Double Vision

by Colby Marshall

  Nothing.

  That would’ve been too easy. Verizon and Sprint used internal GPS tracking chips inside their wireless phones that activated upon a 911 call. Damn. Triangulation it is.

  Now, to get as much information as possible from someone who couldn’t talk while he waited for tower signals to bounce around until he could isolate the caller’s location. “Okay, someone is there. If you’re hiding in a locked room, press a button one time. If you’re hiding but there’s no lock between you and the intruder, press any button twice.”

  BEEP. BEEP.

  Shit.

  Yancy typed fast, his thoughts flying. He sent the report to dispatch, though it did no good since they didn’t have a location yet. He glanced at the monitor. One tower pinged. He needed information, but he also had to keep this caller safe so when help arrived at the location, the officers would be handling a home invasion rather than a homicide.

  “We’re tracking your location right now, but I need you to stay on the line with me so we can get someone to help you. Breathe as slowly as you can. In through your nose and out of your mouth.” And don’t hyperventilate. “If it’s possible to move to a place where you can put some distance—and preferably a lock—between you and the intruder, do so. If not, stay put. If you’re moving, press a button.”

  Silence. Another tower pinged on the monitor.

  “Okay, I need some more information. If the intruder has a weapon, press any button twice.”

  BEEP BEEP.

  Yancy typed:

  Intruder armed.

  “If the intruder has a gun, press any button twice.”

  Nothing.

  “If he has a knife, press any button twice.”

  Still nothing.

  “Press two buttons if it is a blunt object.”

  BEEP BEEP.

  Yancy struck keys to let the officer who would head to the residence when the triangulation finished know what kind of weapon the intruder had. He looked to the monitor.

  The last tower pinged, and a bubble popped up on the map. A location he recognized met Yancy’s eyes.

  “CiCi?”

  No words.

  Yancy’s pulse quickened. He’d taken so many of her calls, and she’d survived these disputes with her husband after each. Yet every single time Yancy talked to her, he couldn’t help but think how this might be the last call she’d make. Every incident had the potential to be the one when she wouldn’t make it.

  Yancy called for the dispatch to the familiar Peake Road address. “Hang on, CiCi. Help is on the way.”

  Please, God, let them get there in time.

  12

  After following the balding history professor through the dining hall line and selecting the least offensive of the choices offered, Jenna sat down across from him at the rickety wooden table.

  “I do love Salisbury steak day,” he commented enthusiastically as he cut into the mystery meat on his plate.

  Jenna glanced down at her tray, which bore the same meal Dr. Etkin’s did. However, she didn’t see the lumpy, gravy-covered mess quite the same way he did. She wouldn’t have known what it was at all if he hadn’t just identified it for her.

  Still, better to be casual, so she cut a piece and gingerly bit it off the tip of her fork. All in all, it wasn’t as bad as it looked.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t talk in my office, but I was famished. Now tell me again what information it was you were looking for,” he said, still chewing a mouthful of green beans.

  Jenna swallowed and wiped her mouth. “No problem. I do need to ask that you keep our conversation to yourself to preserve the integrity of the investigation . . .”

  He waved her off. “Of course, of course.”

  “Right. I have a case right now that I’m pretty sure is steeped in Greek mythology. Or rather, the criminal’s motives might be. Particularly as Greek mythology relates to the number three and death. What all can you tell me about the significance of the number?”

  Dr. Etkin spooned a heaping bite of mashed potatoes into his mouth. “Hm, let me see. I’ve taught a Greek mythology course for about thirteen years, but I’ve never had to think much about all the ways threes could be connected to deaths before. Lots of Greek myth uses the number three. The number three typically symbolizes male gender in Greek mythology. Four is usually symbolic of the feminine, though threes show up in relation to the feminine, too, on occasion. Often certain lesser deities take the form of three separate entities, as in the case of the Fates, for example. The three Fates—Clothos, Lachesis, and Atropos—were in charge of the thread of life. The first spun the thread, the second measured it, and the last cut it to end life. That is one story that mixes threes with death. The three Gorgon sisters Stheno, Euryale, and the most famous, Medusa, had hair made of venomous snakes. Medusa was killed by the hero Perseus, who cut off her head. Any serpentine symbology in these crimes?”

