The Third Eye

by Jenna Rae

  She ambled through the glass door of the eatery wondering why Peterson loved Joe’s Place so much. Both gaudy and shabby, it seemed antithetical to the world her old partner worked to fashion for himself.

  Inside, Joe’s Place was just as colorfully dilapidated. The worn carpet sported red sailboats cavorting on a sea of blinding turquoise, while the yellow-paneled walls were adorned with bright, many-hued movie posters, most of them from decades earlier. She slid into a red vinyl booth wrapped around an electric-blue Formica table and looked at her fellow diners, none of whom were Jonas Peterson.

  A tired blond waitress in her thirties chomped on bright green gum as she filled Brenda’s mug without being asked.

  “What can I get you, hon?”

  “Joe’s Special any good?”

  The waitress shrugged.

  “I’ll take it, wheat toast.”

  “Yeah, got it. You a cop?”

  She peered at the scarred nametag. “Interesting question, Dottie. I have one of my own: do you know a customer named Jonas Peterson?”

  “Old cop?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She turned on her most charming smile, but the hollow-eyed server only shrugged again.

  “Reason I ask is, they been looking for you.” Dottie chucked her chin back over her shoulder.

  “They?”

  “There’s a whole crew of counter critters comes in here every day. He was in here the other morning like usual. Seven on the dot, he always says. Cuz of my name, you know?” The sun-seared waitress waved a surprisingly graceful hand around the dining room. “A lot of these old guys like their corny little jokes. He okay? He isn’t here today.”

  “Well, he’s probably fine, but he took off yesterday.”

  “You should talk to those guys.” Dottie waved her hand toward the long, L-shaped counter and pointed to six men clustered along the shorter side. “They been looking for you, like I said.”

  “Thanks, Dottie.”

  “Go ahead over. I’ll bring your food.”

  Brenda snagged the coffee and tried to look casual, heading toward the back counter. Dottie had been sure she’d want to stay and talk to them, which likely meant she was concerned for Peterson, which likely meant he really did come here every day. She eyed his buddies, who’d turned as one and watched her approach. They looked like they belonged in the diner as much as the red stools on which they perched.

  “You looking for Jonas?” asked the apparent leader, peering at Brenda with keen eyes. His freckled head was shiny, bald and pink, his waist trim, his oxblood loafers gleaming. Not a cop, she guessed. Maybe military, once upon a time.

  “Yes, sir. I’m Brenda Borelli. He and I used to work together. I understand he’s usually here for breakfast.”

  “Hasn’t missed a weekday, in what? At least eight months.”

  “Seven,” another retiree, a little thicker in the waist and round-shouldered, corrected the first. “He had that appointment, remember?”

  “But we knew about that,” a third man, dark-skinned and trim, chimed in with an emphatic nod. “His being gone is unexpected this time. That’s what she needs to know, isn’t it, miss?”

  “Yes, sir.” She mirrored his nod and slid into the empty stool closest to the corner. “Mind if I join you?”

  As one they all scanned the restaurant.

  “He’s working a case for you, that’s what we figure,” the leader confided. “I’m Stan. This is Bill, Andy, Mike, and those guys are Big Henry and Just Henry.”

  “Just Henry?” She grinned. “Nice to meet you all. So—”

  “What’d you order?”

  “Uh, Joe’s Special. Is it any good?”

  “Not bad. Kinda fattening for a skinny little girl like you.”

  “Stan, you’re a terrible liar and I like you for it.”

  The guys all laughed heartily at that and seemed to relax. She had been worried about Peterson when he retired. She’d pictured him sitting home alone and drinking himself to death or eating his weapon on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

  But he had pals. He had a routine. He had people who waited to see him every morning and worried when he didn’t show up. He was part of the gang here. They had their coffee and their jokes and a place to hang out and belong. She sipped her cooling java and wished she’d come by before Peterson went missing. She’d noticed the flock of glasses in front of her old partner at The Hole and thought he spent the whole morning there. But he’d come here first.

