Occasionally a guy or girl would smile at the old man and politely explain that they didn’t have any spare money. Once or twice, he even saw someone toss a few coins into the cardboard box. Some decency, perhaps. Something to be grateful for.
He glanced at his wristwatch, a cheap plastic thing he bought at the Dollar Roundup for a buck. The brunette with the swishy ponytail had only been inside ten minutes. Why was he so antsy for her to come out?
Across the way, next to where the bearded man sat, a horde of students spilled into the pavilion, no doubt in the fray of time between class periods. The old codger put his shoe box on the wall, then held on to the edge of the low wall, bent one knee, and used the stone slab to push himself to his feet. Just as he reached for his shoe box, however, a hand knocked into it.
For a moment, the old man stared at the ground, the meager contents of his receptacle strewn across the pavilion stone. Then he turned in the direction from where the hand had come. His face looked sunken, confused.
But the man who called himself Justice had already seen what the beggar was now spotting for the first time. Two students. Females. One girl with a pencil-thin neck and bony cheeks stood a foot away from another girl with wild, frizzy red curls. The bony-cheek girl lingered but hid most of her face behind the book she was holding, embarrassed. But the other? The red-haired girl faced the old man, shoulders squared, cackling. She smirked as her laughter waned. The old man put his hands to his knees as he bent ever so slowly at the waist, reaching for a dollar that had been flung from his shoe box. Just as his fingers brushed it, the pointy toe of a black high-heeled boot clamped over its end.
The scrawny beggar looked up at the redhead from his crouch and shook his head. “Why are you doing this? I just want to pick up my dollar bill here, young lady. No reason to be nasty about it.”
The redhead gave the old man a fake smile, marinated in contempt. “Your dollar? Don’t you mean the dollar of some bleeding heart kid? One who gave you pocket change you’re too lazy to earn, because all you do is sit around a college campus all day asking for handouts?”
She slid the dollar under her boot toward her, then bent and lifted it, held it directly in front of the old man’s face. “This dollar? It was never yours, and it’s not going to be now, either.”
She ripped the single bill in two, then crumpled the pieces in her hand, tossed them to the ground by the old man’s shoe box, which lay on its side. “Come on, Diana let’s go,” she said. The redhead whipped around and headed for one of the iron tables adorned with umbrellas, like the one the man who called himself Justice was sitting at now. Her friend, however, stayed behind just long enough to mouth, “I’m sorry,” to the shaky old man.
And that’s when the man who called himself Justice saw it. The book the friend carried, the one she had used to hide her face. The screened print on the front said very clearly Latin III. That was one three, and the spine of the book she held under it at her side provided the final two threes: Biology 3300. Three threes.
The man who called himself Justice forgot about the glass door of the Student Life Center and the swishy ponytail of the girl inside it as he slowly turned his head a fraction to catch a better glimpse of the girl with the bush of tousled red curls atop her head. She sat in the black wrought-iron chair, dipping a French fry into ketchup. Diana caught up, pulled up a seat, and stared at the table the entire time the redhead yammered on and sniggered to her.
Today wasn’t a waste after all. They did lead me here, it just wasn’t about who I thought.
As he watched, the red-haired girl gestured animatedly to her friend, coughing as she nearly choked on a bite of her sandwich, she was laughing so hard.
That’s right, little girl. Live it up. After all, it’s time to die.
10
Jenna brushed through the gaggle of reporters camped out at the local police department, not even venturing a “No comment” to the questions they yelled at her. It was the unfortunate part of having a known face in this job. But she wasn’t prepared to say anything to the press. Not until she knew more about what they were dealing with. After all, the grocery store murders deviated strongly from the Triple Shooter’s other killings, and she didn’t know why. All she did know was that it sure as hell didn’t mean he was stable.
When she reached the conference room, Saleda and Teva were already waiting, flipping through pages and pages of Triple Shooter case notes. She’d called them as soon as she’d left the Tyler house to tell them to pull the files and meet her, that she thought she had a lead. Normally she’d never have overstepped Saleda and instructed the team to do anything, but in this case, any information about the Triple Shooter’s profile was vital. His old crimes were where they would catch him. More consistency, more to go on. The grocery store massacre trail was hot, but the pattern was so off that the only way to use it to find him was to figure out where his old style and these new killings converged.
Saleda glanced at her watch when she saw Jenna come in. “About time.”
“Traffic,” Jenna muttered.
“Probably the dozens of roadblocks the locals have set up on every street from here to Saskatchewan, which is cute, ya know. Stopping people to check if they’re someone you don’t know you’re looking for. We have no physical description, getaway vehicle, nothing, but these heroes would rather employ martial law to find a phantom than work with what we have, which is a profile.”
Jenna smirked as she pulled out a chair next to Teva. “Aw, come on, Saleda. Everyone knows the ‘real’ cops shouldn’t listen to our voodoo shenanigans. ‘Behavioral Science,’” she said, miming scare quotes. She flicked her hand, dismissing the thought. “What a crock.”
