While Galileo Preys (29 page)

Her phone vibrated. She glanced at Caller ID. Speak of the devil. Ziegler gave her a nasty look, so she turned her back to him, faced the tinted window, and pressed TALK.

“Hi, Rafe,” she said.

“This isn’t Rafe,” replied Galileo.

A
fter their verbal fracas at the hospital, Rafe drove back to Oyster Bay—by way of Laney’s Pub. It was a small dive, equal parts dingy bar and second-rate coffeehouse, and was frequented mostly by upperclassmen from his college. He ordered a Coors from the mustachioed bartender (who may or may not have taken one of Rafe’s cultural studies seminars) and sipped his way past the rayon divans to the pool tables in the back. As he expected, Hal Kingston was there, just back from his sabbatical and currently hustling coeds for their tuition money (and, often, their virginity). Hal spotted Rafe and raised his own tall-neck bottle in welcome.

“Professor Stuart,” he announced, “what a treat!”

Hal Kingston was the epitome of an intellectual Casanova. He used his considerable IQ for the dual masters of charm and woo, and it was only his talent in the former that kept him from being kicked off the faculty due to the latter. Sooner or later, though—and probably sooner—he would run afoul of some admin
istrator he couldn’t dazzle, and his good time would cease. And Hal Kingston behaved as if each night was that last night.

Here was a man for whom the word
sacrifice
had no meaning whatsoever. Rafe smiled, gave his colleague a warm embrace, and waited out the rest of his current game until they could be alone.

Hal slipped the phone number of his latest conquest into the back pocket of his Levi’s and racked up the billiard balls.

“Haven’t seen you here in a while,” he said.

“A month,” replied Rafe. He chalked the tip of his cue stick.

“So what brings you back? Got thirsty for some action? Or just got thirsty?”

They went head-to-head. Hal got solids and Rafe got stripes. It was a close game, but in the end, it was Hal who sank the 8-ball for the victory. They discussed women and cocktails and the Mets’ repugnant pitching staff, and through it all Hal made no mention, nor even a casual allusion, to slain governors, no mention of serial killers on the loose.

Rafe wanted to hug him again, just for that. Instead, he bought him another round. They were on their fourth beers by the time they got to their third game.

“Do you ever think about responsibility?” Rafe asked him, as he knelt beside the table to judge the angles on a particular bank shot.

“Not if I can help it!”

Rafe smiled, nodded. “No, I’m serious. I don’t mean responsibility to your job or to your students. I mean,
just, you know, your responsibilities as an adult man in this society.”

“Well,” Hal answered, “that’s implying society has a sense of responsibility. And it doesn’t. It has a sense of entitlement, but responsibility went out the window with the advent of the hippies. Thank God. What’s on your mind, buddy?”

Rafe shrugged. He didn’t want to break the mood by getting too serious. Instead, he leaned down, aimed his stick, and shot the blue-chalked cue ball against the wall of the table. It bounced away at a right angle and headed straight toward the 3-ball…and struck it…and Newtonian physics sent the 3-ball rolling toward the corner pocket.

“Nice,” said Hal.

Rafe walked around the table to find his next shot.

“But responsibility’s a funny thing,” Hal added. “We rely on other people—our parents, our civil servants, our leaders—to do the right thing so we won’t have to, and when they don’t, we get all crazy and start pointing fingers. I’m a lush and a libertine and a bit of a prick, but I know who I am. The world needs people like me so there can be people like you.”

Rafe raised an eyebrow. “People like me?”

“The ‘upstanding citizens.’ You all make me want to spit blue vomit, but I love you just the same. Unless you get this next shot. Then so help me I’ll stuff this cue stick so far up your ass…”

Rafe got the shot, and won the game.

“Another?” he asked, after emptying his bottle.

Hal slipped the piece of paper from his back pocket
and waved it. They hugged goodbye, and Rafe paid his tab, still not certain if the bartender was a former student or just resembled a former student. At a certain age, and Rafe was chagrined to discover that age to be thirty-eight, the people whose names and faces he actually remembered became catalogued into Family (always remembered), Friends (sometimes remembered), and Everyone else (rarely remembered). Eventually, if he lived to be old enough, he’d forget everybody, even Sophie and Esme.

