she added, “Agent Muller was living in Maryland at the time of his disappearance. Heidi was being secluded in a safe house in Oregon.”
“He somehow traced her email and was able to get to her with an army of cockroaches the next day?”
“Our theory, Special Agent Piper, is that Cain42 didn’t do it at all.”
Tom frowned, and then he realized her implication. “He’s got a pool of over two thousand psychopaths to draw from.”
Esme leaned against the antiseptic wall of the interview room, crossed her arms and waited for Grover to open his mouth. But he just stared back at her. His whole point in all this, after all, was to get her to open up.
Maybe it was time to give him what he wanted.
“You’re right. Henry Booth murdered many people, and I knew some of them. Some of them were friends of mine. And I miss them. But what you want to know is if I have survivor’s guilt.”
“Do you?”
Esme pushed herself off the wall and closer to the bald pseudo-journalist. She could see the hunger in his eyes.
“Yes, Grover, I do. But not in the way that you think. You see, I know that even though Henry Booth is dead, there’s still a target on me, and maybe on my family. It’s faded a bit, with time, but it’s still there. And people like you are attracted to it. You think you can piggyback off it. You came at us with, what, with a pen? Someone else might come at me or my family with a knife. To take down the woman who took down Galileo.”
She watched that hunger fade a bit, replaced by something else, something more vaguely human.
She persisted. “The FBI—you may not know this—the FBI recommended after Henry Booth’s death that we go into protective custody. They knew that the infamy surrounding the case would attract crazies and they were concerned for our well-being. They wanted us to move, change our identities and start a new life. My husband considered it. We do, as you know, have the welfare of a daughter to consider. In the end, he decided it was a good idea. He was willing to sacrifice his tenure and his friendships for the safety of his family. But I wouldn’t do it. I said no. I wouldn’t be intimidated by some looming what if. I wouldn’t let my family become the last casualties of Henry Booth’s terrorism. I said no. And it’s driven a rift between myself and my husband that probably can’t ever be repaired. So you want to know, for your book, if I have survivor’s guilt? Yes, I do. Every day. But not in the way that you think.”
She sat down on the table and leaned forward, inches from his face. He tried to flinch away, but she just angled her head to catch his gaze.
“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Grover? You may be a hack of outrageous fucking proportions, but you’ve interviewed a lot of people for your book, haven’t you? And not just witnesses and family members. You’ve interviewed people who view Henry Booth as some kind of a folk hero, am I right?”
“Yes,” he replied, quietly, abashedly.
“How did you find them? Or did they hear about your project and come to you, to make sure you told the ‘whole story’?”
Grover, visibly uncomfortable, tried to shift in his seat. It was futile. “A little bit of both.”
“Online mostly?”
“Yes.”
“You started posting on some message boards and newsgroups, telling people about your project, asking for their points of view, and you got them.”
“Yes.”
“Charismatic guy like yourself, I’ll bet you have a pretty high profile right now in this community. Lots of fans of your own, championing your tell-all about their latest idol. After all is said and done and your book comes out, and maybe you say a few negative things about Henry Booth, did you ever stop to think that you’re going to have a target on your head, too? That these new friends of yours are going to come after you?”
“I…”
Esme left the table and strolled toward the door. She reached for the knob and stopped, turned.
“Tell me, Grover. What nickname did you use when you posted on these killer-friendly message boards?”
He whispered his reply.
“What was that?”
He repeated it, louder now, though swathed in embarrassment and guilt. “Galileofan.”
“Thank you, Grover.”
She left the room.
Karl Ziegler stood there, loudly sucking on what had to be another breath mint.