Double Vision

by Colby Marshall

  “Hey! You said I wasn’t a suspect!”

  She leaned back. “You’re not, Kenny. But that doesn’t mean you can’t help us catch who murdered her. You have a mom? A sister?”

  He licked his teeth. “Yeah. Both. What does it matter?”

  “This guy who murdered Brooklyn, he’s killed several women, Kenny. He’s going to kill more. Could be someone else you know. Your family. Think about it.”

  He stared at the floor for a long minute, his eyes changing from guarded to concerned.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  Jenna cocked her head. Who needed the time it took to find a judge to sign off on a search, then perform the thing, when you could have the annoying teenager with a conscience save you all that trouble? “What do you have?”

  27

  Justice scratched his elbow hard as he stood waiting for the shop owner to retrieve the box of bullets. Itching. Always the itching.

  “You okay, buddy?” the shop owner asked, laying the bullets on the counter and tapping a few cash register keys.

  Justice squinted, scratched harder. “Yeah, yeah. My psoriasis, acting up.”

  He’d learned long ago psoriasis was a good answer for the itching if anyone asked. Much better than explaining them.

  His nubby nails dug in, clawed at his flesh. It burned inside. He had to get this done. He couldn’t help it. He’d seen it, had to do it. He already knew it needed to happen.

  “That’ll be twenty-one forty-two,” the man said.

  Justice dropped his right hand from his left elbow and dug it into his pocket. Two bills, a handful of change. He dumped it on the counter, not wanting to so much as brush the man’s hand. Touching other people rarely went well.

  Itching. God, the itching!

  The shop owner swept it off the counter into his hand, then tipped his ball cap. “Thank you much, sir. Until next time.”

  Justice took the box and walked out the door into the afternoon sun, dreading the next part. But he had to keep moving. There was no stopping it now.

  • • •

  This time when Jenna and Saleda made it to Diana Delmont’s house, Diana was sitting on the screened porch, rocking on a wooden swing slowly, back and forth.

  “Diana?” Jenna said, giving warning she was in the vicinity. Diana’s mother had told the girl they were coming, she knew, but after a friend’s murder, sneaking up on someone wasn’t a good idea for more than one reason.

  The girl didn’t turn. “Do you ever think about waking up one day and realizing everything was all a big joke? Like you’re starring in some reality TV show no one told you about, like in that Jim Carrey movie?”

  Jenna sat down next to Diana on the swing. “More than you know,” she said truthfully.

  Diana tapped her white-tennis-shoe-clad toes on the wood planks of the floor. “I feel like I’m gonna find out this was all a big candid-camera thing. Or Brooklyn playing some awful prank on me or something.”

  Jenna blew out a deep breath. The perfect opening, sadly.

  “Actually, Diana, I wanted to ask you about something like that,” Jenna said.

  The girl didn’t respond.

  From the large pocket inside her tan peacoat, Jenna produced the printouts of the Snapchats they’d taken from those saved on Kenny Ingle’s phone and unfolded the stack of them. Kenny had explained he’d kept them around to send to his friends. The little punk had been doing the same thing to Brooklyn he’d claimed was a bitchy move she pulled on her own friends, but then again, after seeing the saved shots, Jenna wasn’t sure she blamed him for letting his buddies in on the “crazy” of the girl pursuing him.

  She slid the stack of printouts into Diana’s lap. “Diana, I need you to tell me if you were with Brooklyn when any of these were taken. If you can try to remember . . .”

  Diana glanced down at the top photo: a snap of a test paper belonging to a girl named Effie. Brooklyn had apparently graded it in class during one of those “Pass your paper to the person on your right” exercises.

  Jenna had specifically chosen only snaps where the incident shown or talked about in the message could’ve been seen by others and so had to have taken place somewhat in public at a time when Brooklyn could’ve been near Diana. The last part was important, since the threes lined up with Diana’s books. Brooklyn had to have been with Diana when the Triple Shooter saw her and the alignment of threes.

  Diana looked back up quickly. “I didn’t see this, no,” she said.

