Double Vision

by Colby Marshall

  “Yeah. Dodd was less than thrilled, but that doesn’t exactly seem like an agent’s nastiest moment. We’ve all had stuff like that get turned over on us—”

  Saleda cut Jenna off. “Not quite like this one, Doc. The Cobbler made it to his new home with the padded walls all right, but when he got there, one of the orderlies recognized Feagin McKye from another facility she used to work at.”

  “Oh, boy,” Jenna said. “I feel a headache coming on.”

  “Yep. I could give you a few guesses, but you’re only gonna need one. So I’ll spoil it for you,” Saleda replied. “According to this orderly, Feagin McKye was held as an inpatient under twenty-four/seven suicide watch in the famous fish bowl they used to house and observe schizophrenics off their meds. He was there for three days. The same three days the kidnapping, killing, and dismemberment of the third Cobbler victim took place.”

  “Holy shit,” Jenna mumbled. “How the hell is this just now coming to light? Shouldn’t this have been found out during the trial?”

  “Heh. That’s the best part. Apparently, at this hospital where the orderly saw him, he was checked into the psych ward involuntarily through the emergency room. He was in the emergency room because he’d been found sitting outside a 7-Eleven literally ripping out chunks of his own hair and screaming about being on fire. Somebody called nine-one-one, and he was taken to the ER to be evaluated. He went through triage and signed in as Bunky Ross. Had an ID for Bunky Ross, too. So no one had any reason to think he wasn’t Bunky Ross.”

  “Well, now that we do have reason to think he isn’t Bunky Ross . . . well, who the hell is Bunky Ross?” Jenna shot back.

  “His younger brother. Stepdad adopted him, so his last name’s different,” Saleda said. She chuckled. “If that nurse hadn’t transferred when she did and seen him today, the staff at that hospital would’ve probably gone on forever not knowing it wasn’t Bunky Ross they had over there all that time.”

  “Good grief.” Jenna sighed. “That’s just not even . . . Ugh! I don’t know what to say, but the idea of the whole thing gives me the chills. Shit!”

  If the third victim was killed while Feagin McKye was in lockdown as Bunky Ross, there was no way he was the Cobbler.

  “Shit’s right,” Saleda replied. “Dodd’s been called up there to do a lot of explaining and clean up some really serious messes, not to mention probably grieve the loss of what he thought was an open and shut case.”

  Jenna shook her head in disbelief. “Should’ve been. They had evidence. Feet, for Christ’s sake.”

  “What they had was a really fucked up framing,” Saleda said. “But as much as we might want to help Dodd, we have to keep our eye on the prize. Porter’ll meet you about quarter ’til nine to talk to Molly Keegan. Let’s see what you can get out of ol’ Eldred today, shall we? Good luck.”

  With that, Jenna hung up the phone. Time to put her game face on.

  “I take it that means no breakfast?” Yancy said as Jenna stood and grabbed her dirty slacks from the previous night.

  “Nope, though if CiCi has a coffeemaker, I wouldn’t say no to a cup.”

  “We’re going to them and not bringing her here? Don’t you think Eldred would be more likely to remember things in a place where he’s familiar with the surroundings?” Yancy said.

  “True,” Jenna answered, hesitant. She wasn’t a fan of the thought of taking an Alzheimer’s patient to a brand new place he didn’t know to try to jog his memory, either, but she knew that ethically, it was safer for Molly. “Normally I’d bring her here in a heartbeat, given Eldred’s circumstances, but if the UNSUBs know where he is or has been, I’d rather be cautious about taking Molly anywhere she might be seen in connection with this case. Someone could follow us to her home, maybe, but it’s likely we’d see that coming and react. If this house or Eldred’s place is already being watched somehow, having Molly show up here would be like waving a sign telling the UNSUBs we have a theory that she was the target for some reason. I need to use Molly, but I don’t want to flash it around any more than I have to.”

  Yancy nodded. “Makes sense, though I seriously hope no one’s watching this place. You really think this little girl can help Eldred tell us something about the shootings?” he asked.