Saleda chuckled, shook her head. “For what it’s worth, I stationed Porter and Dodd with the head of the local task force so they can at least help vet any suspicious characters stopped for no good reason.”
“Dodd’s back already?” Jenna asked.
Saleda waved away the question. “Yeah, they called him in about something regarding the Cobbler case.”
“Wow. I had no idea he worked that one,” Jenna answered. The case was one of the more famous these days. A while back, a killer had murdered twelve people in the Chicago area. The police arrested the alleged murderer after an anonymous tip call sent them straight to the bastard’s door. They found ten feet in the guy’s freezer. There were twelve victims.
“Yeah, unfortunately for him. It’s a dilly. The defense appealed the court’s ruling that the defendant is competent to stand trial, citing new psychiatric evaluations suggesting the perp is criminally insane and needs institution, not jail. Dodd went down there to try to stop a reversal. He worked his ass off for that case, and between us, it was the one that almost broke him. He’ll die before he sees that psycho let loose. But yeah, he got to say his piece, and then he joined Porter with the local task force leader here. Now we pursue your gut feeling, Jenna. Just don’t make me regret it.”
“Oh, you won’t,” she said. She opened the Triple Shooter case files in front of them, gingerly laying out pictures of the three early victims in a neat line across the table. “The grocery store killings are the exception, not the rule. The older victims are how we’ll find him, by smoking out a pattern. Every kill he commits, he gives us another clue, and sometimes he gives us a retroactive one without realizing it.”
“We’ve already established that the Triple Shooter kills compulsively. He isn’t searching for fame or notoriety. He is doing it to stop something from happening, i.e, he’s paranoid. Paranoia makes him dangerous, unstable. If spooked, he might run farther, hurt someone, take hostages. His pathology would escalate, maybe trigger a spree.”
Teva leaned her elbows on the table, propped her chin on her fists. “Isn’t it safe to say he’s already on a spree?”
“Not anything compared to what’ll happen if he gets scared and angry,” Jenna repl
ied.
“Okay, so paranoid, dangerous nut job who may or may not see threes that cause him to kill people. What’s up with the religious connection you mentioned on the phone?”
Jenna stood and went for the coffeepot. She poured herself a paper cup, dumped in two sugars, then stirred as she sat back at the table. “I talked to the little girl who was a witness at the grocery store. Kid has a sharp eye, notices things others don’t. She’s also obsessed with numbers, so I thought maybe I could get a childlike perspective on what the numbers might mean.”
“Anything good?”
“More than I bargained for,” Jenna said. She swallowed the hot coffee hard, the liquid leaving her throat searing.
Jenna took another gulp to stall even as she willed herself to continue. Her suspicion that Molly was pointing her in the right direction might not be seen as valid by most. “We spent time looking at a print of the restored version of The Last Supper in her stepfather’s study, and she ended up telling me tons about numbers and deities, symbolism. Call me crazy, but I think we should take a harder look at the religion aspect.”
“Why do you say that?” Saleda coaxed.
Jenna stood and continued to sip her coffee, pacing the burgundy carpet. “When someone kills another person, they can have a variety of motivations. Passion, financial gain, revenge, political agenda, self-defense, religious fanaticism—that sort of thing. But this guy, he kills because something sets off his compulsions, typically repetition of the number three.”
“So the threes align, his sensibilities are, what, offended? So he strikes?” Teva asked.
“Not exactly,” Saleda interjected. “Something about the threes lining up has to threaten him or otherwise set off his compulsion. The compulsion isn’t the number three alone. Robbery and revenge can be and often are motives, just like Jenna said, but in the case of OCD or schizophrenia, you’d be killing someone because the repetition of the numbers was somehow threatening to you—or because someone told you it was.”
Teva nodded. “Okay. So the threes align, the Triple Shooter gets spooked, annihilates the threat before it can annihilate him. So what about the threes freaks him out?”
“Could be anything,” Jenna said, pacing the room some more. “Molly talked about deities—for all we know the Triple Shooter could think God is pointing an enemy out for him to kill by showing threes near that person.”
Teva strolled slowly past the victim photographs. “We’re assuming the deity is the Christian God. Plenty of other religions use threes in conjunction with holiness. Are there any other ‘pious’ aspects to this case?”
“Besides the remorse of shutting the eyes, you mean?” Saleda asked.
“I’d call that reverence, not piousness,” Teva countered.
Jenna, however, stood still, looking at her feet as colors flashed in her mind. Eyes, closed. Pieces of evidence over them. Remorse. Eyes closed in remorse. Religion.
Gold solidified in her mind.
“The eyes were covered. Coins. Greeks put coins over the eyes of the dead. It was a tradition, a fare to pay the boatman to take them across the river to the land of the dead,” Jenna whispered.
Both women stared at her, suddenly quiet.
“What?” Teva asked.
“He’s not only remorseful for killing them, but he’s even willing to pay their passage into the Underworld. The question is, what the heck does this have to do with the threes setting him off?”
