Diana needed to be assured that they didn’t hold her at fault in any way. She needed to know they didn’t consider her the enemy. And most of all, she needed to realize that no matter what had happened, they didn’t view her as horrible, even if right now she was feeling terrible for living when her friend had died.
The girl sat up a little straighter and stretched out her hand. They shook, Diana’s hand cold and clammy in Jenna’s own.
Jenna resisted the urge to wipe her palm on her trousers when they let go, and instead, she sat on the foot of Diana’s bed, putting them on the same level. No one wanted to be looked down at while carrying on a conversation.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Jenna said gently.
The girl sniffled again, then whispered, “Thank you.”
Careful to keep any hint of accusation out of her voice, Jenna framed her question. “Diana, you two were at Target together. Why did you decide to leave sooner than Brooklyn did?”
Diana’s eyes welled up again, and ash gray flashed into Jenna’s mind. The color she associated with guilt.
“I had a Latin exam and needed to study. She wanted to stay and wait around for Kenny to get off work.”
“Who’s Kenny?” Jenna prodded.
Diana wiped her eye with the back of her hand, then dried it on the patchwork quilt on her bed. “Kenny Ingle. This boy she likes.”
Jenna cocked her head. Of the initial interview Porter and Teva had with the family and the background Irv had dug up, this was the first mention she’d heard of any Kenny.
“Were Brooklyn and Kenny dating?”
“Not exactly,” Diana said. “I mean, they were talking. That’s it.”
Jenna hoped she didn’t look as dumb as she felt. “What do you mean they were talking?”
Dodd cleared his throat. “It means they were talking on the phone or texting or whatever kids do to get to know each other now. You know, kind of a warm-up to dating.”
She shot Dodd a look. How the hell did he know that?
“Wasn’t long ago my daughter was in high school,” he said, shrugging.
Jenna turned back to Diana. This Kenny person wasn’t a likely suspect, but they’d have to follow up with him, just in case. “Diana, did you notice anything strange while the two of you were in Target? Anyone following the both of you or watching you? Anything like that?”
Diana shook her head. “No. Nothing like that.”
Of course not. That would’ve been too easy. “Did Brooklyn talk to anyone that she knew while you were there, or that it seemed like she knew or had met before? On the phone, in the store, via text . . . anything?”
“No,” Diana said again, shaking.
The girl rubbed her arms and rocked herself a little. Somewhere behind those eyes, Jenna knew she was seeing Brooklyn, imagining what had happened. Thinking she was so glad it wasn’t her, but then feeling guilty it hadn’t been. She knew the look all too well. She’d felt it before, too, when her mother had stabbed Charley when they were kids.
“It’s okay, Diana. It’s okay for you to hurt, be scared, grieve, feel relieved and distraught all at the same time. Anything you’re feeling is okay. We’re here to help Brooklyn. We’re here to find who did this to your friend. Just keep talking to us.”
The girl curled up, hugged her knees to her chest. She looked down at nothing in particular, but she nodded.
“All right. So Brooklyn wanted to stay and meet up with Kenny, and you decided to leave. Where were you guys when you said good-bye?” Jenna asked.
“In the store,” Diana said, monotone.
“Where in the store? What section?”
“Um . . . the bed and bath stuff. Brooklyn wanted to find a new shower curtain. Her old one was gross or something.”
Jenna patted Diana’s knee. “That’s good. Can you tell me everything you remember that you both said or did right before you left?”
Diana closed her eyes. “Yeah. Um . . . I pulled out my phone to check a text and saw what time it was. I told Brooklyn I needed to leave. She . . . wasn’t really happy. She said some kind of . . . some rude things to me.”
Great. Not only force her to relive her last moments with her friend, but make her relive her last fight with her friend. Still, if Brooklyn had threatened to do anything impulsive in retribution or anything of that nature, they needed to know. “What sorts of things?”
“She said I should live a little. That I was always such a goody-goody that I wouldn’t know life if it bit me in the face,” Diana whispered, still looking down.
