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
S ix deaths meant six separate funerals, but Amarillo, like Atlanta, held one memorial service to honor them all. There was much debate over where the service should be held. The Amarillo metropolitan area boasted over 1,000 churches, and almost all of them jockeyed for the opportunity to host the service. Mayor Deidre Lumley, however, insisted the memorial service remain non-denominational (although many of Amarillo’s more prominent clergymen were assured seats on the dais).
The memorial service in Atlanta had been held at the 4,500-seat Fox Theatre and every seat had been filled. Amarillo had Dick Bivins Stadium, which seated 15,000, but Mayor Lumley A) didn’t want to associate tragedy with sports, and B) didn’t expect 15,000 people to show up. All those empty seats would look very bad on national TV. After much deliberation, many pots of coffee, and a quid pro quo from the editor-in-chief of the local newspaper, Mayor Lumley and her staff decided upon the Globe-News Center. It was relatively new, seated over 1,000 quite comfortably, and was very media-friendly (as it was named, after the local newspaper, the Amarillo Globe-News).
By the time Tom Piper arrived at the Center, about an hour before the service was scheduled to begin, there already were 5,000 people milling in the parking lot. Law enforcement did their best to conduct the traffic, but sheer numbers forced new arrivals to turn back; park their cars three, four, five miles away, and walk. Children and elders were dropped off, and with a half hour to go the crowd had surpassed 6,000.
Some carried candles. Some carried billboards with the names of the fallen handwritten on them in Magic Marker. All carried grief—in their hearts, in their eyes. Their community had been attacked. A demon had singled them out. Six of their heroes had died trying to protect them. And there was no closure—the demon was still at large.
He might even be one of the 6,000 here at the service.
Tom Piper surveyed the men and women. Despite what he considered frankly outlandish claims about his ability to decipher minds, he knew the probability of his detecting an irregularity, especially in a mass of people this enormous, was astronomically low. Detection was the justification he’d offered his team (while they remained behind and worked the evidence—what little of it there was) for his attendance here today, but this was bullshit.
The truth was far simpler and quainter: He was here out of a sense of duty.
He secured his helmet and protective leggings to his Harley, adjusted the feeling of his baggy black leather coat on his slim shoulders, and joined the throng. Tom wanted to maintain his anonymity here, in this vigil, but that was the easy road. Twenty people were dead. He hadn’t yet earned the easy road.
He displayed his badge.
The questions came almost immediately:
“Do you have any leads?” “Who could have done this?” “What are you doing to keep this from happening again?” “How did you let this happen at all?”
The questions pelted him, pricked at him. He felt every one. The sight of his badge, though, forced everyone, friendly or not, to let him pass. He silently made his way to the red sandstone building, showed his badge to the cops at the gate, and entered.
Inside the auditorium, Tom identified the four distinct cliques. The family members, mostly culled from Amarillo’s lower middle class, wore black polyester. They all knew each other, and chatted freely amongst themselves. Tom picked out the genetic resemblances—these giants over here must be kin to Cole the night watchman, those fair-skinned redhead variations over there must belong to Daniel and Brian McIvey. Among the firefighters in attendance, the genetics varied wildly, but as a group they were easily distinguished by their Class A’s, the black-and-gold uniform each wore in honor of their fallen brethren. The third pocket of attendees, smaller than the first two, was the politicians. Here were the $2,000 suits and the once-a-week haircuts. Tom recognized the state’s congressmen and senators.
The fourth, final, least significant clique was the press. They sat in the rear, set up their cameras. Here was the widest variety of humanity. They carried on their faces bleary evidence of two-hour naps in tiny motel rooms, and their clothes looked shopworn. Some attended funerals for a living. It was part of their job.
Tom took a seat in the back, with the press.