  “Not that we’ve found,” Jenna replied. Surely he would say something that would strike a nerve, light a color in her mind that connected. “Please keep throwing out ideas, though. Anything could be significant.”

  “All right then. Three Harpies—mythical winged monsters. Hesiod mentions a set of three Cyclopes—Brontes, Steropes, and Arges—said in the Theogony to have provided the brothers Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades with the thunderbolt, trident, and helmet of invisibility that allowed them to defeat the Titans. However, that this group of three would be so well-known is less likely than some other scenarios. Of Cyclopes, one is more famous than all the others, Polyphemus, due to Homer’s stories of Odysseus’s encounters with him. Cerberus was the three-headed dog who guarded the gates of the Underworld . . .”

  “The Underworld. Hades?” Jenna asked, latching on to the reference to the home of the dead.

  “Yes, technically, though most people have a misconception of Hades. Unlike the modern day concept of hell where the ‘bad’ people go, Hades housed all of the dead, good and bad alike. Some accounts give different sections that kept certain groupings of people. ‘Good’ people went to the Elysian Fields in Hades, and the damned ended up in Tartarus. Some sources claim Tartarus wasn’t a part of Hades at all, but rather, a place far below Hades itself. Either way, by most accounts, all the departed are said to reside in Hades, presided over by the god of the same name. One of Zeus’s brothers. I suppose those three main gods are an example of threes in mythology themselves.”

  “Right,” Jenna said, a blazing orange settling in her mind around the concept of Hades, the place. It didn’t match any colors she’d seen so far while investigating this case that she could remember, but she filed it away for future reference. Even so, this seemed like a profitable route of inquiry. The sort of thing a paranoid schizophrenic might latch onto. “Any more threes associated with the Underworld?”

  Dr. Etkin rubbed his mouth with his napkin. “That’s tough. Let me think on it.”

  “Perhaps you could just tell me more about Hades in general,” Jenna prompted.

  “All right then. Let’s see here. The Greeks believed death wasn’t really the end of life, though they did not, I think, consider the dead to make any sort of progress, such as aging, after leaving the earth to go to Hades. The living could enter Hades in certain cases. Persephone, for example, was abducted to be Hades’s wife. Different versions of the story quibble over whether what happened next was against Persephone’s will or not, but I for one believe that Hades forced her to eat the six pomegranate seeds, which tied her to the Underworld, as this was a fruit linked to Hades. Note that six is the double of three, but I digress. So Persephone . . . she was one. Orpheus traveled to Hades in an attempt to bring his wife Eurydice back to the world of the living. She was bitten by a snake, so that’s another serpent reference . . . No?” he said at the shake of Jenna’s head.

  If the Triple Shooter had been the Double Shooter, then maybe t
he bullets could be symbolic of fangs, but so far, nothing snakelike about any of these crimes hit her. But this concept of bringing back the dead intrigued her. Maybe the Triple Shooter was trying to do that somehow? The submissive shade of blue she’d seen at the grocery store flashed in. She still thought he was submitting to an urge, not missing a loved one who’d passed. The returning-the-dead angle didn’t feel right. Still, it was worth a question or two. “Did Orpheus succeed?”

  “Good heavens, no. He made it in, all right, though different versions of the tale have him employing different means. But when Hades allowed him to take his wife back to the living world, it was under the condition she walk behind him and he not look back. Before he got past the gates, he disobeyed Hades’s order, and Eurydice was ripped from him and back into Hades.”