  Jenna buttoned her pants, unable to stop thinking about how CiCi probably didn’t yet know she’d spent the night in her home. Maybe CiCi would surprise her and be totally cool about the whole thing, but if it were Jenna’s house, the realization a stranger was there would feel like some sort of violation. Never mind what they’d done in her shower . . .

  Then again, Jenna was more sensitive than most about things like that.

  Liam Tyler’s face the day he’d walked into his office while she and Molly had been chatting flashed into her mind. Maybe it wasn’t just her.

  She smiled, remembering the strange conversation full of numbers and facts about numbers that Molly had stuffed up in her head. So many details for someone so small. Jenna had only fleetingly considered what it was inside Molly’s head that caused the little girl’s intense preoccupation with numbers. After all, Jenna was all too used to people trying to label what it was she did, too. When everything had first come out about how her color associations helped expose Claudia’s crimes, scientists had seemed to come out of the woodwork to give interviews to news show talking heads about their theories on the brain mechanisms that might cause synesthesia. None had proven certainties even today. Molly’s interest and propensity for number memory offered a few suggestions that might be more tangible, but without brain scans and lots of other gratuitous testing, they’d probably never know. Jenna was just fine with that. In her mind, why Molly did what she did didn’t matter. The only label Jenna needed for her was “amazing”; after all, Molly could do things she’d never been able to. Jenna had associated colors with feelings and people since she could remember, but at Molly’s age, she probably couldn’t have explained to anyone how her brain worked to process the associations. She still couldn’t most of the time. Heck, at that point in her life, she wasn’t even sure she’d noticed she made the associations in the first place.

  Molly knew a lot of numbers, but she also somehow possessed a gift for putting people at ease. She wondered if Molly was aware yet of how unique she was.

  The royal purple she had seen in conjunction with Molly flashed in. Seven, always considered the most magical number. Seven Wonders of the World. Triple sevens in slots made a winner. A lucky number. The seventh day finished off the week, a sacred number.

  Maybe one day, when the danger had passed and the little girl’s color association with a number was no longer quite so scary because the Triple Shooter had long since been caught and thrown in jail, she could have this conversation with Molly. For whatever reason, she knew Molly would like it.

  Seven pillars of wisdom in Proverbs made it a number of understanding. Sevens in numerology were the thinkers . . . seekers of the truth. She’d always seen seven in the same family as problem-solving Tyrian purple, a shade fixed in Jenna’s mind as one close to ripe red grapes. It was a number of solutions.

  Purple, the seventh color of the rainbow. A number of completion.

  “All I know is, I think somehow she’ll put something together for Eldred we can’t.”

  45

  Molly was excited. She couldn’t help it. She’d been trusted with a mission, and she knew she could do it.

  She sat with the crayons and paper Dr. Ramey had laid in front of her on the kitchen table, next to Mr. Beasley, the man from the grocery store. She’d asked him to color with her, just like Dr. Ramey said. She chose a dark golden yellow, and she drew tiny circles on the bottom of the sheet, thinking of the secret Dr. Ramey had told her and what she needed her to help with. Dr. Ramey hadn’t told her how to help, other than giving her the paper, but she knew it was because Dr. Ramey trusted her. Way more than other people tru
sted kids. That was why she wouldn’t let Dr. Ramey down.

  Next to her, Mr. Beasley used a gray crayon to color in a very good cat he’d done. Maybe he was an artist before he forgot how to be. She’d have to ask him later. But for now, she needed to focus on her own picture.

  She picked up a brown and drew a big rectangle. The one Mr. Beasley had sat behind in the grocery store.

  “Mr. Beasley, do you remember when we were at the grocery store and all the loud noises happened?” she asked.

  She didn’t stop coloring, but only because she felt like she shouldn’t. It would make him nervous, she thought. She didn’t like it when other people looked at her drawings before they were finished, either.

  “Grocery store,” he muttered. “Yes, I think I remember that.”

