Double Vision

by Colby Marshall

She gestured for him to walk outside with her. “Walk and talk.”

  Yancy trudged toward her, hanging his head. She didn’t blame him. She’d be dreading this, too, if she was him. It was bad enough on her end.

  When he’d shut the front door behind them, Jenna turned on the stoop to face him. “Spill it.”

  • • •

  Half-truths were still lies, weren’t they?

  Yancy bit his lip, looking into the eyes of the woman he hoped to marry. He shoved his hands in his pockets. The cool circle that was the engagement ring brushed against his right fingers, and he immediately removed his hands again.

  Telling her would be bad. Not telling her would be worse. Or was it vice versa? Shit, cool guy. How ya gonna worm your way out of this one?

  If he told her about the dead guy, he’d be asking her to cover up what amounted to a homicide, no matter how you sliced it. She’d have to turn him in to stay out of trouble, and no matter how mad she’d be, she wouldn’t do it. He didn’t have to see people as colors to know things about them, and Jenna loved him. Snitching wasn’t her style. Protecting was.

  “The husband on the business trip? He’s involved in some heavy stuff,” Yancy said, conveniently leaving out the fact that even if the husband didn’t happen to be on a business trip when the cops checked in on him, he wouldn’t have been in the house anyway. The only way Yancy could keep Jenna safe was to twist all the details he had available to him to try to make it make sense without her getting too involved.

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “He’s a pimp,” Yancy said.

  Lie number one. Fuck. Make a man you don’t even know out to be a pimp. Great idea. Poor bastard was already being painted as an abusive ass by his estranged wife for God knew what reason, and now he was a pimp in rumor, too. For him to walk out on CiCi and for her to throw him under the bus and say he abused her every time a pimp beat her up meant he couldn’t be a prince, but damn. Yancy’d hate to be him and ever find out the stories flying about all the shit he hadn’t done. So far, all Yancy knew he was guilty of was being in an obviously fucked-up marriage.

  “Okay,” Jenna said slowly.

  Yancy held his breath as he watched her. He could tell by the way her forehead scrunched and she cocked her head that she was weighing what he’d said.

  “So what does that have to do with not calling the local cops?” she asked.

  Yancy blew the giant breath out. His heart thundered under his shirt so hard he was surprised the fabric wasn’t fluttering with the beats. “He’s involved in a prostitution ring that is run by some local cops.”

  He paused. Fuck. And why, if there’s no evidence of a dead body in that house, would it matter if they dropped by? Hell, if anything, they’d be more protective of someone they knew was in their circle than ready to arrest him, you moron. As if mixing truths with giant lies wasn’t enough, he was doing it and still digging himself deeper.

  “He’s been holding out on them money-wise, though, to pay for CiCi’s dad’s medical bills and everything. So far, they haven’t found where he lives since he does all his dealings with them, uh, elsewhere. The home, car, all their registrations, are in CiCi’s name. But if they come here . . .”

  “Their cover’s blown,” Jenna filled in.

  You could say that.

  “Yes,” Yancy mumbled, ashamed of how easy the lies had come out.

  Lying to Jenna wasn’t like lying to anybody else in the world. First of all, she didn’t deserve it, and second of all, he loved her. But third, he never knew when she was going to pull her weird human trick and call him on it because she saw a festival of tangerine or whatever exact shade of orange she associated with untruths.

  But the moment passed, and apparently no color clues had de-camouflaged him. The relief he expected to come didn’t. Instead, a painful clenching wrapped his chest.

  “You need to talk to . . . CiCi,” Jenna said slowly. “She’s not gonna like it, but we almost have no other option besides putting her father into protective custody. The killer is aware he knows something, and this guy is desperate and dangerous. He’ll come back.”

  Yancy was already shaking his head. Sooner or later, the cops involved with the pimp cop Yancy’d killed were going to notice he was gone. Hopefully they’d never realize CiCi’s house was the last place he was, but if they did, and her father was in protective custody, it would be the least safe place for him. Alzheimer’s might be what Jenna was thinking, but all Yancy could consider were the ways they could use Eldred against CiCi if anything went wrong.