Harsh. A deep plum Jenna had come to associate with rudeness based in hostility rather than ignorance flashed in.
“What happened next?” Jenna asked.
Tears sprung to Diana’s eyes as she gripped the quilt and twisted it. “I told her . . . I said she didn’t always have to be such a bitch to everyone.”
Diana’s head collapsed to her knees, her body racked with sobs.
Do no harm. How was it she could be in a profession with an oath requiring her to hurt no one, and yet, in her line of work, it was virtually impossible not to?
“Then what?”
Diana wiped her face with her fingertips. “I left. I walked to my car, drove away. I came home and studied for my Latin test. I didn’t even know anything had happened until . . .” She let out a sob. “Until Brooklyn’s mom called mine.”
Jenna nodded. This girl might remember something else worth knowing, but it wouldn’t be tonight. Her head was too cluttered with guilt.
“Diana, we’ll let you rest now, but I’ll leave my card with your mom. I need you to call me if you remember anything about Target that might be significant. Someone you saw in the store or the parking lot that just gave you a weird feeling for some reason, a friend Brooklyn spoke to, a call she made . . . anything. Nothing is too small. Okay?” Jenna said.
Diana nodded.
“Thank you for talking with us. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling,” Jenna continued. Never say you understand. You don’t. Everyone’s reactions are different, even if they were in the exact same situation you’d been in twenty times. “But you’ve done a great job recounting what you did. And if you need to talk to someone who isn’t your mom or stepdad or a friend, let me know, and I can set you up with someone who is used to helping people talk through times like this. There’s nothing shameful about needing someone outside the family to listen to what you’re going through. You did nothing wrong.”
Diana sniffled. “Thank you.”
Jenna stood and made for the door, Dodd trailing her. As interviews went, not the most significant, but she did want to follow up with this Kenny person, maybe interview Brooklyn’s family and find out more about the girl, who sounded about as pleasant as a tobacco-filled enema. They had never found a personal connection between the Triple Shooter and any of his victims, but that didn’t mean Brooklyn was a stranger. Even serial killers were vulnerable to hurting someone in their everyday lives if a person rubbed them wrong, and Brooklyn sounded like a character ripe for making enemies. It wouldn’t be the first time a real-life connection turned out to be a serial killer’s downfall.
“Jenna, wait,” Dodd’s voice called from behind.
She turned around, half-annoyed that Dodd was prolonging their visit with Diana Delmont. The girl was clearly out of her mind with misplaced responsibility, and the last thing she needed was some sort of interrogation or argument the likes of which Dodd had provoked Liam Tyler into.
But arguments didn’t seem to be what Dodd had on his mind. He was standing in front of the small desk against the left wall of the room. It was strewn with mechanical pencils, notebooks, and Post-it Notes. An open textbook splayed across the middle, one Dodd now closed. He shifted the book so its spine faced Jenna.
LATIN III.
Green flashed in, and Jenna’s gaz
e darted to the other textbooks on the desk. Calculus, Art History, British Literature. Then it came into her vision: Cellular Biology: Structure and Functioning on a Microscopic Level. At the bottom of the spine, a bookstore sticker displayed BIOLOGY 3300.
Latin III. Biology 3300. Drop the zeroes from the biology book, and there they were. Three threes.
It could be a coincidence. After all, Diana Delmont was here, safe in her room. Brooklyn was the one in the morgue.
And yet, a puce color pervaded Jenna’s psyche, the same one she’d noticed all those times her gut told her that her brother getting sick after eating something her mother cooked wasn’t happenstance. It was the color she saw when certain actions of Claudia’s corresponded to unpleasant events in the house, like when she washed Dad’s clothes after a fight they’d had and the first time he wore something from that laundry load he broke out in hives. Those instances might’ve been flukes, but their timing and the gut feeling surrounding those things always seemed to have a cause-and-effect relationship. A synchronicity.