  “Were you present, or could you have been present, when this was taken?” Saleda asked.

  The girl glanced at Saleda. “I don’t . . . I don’t know. Maybe. What difference does it make?”

  You don’t want to know. The survivor’s guilt was bad enough. Just wait until Diana found out that her books were what attracted attention to Brooklyn—or sealed her fate, anyway. Jenna hadn’t been looking forward to explaining it, but she’d known all along she’d have to at some point. Now was as good a time as any ever would be.

  “Diana, this is going to be tough to hear, but it seems as though the killer may have noticed Brooklyn while the two of you were together,” Jenna said slowly.

  “What? How could you possibly know something like that?” Diana practically shrieked.

  “This killer has a very specific MO, a method of operation so distinct it allows us to qualify that a victim is almost assuredly his victim as opposed to that of another random or even serial shooter. This particular MO always involves the lining up of the number three,” Saleda said.

  Diana’s hand flew to her mouth, then she started shaking her head. “The Triple . . . you were looking at my books! My Latin and . . . oh, God!”

  The girl leaned over and vomited all over the wooden porch.

  Jenna looked away from the mess but placed her hand on Diana’s back and rubbed, just like she would for Ayana when she was ill. Jesus. One day her daughter would be this big. God help her.

  “I’ll get some water and paper towels,” Saleda said.

  Jenna heard the porch door close behind her. “I know this is a shock, Diana. But you have to keep remembering this is not your fault. This was the doing of a sick, demented individual. That your books were present near that individual was a coincidence. You were doing nothing wrong by having them with you, by carrying them. Nothing.”

  The girl heaved again, this time spitting out only whatever grossness lingered in her mouth. She coughed, then sobbed. “I know that, but how can I feel that?”

  I know. Jenna couldn’t do anything or say anything, but she could sympathize more than this girl could ever understand. After all, if she’d never figured out what Claudia was, maybe Dad and Charley wouldn’t be in danger now. She knew it wasn’t rational—Claudia had already been hurting them anyway. But somehow, in her head, she’d caused the trouble. Should’ve let someone else come to the rescue. In Jenna’s mind, if someone else had been the hero she tried to be, maybe last year wouldn’t have happened. Hank would still be here, and Victor would still have his brother. Ayana would still have a dad.

  “You might always feel it, Diana. I won’t lie to you. But the best way to ease that particular pain is to try to help us figure out who did this,” Jenna replied. Jesus. She’d just told the girl she wouldn’t lie to her, then in the next breath, she’d told the tallest tale in her recent memory. She’d had to do it, because they needed to find this guy to save someone else in the future from this same fate Diana was grappling with—and worse—but the truth was, assisting the investigation probably wouldn’t save Diana in the slightest.

  Saleda returned with Mrs. Delmont, who traded places with Jenna and properly pampered her little girl, wiping her mouth and handing her a cup of fizzy liquid. She laid a damp paper towel on the back of Diana’s neck and used another to swipe at her daughter’s brow.

  “I’m sorr
y, Mama,” Diana said.

  “For what, baby?” Mrs. Delmont asked, patting Diana’s cheeks and forehead with the cloth.

  “For getting sick all over the porch,” Diana said weakly.

  Mrs. Delmont pulled Diana into a side hug and held her daughter’s head to her shoulder with the palm of her hand. “Oh, sweetheart. It’s okay. It’s nothing a hose won’t fix.” Mrs. Delmont turned to Jenna. “Maybe we need to finish this another time. I think this might be too much too soon—”

  Diana stood up and vigorously shook her head. “No, Mama. I need to do this. Now.”

  She grabbed up the stack of Snapchat printouts from the porch windowsill, where Jenna had moved them out of harm’s way a few moments before, and sifted through them one by one. At about the fourth, she stopped. Her eyes watered, and she bit her lip, fighting more tears.

  After a long moment, she handed it to Jenna.

  The picture showed a graying man in tattered clothes lying on what looked like some kind of stone pathway. He seemed to be asleep. Next to him sat a yellow shoe box, and a few empty soda cans were strewn on the ground nearby.

