Joshua Corin - Before Cain Strikes

So she compartmentalized it, stepped into the shower to wash off the chili and rice and ruminated about other matters.

More specifically: why did the unsub burn down the whole house?

By all accounts, the fire started with a bang. Electrical fires often did. Some appliance shorts out, goes kablooey, and it’s time to call your insurance provider. The unsub undoubtedly set the fire on purpose, which meant he rigged an appliance to blow, which meant he knew there was going to be a bang, which meant he knew it was going to draw attention to the house—and to him, making a rapid and hopefully burn-free getaway. So he wanted the body to be found. And given that there were no signs of accelerant on or near the remains, he wasn’t particular about the body being identified or not.

Esme moved on from body wash to shampoo, and thought about the victim herself. Maybe Rafe and the sheriff and most everyone else working the case were right. Maybe Lynette was the gateway. It made sense. It was the obvious choice. She rarely favored the obvious choice, true, but that didn’t make it any less valid.

So: Who would want to cause Lynette harm?

No. Better question: What was significant enough about Lynette for someone to go through all this trouble?

Esme didn’t mean to imply that it was difficult to believe that someone found Lynette significant. Her tattooed boyfriend was obviously enamored. And then there was the matter of Rafe’s overcomplicated emotional relationship to her….

Rafe!

Christ, how long had she been in the shower while he waited, soggy foodstuffs still splattered over his hair and cheeks and neck? Granted, he’d done the splattering, but still. Esme hastened her ablutions and hustled out of the shower. She opened the door for Rafe while she was drying her hair. The door wasn’t locked, and he could have come in at any time, and he would have come in during the first year of their marriage, joined her in the shower even, but that was a long time ago.

As her husband soaped and soaked, Esme climbed into a nightgown, rolled her iPod to Roxy Music and snuggled under the covers. Her mind drifted back to the case, back to Lynette Robinson and those teal earrings and her unfortunate fate. How differently people would live their lives if they knew how and when their lives would end. Esme wondered what she would do differently, if she knew, and by the time Rafe had toweled himself off, those musings had carried her off to sleep, at least until the pounding began at 6:16 a.m.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

Esme bolted awake. So did Rafe. A minute passed. Silence. They looked at each other. Had they dreamed that thunderous—

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

Apparently not.

“Is it the pipes?” she asked. He’d grown up in this house.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“No,” he replied. “That’s not the pipes.”

Their eyes scanned the room for something to use as a weapon. But how did one defend against a sound?

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“Maybe it’s the front door,” said Rafe.

“At six in the morning?”

Rafe shrugged. Did she have a better idea?

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

“Goddamn it,” she mumbled, and swung her legs out of bed and onto the thin mauve carpet. Her robes were at home. Her slippers were at home. So she slid her bare feet into her sneakers, tugged a navy blue sweater over her nightgown and headed downstairs to probe out the invasive racket.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

As she neared the front door, she knew Rafe’s conclusion had been accurate. Someone was on the other side, knocking. The door shook with each pound. Whoever it was at their door at 6:21 a.m. on this cold, cold Saturday morning, they were both large and insistent.

Maybe it was that dickhead pseudo-journalist Grover Kirk. He had the size and the lack of common decency to track them down to a funeral and pay them a visit. Either way, Esme vowed to use her resources at the Bureau to learn more about Mr. Kirk, maybe pull his IRS records.

She poked her head to one of the windows. Two sheriff’s deputies, each the size of a Dumpster, stood there on the front stoop. They appeared cold and they appeared antsy.

She opened the front door.

“Morning, officers. What seems to be the trouble?”

“The sheriff told us to come get you, ma’am.”

Of course he did.

“Give me a few minutes. Would you like to come in?”

The deputies exchanged glances. “No, ma’am. We’re just fine out here.”

Sure they were.

She closed the door in their frost-tipped faces and made her way back to the bedroom.

“Was it the front door?” Rafe asked.

Ten minutes later, both she and Rafe were back downstairs, fully dressed. She half expected to find two ice statues on the stoop where the deputies had been, but no, the two men remained flesh and blood. When she opened the door, one of them was doing a little dance to keep warm.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

“Just you, ma’am,” replied the dancer. “Sheriff’s orders.”

Uh-huh.

Esme kissed her husband goodbye and joined the deputies in their brown squad car. She noticed that the streets were almost all clear of snow and that the sidewalks had already been salted. Impressed, she reclined in the stiff backseat as they drove downtown—and then past the county station and kept on going.

“Um,” she said.

They took a left toward the interstate.

“Excuse me…” she said.

“Sit tight, ma’am. We’ll be there in a jiffy.”

“That’s fine and all but, well, where’s there?”

There turned out to be Stewart International Airport some forty-five minutes later. They pulled up to the terminal. The dancer got out and escorted Esme to the curb while the other deputy remained behind the wheel.

Behind a door marked Official Use Only, Sheriff Fallon was waiting for them, a cup of coffee in his hand. His grin left little doubt in Esme’s mind; this, finally, was the cat that ate the canary.

“Good morning!” he said.

In an adjacent room, he went on to say, sat the Weiner family. A member of airport security was keeping them company. Their plane had finally touched down about two hours ago and he knew, just knew, that she’d want to be there when he questioned them.

“Thanks,” she replied, and added Sheriff Fallon to her list of IRS record pulls.

They began with the father, Todd, who could have carried the sheriff’s deputies in the bags hanging under his eyes. His hands couldn’t keep still, either twitching and fumbling with the zipper on his L.L. Bean ski jacket or fixing the part on his thinning brown hair. This was not a calm man—but then again, how often did one’s house get burned to the ground with a body left in the basement? Perhaps he was worried they suspected him. Perhaps he was worried they thought he put the body there.

“I didn’t know her,” he insisted. “We all looked at those photos and none of us had ever seen her before in our lives. I swear.”

The interview lasted about an hour. Most of it consisted of Todd Weiner repeating that he didn’t know her, or anything, or anyone, and asking several times if this would be covered by his homeowners’ insurance. Esme believed more and more that her hunch—about the house being the key—had been way off.

And then Todd said something odd.

“I knew it was too good to be true.”

Sheriff Fallon nodded at Esme, allowing her to take the bait.

“You knew what was too good to be true, Mr. Weiner?”

“This contest. I told Louise I didn’t remember signing up on their website.”

“What contest?”

Todd Weiner looked up at them like they’d just claimed two plus two equaled an apple. “Hammond Travel Agency. That’s how we went on this trip. We won it in a contest from Hammond Travel Agency out in New Paltz.”