Before Cain Strikes by Joshua Corin Read Free Book Online

missing? That pretty much nixed the S and M idea, unless dismemberment was a subfetish that she (gratefully) didn’t know about. But she rather doubted it. Unless the hands got misplaced in the transfer from the crime scene to the lab, which was nigh unlikely, they almost definitely had to have been removed from the body by the unsub (unknown subject of the investigation, henceforth known as Sick Son of a Bitch).
    “Was there a relationship between Lynette Robinson and the Weiners?” she asked the sheriff.
    Sheriff Fallon answered with a red-hot glare.
    Ah, right. He was interviewing the boyfriend. She had forgotten. When she fell into investigation mode, the outside world sometimes became an afterthought. This was a necessary part of the routine, although it did little to ingratiate herself with, well, most anybody else. And she usually amplified this distance even further with the aid of her iPod and some kickass British rock, but her iPod was back at her father-in-law’s house. She made a mental note to retrieve it.
    “I never heard of them,” replied the boyfriend to her question. “I don’t think Lynette knew them, either. I mean, I knew most everybody she knew. Maybe she sold them a vacuum. That’s what she did. That’s how we met. She sold me a vacuum. She… Excuse me, I need to get some air….”
    Charlie got up from his seat and left the room.
    Sheriff Fallon’s glare became incendiary.
    “Sorry,” said Esme. “Sorry.”
    “Are you through with the file? The Weiners should be arriving at the airport in about a half hour and I’d like to meet them there, if you don’t mind.”
    “You really think they’ll be able to land in this weather?”
    Fallon glanced out his window. His already-caustic mood soured.
    Esme considered how to play this. The man was a hornet’s nest. She decided on a little reverse psychology. “It’s not a big deal. They probably won’t have any information that can help you. They’re almost definitely incidental to the crime….”
    “Is that so? A couple hundred thousand dollars in property damage begs to differ.”
    “The neighbors said they didn’t see anyone enter or exit the house,” Esme explained, “but they weren’t really watching the house until it started burning. So we know the arsonist left before the fire and we know that Lynette Robinson was already in the house by then, as well. She was brought there. Why?”
    “With all due respect, ma’am, that’s what I plan on finding out from the Weiners.”
    “Who knew they were going to be out of town?”
    “Friends, family, coworkers. The usual assortment, I’d assume.”
    “That’s who you need to interview.”
    “Is that an order?”
    “It’s a suggestion….” Her harmless little exercise in reverse psychology complete, Esme handed him back the file. “Do you have a snack machine in this building?”
     
    One to two feet proved accurate. Rafe and Esme wrangled a deputy to help them dig out the Prius, andthey drove back to Lester’s house at a steady, safe three miles per hour. The windshield wipers did little to keep the fist-size snowflakes from clotting up the front view. God was emptying his vat of Wite-Out over upstate New York.
    If there was a God, thought Esme.
    Henry Booth—her erstwhile Galileo—didn’t think so. Henry Booth’s atheism—and his anger at religion in general—had helped fuel his murder spree. Henry Booth had forced Esme to reconsider her own faith. She and Rafe never attended church, aside from the secular functions held there. She owned a copy of the King James Bible, but it was a relic from a lit course she took as an undergrad.
    Henry Booth had targeted policemen, firemen, teachers. Mothers, fathers. Good people. In one of his notes, he wrote that if there were in fact a God, these violent crimes would not have been allowed to occur. If there were a God, divine intervention would have ended his massacre.
    But God didn’t stop him. Esme did.
    And now someone had