  “I wasn’t there when she took this picture, but . . . I know why she took it,” Diana muttered, looking at her feet.

  Ash gray flashed in. Guilt.

  “Why did she take it?” Jenna asked.

  “Well, maybe she didn’t take it because of this, but . . .”

  “Go ahead, Diana. We’re not here to judge you,” Saleda pressed.

  “Or Brooklyn,” Jenna breathed.

  Diana glanced at Jenna, then back toward the photo. She wrung her hands. “Earlier that day, Brooklyn had . . .”

  Jenna didn’t push. She let Diana take her time. Clearly whatever the girl had to say, she wasn’t proud of her friend for it.

  “Brooklyn had been mean to that guy. He stays there, outside the college pretty much every day. He doesn’t bother anyone. He just sits there with his box. Sometimes people will give him a sandwich from inside the dining hall, and some kids even toss their change from buying lunch into his box,” Diana said.

  “And Brooklyn?” Saleda prodded.

  Diana continued to stare at her feet. “Brooklyn knocked over his shoe box that day. On purpose.”

  Several colors assaulted Jenna’s vision in rapid succession as she imagined the living, breathing Brooklyn taking an old homeless man to task just for being where and who he was. The plum she associated with hostility flashed in. It morphed into the orchid of superiority.

  Jenna closed her eyes, pictured the photos of Brooklyn taken at the hospital morgue. Auburn, rich and bright, flashed in. Then a flicker of green. That was the Triple Shooter’s green three, she knew. But the auburn. She’d seen it somewhere recently . . .

  She opened her eyes with a start. Calliope Jones.

  “Thank you, Diana. That’s exactly what we needed to know. I’m sorry to rush off, but we have to go. Now that you’ve given us this important piece of information, there’s someone else I need to talk to.”

  28

  Jenna hit the answer button and turned on speakerphone. “I hope you’re about to tell me where Calliope Jones is, because she isn’t home.”

  “Luckily, due to an eight-millimeter DARPA tracking chip her parents had installed in her neck without her knowledge after a failed attempt to run away at age ten, all I had to do was hack into the air force’s GPS control segment and lock in on the signal. After accessing their secret databases, I was able to learn she’s at a very exclusive, clandestine book signing at Two Fifteen Dradenburg,” Irv said.

  “Right. Air force GPS segment,” Jenna said, throwing the SUV into reverse and backing up to have room to return the way she came. “That or you checked her Twitter feed.”

  “Hey. Be nice to your friendly FBI technical analyst. Just because this time I was an able body in front of a computer screen who could find out where she might be using Google doesn’t mean next time you won’t need info only I can obtain without getting arrested because the government happens to pay me to find it.”

  “You’re right, Irv. I’m sorry. Your skills are legendary, and only you could find me a book signing on Twitter quite as well as you did,” Jenna said, letting out a laugh. She peeled out of the parking lot of Calliope’s apartment building. The woman hadn’t answered her cell, either. This would explain it. “But who are you kidding? Even if you weren’t FBI, you’re way too good to get arrested. Two Fifteen Dradenburg is a thrift-shop bookstore, right?” she asked.

  “Ooh. I do love having my ego gently massaged while I do your bidding,” Irv said as he pecked a few more keys on his end. “Yeah, looks like a classy joint. I recommend taking a can of Cheez Whiz to go with the wine.”

  “They can’t all be on Oprah, Irv.”

  “Damn right. Can’t all make Psychiatry Today, either,” he replied.

  “I was never in that magazine, smart-ass. It doesn’t exist. I’ll be back in touch in a little while. In the meantime, send anything and everything you can find on the grocery store patrons we have listed to Dodd, Teva, and Porter.”

  “Already on it,” he said.

  Jenna hung up, then glanced at Saleda out of the corner of her eye. “The color auburn—the one that I saw at Diana’s that made me want to find Calliope—I saw that same color here inside Calliope Jones’s place when we were looking at some painting, but I can’t remember what it was to save my life. I had to rush out the second we started talking about it that day, because my pager went off about Brooklyn.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll find out,” Saleda said.