His heart lurched at the thought. Maybe it was the combination of beer and frivolity. Maybe it was an aftershock from his argument with his wife. But he suddenly needed, very badly, to hear her voice. He patted himself for his cell phone, but then remembered that in his haste to get to the hospital, he’d left it in his office. Already his mind was going. He crawled into his car and motored home. By the time he pulled into the garage, it was almost ten o’clock.

Esme’s car wasn’t there.

No, he told himself, it wouldn’t be. She was out saving the world. He was here.

Had she been right? Surely what she was doing now served a good purpose. Galileo needed to be stopped. He knew that. And just because his mind prioritized his memory by family, friends, and everyone else, that didn’t disqualify everyone else from significance. Civic duty existed. If anything, in specifically targeting policemen and firemen and teachers, Galileo had highlighted the unappreciated importance of civil service. How could he fault his own wife for this? There had to
be a point where your community outweighed your family. Soldiers went off to war. Was this a negligent choice? Was it selfish? No.

He opened the driver’s side door and his cell phone tumbled out to the cement floor. It had been in his car all along. It must have fallen out of his pocket. It wasn’t the first time that had happened, nor would it be the last. Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he picked the phone back up and slipped it back into his pocket. His balance was a little wobbly, but his head was clear. He would kiss his daughter good-night, and then he would call his wife. And apologize.

His father was sitting on the living room sofa, asleep in front of a Discovery Channel program on shark attacks. The narrator’s enthusiasm intermingled with Lester’s throaty snores. A half-empty bowl of popcorn lay on the cushion next to him. Rafe grabbed a handful and quietly loped up the stairs to the second floor. He relied on the banister to steady his balance, but made it to the top without stumbling.

Sophie was soundlessly asleep in her bed, Bugs Bunny clutched to her chin. Rafe gently removed Bugs, lest the stuffed animal upset her breathing, and instead placed him beside her cheek.

“Good night, angel,” he whispered, and kissed his daughter on her scalp. She didn’t stir. He paused, then kissed Bugs good-night too. The things we take for granted, he mused, and padded down the corridor to his bedroom. He flicked on the light switch and removed his cell phone from his pocket. Before dialing his wife, though, he needed some fresh air. He turned to unlatch
the window—but it was already open. A cool April breeze cavorted through what was left of his hair.

“Hello,” said a middle-aged man in a yellow Polo shirt. He was standing by the bedroom door, and he was holding a large revolver.

Instinctively, Rafe tried to rush past him, but Galileo easily blocked his path and smacked him in the chin with a quick jab of his palm. Rafe wobbled back. He tasted copper. He had bit down on his tongue and his mouth was filling with blood.

“Please,” said Galileo, “may I have your phone?”

Rafe spat out a tablespoon of blood.

“I had to kill a cop to get this gun. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to fade away, but your wife forced my hand. But I’m confident she’ll be able to help me out. Now give me your phone or I’ll have to wake up your daughter.”

Rafe gave him the cell phone.

Galileo searched it for Esme’s number, and dialed. He held the phone to his ear.

“This isn’t Rafe,” he said.

“It’s time for you to come home,” he said.

“Tell anyone what you’re doing or why and in several days you’ll be attending your family’s funeral,” he said.

He handed the phone back to Rafe.

“Thank you,” he said.

Esme came in through the garage door. The first thing she noticed was how dim the living room was. All the blinds and shades were drawn, blocking out the
moonlight, and only the one kitchen light—in all its sixty-watt glory—was on. Lester, Rafe and Sophie were seated, hand in hand in hand, on the couch. Sophie’s cheeks were red. She had been crying.

“Hello, Esmeralda,” said Galileo. He stood behind the couch, in the center of the floor. He held a .44 Colt revolver, and had the barrel aimed in perfect alignment with her right-now-overactive frontal lobe.

“How did you know where I lived? My name wasn’t on the list they found in San Francisco.”

“Just because I didn’t include it, that doesn’t mean I didn’t have it. From what I can gather, your address and social security number were uploaded about five hours before I accessed the database back in Amarillo. So you could get paid, I would imagine.”

Esme felt her veins freeze over. She remained near the door, but her gaze darted back to her family. Rafe broke their daisy chain and hand-holding to dab a white wash towel to his mouth. There was blood on the towel. Their eyes met. She saw so much conflicting emotion in his stare—so much that she couldn’t discern most of it.

