Double Vision

by Colby Marshall

  “Yep. My dad’s okay, I guess, but he doesn’t really act like a dad. Only seen him a couple of times in my life. He doesn’t call or want to be my dad or anything. Just met me ’cause Mommy thought I should meet him. Not sure why, but she seemed to think it was important. He was nice enough, but I got the idea he didn’t really want a kid. Mommy always says he’s just a kid himself. Liam asked if he could adopt me, and I said sure.” Molly crouched in front of the desk where she was using her pointer finger to trace one of the patterns carved into the wood. “Mommy and Liam were going to change my name to Molly Tyler when he did, but they ended up leaving it.”

  Jenna examined a piece of abstract brass art atop the desk. “Why’s that?”

  Molly giggled, her focus still on the desk’s intricate etchings as she now traced the scalloped valance that hung down from the front edge. “G-Ma. She made an awful fuss about how if they did, she’d be the only Keegan in the house.” She laughed again. “They’ve never found out G-Ma was doing it for me.”

  “You didn’t want to change it?” Jenna asked, now curious. The revelation that G-Ma, Raine’s mother, and Molly had the same last name hadn’t been a surprise to her. She’d read in the file on Molly that Irv had put together that Raine had been using her maiden name when she gave birth to Molly, so Jenna was already aware Molly’s parents had never married.

  Molly shrugged. “Tyler’s okay, but I like Keegan. I was so used to my name having the number of letters it does . . . it might be silly, but I didn’t want my letter number to change. It just would’ve felt weird. Liam’s fun, but he never would’ve understood.”

  Jenna looked at her and smiled when she found Molly was staring up at her, eyes hopeful. Desires validation. Approval.

  “Well, I get it. You can like your new stepdad a lot and still want to be you at the same time,” Jenna said. She turned to face a wall with some sort of clay or plaster artwork adorning it. Her gaze drifted up the wall and down, skimming the rows of circular plates, each with the impression of something in the middle, the entire plate painted to its own theme. They looked almost like some kind of fossils.

  Molly joined her in front of the display. “Aren’t they pretty?”

  “Oh, yes,” Jenna replied. “What are they?”

  “They’re rock molds. Volcanic rock molds, to be exact,” Molly said, taking a step toward them. She lifted her finger and, without touching the mold right in front of her, traced the line of its impression. “See how in this one, there’s a gap in the print here? That’s because these kinds of rocks are formed when magma is erupted from a volcano and becomes lava or gets trapped in a pocket inside the earth. Either way, it cools and solidifies, but sometimes gas bubbles get trapped inside. They leave spaces in the rock, like this one.” She grinned at Jenna, clearly proud of knowing so much about something Liam had taught her.

  “Your stepdad has a bunch, huh?”

  She nodded, eager. “Oh, yeah. He’s an enthusiast. Makes imprints of his favorites.”

  Jenna smiled, but on the inside, she was cringing. Sure, everyone had their own thing, but how boring could you get? Rocks as a hobby? Stamps were about as close as anyone she knew had come, and at least they were compact enough that you could confine your dull-as-dishwater pastime in a scrapbook or two instead of needing to take up entire shelves and walls.

  “So Liam’s a rock collector, then?” Jenna asked.

  “Well, not to get too technical, but I’m more of a mineral collector than a rock collector.”

  Jenna whirled around to see Liam Tyler standing in the office doorway.

  “How interesting,” Jenna said. She turned away from the wall of rock imprints toward the large print of Da Vinci’s The Last Supper hanging behind Liam’s third-generation desk. The colors were much more vivid than in any of the versions of the painting she’d seen.

  Molly stepped up beside her, grinning. “It’s the restored version. Isn’t it cool? I like it because of all the stuff to count.”

  Liam stepped into the office and put a hand on Molly’s shoulder. “Molly, I doubt Dr. Ramey has spent nearly as much time counting the apostles’ dishes as you have, hon.”

  “The feet don’t add up, did you notice? Not as many feet as people in the picture,” Molly said.

