Before Cain Strikes (29 page)

“Don’t let me down, Nolan,” said the man on the bed.

“You know I’m right, Nolan,” said the woman by his side.

And it all crystallized for him. Yes, of course. His wife was right. The little girl was in danger.

His cock stirred.

And he struck his wife in the right temple with the blunt end of his hammer, as hard as he had struck one of those goddamn nails she’d forced him to purchase for that goddamn mural. Halley staggered back, more confused than anything else, and brought a hand to her head. She glanced down at the hand. Why was it covered with blood? Had there been an accident? Someone really should call the police. Nolan, call the police. Nolan? I’m having trouble standing. Help me, Nolan. Please. Help me.

Her legs gave way from underneath her, and she
crumpled. Blood emptied out of her head like syrup, passing through the flap of scalp and brain the hammer had unhinged. It pooled beside her onto the carpet floor.

Nolan hurried into the kitchen to get a measuring cup. One pint, coming up.

Rafe emerged from the car umbrella-first. He didn’t especially mind the rain, but he wasn’t keen on getting the papers in his valise wet. He considered leaving his valise altogether on the passenger seat and retrieving it when the storm dried up, but he had no way of knowing how soon that would be, and he really wanted to grade these essays and be done with it. They were a collection of reader-response papers from his senior seminar on Semiotics and American Subcultures, and while they undoubtedly contained glimmers of insight, he just wasn’t in the mood. The news reports about the incident in Penn Station had left him uneasy. He had no evidence that anyone he knew was involved, and yet his first call had been to Esme, and she still hadn’t called him back.

Curious, he mused, as he slid his keycard through the card reader beside the lighthouse’s front door. Worrying so much about his soon-to-be ex-wife—hardly the feelings a man bent on divorce should have. The lock clicked open and he yanked on the handle. This was one heavy door.

Rafe was on the first step on the circular staircase when he heard the footfalls behind him. He turned around, half expecting to see Esme there, that unmistakable look of love in her eyes, but instead he saw Grover Kirk. Grover caught the door before it shut and managed his way inside. He was as sopping as a fresh-caught fish and well out of breath.

“Leave, or I’ll call the police.” Rafe stood his ground. “I mean it.”

“Your wife… It was a trap… Penn Station…”

“What do you mean ‘your wife’?”

Grover paused to catch his breath, and then gazed up with eyes afire. “He knew about our plan! Don’t you see? Someone tipped him off!”

“What happened to Esme? What are you talking about?”

With the frenzied energy of a madman, Grover approached. Rafe backed away, slowly climbing up the metal stairs.

“It might have been someone who was at the table!” the writer explained, spit flying every which way from his lips. “Your father would know. Or Nolan Worth.”

“What table? What happened to Esme?”

Now it was Grover who was on the first step. Rafe stood on the third. Mere inches separated the two men.

“I’ll explain everything upstairs. First, we need to talk to them.”

Grover shoved past him and continued up the stairs. Rafe quickly followed him, clutching his valise close to his chest. By the time he’d reached the second floor, Grover was already at the front desk.

“Nolan!” he called. “It’s Grover Kirk.”

Rafe’s patience had all but evaporated. He placed his valise on the floor and opened his mouth to speak, but then the door to the Worths’ living quarters swung open, and Nolan Worth emerged, a hammer in his hand. Rafe noticed the tip of the hammer was wet and…hairy?

“Welcome, gentlemen,” said Nolan, and he swung his hammer wide. He took down Grover first with a blow to the side of his head, and then struck Rafe, who, to his
credit, was reaching for the rifle on top of the front desk when the iron struck him flat in the face.

Nolan smiled at his handiwork. What a man he was! His erection throbbed with joy as he walked over their limp bodies and began his ascent of the stairs, two flights up, to pay Lester and his lovely, lovely granddaughter a visit.

H
er shower finished, Esme climbed into a nice pair of blue slacks. Her shoulder injury precluded any top she had to don by lifting her arms, so she instead selected a white blouse and very slowly slid her arms into its sleeves. Her coat and holster lay on the bed, where she’d put them before undressing.