  “You can’t do that, Jenna. You just can’t. It’d kill her,” he said.

  Jenna looked taken aback. “You must know her pretty well . . .”

  Yancy sighed. “It’s not like that . . .” Yeah, you tell her as she finds you at the woman’s house and knows you’ve walked by it before. How can you expect this vibrant, intelligent woman to buy your crap when you don’t even believe your bullshit? “He’s a weak guy, Jenna. Even you can see that. He’s confused enough around people he’s known for decades. How terrifying would it be for him to wake up in, what, a jail cell?”

  “There are lots of ways to keep someone in protective custody that don’t involve jail cells,” Jenna said.

  “Still. He won’t understand where he is, and these might be the last years . . . hell, months of his life he’ll recognize his own daughter. Do you really think it’s fair to deprive him of that?”

  “Are you sure you don’t mean ‘her of that’?”

  Yancy swallowed hard. “I deserved that. But I’m serious. Plus, if he does know something, from what I’ve heard of this disease, Alzheimer’s patients tend to have the most access to their memories when surrounded with familiar environments and people to jog them. If you want to find out what information about the shooting he’s got locked in that head of his as bad as the killer doesn’t want you to, wouldn’t it be more beneficial to keep him in a place conducive to making that happen?” Yancy begged.

  Jenna scratched her cheek absentmindedly as she sometimes did when she thought about something hard. God, he loved her. He should really just pull the ring out right now. Right here. After all, a crime scene would be appropriate as a proposal spot for them, right? If only things were like last year and they were working side by side, they’d never have drifted so far apart that he would have gotten so wrapped up in his own stupid, fucking self-pity. He’d never have tried to play Superman with CiCi, and he wouldn’t be lying to the woman he loved.

  “Hey,” he said, something snapping in his brain. “I could stay with them.”

  Jenna’s gaze jerked toward his face, an eyebrow raised.

  Way to go, buddy. That sounded right. “Hey, how about I hang out at the home of this girl you found me with who you’re clearly threatened by if for no other reason than that I’m a douche . . .”

  “Look, I’m doing a really awesome job of shoving my foot in my mouth, which blows, because I really can’t stand the taste of metal, but I’m being serious. Remember when I stuck around at Zane’s last year because you couldn’t leave a cop, since it would spook the bad guy we wanted to lure? It could be like that again. You know me. I can handle myself, and I can handle protecting these two. It’d be a way for you to make sure Eldred stays safe and sound while you work your magic to abracadabra the memories out of him, and at the same time, he won’t be scared shitless or too confused to try to remember.”

  “And you think her husband will be all right with that when he comes back from his business trip?”

  Shit. Hadn’t thought of that one, had you, buster? Care to explain why you’re not even worried about the dude coming back?

  Yancy shook it off. “Let me worry about that.”

  Jenna swayed back and forth on her feet, staring at the cement of the door stoop. Finally, she looked up. “Okay, but only if Saleda gives the go-
ahead, and only if you swear you’re not going to yank the secret gun out of your leg unless the killer is on the porch trying to slip in under the guise of selling Girl Scout cookies or something. You won’t make a move like that unless there is real, confirmed danger.”

  Her words bit at him like a cool breeze. If only she knew how close she was to the truth. God, if only he could tell her he had perceived a real danger. That he had shot when he was sure he needed to.

  Instead, he forced a weak smile. “How many times a year do you think most FBI agents get to say, ‘swear you’re not going to yank the secret gun out of your leg’ and really mean it?”

  She smiled back, leaned forward, and brushed her lips against his. She smelled perfect, like honeysuckles and pancake batter.

  “Not enough, I’d guess,” she said as she pulled away from him. “Now come on. I’ve got a really awful plan to sell to a superior.”

  Yancy followed her through the door. “Use the leg line. Gets ’em every time.”