  The little girl stepped toward the canvas and gestured to each visible foot with her pointer finger, counting them as she went. “Sixteen. But there are thirteen people, so there ought to be twenty-six feet. You can see Jesus’s easily, though. If you don’t count his, you can only see fourteen feet, not twenty-four. And the cups. Eleven cups, twelve men. Other than Jesus, I mean. Thirteen with him. Have you ever noticed that stuff before, Dr. Ramey?”

  Jenna smiled. “No, I haven’t, but it is fascinating, Molly.”

  Next to her, Jenna felt Liam stiffen, and she blew out a breath. Contradicting him in front of his stepdaughter didn’t make her feel warm and fuzzy inside, but it was in her best interests to make friends with the little girl. And for that to happen, she needed Molly to feel like she was genuinely interested in what she had to say.

  “Sorry to disrupt the tour,” Liam said. “I just need to grab a file and I’ll be on my way.”

  Liam rounded the corner of the desk, pulled the drawer open, removed a manila folder, and closed the drawer. “Molly, show Dr. Ramey around if you must, but don’t be too long, and don’t touch. The mineral molds and the artwork are fragile, and fingerprint oil will degrade them over time.” He turned to Jenna and smiled. “I’m sorry to be a bit uptight. Expensive hobbies bring out the stickler in a man, I suppose. Let me know if you need me.”

  With that, Liam left, and Jenna and Molly were alone again in Liam’s office.

  “He’s protective of his rock imprints,” Molly said matter-of-factly.

  Jenna nodded, glancing back to the painting of The Last Supper.

  “Do you know about the book The Da Vinci Code, Molly?” Jenna asked.

  Molly frowned and sighed. “Mom won’t let me read it until I’m older. But I did watch part of the movie on one of the paid channels,” she admitted sheepishly.

  Jenna smiled, thinking of how the number of cups in the painting contributed to the plot. “You’re really going to like that book one day.” Now to tempt her to talk about numbers in this case. “What other things have you counted in the painting?”

  Molly’s toothy smile came out again. The little girl was clearly eager to be asked about her favorite subject. “Well, five people are wearing something blue, and you can only see twenty-five hands, but there should be twenty-six.” She gestured toward the right-hand side of the painting at a man who appeared to be holding up a number one. “He’s the only guy who doesn’t have two hands.”

  The little girl seemed to be right. The figure’s left hand didn’t show. “What’s that one about, do you suppose?”

  “The finger?” Molly asked.

  “Mm-hm,” Jenna said, examining the painting herself. For everything she knew in the world, the six-year-old had one-upped her this time. Jenna was no art historian.

  “It’s doubting Thomas, so probably to do with the finger he poked in Jesus’s nail holes to test the evidence. That’s what Liam thinks, anyway.”

  “You and Liam talk about the painting a good bit?”

  “Eh, not that much. I’ve told him stuff I’ve noticed before. Like the dishes. There are eighteen flat dishes, but only three big ones. So that means fifteen small ones even though only thirteen people. Then there’s the one big empty dish in front of Jesus, and the two with food on the sides. Three big dishes could be for the Holy Trinity maybe.”

  Purple flashed into Jenna’s mind against her will, a royal purple, deep in hue. Strange. She usually associated the number three with an avocado green, not purple. And yet . . .

  She’d seen purple at the crime scene, and every time she thought about the Triple Shoot
er’s spree at the grocery store, a purple nagged her in addition to the similarly jewel-toned blue she’d seen there. The blue she already felt sure was submission to an uncontrollable urge. But the purple . . . That purple was close to the color of impulse or narcissism, but the shade was a bit different.

  No matter. She could come back to the color association later. Now that she’d finally gotten Molly on not just numbers, but the number three, no way she was about to waste the opportunity. “Any other theories about the three?”

  Molly shrugged. “Threes are used all the time in religious stuff. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one thing, but then Jesus took three days to rise from the grave, too. In fact, the number three is used four hundred and sixty-seven times in the Bible.”

  Jenna bit her lip to hold back the laugh. “Did you count those?”

  “Googled it,” Molly answered. “Three gets used a lot. Three virtues of Christ, that kind of thing, but that’s normal. It’s used any time deities come into play in all kinds of religions. Hindu, Buddha, Wicca, everything.”