  She eyed the abandoned breakfasts of his usual companions. Based on the remnants, she inferred they’d ordered eggs, bacon and fried potatoes with rye toast, every single one of them. So Peterson probably had the same thing. It should have slowed down the booze. A daily drinker like Peterson should have had a very high tolerance and needed a lot of alcohol to feel drunk.

  “Dottie said you’ve been expecting me?”

  “Something happen to Jonas?”

  She shrugged. “He’s probably fine, but he left suddenly yesterday.”

  “You were meeting for lunch at The Hole.” Mike nodded, and the others followed suit. “You get together with him regular, every couple, three weeks.”

  “He was a good partner, I miss working with him.” She frowned. “I’m a little worried. I was hoping he’d be here this morning. You said he’s been working a case? Can you tell me a little bit about that?”

  It was Big Henry who responded, and he, Brenda surmised by his tone and burned-out eyes, was a retired police officer.

  “Not officially, obviously. But he’s had some concerns about the rookie who got popped. He figured you were gonna be looking into it.”

  “He’s smart.”

  “Listen, there’s something else.” Big Henry looked at the others one at a time, and the group seemed to reach consensus. “Peterson didn’t exactly have the easiest time with retirement.”

  The others laughed like this was an understatement, and she watched them closely. To cover her scrutiny, she took a swallow of coffee.

  Big Henry visibly handed the conversational ball to Stan, and she swung her gaze toward the smaller man she now pegged as a Marine, a twenty-year man. His spine was iron, his eyes rimmed by squint lines so deep they looked drawn on his skin with a Sharpie.

  “Sir?”

  “He drank some.” Stan ducked her gaze and stared at the neon orange wall behind the line cook, a burly man with a bulbous nose and a surprisingly spotless apron. “But he still had it under control. Mostly.”

  “He started looking kinda tired.” This came from Just Henry.

  “Hungover is what you mean.” Bill spoke for the first time. “Every day.”

  Andy cleared his throat. “We were trying to decide if we should just let him work it out or say something. When he started to get a little more pep in his step, we figured it helped him, having a reason to stay sober. He wanted to be there for you.”

  She nodded.

  Bill piped up. “He never called me back.”

  She looked a question at Bill, who pointed at his watch. “I called him at sixteen hundred yesterday. Basic message. He has caller ID, and he never called me back.”

  “Which he usually would?”

  Bill nodded and a chorus of low, urgent voices sounded from the men.

  “Now he’s disappeared.”

  “Out of the blue.”

  “He didn’t show up or call any of us.”

  “And you’re here.”

  “Looking for him.”

  “Which means you’re worried about him too.”

  They all started arguing about what this might mean and what they should do. She listened to the babble while Dottie slid an overflowing plate in front of her and filled up all the mugs. She dug in, noticing that each of the retired men paused long enough to thank Dottie politely before going back to arguing.

  They seemed to forget her presence while they debated the merits of telling her about Jonas’s drinking and the possible implications of their buddy’s absence. The hot, c
heese-smothered pile of meat, eggs, and potatoes filled her stomach while the words filled her ears.

  At some point, she realized the guys had stopped arguing and were quietly sipping coffee and watching her eat. Once she’d put down her fork and blotted her mouth, they all straightened up as if on cue.

  “Young lady?”

  “Yes, sir? Stan?”

  “We think something may have happened to Jonas. We’d like to help you investigate.”

  She considered Stan’s words and said, “I hope you’re wrong, but I’m a little worried you may be right.” She checked her watch. “But I’m not even officially investigating, and he may have just decided to run off with some hottie nobody knows. Obviously I can hardly endorse a posse, but I could use some help. I just need to figure some things out. Listen, I need to get to a meeting. Can I come by, check in with you tomorrow morning?”

  “No good,” said Just Henry. “Stan finally got an appointment with the good proctologist. He shouldn’t cancel it, and we all stick together.” He held Brenda’s gaze to underscore his secondary meaning, and she nodded.

