on her informant just to verify his details, badge number, etc. One could never be too careful. But the data she’d accumulated had made no mention of kids. Whatever.

“So what’s your big news?” he asked.

His brown eyes bulged with eagerness.

Down boy, she mused.

“Yeah, I see you hustled right over here,” she replied. Waiting an hour in the middle of February in a nowhere-to-go-nothing-to-do city had been less than fun. “If you got here any faster, we could’ve had breakfast.”

“Sorry. Had an errand to run. Didn’t expect you to call so soon.”

“What can I say, Ray? I missed your sweet Texas charm.”

He scowled, charmingly.

She held up her hands. “Okay, okay. Jeez. So here’s the scoop—your pals at the FBI have got a ringer flying in from New York.”

“A ringer?”

“Her name’s Esmeralda Stuart. And you should’ve seen Special Agent Piper when he told his crew the news. It was like he was talking about the Second Coming. Apparently she’s some kind of savant. I don’t know.”

Lilly was lying. She did know. As soon as Tom Piper had made the announcement, she’d beelined for her Hello Kitty laptop and gleaned as much information on Esme Stuart as was available. But Ray Milton didn’t need to know that. Ray Milton needed to know what she decided he needed to know. Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and baby, that boy won’t need you no more.

Ray studied his steering wheel for a moment. Then: “When is she arriving?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Thank you.” He smiled at her. His teeth were eggshell white. He must spray them or something—no smoker has teeth like that. “Maybe the FBI knows what they’re doing after all.”

“Nobody knows what they’re doing, Ray. That’s what makes it all so much fun.”

She saluted the middle-aged cop and exited the cinnamon cloud of his vehicle. She felt him watch her go. She couldn’t blame him. When she wore the right outfit, her curves could cause whiplash in the most modest of spectators. So what if she liked women? That didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate being ogled now and again by the lesser of the species…

Sigh.

Spending Valentine’s Day outside of her hometown really blew.

Lilly meandered her way back to Motel 6. She hoped some of her friends would be online to distract her. She wrote her best journalism when she was distracted, and she didn’t want to squander this opportunity. Her articles on the task force had the potential to be front page, above the fold. The public loved to peek behind the curtain and see the wizard at play, and this time there was the sexy bonus of a serial killer. If she played to her strengths and created the rock-solid re-portage she knew she could produce, these articles would follow her portfolio until the day she died, when some other journalist would mention them at the top of her obit.

Her sixteenth (but not last) Marlboro of the day accompanied her on the short walk from the parking lot to her room. She passed a vending machine on her way, considered buying a bag of pork rinds, but continued on her way. The only thing worse than being stuck in Texas would be getting fat in Texas. It’s not that she was biased against the entire state. Austin, for example, was a wonderfully progressive city, and she had some friends who swore that the arts scene in Houston was thriving. However, most of the folk she had met, at least here in Amarillo, had been of Ray Milton’s ilk: a Bible in one hand and a shotgun in the other. Her lifestyle—hell, her very appearance (when she wore all her piercings and left her tattoos uncovered)—was diametrically opposed to everything these people held dear. She knew it. To them, she was the demon spawn. Worse yet, she was California. Not everyone here felt this way, of course, but the majority did, and in America, the majority ruled.

Whatever.

Back in her motel room, Lilly returned her Hello Kitty laptop from hibernation mode, instant-messaged with some friends for an hour, and wrote 500 words for her piece. Her editor Ben Blackman at the Chronicle wanted pages? He was going to get them.

She didn’t include anything which compromised the task force’s capability. She was a responsible journalist…and had only landed her plum source very recently. Still, as an exposé on one of this nation’s top crime-fighting units, her story had the potential to sizzle. It had colorful personalities. It had turf wars among different branches of government. It even had a hateful villain. Forget about Pulitzer—this could be her ticket to network television.

Lilly Toro nodded off around 1:00 a.m.; still in her black boots, stockings, the whole nine yards.

At 4:43 a.m., she awoke. Looked around, befuddled. Why the hell am I awake at—

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Someone was at the door.

BAM! BAM! BAM!

Someone not very happy.

Lilly padded over to the peephole.

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

“I’m coming.”

She peered through the peephole. Who the fuck would be banging on her door at 4:43 a.m.?

Lo and behold: it was Special Agent Tom Piper.

Even more confused, Lilly took a moment to straighten her hair, and then she pulled open the door.

“Special Agent Piper. What a semi-pleasant surprise.”

He stared at her for a full thirty seconds. Thirty seconds of nothing but his eyes on hers. He was trying to peer into her soul. She could feel it. She was terrified of what he wouldn’t find.

After thirty seconds, he reached some kind of conclusion. “Okay,” he said.

Then she noticed the blood on his palms.

What the hell?

He noticed her noticing.

“It’s Darcy Parr’s,” he said. “He shot her a few hours ago at Walmart.”

Darcy Parr was dead? Jesus Christ. Wait—Walmart? Where had she seen…?

“The license plate of the guy you met tonight? It’s registered to a Pablo Marx out of Lubbock. Pablo Marx—”

“Wait…”

“Pablo Marx was reported missing ten days ago.”

“How do you know I—”

“How do you think?”

Lilly shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. Of course they would tail her. They knew she had an informant. Of course they would want to find out his identity.

“His name is Ray Milton,” she told him. “He’s a cop with the Amarillo Police Department.”

“Ms. Toro, all due respect, but I guarantee you the man you’ve been speaking to is neither named Ray Milton nor he has ever, ever, worked with the Amarillo P.D. We’re going to need you to come with us. Right now.”

Lilly nodded, reached for her coat. Her mind was spinning (and the lateness of the hour didn’t help).

“Am I going to look at mug shots?” she asked.

“No, Ms. Toro. You’re going to help us trap the son of a bitch.”

8

E sme had three days to solve the case.

She solved it in nine hours.

While the rest of the task force was prepping Lilly Toro for the sting operation, Esme sequestered herself in a conference room, set her iPod to random selection, and through careful analysis of the case files and aggressive prodding of the FBI computer database, was able to deduce not only Galileo’s next likely target, but also his endgame.

This is how she did it:

Tom met her at the airport. The new lines on his long face weren’t just from age. It was obvious he hadn’t slept. Nevertheless, he put in the effort to smile.

“Esmeralda,” he said. “You look good.”

“So do you,” she lied. His left arm hung useless in a mauve sling. Oh, Tom.

They hugged, two old friends, and waited beside the baggage carousel for Esme’s two Louis Vuitton suitcases to emerge. Outside the bright Texas sun foretold a day luminescent with possibilities.

“Do you have any new photos of Sophie?” asked Tom. “She has to be, what, in grad school by now, right?”

Esme smirked. “Practically. Don’t worry, I’ve got a whole bunch of pictures in my digital camera. I’ll show them to you later.”

“Great.”

“How’s your family? Is your cousin still married to what’s-her-name with the Komodo dragon?”

“They’ve added a second pet to the household.”

“A unicorn?”

“A sea otter.”

“Oh, God.”

“It lives in their swimming pool in the backyard.”

“Of course it does.”

Her baggage arrived, intact and unblemished.

As they lugged it outside, Esme wondered how it all would fit on his Harley. To her surprise, a black sedan pulled to the curb and its trunk popped open. Behind the wheel sat 242 pounds of Norm Petrosky.

“The prodigal returns,” he said. Norm was one of the task force’s expert profilers.

Tom took the passenger seat and Esme sat in back. It felt odd to Esme, being chauffeured like that, but times had changed…

“How was your flight?” asked Norm.

“It didn’t crash.”

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