  At this Jenna snorted a little.

  “What?” Molly asked, wheeling around to face her.

  Jenna shook her head. “It’s just that I’ve never met a six-year-old who knows as much as you do about world religions, that’s all.”

  Molly flashed her smile again, proud of herself. “Thanks!”

  “Don’t mention it. So you’re saying The Last Supper could just as likely be a Wiccan painting as a Christian one?” Jenna asked. The Triple Shooter was obsessed with threes for a reason, and when obsessions took root, religion could very well be the source of them. People tended to fixate on ideas entrenched in something they already had strong ties to, a broader subject they themselves held dear. Politics, sports, religion. All three were big. Even if a person displayed a compulsion such as hand washing, the behavior and the reasons for it often stemmed from beliefs about another core life principle.

  Purple flashed in again. Royalty. A color association even people without grapheme–color synesthesia had.

  “I doubt it’s likely,” Molly answered, her voice a bit annoyed. “After all, it does have Jesus in it.”

  Stupid question. She’d phrase it better this time, because the more she thought about it, the more she was sure the purple she kept associating, side by side, with the royal blue she saw in conjunction with the Triple Shooter matched the shade she associated with royalty. The jump from royalty to deity wasn’t hard to make. “Right. But let’s say you saw a painting with threes in it. A new painting you’ve never seen. Let’s pretend you knew the painting was religious but didn’t know which religion. What might you think?”

  “Could be anything,” Molly said. “Depends on what else was in the painting.”

  Duh, Jenna. The crime scenes of the Triple Shooter’s victims flashed in, one by one. This was either a really good idea or a really bad one.

  “Just for argument’s sake, let’s say the painting had the number three involved, then there were women,” Jenna said.

  “How many?”

  Several. But no. The Triple Shooter, until now, had killed one at a time.

  “Just one, maybe. Let’s say there’s more than one painting, but they’re each of a different woman.”

  “Okay. What are they doing?”

  Resting in peace? “Sleeping,” Jenna blurted.

  “Okay. Sleeping women, one in each painting. What else is in the paintings?”

  What could she tell this kid without giving away important case facts they’d withheld? “How about . . .” The case details flitted through her mind. Each of the Triple Shooter’s first three victims had at least one chest wound. “They all have a circle right here.” Jenna indicated the middle of her breastbone.

  Molly scrunched her eyebrows, deep in thought. “Geez, Dr. Ramey. I’m not sure I know. Once you take out the numbers, I’m kind of out of it. I mean, there are the Triple Goddesses in Wicca. That’s what I thought of first when you said more than one woman, I guess. They correspond to the three phases of the moon, I think. Full, waxing, and waning, but even then some people say there’s a fourth unseen goddess. The Celts had three goddesses. Maid, mother, crone. What paintings are these? How many of them are there?”

  Ten. “Oh, never mind, Molly. I was just speculating. We should probably get back upstairs, yeah?”

  Molly nodded. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Jenna followed Molly back upstairs to the living room, where they found Liam and Raine sitting at the coffee table, looking through papers from the file folder Liam had retrieved from the office. When Liam noticed them, he stood.

  “Going through Rita’s lease at the apartment she rented to figure out what we’re responsible for after the incident,” he said. Then, he frowned at Molly, who had blanched at the mention of her grandmother. “Sorry, Molls. Hey! I bet you didn’t think to show Dr. Ramey your new invention, did you? I’m guessing not, since you left it on my nightstand last night. Run up and get it, huh? I bet she’d like it.”

  Molly’s eyes lit up again. “Yeah!”

  She dashed away up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  “Sorry about that. I’ve been trying my best to get Raine through the logistics of Rita’s passing, and Molly through having maybe seen her grandmother’s shooter while she was with her at the grocery store, but those two things don’t always align in a simple way.”

  “Molly’ll be okay,” Jenna replied. “Kids are resilient. Do let me know if you need me to recommend a good child psychologist, though. I’d be happy to give you some names.”