She left them there, opting instead for her old red jacket she’d bought years back from L.L. Bean. There was no reason Sophie needed to see her with a gun, certainly not yet. Esme did still need her sling, though, and made sure to put it on under her coat.

Downstairs, Tom and Penelope Sue were snuggling on the couch. Apparently, they had finished their business in the garage with the “crotch rocket.” So much the better. Esme didn’t want to think about what they might have been doing in there on his motorcycle, which made it impossible for her not to think about what they might be doing in there on his motorcycle.

Then she noticed that, in addition to snuggling, they had a scrapbook on their laps, currently open to a photograph of Esme, nine months pregnant, in an orange muumuu.

“Hey, excuse me,” she said.

“You still have that outfit?” asked Tom.

“I think she turned it into curtains,” replied Penelope Sue.

Tom gave the windows a once-over. “Then what did she do with the rest of the material?”

“Are you two just about finished?”

They were. Penelope Sue attempted to sneak the scrapbook under her coat, but Esme caught her and demanded she return it to its proper place on the shelf. She grabbed an umbrella from the closet and the three of them rushed through the rain to her Prius. Penelope Sue still insisted on driving, so Esme hopped into the passenger seat and, once again, Tom Piper folded his lanky body into the back.

The streets had become rivers, so Penelope Sue drove slowly. Not an overcautious person usually, she’d experienced more than her fair share of flooding, and so she took no chances. She even pumped the brakes every minute or so just to keep them unclogged. It made for a jerking trip, but a safe one, and they arrived at the lighthouse without having once lost traction with the road.

Esme spotted Rafe’s car in the gravel lot, parked beside Lester’s blue Cadillac and…wait, was that Grover Kirk’s Studebaker? What the hell was he doing here? Anxiety pumped through her circulatory system in the form of adrenaline, and left her light-headed and on edge. She searched her pockets for her cell phone, but must have left it at home in her other coat.

They parked in the lot, and chivalric Tom stepped out first, braving the torrents, so he could open the umbrella. He maneuvered to the driver’s door and canopied Penelope Sue, and then they both hustled to the passenger door to protect Esme. They made their way across
the muddy gravel to the front door and Esme pressed the buzzer. Her hands were trembling, and not from the cold. Why was Grover here? She pressed the buzzer again, and waited.

In their stateroom on the fourth floor, Lester was teaching his granddaughter how to cheat at cards. They were sitting cross-legged on the floor; rather, Sophie was sitting cross-legged, her limbs apparently made out of licorice, while Lester had his ass on a cushion and his legs stretched out and he still felt uncomfortable.

“The first trick is in the shuffling. Remember what I taught you about shuffling?”

“Uh-huh…”

“Show me.”

He handed her the deck of cards. She took them, split the deck in half, placed the halves side by side on the carpet, lifted the halves’ corners with her thumbs and jabbed her tongue into her right cheek. Rafe used to do the same thing with his tongue when he was her age. What had been an annoying habit for a boy was, Lester decided, adorable for a girl. With her tongue firmly in place, she let the corners of the halves riffle into one another. The cards mixed. The shuffling was a success.

“You’ve been practicing,” said Lester.

Sophie blushed. “A little.”

“That’s nothing to be ashamed of. You think I became a captain of industry overnight? It took me years to learn the vending machine business.”

“I like vending machines that have gummy bears.”

“Nice profit margin on those.” He nodded at her. “Now that you’re a captain of shuffling—”

“
Princess
of shuffling!”

“My apologies. Now that you’re a
princess
of
shuffling, let me show you how you can make sure you always get the cards you want.”

He picked up the deck and fanned the cards out, face up.

“Okay, so, let’s say you want four aces in your hand. You see where the aces are right now? Point them out.”

She pointed them out: “Clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades.”

“Very good. Now that you know where they are, you can—”

Knock, knock, knock.

They both simultaneously glanced over at the door.

Then: “Daddy!”