  “Lunchtime, then? Here’s my card.” She took the time to hand one of her business cards to each of them. “Please don’t do anything until we’ve met tomorrow, except call him. My hope is that one of you will hear from him, we’ll all give him heck for scaring us, and I’ll be back here to see you all for a regular visit sometime soon.”

  From a chest pocket, Big Henry produced a carefully hand-lettered list of names, along with contact information for each member of the counter crew. They’d been here since six or seven a.m. and not seen Peterson. They’d discussed the lack of a callback from their old buddy. They’d decided something was wrong and she’d probably come here looking for her old partner at some point, and they’d planned to give her this list. She smiled and thanked them, dropping enough cash on the counter to include a generous tip.

  “Thanks, Dottie,” she called on her way out. She’d learned enough on her field trip to be really worried about Peterson and to feel guilty about neglecting her former partner. She’d met him for lunch or dinner every few weeks, but that was it. She’d been so caught up in her own nonsense that she hadn’t paid enough attention to him.

  He was unsentimental and gruff as usual when she’d told him she and Tori were splitting up, telling her no self-respecting police officer retired without at least one ex-wife to split the pension with. But he’d watched her in that speculative way of his, assessing her state of mind. Did he start drinking heavily again in part because of the stress of worrying about her?

  As the daughter of an unrepentant alcoholic mother and unknown father, she knew better than to take responsibility for his alcohol abuse. He’d been a heavy drinker for years before she’d even met him. But he’d been able to confine his tippling to his few off-duty hours during the part of his career she’d witnessed, and he had rarely been more than slightly tipsy around her even after his retirement, at least until yesterday.

  She knew he had long seen her as a protégé or daughter figure. She sighed. Peterson’s diner pals seemed pretty astute. One had been a cop in a former life, and at least half of the rest had been military at some point.

  She figured this meant their buddy’s drinking had to get pretty out of hand before they would be concerned enough to talk about it with her. Like Peterson, they’d assessed her and decided she was worth confiding in—to a point. She’d assessed them and decided they were worth confiding in—to a point.

  She thought about this on her short drive to Staci Smith’s apartment. She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t sized up everyone she encountered. Part of that was the result of growing up with her boozy mother and her mom’s motley collection of mostly drunk, occasionally abusive boyfriends.

  Certainly she’d learned to stand up for herself. She’d learned how to dodge a blow and deliver one without breaking her hand. She’d learned how to pick a lock, survive without help, and maintain normalcy under abnormal circumstances.

  She’d learned, during her turbulent early years, how to shoot, how to sail, how to escape a fire, how to climb a tree and ride a bike and drive and disarm a lunatic. And she’d learned to assess people for hidden motives and dangers. Without ever intending to do so, her mom had helped train her to be a police officer.

  But Brenda thought part of it was inborn. There were cops who learned on the job to assess everyone. Maybe people who chose law-enforcement careers were more likely to have been born to wariness and hyperawareness and an innate need to perform ongoing threat assessments wherever they went.

  For years she’d automatically sorted people into cops, bad guys and regular people. While she’d worked hard to recognize the blurring of those lines, there was still a series of litmus tests her mind seemed to run on everyone she met. She couldn’t help but notice things like posture, eye movements, breathing and speaking patterns, the tiny tells people weren’t even aware of. She knew she had big blind spots, especially when it came to people she cared about, but with strangers, she often saw far more than she wanted.

  Dottie the waitress was in an abusive relationship, the current boyfriend the latest in a long series of losers who made her a punching bag. How did Brenda know that? She’d come to the conclusion so quickly she had to think back to recall what led her to it.

  Dottie wore a long-sleeved gray sweatshirt under her polyester uniform, though it was warm in the diner. She shifted her gaze down to the floor when annoyed or uncertain. Her pancake makeup aged her but was necessary to cover the remnants of a black eye and finger marks on her cheek and neck. She stayed on the balls of her feet like she might need to dodge a blow at any given moment. Her seemingly saucy attitude notwithstanding, she slipped by tables like a cat in a room full of dogs.