  Jenna nodded, forcing away the powder pink of parallels that flashed in. The story had prompted her to think of the parallel biblical story of Lot’s wife looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah. The thought was of the sort she always had to sift through in situations like these, to isolate the important associations her mind naturally made from the myriad of insignificant ones. The pink had cropped up because of her own purely anecdotal thought, not due to an impression she had that connected the story with the case. A subtle distinction, but it was a skill she’d honed over time.

  “So, Persephone and Orpheus. Anyone else?” Jenna said.

  “Odysseus also entered the Underworld alive. Blood offerings were required for the dead to interact, though. A life force offered in exchange for contact. Cerberus was charged with keeping all who entered Hades from leaving, but Odysseus escaped by sailing through an exit of Hades guarded by two monsters. Instead of trying to navigate the water between them, the mistake of most sailors, he stuck close to the tentacled monster, Scylla. He lost men—six—but otherwise he and the rest of his crew escaped. As far as I know, he was the only person who led a ship that sailed into Hades and also sailed out. Now the dead are another story entirely. The Greeks thought that at the moment of death, the soul and corpse separated. The soul assumed the form of a body itself, and that was the part which was taken to Hades.”

  “By the boatman,” Jenna filled in.

  “You are correct. Charon, the ferryman, was charged with sailing the shades of the dead to Hades, by some accounts across the river Styx. By others, Acheron, the river of pain.”

  Jenna cleared her throat. “So there are a lot of discrepancies?”

  Etkin nodded. “Depends on whose portrayal you’re reading which river was the entrance to the Underworld. Homer said one thing, Euripides another. Everyone else usually something in between. But those are the more popular versions.”

  “Mm-hm. And Charon was paid two coins over the eyes, correct?” Jenna asked, not mentioning the relevance to the case.

  Dr. Etkin nodded. “Sometimes, but not as a rule. Another source of disagreement. Some tales say coins over the eyes, but most if not all instances in literature depict a single coin under the tongue. The eye coins usually appear as the myths are orally passed down as folktales and lose some authenticity.”

  Jenna let the idea simmer. Apparently, if their killer did intend the pieces of evidence to appear as coins, he didn’t know his mythology well. An interesting detail, considering their current theory said he was obsessed with it.

  “Were coins over the eyes perhaps symbolic of . . . well, anything?” Jenna reached.

  Dr. Etkin shook his head. “Not that I know of, young lady. But either way, Charon was a coin taker, and if the dead did not pay, they were condemned to wander the earth as ghosts.”

  “A bad thing?” Jenna asked, unsure.

  “Yes, in that culture. Many thought that reaching the Elysian Fields after death might provide a chance for rebirth. Reincarnation, as it is thought of in traditional society, wasn’t on the table back then. There was a very specific set of circumstances the Greeks aspired to in order to have the prospect. And yet, I suppose the possibility comforted them. Ghosts, however, were doomed to a life of seeing but not being part of the world.”

  “I see,” Jenna replied. It did sound awful. Seeing Ayana but not being able to talk to her, to touch her. She shook the thought away. “How did Charon land this special little job?”

  “Eh, I don’t think it’s ever really told how the task came to him, though it no doubt happened in the same manner most of the gods acquired charge of their realm: either through being born with the inherent role, or by overthrowing the god or supernatural being who possessed it before them. Some artwork depicts Charon as a decrepit old man, but most portrayals allege he was more something of a demon than a human.”

  Jenna closed her eyes for a second, swallowing the tepid potatoes in her mouth. Try as she might to force a color to flash in, none would come. Only discerning the colors her mind brought forth was an ability she could master. Grapheme–color synesthesia wasn’t a skill or talent, no matter how much she wished it was at times. It simply was . . . or, as in this moment, it wasn’t.

  “You know,” Dr. Etkin said, scooping banana pudding into his mouth, “one idea you might consider would be talking to Brody Gallagher. Teaches religion here. He’d be a wealth of knowledge on the numerological implications of the number three. Occurs a ton in Greek mythology surrounding deities, but it’s a common integer in many religions. He might be able to give you even more insight than I on the Greeks and the numbers as they relate to deities.”