Sophie hopped to her feet, her licorice limbs magically bouncing into place, and she scrambled for the door. But why would Rafe be knocking at the door? Lester put down the cards and, using his granddaughter’s bed for leverage, pulled himself to his feet. His joints sounded off like fireworks: pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

Sophie opened the door, ready to embrace her father, but this was not her father. This was Mr. Worth, and he had dots of red paint all over him, and especially on his hammer.

“Hi, Mr. Worth,” she said. “I thought you were my daddy.”

“Do you want me to be your daddy?”

Sophie’s brow furrowed. What did he mean by that?

Lester was now standing beside her. “Mr. Worth and I need to have a chat. We’ll just be a second. Okay, Sophie?”

Lester joined Nolan out in the hall, closing the door behind him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Did something happen?”

“Like what?”

“We both know that’s not paint. Has there been an accident?”

“Oh, no. It all happened on purpose.”

He drove the hammer into the old man’s chest. Ribs cracked like potato chips, and Lester fell to one knee. He tried to breathe, tried to scream and warn Sophie, tell her to lock the door, something, anything, but the blow had knocked the wind straight out of his body. He held up his hands and blocked the second swing, although the air filled with the crackle of more shattering bones. Rather than finish him off, though, Nolan just kicked him aside as if he were a troublesome pup and reached for the doorknob.

Grover watched it all unfold from the second floor, where he lay spread-eagled on his back. He was as helpless as Lester, though, and could only stare up the stairwell as Nolan opened the door to Sophie’s room. Then he disappeared from view, and Grover shut his eyes.

This was his fault. He should have swallowed his pride and come here with the police or the FBI. What had he been thinking? He hadn’t been. He was so eager to find out the truth that he hadn’t bothered pondering the consequences. But wasn’t that the story of his life? If someone were ever to write a book about these murders, the chapter on him would be brief. Grover Kirk: victim of his own frustrated ambitions. He shook his head. It was almost comical. And was someone pushing the buzzer for the front door?

Three or four feet to his right lay Rafe Stuart, face-down, the rifle by his side. If he’d only been a little
quicker…but that was just passing the blame, wasn’t it? No. This was Grover’s mess. The least he could do was man up and accept responsibility for it. This wasn’t selfpity. This was acceptance. Too little too late, maybe, but—

Two floors up, the little girl screamed. Grover’s blurry field of vision returned to the stairwell, and he saw Sophie scamper past Nolan Worth—go, girl, go!—but she didn’t flee down the stairs. She went up. In her haste, she, too, hadn’t thought out the consequences of her actions. She went up, and Nolan followed her, and soon they reached the roof, and there was no escape from there.

Damn it, Sophie.
Grover glanced back at her father, still unconscious. He tried to reach out to him, wake him up, tell him. Someone had to save that little girl. He nudged Rafe with his foot, and then with his hand. No response. Nolan had clocked him good, and one half of Rafe’s face was so purple and swollen the skin had split right open.

Grover sat up. His head felt funny and his hair was wet. He tasted copper. His vision didn’t clear, but at least he had his equilibrium again.

“Rafe,” he whispered. That was all he could muster…a whisper. “Rafe.”

Nothing.

His fingers found the rifle before his mind made the decision to pick it up. He used it to lever himself upright. For a moment, he thought his head was going to roll clean off his shoulders, but it didn’t, and he was still conscious, and he had the rifle in his hands, and he knew what he had to do, what was his responsibility to do.

The lighthouse stood ten stories, with a lantern room as its crown. Grover had eight stories to climb. He got
moving, winding up the spiral staircase that functioned as the building’s spine. He was ascending its spine. No, not spine. Helix. Double helix. DNA. What a thought. Third floor. Keep moving.

He pulled himself up with his right hand on the railing. The rifle in his left hand gained ten pounds with every step he took. His brain fluttered from the image of the staircase to the sight of his feet—one, two; one, two; one, two—and then he was on the fourth floor, and there was Lester, and he was as unconscious and batter-bruised as his boy Rafe but also still breathing, somehow, after the beating he took, still breathing. Good old Lester. Grover liked him. He patted the old man on his scalp and continued up, up, up, to rescue the maiden in the tower.