  When they arrived at the tiny hole-in-the-wall bookstore, a bell tinkled to announce their arrival.

  The store was practically empty, save for the person behind the counter and Calliope Jones, this time wearing a crisp white button-down shirt and sitting behind a rickety table stacked with many copies of a single book. One was turned up on a small easel, and it bore her name in big pink letters along with the title Gifts of the Greeks.

  Jenna and Saleda marched straight to the table.

  “Ms. Jones, we need to ask you a few more questions,” Jenna said.

  Calliope’s mouth formed a smug, thin-lipped smile that dripped contempt. “Agent Ramey, I’m in the middle of a book signing. If you’d needed to talk to me, we had plenty of time during our prior get-together. If you require something further, we’ll have to schedule an appointment at another time.”

  Jenna glanced around at the empty store. “Yes, I can tell you’re busy. However, this is a matter of life and death, as I’m sure you can understand. Didn’t the Greeks believe in some sort of karma?”

  “Not exactly,” Saleda piped up.

  Jenna shot her a look but quickly turned back to Calliope.

  Calliope, however, had glanced interestedly at Saleda. Slowly, she returned her eyes to Jenna as though she’d much rather have this conversation with the woman beside her, who was clearly more intelligent in all things Greek.

  “Your colleague is correct. The Greeks were more concerned with fate. Destiny, if you will.”

  “But didn’t they constantly have bad things happening to them if they did something wrong? Look at Ulysses!” Jenna sputtered.

  Calliope gave a patronizing laugh. “Odysseus wasn’t doomed to not make it home for years because of karma, Agent Ramey. He angered a god. That’s a different story entirely. Gods punish those who anger them.”

  The auburn flashed in again.

  “That’s exactly what I want to know about. The painting we were looking at when I had to leave your apartment the other day. What was that painting again? Or rather, what were the mythological beings in the painting?”

  Calliope sighed, resigned. “The Erinyes. The Furies.”

  The human-like forms came back full force in Jenna’s head: the tortured man, the stabbed figure, the three angry, sp
irit-like women. One with a torch . . .

  “The Furies. Goddesses of vengeance. We need to know more about them,” Saleda said.

  Saleda knew about Greek mythology?

  If only the two of them could’ve been sharing their two brains—one with color associations, the other with this knowledge—maybe they could’ve avoided Calliope Jones altogether.

  “Very good.” Calliope nodded at Saleda. She folded her hands on the table, perfectly manicured nails shining gently in the low light of the store. “The three goddesses of vengeance, sometimes known as the Daughters of Night. The latter is a misnomer, though. They were the children of Mother Earth, or Gaea, and Uranus.”

  Thank goodness we have their family tree.

  “Did they each perform a different function?” Jenna asked, remembering only one holding a torch. She couldn’t quite recall the other two. One might’ve been draped in cloth . . .

  “Oh, yes. Quite. Tisiphone was the avenger of murder, Alecto represented constant anger, and Megaera, oh, Megaera,” Calliope said, laughing jovially, as though thinking of an old friend. “She was the jealous one.”

  “Tisiphone avenged murder,” Jenna repeated, confused. The other two had been named with traits, but only the one seemed to have a specific purpose.

  Calliope nodded. “Specifically matricide and patricide, though technically she avenged all homicide. We’ll just call that her pet peeve. She was described in the Aeneid as guarding the gates of Tartarus itself wearing a blood-wet dress.”

  “She was the cloth-draped figure in the painting?” Jenna asked.

  “You’re thinking of Orestes’s mother, my sweet. She is wrapped in red cloth in this particular painting and has a golden dagger protruding from her chest. The three Furies are torturing Orestes. He had killed his mother, you see.”

  Jenna closed her eyes and found she could recount the painting better than she imagined she could’ve. The auburn burned through again. The colors lined up, so it was possible these were the voices the Triple Shooter heard in his head. Still, the concept of a homicidal maniac murdering in the name of avengers of homicides sounded either too good to be true or like it had to be stand-up material, especially given that as far as Jenna knew, none of the shooting victims had killed anyone.