  She doodled different boxes on the shelves. She wrote “Fruit Loops” on one, even though her words didn’t fit inside the lines. “When you saw me there, were you afraid?”

  It was a personal question, she knew, and she was a little sorry for asking it out loud with other people watching. She wasn’t sure what to say. So she just decided to talk to him about it, and it was what she really did wonder. But she’d been afraid, so it was okay with her if he was.

  He put down the gray crayon and selected a pink. He drew in the cat’s nose. “I was a bit. Yes.”

  Despite knowing she shouldn’t, she pointed to where the cat’s tail should be. “He doesn’t have a tail yet.”

  Mr. Beasley looked at her and nodded. “My cat Mobley didn’t have a tail, either.”

  Molly cocked her head. She’d never seen a cat without a tail.

  “Was he born that way?”

  Mr. Beasley shrugged. “Dunno. He took up at our house. He was like that since I knew him, though.”

  Molly nodded. That made sense.

  “Was he a nice cat?”

  Mr. Beasley drew in red curtains on the window Mobley sat in front of. “I liked him.”

  “Where is he now?” Molly asked.

  “Oh, he died. Long time ago. He was mine when I was little,” he said.

  Feeling like she’d intruded a lot, Molly picked up a red and drew some splotches on the floor. “Like the people in the grocery store?”

  Mr. Beasley shook his head, now drawing a chair beside Mobley. “No. He just died one day. By himself.”

  “Yeah,” Molly said, sadness pooling up in her stomach in a way that made her feel a little like throwing up. G-Ma hadn’t died by herself at all. That was why Dr. Ramey wanted her to talk to Mr. Beasley. Because when she had talked to him before, he’d remembered something that might help catch who hurt G-Ma, but now he’d forgotten it again. “That was scary. I remember when I heard the pops and went to hide. Then it got quiet again, and I came to your aisle.”

  Mr. Beasley stopped coloring. He scrunched his forehead, looking confused. Then he looked up, and his eyes stared far away.

  “Yes,” he mumbled.

  He picked up a black crayon, and in the middle of the picture of his living room with his cat, he started to sketch something that didn’t make sense in the rest of the drawing to Molly. She didn’t know if she had upset him, because his coloring had gotten faster, but her stomach tickled. The look on his face reminded her of Pop-Pop’s when he couldn’t find his keys but needed to in a hurry.

  And somehow she knew right now that she should be very, very quiet.

  • • •

  Eldred scribbled as fast as he could, so afraid of the thought slipping away again. The picture, the one that had nudged him so many times but slid away before he could grab hold of it, was finally there again.

  The little girl had been in the row, and the man in the mask had arrived. He had raised his gun to shoot . . . her.

  Eldred hadn’t been able to look away. The big black weapon had pointed past him, and as he’d stared, too frozen and terrified to do anything else, the man’s shirt had lifted with the raising of his arms.

  The man’s side had been white, like the rest of his own skin, but something strange and black snaked there. Eldred’s picture wouldn’t be nearly as ornate and detailed as the image was in real life, but he needed to tell people about it before it went away.

  He drew, faster and faster, muttering under his breath. “Looked like it was real, almost like an extra body part . . .”

  Eldred pointed at the sides of his sketch, and the little girl leaned in to look closer.

  “See here?” he said, hoping she’d understand. She would. He knew she would. “The edges around here were so light it somehow made it look like it grew out of his skin . . . then it got darker here, and the further in, the more it was like a picture on TV or in a movie. So clear. Lots of different colors really close to each other, but all dark and nearly the same.”

  Why did he know that? He’d been too far away to see that kind of detail, and yet . . .

  “Looked like it grew from him,” he repeated, trying to think of even better words that matched what he’d seen, since that didn’t quite describe it. “Or like it had ripped through his skin and was what was underneath all along.”

  He picked up the red crayon, added some gentle streaks around the picture the way they had been, then some pinks of different colors, all the while lamenting his inability to draw it just so.

  Eldred closed his eyes, trying to access any other specifics he could about the picture. Tears stung his eyes, the image slipping.

