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 [email protected].
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
Six deaths meant six separate funerals, but Amarillo, like