  37

  After Saleda grudgingly agreed that the best thing for Eldred Beasley’s memory was to remain home—with Yancy as an impromptu bodyguard—she, Jenna, and Porter left the Winthrop home and headed back to Quantico. When they arrived, Jenna shoved aside the buzzing in her head about Yancy’s predicament, him being in the line of danger, and CiCi’s role in said danger to focus on the files strewn across the table.

  “Welcome back,” Teva muttered, not looking up from the folder she was perusing.

  Dodd, however, stood. He pushed his way past two chairs turned sideways to hold a slew of papers the two of them had apparently categorized in some way, and he thrust a folder into Jenna’s hand. “Pictures from the surveillance footage at the college. These are the few shots taken during the timeframe Diana described that happen to be from angles that caught others present. When she and Brooklyn were in the Student Life Center forecourt with the homeless guy, I mean. I’m not gonna lie . . . it’s not too helpful.”

  Jenna opened it, but only half looked at the grainy images inside. She knew Irv had done his best to catch these frames, but these pictures looked like they were taken from cameras made the same year surveillance equipment was invented.

  “What about the homeless dude himself?” she asked.

  Dodd shook his head. “We talked to him, but he’s more burned out than a rock star at his retirement party. He couldn’t tell us a thing.”

  “Damn. So any luck judging the books by their covers?” Saleda asked.

  Dodd let out a sigh. “I wish. We haven’t found anything damning about Donalyn Greer other than that she teaches elementary Sunday school and volunteers at a pet shelter.”

  “Which one was she again?” Saleda asked.

  “The woman who ate the grapes she wasn’t buying from out of the bag on the shelf,” Jenna supplied.

  “I guess she was just late for lunch that day,” Porter said.

  Jenna smirked. Trying to weed out potentially “immoral” people present on a random day in a grocery store based on statements made by a six-year-old was never going to be the perfect scientific method. But it was all they had, so she’d resigned herself to the fact that some silliness would accompany anything functional. Plus there was every chance that whatever had caused the Triple Shooter to go after whichever of the potential targets was something that wouldn’t be obvious in the profiles Irv dug up, something they couldn’t possibly find by looking through employment histories or socioeconomic backgrounds. The things Molly had told them were details Irv couldn’t hunt down in any online search. After all, Brooklyn Satterhorne probably looked fine on paper, but the killer watched her intentionally mind-fuck a homeless man. That was all it took.

  “So grape lady is probably a no. Next?” Jenna said.

  Teva pushed a folder across the table at Dodd. “Connie Ehrenhaft isn’t a princess by any means. She’s the one Molly saw rushing and rolling her eyes at her nineteen-hundred-year-old father in the toilet paper row. She said the woman had seemed frustrated and in a hurry. Well, it was probably because she was in a hurry. Her license is suspended right now because she missed a court appearance for a speeding ticket. Still, do Furies hate speeding?”

  “Speeding is against the law,” Dodd said.

  “Poor old guy. Getting ratted on for taking his time in the toilet paper row. I mean, when you lose the dignity to take as long as you want making an ass-wiping decision, what do you have left to lose?” Porter chuckled.

  The cardinal red Jenna associated with stupid cockiness flashed in. Porter wasn’t a jerk, but the joke was the kind she’d have expected from the guys at her high school who thought it was hilarious to chase and slap each other with wet towels in the locker room.

  “Grandpa Ehrenhaft’s ass isn’t the only thing shitty in this room,” Dodd interjected.

  At this, Jenna laughed. She was starting to enjoy Dodd’s presence more and more, especially any time he proved he had a drop or two of human DNA in him.

  The biggest problem with this entire method was that even if Connie “Fast and Furious” Ehrenhaft had enough speeding tickets to supply her father with rough toilet paper for a year, there was no guarantee the shooter knew about and was offended by them. All they were doing here seemed to be taking some good guesses at which person on their short list was a more likely target than the others. But even then, the real target could be missing from the short list altogether. Molly couldn’t have seen every action of every single person in the store, and even if she had, surely some people went to a grocery store, bought their items, and left without ever giving away that they were banging their pool boy while their husband played golf. She just had to trust that Irv could cross-reference the names they narrowed it to and that they’d get lucky.