  An eggplant purple flashed in as the word religion hit Jenna’s ears. She put down her fork. “How can I find him?”

  13

  Molly twirled her spaghetti around her fork. She’d had plenty, but Liam always insisted the whole family stay seated at the table until everybody finished. He said it was only polite.

  Three witches in Macbeth. Three books in a trilogy. Three movies in a trilogy. The Three Musketeers. The Three Bears. The Three Little Pigs.

  “There sure are a lot of stories that use it, too,” she said, rolling a noodle between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Use what, love?” Liam asked.

  Molly glanced at her mother. As usual, her mom was quiet, staring at her food like it could help change everything that had happened. She looked back at Liam.

  “Three. Three Blind Mice, Three Billy Goats Gruff. Three Little Kittens Who Lost Their Mittens.”

  Her stepfather looked back to his plate and sawed at his meat. “A lot of books have numbers in their titles, Molly. A Tale of Two Cities, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Around the World in Eighty Days . . .”

  “But those aren’t threes,” Molly replied as she lifted one noodle at a time to drape over her fork. “Dr. Ramey was most interested in three.”

  Ever since Dr. Ramey left, Molly had been racking her brain for what she knew about the number three that might help Dr. Ramey. She wasn’t really sure what the doctor was looking for, but she understood it was to do with what happened at the grocery store. She could tell that somehow Dr. Ramey needed to peg something special about the number three so she could figure out who had hurt all the people at Lowman’s. She wouldn’t have asked if she didn’t. Molly knew a lot about numbers. She was positive she could help Dr. Ramey, if only she could think of the right three.

  “Molly, Dr. Ramey will come and ask you if there’s anything else she needs. Stop playing with your food.”

  Molly dropped the noodle she was holding and lowered her fork to her plate. She bit her lip. Liam was just like all grown-ups who thought kids couldn’t really help adults with anything important. Of course he was confident Dr. Ramey didn’t need her ideas.

  But just because her stepdad was sure didn’t mean she had to be.

  “May I be excused?” she asked.

  “Molly, everyone’s not finished yet,” Liam said.

  Molly let out a sigh and leaned back in her chair. She needed to think harder. She could help Dr. Ramey. Sh
e sat in silence and watched her stepdad and mother eat. When they’d finally cleared their plates, she tried again.

  “May I be excused now?” Molly asked.

  “Yes, you may, but go upstairs and take your bath, put on your pj’s, and brush your teeth. I’ll be up to tuck you in in about an hour and a half. You can play until then.”

  Molly hopped out of her chair and skipped up the stairs to her room. She closed her door behind her. Then she flopped onto her hot-pink comforter. Finally, some time to think.

  • • •

  Molly pulled the plug up for her bathwater to run out, and she watched the clear soapy liquid swirl toward the drain. Games. Three plays to make in the rock-paper-scissors game. You could make a three-point shot in basketball. Three strikes and a batter was out in baseball. Three bases to touch before running home. Hockey had three twenty-minute time periods. Three strikes in a row in bowling was called a turkey.

  She reached for her fluffy pink towel, dried off, then wrapped it around her chest like a dress. Once she was in her bedroom, she pulled on a lavender nightgown with a screen-printed version of Daisy Duck’s face on the front, complete with giant pink hair bow. She left the towel on the floor and crawled onto her bed. She pulled back the covers but lay on top of them, still determined to help Dr. Ramey.

  She grabbed her pale pink Koosh ball off her nightstand. As she thought, she tossed it up in the air, caught it, and tossed it again. Atoms contained three particles: protons, electrons, and neutrons. The Roman Catholics believed there were three realms in the afterlife: Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. On some telephone keypads, the number three key was also associated with the letters D, E, and F. Three notes to form a triad, the basic structure of a musical chord. Three was the number of wishes granted in most stories involving genies, wizards, or sorcerers. Three primary colors made all others.

  Her door opened, and she looked up, still tossing her Koosh ball into the air and catching it when it came back down.