Sophie appeared uninjured. Thank heaven for small miracles. She sat with her legs folded under her, with her Bugs Bunny nightgown draped over her knees.

She was terrified.

Lester, on the other hand, blamed her. That much was obvious from the hostility he projected at her through his lined face and dark eyes. Esme wondered if he had the choice, who would he take down first, the man with the loaded revolver or the meddling wife of his only son.

Then she looked to Galileo.

“While we were waiting for you to arrive,” he said, “I was schooling your daughter about the man whose name I took as my symbol. She had never heard of him.”

“She’s six years old.”

“Is six too young to know the truth? Is four? Why do we teach children illusions at all? Believing in Santa Claus never helped anyone grow up to be great. Believing in Santa Claus only helps people grow up to be disillusioned, wishing the world were the fairy tale they once thought it was. It’s bad parenting.”

“Have many kids do you have, Henry?”

“Galileo Galilei knew how unpopular the truth was. He knew the dangers involved, but he spoke it anyway because he knew that the truth was the only God worth worshipping. And his truth helped dismantle a thousand years of clerical tyranny.”

“Actually,” said Rafe, “that’s not what happened….”

Galileo cocked his head. “Excuse me?”

“It’s a little-known fact, but, well, those are my favorite kind.” He offered a quick glance to his wife. Did she have something up her sleeve? Yes, she did. Good. He returned his attention to the carpet. “Galileo Galilei was actually very religious. When he saw the rings of Saturn through his telescope, when he became the first man in history to truly understand how the solar system moved, it confirmed his faith in God.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Well, no, not really. Because the universe he beheld was beautiful and perfect. That just underlined for him the idea that a Supreme Maker must have had a hand in its crafting. The Earth may not have revolved around
the sun, as Church dogma believed, as Aristotle and Ptolemy believed, but there was no doubt in his mind that everything in its infinite wonder was a product of God.”

“And for all that his beloved Church tortured him, forced him to publicly recant, and then locked him under house arrest for the rest of his life. Religion is the enemy of progress. Genetic engineers are hampered in our country from curing cancer because of ignorance preached from the pulpit, and our place in the twenty-first-century will become more and more irrelevant. Do
you
believe in God, Mr. Stuart?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Then I think you’re about to be disappointed.”

He placed the revolver barrel against the back of Rafe’s head and cocked the hammer.

“Wait!” cried Esme.

Galileo looked up at her.

“If you wanted to kill them, Henry, they’d already be dead. Tell me why you’re here.”

“I’m here because you forced me to come here. I’m here because you had the FBI run a check on my credit card. You don’t think I know how to check incoming calls? I’m here because I’ve run out of options and need some assistance in avoiding capture. It’s time for you to use your commendable skills to help me.”

Esme took a deep breath. She still hadn’t moved from the welcome mat by the door to the garage. She still had her coat on.

“Time is a bit of an issue,” added Galileo. “So what do you say?”

She took off her coat—slowly, so as not to startle the man with the gun—and hung it up on its hook.

“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” she said. “I’m not a magician.”

“Don’t underestimate your talents.” He moved the gun barrel to Sophie’s head. “And don’t underestimate mine. I’ve shot children before.”

“Mommy…”

Esme locked eyes with her daughter. “Everything’s going to be okay. I promise.”

“Right,” said Galileo. “Now keep your promise.”

Esme hesitated, then nodded. “There’s a hole in our security. It occurred to me this afternoon. I thought you’d exploited it, but it’s really only something you’d know if you worked for the FBI.” She indicated her computer, asleep as it was on her desk, hidden in deep shadows imbued by its nearest window’s closed curtains. “May I?”

“What do you need from that?”

“What I need is to check to make sure the hole still exists. I’ll just need to access a traffic report. It’s right on the home page for the
New York Times.
You can stand over my shoulder and watch me if you want.”

He considered her offer, then, with the brush of a hand, indicated his acquiescence. She quickly made her way across the carpet to her computer. He followed her, all the while keeping his gun trained on Sophie. Esme had no doubt this man could look at the computer screen and kill her daughter simultaneously and without breaking a sweat.