But if the threes lined up on Diana’s books, either Brooklyn’s classes were identical to Diana’s, or the two had been together when the killer saw that particular grouping of threes. If the latter was the case, the killer had chosen to take out whatever it was the combination set off in him on Brooklyn instead of Diana.
Jenna nodded at Dodd. For now, they had some more interviews to do and some checking into Brooklyn’s class schedule to assign to Irv. She also needed to look into the other patrons in the grocery store at the time of the massacre there, the incident that didn’t make any sense with the Triple Shooter’s profile.
They thanked Mrs. Delmont, told her they’d be in touch, and climbed into the SUV. Jenna glanced up to the lighted window she now knew to be Diana’s. Somehow, she doubted this would be their last visit.
24
When they were on the road again, Dodd dialed Irv and asked him about Brooklyn’s class schedule. Jenna drummed her fingers on the passenger door while she waited anxiously, though somehow, she already knew what they’d find out.
“What? No? Got it. Thanks, Irv,” Dodd said, and he hung up. “No Latin III.”
“Shock me further,” Jenna muttered.
“Yeah, I had the same feeling. But what do you make of it? Diana Delmont had the toxic three lineup, but she isn’t dead.”
“No, she’s definitely not . . .” And if Diana wasn’t dead, why? What did the Triple Shooter see in Brooklyn . . . or not in Diana? “I just don’t know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Though . . .” Jenna stopped, hesitant. She hated bringing the color thing into it. No one ever understood.
“What?” Dodd prodded.
“Well, I saw puce. With the books, I mean. It’s something I associate with synchronicity,” she replied. She braced for questions.
“Puce, huh? What do you do? Sit around memorizing crayon names?”
Jenna let out the nervous laugh she’d been holding on to. Maybe she didn’t give Dodd enough credit for his ability to be an ass. She’d worried he wouldn’t understand the color thing. And yet, even though they’d gotten past that part when he accepted it despite not totally understanding why it made sense to her, he wasn’t just going to let it go without antagonizing her. “Yeah. Kind of.”
“Then I can only imagine the Crayola creation you have stored up there to equal Beasley,” Dodd said.
Jenna contemplated. For the time they’d visited Diana, she’d put Eldred Beasley’s call out of her mind, but now, it came rushing back full force. Acting like she hadn’t heard the comment about color and only the old man’s name, she said, “You’re right. We should do some checking into Beasley. I want to look into other patrons, see what threes we can find surrounding them. I still have no clue why so many people instead of just one, but if the shooter didn’t hit who he was supposed to, I guess that’s why he didn’t leave anything over any eyes as evidence. Figuring out who that real target was is as good a next goal as I can think of.”
Dodd turned the steering wheel right. “I think it’s a worthy plan, but first, I say you go on home and get some rest, give the boyfriend a little hanky-panky, whatever it is you do. I can work up some profiles of the other store patrons to have fresh in the morning.”
Jenna glared at him. “Did you just say ‘hanky-panky’?”
Never mind that she had no idea what Yancy was up to right now. She hadn’t texted him all day, actually. Since their squabble yesterday, he probably needed the space. But maybe she should call . . .
“Don’t make fun of us old-timers,” Dodd said, smiling. “We might have some rust on the genuine works and aren’t up-to-date with what terms define ’em these days, but we remember what they mean, mind you. You, however, ought to get up to ’em while you have access to more than their definitions, if you’re with me.”
“Why the sudden interest in my well-being?” Jenna asked.
Dodd smirked, then his smile turned to a frown. “Let’s just say you still have a family. The career ate mine a long time ago. I have nothing better to do but go back to Quantico and put together profiles. You still do.”
The green of regret washed through Jenna’s mind at Dodd’s words. He sounded so sad that for a moment she almost forgot her disdain for him.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I haven’t been there to tuck my little girl in, but maybe I could catch a few hours of sleep and still be around to have lunch with her before I head back out. Besides, I have some legal stuff I have to deal with.” Hank’s face popped to mind. Jenna sighed. Geez. The phone call from the lawyer regarding Hank’s estate seemed like it was years ago.