Esme thumbed the buzzer again and again. Only the rain responded, the never-ending autumnal rain. Meanwhile, Penelope Sue sifted through her cell phone applications and Googled the phone number for the Worths’ B and B. Somewhere inside the lighthouse, a landline was ringing. And no one was answering it.

Tom took out his Glock, made sure they were all at a safe distance from the door and aimed his weapon at the door lock. He nailed it in one. The lock popped off and the three of them entered the ground floor of the lighthouse.

Esme took the lead. “Nolan? Halley?”

She wound her way up the stairs, and halfway to the second floor, she saw a hand and knew that wedding ring and rushed the rest of the way and knelt beside her husband. His pulse was weak but steady.
Rafe
.

To her credit, Penelope Sue didn’t freak out. She didn’t gawk at the scarlet spatter on the walls and ceiling or
tremble at the gory smear of blood and pus that used to be Rafe’s right cheek. She took out her cell phone and dialed 9-1-1.

“Grover did this?” asked Tom.

Esme wanted to say yes, but as much as she loathed the dickhead, was he capable of this? Sure, he’d experienced tremendous emotional trauma and perhaps…perhaps…was experiencing a psychotic break, but this? This was just—

Sophie
.

“Sophie!” she cried out. “Sophie!”

No response. No sound. Esme peered up through the stairwell and that was when she spotted her father-in-law’s twisted, purpling form.

“Give me your gun,” she said to Tom.

“Esme…”

She held out her free hand. “Now.”

He gave her his Glock.

She bounded up the stairs, peeked into her daughter’s quarters, hopeful, hopeful, but knew they would be empty, as empty as the pit deepening in her heart.

She checked Lester’s heartbeat. He was alive. And he had defensive wounds. At least there was that.

Still no sign of Grover. Or Nolan and Halley Worth, for that matter.

She continued up the stairs, closer and closer to the hatch at the top, and the rain, and the lantern room, and answers she was terrified of learning.

The lantern room occupied the middle third of the lighthouse’s roof, and the middle third of the lantern room was occupied by a first-order Fresnel lens, almost twelve feet in height and rotating at a horizontal arc of two hundred and eighty degrees. The mightiness of
the beam momentarily blinded Grover, and he stumbled back against one of the lantern room’s thick glass storm panels. He felt so faint. How much blood had he lost? How much blood was there in the human body? How easy it would be to just sit down for a spell and just nap.
No. Think about the girl.
Grover rubbed at his eyes and his vision cleared, somewhat, and he looked away from the light at the rest of the roof, which was little more than a bare terrace, perfect on a clear day for sightseeing or on a clear night for stargazing, but tonight was just a wet platform, towering above sea level, and with Nolan Worth standing by the narrow railing beside seven-year-old Sophie Stuart.

One hand was snaked around the little girl’s arm.

The other had the hammer raised.

Grover pushed open the lantern room door and raised the rifle and shouted, “Stop!” and despite the roar of the raindrops Nolan heard him, and faced him, and smiled.

“I’m glad you’re alive, Grover! You can write another book! How do you like this pose for the cover?”

He twisted the hammer around so the claw end now faced down toward Sophie’s soft blue eyes, which were only an arm’s reach away.

Grover thumbed the hammer on the rifle. The rudimentary training the FBI had given him for Saturday’s mock-execution kicked in. He held the edge of the barrel level with the target. Even with his diminished vision and unsteady equilibrium, at this range, he couldn’t miss.

“Go ahead, Grover. I finally became a man tonight. Can you do the same?”

Grover could. He had Nolan Worth’s chest in his sights. He pulled the trigger.

Click.

What?

Grover tugged again at the trigger.

Click.

Nolan replied with another smile. “You don’t think I’d leave a loaded gun around, do you? This is a family establishment! My grandson comes here!” Then he returned his focus to Sophie, who was struggling to break free. “I’m going to make you so lovely.”

Grover didn’t lower his rifle, but he didn’t move, either. Perhaps it was his concussion. Or perhaps his heart simply chose that moment to surrender. He didn’t lower his rifle, and he didn’t move, but he also didn’t look away.