Teva chortled. “So this guy thinks Zeus is telling him to smite down anyone attached to the number three?”
Jenna grabbed her satchel and the stack of case folders, and headed for the door. “I haven’t gotten that far, but I think it’s worth pursuing. We need to find out what all in Greek mythology was associated with the number three. Then maybe we can figure out what’s triggering his attacks. I’m going to the community college to talk to the history professor. I’ll check in soon.”
And with that, Jenna was out the door.
11
Yancy plopped down into his desk chair, jammed his headphones on. Time to save the world again—or at least save little boys from closet monsters and stupid teenagers who thought 911 existed so they could call and ask for directions when they were lost.
Before he hit his ready button to signify he was in place and prepared to take an emergency call, though, his cell phone lit up. He’d already turned it on silent, which was standard when he was on duty, but seeing the number glowing on the face, he couldn’t help but take one more minute off work to answer this one.
“Hey, beautiful lady,” he said.
“Hi, yourself,” Jenna replied flatly, but Yancy could tell by the sound of her voice that she was smiling. “Listen, I’m on my way to interview someone about the case right now, but I just wanted to call and let you know I can have Irv check in on the domestic abuse vic call if you want, just to make sure it all went down without anything crazy happening. If you were worried, I mean. I know we all have cases that get to us, and sometimes closure is best.”
This wasn’t going to go well. But, like his grandmother had tried so hard to beat into his rear end with a belt, honesty was the best policy. Go ahead, rock star. Make her day.
“Um, that won’t be necessary. I, uh . . .” Yancy cleared his throat. Spit it out, moron. “I went by her house.”
“You what?” met his ears, the shrill pitch something like what he expected, only a little louder and a little more angry than confused.
“Hey, before you give me the lecture, relax. I just went by on my walk with Oboe to see if I saw anything. The blinds were open, and I saw her vacuuming. I didn’t knock on her door, throw pebbles at her window, nothing. She never knew I was there.”
Jenna’s sigh echoed in his ears through the phone. “Yancy, it’s not about whether or not she saw you. It’s about protocol and professional distance! You can’t get so personally involved. It never ends well. Ever. You know better than this . . .”
The back of Yancy’s neck burned, the heat creeping up his cheeks. “Whoa, wait a minute—”
“It’s easy to get invested in these cases that crop up a lot. I know. But self-control is—”
“Oh, self-control is important, huh? Not overstepping? But you didn’t have any problem breaking protocol or having me overstep when it served your purposes last year . . .”
“Yance, that was different. You were part of the investigation . . .”
But Jenna’s tone didn’t match the words. She wasn’t fooling anyone, and the hell if she was going to scold him about professional standards when she’d broken many bigger rules than walking by someone’s house.
“Double standards much?”
“Yancy, I’m an FBI agent, okay? You could get fired from your dispatch position for something like this if anyone found out,” Jenna said.
The way he could tell the calm, slow cadence of her words was designed to ease the rising conflict just pissed him off worse. “Don’t shrink me, Doctor. And don’t forget, when you broke all the rules, you weren’t an FBI agent anymore . . . yet . . . whatever the hell the right word is!”
Jenna’s breathing had been even, but was he imagining it was getting heavier?
“Yancy, I’m only trying to protect you—”
He couldn’t stop the cold laugh that escaped him. “Protect me? Protect me! That’s a hot one. The poor one-legged guy needs his big, bad FBI girlfriend for protection. Can’t even take care of himself enough to get a real law enforcement job instead of one sitting behind a desk answering the phone all day.”
“That’s not what I mea—”
He cut her off again. “You know, believe it or not, Jenna, I’m capable of taking care of myself and other people. I’d have thought you’d know that by now, considering everything I’ve done to help your superhuman FBI agent rear end, but apparently I only get kudos for my past p
erformances based on affirmative action,” he snapped.
“I didn’t say tha—”
“Don’t worry about it. I have to go now. My piddly little job calls. Talk later. G’bye,” he spat, ending the call and shoving his phone into his pocket.
He slammed the ready button with the heel of his palm, and his work line signaled immediately.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
Heavy breaths, then an inaudible whisper.
“Are you there?” Yancy asked.
No answer, but breathing. Deliberately rhythmic breathing.
“If you are on the line and unable to speak, press a button on your phone twice,” Yancy said, holding his earpiece closer to try to hear anything in the background. He glanced to the call window. No address attached to the number. Looked like a cell phone.
BEEP. BEEP.
“Okay, you are on the line and can’t speak. If you can’t speak because of a medical problem, press a button once. If you cannot speak for fear of an intruder, press a button twice.”
Silence.
A long ten seconds went by.
BEEP BEEP.
Yancy typed fast:
Caller intentionally not speaking for fear of alerting intruder.
He pressed the mute button so the caller wouldn’t hear the panic tied to his next request. “I need a location on this cell number,” he yelled into the buzzing hub of the dispatch center. He let up on the mute button. “If you know that the phone you’re calling from is a Verizon or Sprint serviced phone, press any button.”
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