“Time for little princesses to be in bed,” Liam said, catching the Koosh ball in his palm. He set it down on the nightstand, “Yep, in bed . . . with their tootsies under the covers!” Liam smiled just before he dove for Molly’s feet.
She squealed and shoved her feet under the sheets, then yanked the blankets up to her chin. She’d made it before he tickled her toes.
“Shucks!” he laughed, shaking his head and snapping the fingers on his right hand once. “Missed getting the feets again!”
Molly giggled.
“Next time,” he said, leaning down and smoothing her hair back from her face.
Molly narrowed her eyes playfully. “You hope!”
Liam chuckled. “Confident, are we? We’ll just see tomorrow,” he said, giving her a playful punch in the arm. “You brush your teeth?”
“Mm-hm,” she said, then gave him the toothiest grin she could manage.
“Sparkly as ever. Wash your face?”
Molly nodded twice.
“Say your prayers?” Liam asked.
“Not yet,” she answered.
“Well, come on. I’ll help.”
“Where’s Mommy?” she asked.
Liam frowned. “In bed, puddin’. She’s had a hard few days. She needs her rest. Now how about those prayers?”
Molly crawled out, but just before she took her feet out from under the covers, she shot Liam a look. “Are my feet safe from the tickle troll?”
Liam drew an X over his chest. “Cross my heart.”
She knelt beside her bed, and Liam crouched and dropped onto both knees next to her. People kneeling and lying down in the grocery store after they were killed. Others sat slumped, trying to take cover. The three taps the shooter made before he fired. Most of the people who were still alive that she’d seen or talked to inside the grocery store had been in that little room where she’d first met Dr. Ramey and Agent Dodd. Three taps before the shooter fired.
She’d talked to someone else inside the store. Someone not in that back room. That old man. The one that looked like Pop-Pop.
Molly looked at Liam, who already had his hands folded, his head bowed. “Liam, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, love. Anything,” he said, unfolding his hands.
“I remember talking to another man that day on the aisle where the last guy got shot. They kept all the witnesses who might’ve seen the shooter in the back room to ask us questions. They talked to everyone else who hadn’t seen the shooter out in the parking lot. This man I saw, he definitely could’ve seen the shooter. But he wasn’t in the back room with the witnesses.”
Liam’s eyebrows narrowed. “What’re you trying to say here, Molly?”
Molly shook her head. “I don’t know,” she muttered. “It just might be important . . .”
They said their prayers, then Liam lifted Molly onto her bed and tucked her in. He kissed her on both cheeks and rubbed his nose to hers. “Everything’s going to be fine, Molly. Do your best not to worry.”
Molly nodded. “I’ll try.”
Liam left the room, flipping the switch next to the door on his way out and dousing the room in darkness, the only light left cast by the glow-in-the-dark stars on Molly’s ceiling. But Molly wasn’t sleepy. Not at all. Something in her gut told her that old man she had talked to in the aisle was important. He’d seen something, and maybe she could find out what it was.
14
Eldred lay back against the plush lavender pillows. What had he been thinking about?
Nancy sat in a kitchen chair next to him, wiping his sweaty forehead with a wet washcloth. “Feeling better, Dad?”
Better? How could he feel better? He couldn’t remember what he’d been thinking of. How could anyone be content when they couldn’t hold a train of thought? Madness.
“Fuzzy,” he replied through thick lips. The man from the truck with the flashing lights had plunged a needle into his arm. What was the word for that truck? Ambrosia? Ambrol? No. That wasn’t even a word. Something wet and warm had squished inside his veins, and his bicep had tingled. The room spun, and his head swam. He sat down, his knees suddenly rubbery and jellylike.
The man and Nancy had whispered at the door, then, finally, the man left along with the other people who’d come with him in that ambivalent. Darn it. That wasn’t it, either.
“It’s all okay. You just lay back and relax. Everything is going to be all right,” his daughter said.
All right? What would be all right? What had happened?
Gunfire. Cereal boxes falling, sliding across the floor in front of him. Something niggled at his mind.
“Sarah, what was that cereal you used to like? The ones with the marshmallows?”
The woman beside him squeezed his hand. “Dad, I’m Nancy, remember? Your daughter, Nancy.”
He squinted at her and studied her slender nose, her long, wavy brown hair. “What are you playing at, Sarah? I recognize my own wife.”
“Dad . . .”
Then he noticed the bags under the eyes. Brown eyes. Not hazel.
“Who are you? What have you done with Sarah?”
The imposter squeezed his hand again, and he tried to wrench it away. His limbs felt heavy, lethargic. “Get away,” he mumbled through dry lips.
His eyelids fluttered, and he fought as sleep overcame him. Cereal boxes. Gunshots. Footsteps. A voice . . .
Then Eldred’s brain blurred all of the images together, and grapple as he might to hang on, the pictures drifted from his mind.
• • •
Brody Gallagher turned out to be younger than Dr. Etkin. His office was plastered with pictures of his young wife and two toddlers that might be twins, all of the photos telling the tale of a perfect nuclear family with a picket fence and a dog named Rover.
