Joshua Corin - Before Cain Strikes

Rafe emptied two cans of chili into a pot and set it to boil.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“The twenty-first century,” she replied, checking inside handmade cabinets and hutches.

“You’re not going to find that here.”

She returned to the kitchen, an exaggerated pout on her lips. Rafe shrugged and started to stir the chili. Esme joined him at the gas stove, hip-checking him to make room, and cooked the contents of a box of white rice on an adjacent burner.

Apropos of absolutely nothing, Rafe turned to her and said, “So do you think it was the boyfriend?”

She lowered the temperature on Rafe’s burner.

“He had an alibi at the time of the fire.”

“Alibis can be falsified.”

She smirked at him. “Since when did you become a criminologist?”

“Everyone who watches prime-time TV is an amateur criminologist.” He grabbed some basil off the spice rack and sprinkled a few dashes into the chili. “I just want to make sure no stone goes unturned.”

There was that melancholy again, quavering the timbre of his voice. Esme noticed the steam from the pots was misting up his glasses. He did nothing to remedy the situation. She waited. He continued to stir, his vision undoubtedly getting foggier and foggier. Christ, the man could be stubborn.

She handed him a dishrag.

“What’s this for?”

“Just give me your glasses.”

He did. She wiped them. He poured the boiled rice into the chili and stirred them together.

“The man who killed her took her hands.”

Esme regretted saying it the moment the words came out. In fact, she had no honest idea why she’d shared with him this information, which was both grisly and confidential. He had no need to know. He had no need to ever know.

But now he knew.

He stared at her, his turquoise eyes so small, so vulnerable, without his glasses on. At that moment he didn’t look like a sociology professor or the father of a seven-year-old girl. He looked like a boy, a broken-hearted little boy.

“I’m sorry…” said Esme. “I—”

He began to pace the kitchen, thinking, thinking. Then he wheeled on her, fists clenched. “Why would someone do that?”

Esme shrugged. “Any number of reasons. What’s important is—”

“There are reasons? There is more than one reason why someone would…?”

“Rafe—”

“This is your world, isn’t it? This is what you deal with, willfully.”

Willfully. That word harkened back to their argument in Dr. Rosen’s office. How he’d accused her of knowingly and willfully killing their family with her selfish behavior. Goddamn it, couldn’t they have made it through one day without this shit coming back up between them?

She handed him his clean glasses.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Really, I am.”

He accepted the glasses from her hands, peered through the lenses and donned them.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.”

They ate dinner.

They talked about the weather.

And then, while washing the pots and dishes, it all began again….

“What are these number of reasons?”

“Rafe, it’s not important—”

“You know that’s bullshit. The reason someone does a thing is an essential ingredient in… I mean, come on. What causes a person to decide, ‘Oh, you know what? I think I need to lop off a person’s hands’?”

“What you’re talking about is profiling,” replied Esme. She was avoiding his stare, but could still feel it. “That’s not really my area.”

“Then how do you expect to catch this guy when a major aspect of the work is not really your area?”

“I’m not the only person working this case, Rafe. I’m not even officially working this case at all. I’m consulting, off the books, as per your whatever. I’m sure the police have their own experts who can—”

“We’re talking about a woman’s life here!”

“Please stop yelling at me.”

“You want me to stop yelling at you? Okay. Here’s me not yelling.”

That’s when Rafe threw the pot against the wall. A stain of dirty dishwater, dotted with bits of chili, drooled down the white paint and to the linoleum floor below, where the pot had loudly clanged to its resting place, but not before soaking both of them in sodden crap.

They both stared at the mess on the wall. Then at themselves. Then back at the wall.

A minute passed.

“Did I mention,” muttered Rafe, “that everybody who watches prime-time TV is also an amateur melodramatist?”

“That would explain the crescendo of violins I just heard.”

Rafe nodded.

They continued to stare at the mess.

“I’ll clean this up,” he finally said. “Why don’t you go take a shower?”

Esme nodded and walked to the bathroom. She could feel rice in her hair. Oh, how nuptial. She quickly got undressed and turned on the shower. The water would take a minute or two to heat up.

The funny thing was, she knew Rafe was right. This case was bigger than her. There was a sinister psychology at play, and she lacked the skills to analyze it. She needed an expert, but this wasn’t an official FBI case….

Turning off the water, she wrapped herself in an oversize towel, and reached for her cell phone to call Tom Piper.

When the phone call came, Tom didn’t hear it. He was too busy quite literally rolling in the hay with the farmer’s daughter. To be sure, the farmer in question was ninety-two years old, half-deaf and asleep at the time, but life had taught Tom Piper that sometimes it was best to ignore the salient details in favor of sauciness. He (age fifty-eight) and Penelope Sue Fuller (age sixty-one) groped, fondled, licked, lapped, nuzzled, squeezed, bucked, sucked and thrust against each other in the pine loft of the Fullers’ stables, several hay bales acting as their makeshift mattress. The hay was itchy, and poked a bit, but that just caused Tom and Penelope Sue to act upon each other with increased, well, assertiveness.

Through it all, Tom’s heart maintained a steady, calm rhythm. Th-thump. Th-thump. Th-thump. Damn pacemaker. It really took some of the fun out of primal, no-holds-barred sex. The pacemaker was his souvenir from Galileo. The fucker had shot him in the chest. Only emergency surgery on Long Island—and the installation of his very own personal timekeeper—saved Tom’s life. Now, six months later, his doctors here in Kentucky were impressed with his recovery. Tom was less than impressed. It was moments like this, moments with Penelope Sue, that he was reminded just how comprehensively Galileo had robbed him, because here, with a beautiful redhead and in an idyllic setting straight out of a dirty limerick, as they went at each other like a pair of id-addled bunny rabbits, Tom was having trouble maintaining his erection.

He tried everything. He concentrated on Penelope Sue, her full breasts, her perfume (peaches…oh, my!), how much she wanted him, how much he desired her. When that didn’t work, he flipped through the Rolodex of memories. Other women he’d been with, other women he’d craved, high school sweethearts, coworkers, that bubbly clerk he once chatted with in Toronto and the way he wanted to bury himself in her dimples. He had more than four decades of memories to choose from, and yet he could feel himself deflate, deflate, deflate….

Finally, between gasps, Penelope Sue asked him if everything was okay, and the sound of honest concern in her voice, of pity, was like a bucket of ice. He sighed, lay beside her and gazed up through the roof slats at the plump, indifferent moon.

She ran a hand across his long gray ponytail. “It’s all right,” she said. “We can just lie here,” she said. “This is nice, too,” she said.