  Liam Tyler smiled warmly, but he shook his head. “I doubt that’ll be necessary, Dr. Ramey. Even if we’re stretched a bit thin, Molly has a good support system here at home, and anything else she needs, we’ve got a counselor at the church she can talk to.”

  Molly came thundering down the stairs, holding a Rubik’s Cube in her hand. Each of the colored squares on the cube had been numbered in Sharpie marker. Molly began to twist furiously, causing the block to become a mix of different numbers and colors.

  “I can’t do it by the colors, but once I numbered the blocks . . .” She held up the cube to show Jenna the colors were sufficiently scrambled, then began to work the tiers of the toy, turning them row by row into place. “I can do it, see?”

  She held the cube back up, two neat rows of green already aligned so quickly that Jenna could tell the six-year-old would have all the colors back into place within minutes. “That’s awesome, Molly.”

  “Thanks. I thought it was pretty cool.”

  Liam put his hands on Molly’s shoulders in front of him. “Anything else we can help you with today, Dr. Ramey?”

  The Last Supper painting drifted through her mind, the talk about numbers and gods and divinity still fresh. There was something to be tapped there. She just didn’t know what yet.

  “No, thank you,” Jenna replied. “That’s all for now.”

  9

  The man who called himself Justice had followed the brunette with the swishy ponytail ever since the basketball game last night. Now he walked about ten feet behind her, toward the Student Life Center at Woodsbridge Community College. Her gray sweatshirt bearing a blue cougar seemed heavy for the springtime air, the girl’s waif-like frame lost in its billows. She went to the high school, the one with the blue cougar. It was where he’d seen her play basketball. Maybe she was taking an advanced course here. That would mean she was smart. Maybe he was following her for no reason.

  But the threes.

  Itching. Always the itching.

  She trotted up the short flight of stairs to the pavilion in front of the Student Life Center, cut down its middle toward the set of four stairs on the other side that led inside. He wouldn’t be able to follow her much farther without an ID. He’d have to sit here, wait until she came out.

  He reache
d the end of the pavilion as she scanned her access card against the rubber mat beside the door. In she went, away from his sight.

  His feet slowed of their own accord, and for a moment, he stared at the closed glass door where she’d stood only moments before, her long, swishy ponytail whipping behind her as she stepped inside. Then, suddenly, his neck burned. He glanced around, sure people had noticed him, were watching him.

  Other students walked in twos and threes around the pavilion and the grassy knoll nearby, laughing, chatting. Some hurried with armfuls of books, eyes only on destinations. On the grounds to the left, a girl and a boy lay together on an orange-striped beach towel, the boy on his stomach reading a campus newspaper, the girl on her back, eyes closed and using his back as a pillow.

  No one had noticed him. They wouldn’t. It was them he had to worry about. Not these people.

  He glanced around, saw an empty spot at one of the umbrella tables to the right of the pavilion. Settling down in the chair and angling it for a good view of the Student Life Center’s glass door, he couldn’t help but wish he’d thought to bring a book, a newspaper, a crossword puzzle. Anything to look a little more like he belonged here.

  But she’s done nothing wrong.

  The man who called himself Justice exhaled the deep breath he’d been holding. It probably wouldn’t matter if anyone saw him here or not, because so far, he’d followed the numbers and cleared them. They did not ring true. A little longer to watch, of course. To be sure. But at the moment, it looked like he would get to go home tonight without worrying.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed another man, the only other on the pavilion rooted to a spot. The white-bearded fellow with waxy, wrinkled skin leaned next to the low wall that set the pavilion’s border. He, too, wore clothing uncharacteristically warm for the season in the form of an old, tattered green army jacket. His hands were neatly folded over his stomach, a lidless shoe box at his side.

  The man who called himself Justice pulled the ball cap’s visor lower over his eyes to block the sun, aware of the glass door in case the brunette with the swishy ponytail came back out, but his gaze lingered on the homeless man with the shoe box across the way. Students entering the pavilion passed him, mostly paying him no mind, ignoring his requests for change as though they couldn’t hear them. Standard. As the man who called himself Justice watched them, he seethed quietly. These people had committed no crimes, but to observe people ignoring another human being, even if that man was a beggar, brought a metallic taste to his mouth.