“Happy Valentine’s Day,” whispered Esme.
Sophie marched into the kitchen. “I’m ready!”
At 10:00 a.m., Esme texted their babysitter, Chelsea, reminding the slightly scatterbrained but quite responsible teenager to come by the house no later than six o’clock. Rafe and Esme had strict dinner reservations at 6:30 p.m. at Il Forno.
As soon as Esme returned her cell phone to the counter, it buzzed. Was that Chelsea already, sneaking a text message back to her from some high school classroom? Esme checked the screen.
Tom Piper.
Her phone buzzed again.
Like most Americans, she had read about the attacks in Amarillo. The 24-hour news channels were still filled, three days later, with footage and interviews and expert opinions, not the mention rampant speculation. Was this attack related to the one in Atlanta? Was there a serial killer on the loose? It made for compulsive TV.
Except for Esme. After her initial obsession about the Atlanta shootings, after Tom Piper had deconstructed her obsession into simple displacement, her interest in the story quickly faded. One might even say she became just as obsessively uninterested. Instead, Esme concentrated her days on her Sudoku puzzles, her books (she’d moved on from the Elvis Costello biography to a schmaltzy novel her reading club had selected), and her ever-surprising daughter. She’d even started paying attention to the presidential elections. It was unavoidable, really. Amy Lieb was roping all of Oyster Bay into her campaign for Bob Kellerman and now that it looked like he’d be the nominee, her efforts (in her mind) had ascended to Great Importance. To not be involved would be un-American. So Esme found herself volunteering on weekends with the other housewives at Oyster Bay’s KELLERMAN FOR PRESIDENT campaign headquarters (i.e. Amy’s mini-mansion). She licked envelopes, cut decals and traded gossip with everyone else.
Bzzzzzzzzzzz!
Tom Piper, calling to snatch her from the jaws of mediocrity.
Bzzzzzzzzzz!
“Let it go to voice mail,” she muttered. She was content, damn it.
Bzzzzzzzzzz!
There were men and women at the Bureau far more in the loop than thirty-eight-year-old Esme Stuart from Oyster Bay, Long Island. Tom had no right to call her, really. The responsible thing for him to do would be to go to his own people. Yes, she’d called him last month, but as Tom himself had pointed out, that had been a moment of temporary lunacy. She was retired now. She was a housewife.
Bzzzzzzzzz!
“Just go to voice mail!” she growled. How many times did it have to ring before—
It stopped. Finally. She felt her shoulders slacken, and ambled to the stereo and pondered a distraction. Joy Division? Too morose for right now. Pavement? Too loud.
The Kinks. Ideal for any mood and setting. She popped in the CD. Bless you, Ray Davies.
And her phone buzzed again.
“Jesus, what the hell?”
She stomped back to the counter and checked the screen. It was just a note from her voice mail. One new message.
One new message.
Damn it, Tom.
It was Valentine’s Day, for fuck’s sake.
Esme slipped her phone into the utensils drawer (out of sight, out of mind) and lay down on the sofa with her water-damaged paperback. “Lola” strummed in the background. She thought about lighting some peppermint incense, decided against it, and forced herself into the book.
Six people had died in Amarillo…
No. No. People die every day. Read the book.
Fourteen in Atlanta, six in Amarillo. Someone had to speak for those victims.
And they would. Why her? She had done her bit for king and country, hadn’t she?
More would die. This sniper had a purpose.
He must have left a note.
Esme closed her novel.
“Fuck,” she concluded.
She dialed down the volume on her stereo, went in the kitchen, and retrieved her phone. Didn’t bother listening to Tom’s message. Just dialed him direct.
“This is Tom.”
“Hi, Tom.”
“I just called you.”
“I was in the shower.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“How are you?”
“Busy.”
“I can imagine.”
“I know you can. That’s why I called.”
“For my imagination?”
“Have you been following the case?”
“I’ve actually been a little busy.”
“Oh?”
“I’m campaigning for Bob Kellerman.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I’ve become very civic.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“How can I help you, Tom?”
“You don’t seem as enthusiastic as you were before.”
“What can I say? Love fades.”
“He’s going to kill again.”
Esme closed her eyes, then opened them.
“I’m sure you and your team are more than capable of stopping him. Our tax dollars at work, right?”
“He left a note in Atlanta.”
The cell phone trembled in her hand. No—it was her hand that was trembling.
“What did the note say?”
“I thought you weren’t interested.”
“What did the note say, Tom?”
“He left it in a shoe box. We found the shoe box on the roof of the school. It was just lying there. We also found the spent shells from his rifle. Sixteen shells.”
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