“Good plan,” he said. “Can I drop you off?”
• • •
Jenna drove her Blazer back to the house. Despite Dodd’s generous offer and her eyelids drooping dangerously, she hadn’t let him drive her back. Call her paranoid, but nobody could know where she lived who didn’t know already. Even people she worked with. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust them. It was just that anyone who knew could lead someone back to her family whether they intended to or not.
That was why when she pulled into the driveway and saw an unfamiliar vehicle parked in the drive—a white Honda Civic—she leapt out of the Blazer, gun drawn. Around the back of the house, she peeked in the window. No one.
Locks were intact, colors in line. She keyed them one by one, her pulse racing. If the locks were on, her dad, Charley, or Yancy had to have unlocked them and locked them back. Had someone forced them? They never had visitors . . .
She pushed into the door, gun trained to the right to sweep.
Charley lifted both his hands off his coffee mug. “Don’t shoot, Rain Man. I just borrowed the gum. I was gonna give it back.”
Jenna didn’t lower her weapon. Instead, she looked toward the black man sitting across from Charley, also holding a steaming cup. “Who the hell are you?”
The man blinked. “Nice to meet you as well.”
Jenna took a step toward him, gun still aimed. “Just because my brother is having coffee with you doesn’t mean I can’t shoot you. Who are you?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, also raising both hands. “I didn’t mean to offend. I’m Victor. Victor Ellis.”
Jenna’s arm holding the Glock dropped to her side, and she stared, wide-eyed. Hank’s brother.
“Now,” Charley said, “aren’t you glad you didn’t kill him?”
She reached down and flipped on the gun’s safety, holstered it. “That remains to be seen. And don’t think I’m finished deciding I’m not going to yet, either. How did you find this place?”
Victor withdrew the hand he’d extended toward her. “I, um, I’m a cop. You know, with the police force.”
“And I’m the Easter Bunny. Neither knows where we are. No one does.”
Victor smirked. “With all due respect, miss
, someone obviously does.”
Jenna forced herself to breathe evenly. Clearly, she hadn’t planned something about this hideaway perfectly, but the brother of her ex, who she’d only heard about in theory, sitting in her kitchen, telling her of her oversights, wasn’t exactly the way she wanted to find out.
Would you rather it be Claudia?
“Right,” she said. “Could you please be more specific about how you obtained this address?”
“I, uh . . .” Victor’s smart-assery seemed to suddenly disappear.
Charley slurped a sip of coffee, then slammed his mug down. “Well, I’ll tell you if he won’t. Hank left word with his brother that if anything ever happened to him in the line of duty—especially anything to do with Claudia after she got out—that he should keep an eye on Ayana.”
What? Hank, who had spent so much time telling Jenna she was paranoid about Claudia. Hank, who had underestimated Claudia enough that it had gotten him killed.
“So you . . . what? Followed us? Starting after Hank’s death?” Jenna said incredulously.
Now Victor looked her straight in the eye. “Something like that.”
Jenna threw her arms up. This guy obviously didn’t know what he was dealing with, following her after last year. If she’d seen him once, he’d have been as good as dead.
But she hadn’t seen him once.
“You know, a nice, ‘Hi, I’m Hank’s brother, and he asked me to watch over you,’ might’ve been appropriate,” she sneered.
Victor cocked his head. “You’re telling me you’d have just accepted my help?”
Jenna balled her fists. “Touché. So why come out of the shadows now?”
Hank’s brother frowned. “I wanted to warn you about something.”
“And?”
Charley rolled his eyes. “Rain Man, how about you come sit down? Have a cuppa? We can all be friends, talk a bit. You know, not scream at friendly protectors on our side . . . not point guns at them . . .”
She blew out a breath. Her brother, the perpetual optimist. You’d think he’d totally forgotten being stabbed by his mother as a kid, targeted by a nutcase last year, all that good stuff.
Double Vision Page 14