  He had sacrificed his wife and his two daughters to the job and to the drinking. He’d worked too much, gotten drunk and loud too many times, and now the ex-wife and the girls who’d once been his world wouldn’t even talk to him.

  He’d stumbled along, depressed and lonely, just doing the job and counting time. Then he’d been forced to accept Brenda as a partner. Before long she had realized she was becoming a kind of emotional surrogate for his family. She’d allowed this because it was clear the man was emotionally tattered and needed to feel something for someone.

  She gripped the steering wheel, numb with dread and guilt. She should have read Peterson more clearly. She should have realized he was in trouble. His buddies from the diner were aware of his drinking as a problem, while she’d seen it as normal behavior for a newly retired cop. What else had she failed to see? She clenched her jaw and unclenched it to blow out a slow breath. Maybe it was egocentric to think he’d disappeared because of her.

  She parked in one of the narrow spaces in the lot outside Staci Smith’s apartment complex, wishing she could hear her old partner’s voice and know he was alive. She was drawn out of her thoughts by a dawning awareness of stink.

  She eyeballed the area around her. Here in the southern part of Briarwood, the mingled scents of the city’s eponymous roses and their perfumed leaves were barely discernible. The stench of overflowing Dumpsters was everywhere. The foul smells of rotting food, automotive exhaust, marijuana, cheap beer, cigarettes, dirty diapers and unwashed clothing stained the air and permeated her senses. It all added up to the not-unfamiliar stench of poverty.

  Whatever money Donnelly had made, he hadn’t spent much of it on housing. He’d lived in this apartment with Staci Smith. Even if he only lived on his salary and not on the profits from his extortion activities, he should have been able to afford a better place. Defensible space was one of the most important components of a home for everyone Brenda knew. So why had he lived in this cheap, ugly, smelly, unsafe environment? Smith said they wanted to buy a house in a good neighborhood with good schools. Why not take his would-be family to a safer place in the meantime? Bad neighborhoods were hazardous for children, especially when both adults in the home worked
second shift.

  Her phone rang. “Mr. Miller, thank you for returning my call.”

  “I was surprised to hear from you, Captain Borelli. Glad, but surprised. Have you reconsidered my offer?”

  “Well, I’m still thinking about it. Actually, I called for a couple of reasons. Is now a good time? Can we meet in person?”

  “I’m on my way to the airport. I’ll be in India for a cyber-security conference and some meetings for a couple of weeks. Is it something quick? I have a good twenty minutes before I get to the airfield.”

  “No, it’s nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow. And I’d like to have more than twenty minutes of your time.”

  “Intriguing as always, Captain Borelli. I’ll call you.”

  Curious, she searched online and found there was indeed a big cyber-security conference about to start in India. It was advertised as the venue that introduced the most advanced technological equipment in the world. She wondered why the CEO of a relatively small home-security company and a handful of strip clubs needed to fly all the way to India to such a conference.

  She’d learned a long time ago that people lied to police without even thinking about it. Asking questions was a game, like everything in an investigation. Sometimes the lies and evasions were more revealing than the honest answers.

  She dragged herself up the stairs toward Staci Smith’s apartment, suddenly overwhelmed by aloneness. Having walked away from the department and having let Peterson ghost on her, she was lost. She was relying on a bunch of old men, her old partner from twenty years ago, and her ex-girlfriend to help her investigate. She pushed away her self-pity and cleared her throat.

  There was no response when she knocked on Smith’s door. She called but got no answer, and a frisson of alarm went through her. She’d talked to the woman a few hours earlier, and Smith had been under the weather but hardly on her deathbed. Had she taken her daughter to see a doctor? Had she slipped out to the drugstore for something? Brenda spent ten minutes banging on the door and calling Smith’s cell phone.