Gallagher sat behind his desk, resting his chin on his thumb and forefinger pressed together. His clean-shaven face and curly ginger hair gave him the appearance of a high school kid who’d just gone through puberty rather than a college professor.
“Your case has religious undertones, then?” he asked after Jenna finished filling him in on the reason for her visit.
“Kind of. Maybe. This is more of a theory I’m researching. I’ll need everything we say here to remain between us so as not to compromise the investigation.”
“As you wish,” Gallagher replied. “What exactly would you like to know?”
Isn’t that a good question? “Dr. Etkin tells me numbers—particularly the number three—are a common theme in many religions.”
“And he did not steer you awry. Threes are especially significant when talking about deities. Many deities are triplicates—that is, depicted as threefold. Studies of various religions are rife with the number three. Christianity portrays the Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Indo-Europeans depicted the ‘spinners of destiny’ in much the same way the Greeks did, though their names were different. The three cranes of Arabian folklore, popular trios of gods and goddesses like the Greeks’ Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades or the Norns in Norse mythology. Many gods and goddesses were thought to have three heads even, like the Hindu goddess Durga. The list goes on and on. You’re sure you can narrow your case down to Greek myth?”
Another worthy question. Jenna closed her eyes, went over the case details again in her mind. The makeshift “coins” over the eyes, the number three . . . what else told her Greek myth played a role here? Nothing. And yet, any time the “coins” over the victims’ eyes came to mind, a white color coalesced in Jenna’s mind. It could mean anything, but Jenna’s gut said it was the same clean, fresh color she associated with ancient Greece.
“I suppose the truth is that I can’t be certain. Call it gut feeling,” she said, cringing as she waited for yet another negative reaction to her giving the familiar reasoning no one ever seemed to
quite understand.
However, Brody Gallagher didn’t seem fazed. Instead, he shrugged. “Fair enough. So, let’s go with the notion that your guy is obsessed with Greek mythology. Specifically, threes in Greek mythology. Dr. Etkin said he gave you the rundown of some basic concepts like the Underworld, Cerberus, and some of the more popular threes of the Greeks. Let me see if I can give any insight into some other aspects of the number and narrow this down for you.”
Jenna nodded. Narrowing things down was what she really needed. “That would be welcome.”
Gallagher leaned back in his leather armchair. “All right. First, you need to understand why religions have such a fascination with the integer. There’s not really a simple answer as to why the number claims such significance in beliefs of all varieties. A lot of factors lend the number three a special symbolism. For example, three is the number associated with all things solid. Two-dimensional objects are, alas, flat. When physical items have height, width, and depth, they are tangible. Time is also represented by three distinct divisions—past, present, future. The most striking of all reasons for the religious attraction to the number, however, is its association with divine perfection.”
“How is it considered more perfect than other numbers?” Jenna asked.
“It’s the first of the four biblically perfect numbers. Spiritually considered perfect in many different religions, even though this spiritual perfection regarding these four is most often attributed to the Bible. This isn’t surprising since many religions contain parallels, no matter how different. Anyway, the four perfect spiritual numbers I speak of: three, seven, ten, and twelve.”
The word “seven” jumped out at Jenna. Seven victims of the grocery store shootings. But the Triple Shooter had no other noted connections to the number seven, and every other time there had only been one victim.
She pushed the thought away. “Tell me more.”
“Those four numbers, considered by many to be spiritually perfect, are each associated with different aspects of society. Twelve, governmental perfection. Ten, ordinal perfection—”
“Ordinal perfection?” Jenna cut in.
“Perfection of spiritual order. Interestingly enough, this does have some mathematical significance even though these four numbers have little to do with the mathematically perfect numbers. In counting, ten represents the completion of the cycle of the number one, or the beginning of a new cycle of one. Mathematically, the product of those four numbers—three, seven, ten, and twelve—is 2,520, which happens to be the least common multiple of every single digit of the completion cycle of the number one. To be honest, I’m not sure if that concept makes those biblically special numbers logical or whether the people who believe those numbers are special searched for a mathematical pattern to justify them as important, but either way, ten is valued for its sense of completeness. Children were often considered ‘whole’ if born with ten toes and ten fingers, for instance. But in spiritual context, we see the number ten many times in association with regulation. Guidelines, if you will. The Ten Commandments, the tithe. The number ten also reduces back to the number one. The light source, the beginning of all things.”
“Makes some sense,” Jenna replied. “And the other spiritually perfect numbers?”
Gallagher unfolded his arms and ticked them off on his fingers. “Seven is associated with actual spiritual perfection. It’s more of a magical sort of number, as far as it is connected to events and ideas in scripture. Tends to denote God’s perfection of his own system. Seven days of creation is a good example. Jesus said seven things on the cross. Seven seals, seven trumpets, seven promises to the church. The list continues. Then there’s your three.” His left fist closed, and he folded his ring finger and pinky down.
Avocado green flashed in as she looked at the three fingers he held up.
“Divine perfection,” he said. “Space, time, matter, humanity . . . all come in three forms.”
“Humanity?”
Gallagher cocked his head, then smiled. “Ah. Yes, let me clarify. Many describe humans as made of three parts: mind, body, and soul.”