  He felt something warm close over his hand, and he opened his eyes again.

  Tiny fingers clasped around his hand where he still held the crayon poised to the paper.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Beasley. You did a good job.”

  46

  Jenna stared wide-eyed as Molly took the paper from Eldred Beasley and sauntered over from the kitchen table. She’d arranged to have Eldred brought to Molly to do this, but even she hadn’t been sure how the little girl would manage it or what they were trying to get from Eldred’s memory. But lo and behold, they’d watched as she’d brilliantly extracted a drawing of the three-headed dragon tattoo, the piece of the puzzle Eldred had seemed to lose over and over again.

  “Can we give this kid a job?” Porter said out of the corner of his mouth so Raine Tyler, who was folding laundry a few feet away, wouldn’t hear.

  “I wish,” Jenna said truthfully. Who knew? Maybe the kid had a career in psychology one day.

  “Unreal,” Yancy echoed.

  CiCi stood next to him, silent, her mouth hanging open.

  “Here you go,” Molly said, handing the paper over to Jenna. She repeated everything to them Eldred had told her, though they’d been close enough to listen in.

  “Molly, you’re amazing,” Jenna said, accepting the picture. No truer words had ever been spoken. “Thank you.”

  “No problem,” Molly said. “I like coloring.”

  “Me, too,” Jenna replied.

  Molly shifted from side to side, and it seemed like she wanted to say something else. Weird. Usually, the little girl spat out whatever came into her head.

  “What’s up, Molly?” Jenna asked.

  “Um, it’s just . . .” She looked at CiCi. “Would you mind if maybe Eldred came over sometimes? I think . . . I think he needs it.”

  Jenna couldn’t help the smile that stretched over her face. The kid had it. Whatever “it” was.

  “I’ll talk to your mom about it, okay?” CiCi said.

  Molly nodded, then scampered back over to the table to color some more.

  “So, random tattoo. Where do we go next?” Jenna wondered out loud.

  “Case the tattoo parlors in town? Though he could’ve gotten it anywhere,” Yancy said.

  “Surely there’s a better place to start than the Yellow Pages,” Jenna said. “People with ink are really into their art. From what Eldred described, this thing is pret
ty intricate. Surely we know someone with tats who can tell us some of the best artists in town we could run this by. The Triple Shooter’s murders are all within a certain radius. He wouldn’t go states away just for the tattoo, right?”

  “Not a clue. Irv might have one, though,” Porter filled in. “Irv has tattoos.”

  Porter was right. Their technical analyst had a sleeve of them, and he was back at the next stop they needed to make anyway.

  “Yancy, will you guys be okay to head home without us?” Jenna asked, catching her boyfriend’s eye. She knew he would be fine, but she wanted to acknowledge how much she hated leaving him. She wished he could come with them, just be a part of the team.

  He nodded, and something mischievous flashed in his eyes. “Get back to headquarters, Dr. Ramey. You’ve got a tattoo artist to find.”

  • • •

  The second they walked in the door, Saleda didn’t give Jenna a chance to speak.

  “You were right. Sevens in all of the other Triple Shooter murders. Based on the time she left the restaurant where the takeout receipt came from, the shooter saw the threes line up around Wendy Ulrich right around seven p.m. Victim two, Maitlyn O’Meara, was found off of Exit 7B. Ainsley Nickerson’s birthdate was, get this, seven, seven, nineteen seventy-seven.”

  The news of the tattoo died on Jenna’s lips with the surprise. “How would he know her birthday if he just happened to see threes align by chance?”

  Saleda shook her head. “We’re working on that. But he had to have either known her or come across it. Too big a coincidence. Still haven’t found the seven connection with Brooklyn Satterhorne, but I’m guessing it’s only a matter of time. And no luck with finding anyone or anything that appears in both the Student Life Center courtyard surveillance and the bank surveillance, unfortunately. No creepers stalking Pesha Josephy in the bank footage, either. Though we did find Pesha’s other three. She made her deposit that day with the teller at station number three.”