  “Didn’t Calliope Jones mention dishonor of parents as one of the Furies’ pet offenses?” Saleda asked.

  Jenna nodded. That did sound familiar. “Okay, so we put a gold star by Connie Ehrenhaft’s name and don’t exclude her yet. What about the guy Molly saw demanding that the employee fetch some detergent he couldn’t reach from the top shelf?”

  “You mean Mr. ‘I Like To Treat Lowly Store Employees Like Dirt’ Stevens? He’s also a resident of Carmine Manor. Came on the bus that day. Other than that he’s a World War II vet who enjoys checkers and long walks on the beach—and also likes the toilet paper row. I can’t find anything that makes him undesirable on paper,” Dodd answered.

  They ran through the remaining list of potentials, including the woman who spanked her screaming child right in front of the salad dressing, the man who bumped into someone and didn’t say “excuse me,” and the guy who wouldn’t surrender the last box of graham crackers to the mother who requested them because they were the only brand her toddler wasn’t allergic to. None of them presented promising leads.

  “We never talked about the man who didn’t tip the bagger,” Jenna said, remembering Molly’s short rant about feeling as though it was unfair that the store’s official policy required employees to refuse tips. “Even when employees at a place like that comply with the rules and try to turn down tips, it’s more common than not that customers at least try to give them a little something even if they ultimately don’t shove it in their pocket and insist they keep it. So common that a child noticed it and mentioned it, anyway. Regardless of the fact that any rational adult probably wouldn’t think of failing to offer a tip as a slight given the store policy, the Triple Shooter’s profile says he’s not necessarily rational. He might have his own logic, but his rules are most likely like a child’s in the way that his concepts of fair might be more based on instinct and feeling than technicality.”

  “You’re right. We don’t know for sure he’s schizophrenic, but we all know we believe it. If hearing goddesses has shaped the skewed social reality his cognitive bias suggests, the real rules are irrelevant. His perception of events is all that matters.
The Furies do have a thing for protecting poor people, as we well know,” Saleda replied.

  Dodd yawned. “That may be, but unless the UNSUB followed Vince Zolfer on a spree of stiffing the working poor of America or observed as the guy screamed in the bagger’s face all the reasons he would never tip him even if he could, the simple act of doing nothing probably didn’t trigger any outbursts. And on paper, the guy is a paragon of virtue. He probably didn’t tip the bagger because he’s out of money after the three thousand he donated to charity last year alone.”

  “Yipes,” Teva said.

  “I know what you mean. Three dollars is my limit,” Dodd said.

  Jenna glanced over her list again. “The employee Molly overheard blowing off the coworker she was supposed to cover for?”

  Dodd shook his head again. “Oath-breaker-in-chief’s records didn’t send up any red flags.”

  Jenna groaned. They were getting nowhere, and fast. Game plan number two would’ve looked better and better, only she had no clue what it was.

  “What about Beasley himself?” Saleda ventured.

  Jenna looked up at her. Blinked.

  Saleda was right. Eldred Beasley might be a harmless old man, but he did have a temper, even if it was out of frustration with his failing memory.

  But as soon as the thought had intrigued her, she felt herself shake her head. “It doesn’t make sense, though. If Beasley was the target, why would the Triple Shooter—”

  “UNSUB,” Dodd interjected.

  “UNSUB! If Beasley was the target, why would the UNSUB go to his place to silence him and knock him in the head instead of putting three bullets in his chest?”

  Plus Jenna couldn’t get past the fact that every previous Triple Shooter victim was female, even if the profile didn’t dictate that as a necessary victimology for him, other than it had happened up to this point. Well, until the grocery store killings, anyway.

  “He ran out of bullets?” Teva suggested.

  “If Beasley was the target, he’d have killed him when he went back for him in the style he kills all his victims. MO doesn’t change that much. If it’s the Triple Shooter, even if the grocery store shooting was different, the weapon wouldn’t change that dramatically, would it?” Dodd asked.