Jenna nodded. “Sounds about right.”
Gallagher stroked his chin, a gesture which struck Jenna as odd, given his young age, even if she couldn’t place why age should matter.
“If Christians are to be believed, three is also indicative of Christ’s very existence. He rose three days after his death, he subsists in three time periods: past, present, and future.”
“What does all of this have to do with the Greeks?” Jenna asked, mustering patience. As they sat here, the Triple Shooter could be driving states away or, worse, killing another victim.
“A lot of the same principles apply. But simply put, in any religion, the preoccupation with the number three and its association to deities is due to one thing: balance. Two can agree—wrongly—and move forward even if ill-advised or ill-conceived. Two can disagree and precipitate deadlock in rule. Four can be divided evenly with no one to break a tie, and more than four in rule constitutes too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. Three represents an ideal division of power, one that is infallible.”
Jenna tossed the concept around in her mind. The Triple Shooter killed where threes lined up. An irrational reasoning or a rational one? As rational as a cold-blooded killer could be, anyway. Schizophrenics did often consider the voices they heard to be those of God, so it made sense to think the Triple Shooter could be hearing a god. Rational reasons for threes lining up that would precipitate the need to annihilate someone were slim. Loathing of the god in his head, his belief he was better than the god he heard . . . anger at the god. The god’s vengeance. That was a common one. Murdering schizophrenics were famous for killing people because “the voices told them to.”
The Triple Shooter believing he was superior didn’t ring true to Jenna. The coins over the eyes were remorseful. Not a narcissistic display of power. Anger didn’t make a lot of sense, either. Gunshots weren’t a very passionate method of killing. Not unheard of for an angry perp to shoot out of ire, but those were usually crimes of passion. Anger took passion, and while the Triple Shooter’s remorse might fall in line with the details of some crimes of passion, in serials, it wasn’t as common. Stab wounds were much angrier.
Hearing voices seemed the most semi-rational logic the killer might be employing.
Irrational reasoning was a totally different beast entirely. No way to even speculate. Irrational thoughts were just that . . . irrational.
The slate gray she associated with the sense of hearing flashed in, clearly distinct from the Prussian blue she associated with the sense of sight. Hearing seemed right here. No way around it.
But if the Triple Shooter heard the voice of some god telling him to kill someone, who was he hearing?
“Dr. Gallagher, you mentioned the triad of Zeus and his brothers in Greek mythology, and Dr. Etkin told me more about the three Fates. What other deities in Greek mythology presented in triad form or as personifications of three different related concepts like Fate?”
“Oh, plenty. As you say, the Fates represented the three stages of life: birth, life, and death . . .”
Jenna pressed her mind to find a connection. The shooter being the taker of life seemed to make this particular set intriguing, but she simply couldn’t find a link. Not yet, anyway. And unfortunately, no color manifested to help her out.
“Nine muses in all, so there’s a multiple of three. Three threes. Interestingly enough, originally there were only three muses. Aoide, Melete, and Mneme, the goddesses of song, practice, and memory, respectively. Mneme being the origin of the word mnemonic, of course. A group known as the Hundred-Handed Ones, who were responsible for storms. The Cyclopes were technically gods since they were sons of Poseidon, though most people don’t think of them quite that way. There was a set of three of them. Um . . . lots of concepts personified, like Fate. Se
veral lesser known ones, like the spirits of pain and suffering.”
“Sounds promising,” Jenna quipped, though the Triple Shooter wasn’t really the pain and suffering type. Sure, he killed people, but that was more incidental. Torture killers didn’t typically feel remorse. It took a certain level of psychopathy to purposely inflict misery on other human beings. Lack of empathy meant lack of remorse . . . always. A torture killer might shoot a victim after he was finished committing whatever sadistic acts his perverted little heart desired, but only as an end to his means, and certainly not because he felt sorry for them. Not sorry during and not sorry after.
Gallagher shrugged again. “I know there are plenty I’m not thinking of. I can get you a comprehensive list from a friend of mine who studies ancient mythological sciences. Uh . . . there were three judges of the dead, I think, but I can’t recall details about them . . .”
Gallagher’s friend might be most helpful. “That’s all right, Doctor. Could you put me in touch with this friend of yours?”
Brody Gallagher nodded, opening a drawer of his desk. “Sure, sure. Calliope is a character, I warn you, but she knows her stuff.”
Jenna watched as he scratched a name and phone number on a blank sheet of computer paper with the pen he’d taken from the desk drawer. “Her name is Calliope?”
He chuckled, eyes flitting from where his cell phone displayed the contact card to the paper. “Not her given name, of course. She changed it several years ago after she took a sabbatical in Turkey in order to read Homer’s works in full in the place of his birth. The mythological figure Calliope is widely considered to be Homer’s muse, apparently, and what can I say? I guess it struck a chord in my friend.”
Jenna smiled, imagining a kooky woman in huge glasses, a raggedy shawl, and large, gypsy-esque earrings. “No pun intended, huh?”
Gallagher laughed again. He passed Jenna the sheet of paper. “She’s a fun gal. Smart as a whip. Tell her I said hello, will you?”
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