The Third Eye

by Jenna Rae

  She shook her head, transfixed by his faraway gaze.

  “Home. I was cooking Japanese food, ’cause she liked it. It takes forever, chopping all this stuff, and everything has to be fresh. But I learned how to make all kinds of foods she liked. Anything to show her how much I love her. Loved her. She said she’d swing by the liquor store and get some sake. She wasn’t even following him that night. She just liked to have theme dinners. We would dress up in costumes, if she wanted to. She didn’t drink much. Neither of us does, but she was like that. If we were having tacos, she’d get tequila and play old Spanish love songs and put a flower in her hair. If we were having sushi, she’d get sake and play Japanese folk music and put her hair up and wear red lipstick. Everything was an adventure for her. It was fun. Silly, I guess, but I miss that, the way she made everything into something special. She had this big light inside her, and I couldn’t look away.” He broke off, chewing his lip and turning away.

  She waited him out, swallowing tears she wouldn’t allow herself to shed.

  “I burned it all, at least what she’d left at my place. Her notes, her maps. All of it. Stupid, I know. But I was real freaked out. Crazy, I guess. Sad, and a little mad. I went kind of crazy for a while. She wasn’t even looking for him, at least, I don’t think so. I think she was just there to get sake, like she said. I think it was just a coincidence.”

  He’d confessed to killing Donnelly as much as he would, at least for now, at least without nudging. She could elicit that confession, she was sure. He’d destroyed Sheraton’s evidence against Donnelly because he’d decided Donnelly would never go to trial. Some childish part of him was compelled to say he “went kind of crazy for a while.” It might even end up being part of his defense, though it was a strategy that rarely worked in a real-life courtroom.

  “Mr. Miller talked to me. He said I could have a couple of weeks off for grief. They don’t usually give that here. The pay is awful, no benefits. I didn’t expect him to be so nice. He treats smart people like they’re unfortunate necessities, like he’d rather we were stupid or went away, but he was so nice after she died. He invited me to his house and we went out on his boat. It’s huge.”

  She breathed slowly and quietly next to Harding, blinking a few times. “It sounds like he’s been really supportive.”

  “If we had access, we could have put cameras everywhere and we would have realized Mark was a crook. Maybe Tam would still be alive. Mr. Miller says he and some of his buddies are going to wire up the whole state and help keep everyone safe. Maybe the whole country, one big database, so we can protect everyone. That’s part of what I’m working on.”

  She blinked and kept her expression blank. “And different companies in each metro area, all sharing information, videos, like that.”

  “Tam thought it was a bad idea, a private corporation having all this footage of people without permission. I get it, but it can be really helpful too. And if you don’t have anything to hide, why should you worry?”

  “Mark pretended to be supportive of Tam. I never trusted him, but I thought maybe I was just feeling jealous. Tam thought I was just being a silly jerk. She made it sound sweet.”

  “You must feel so betrayed by him.”

  “I thought he would help her. Be a mentor or something like that. She trusted him.”

  “And now he’s dead.”

  He nodded and looked toward the Watchdog building.

  She examined him closely. Folded into her small car, with his terrible uniform hanging off his narrow shoulders, he looked to her more child than man. But she firmly believed he had stalked and murdered Mark Donnelly and that he felt little remorse for having done so. The relief in his voice, the way he’d destroyed everything Sheraton gathered on Donnelly, the way he spoke about Sheraton and about Donnelly made it clear. He hadn’t returned her calls because he was busy stalking Donnelly.

  He was a wind-up toy, all run down now that he’d fulfilled his last mission, avenging the death of his beloved. How much influence Miller had exerted on this grieving man-boy she would never know. He was smart enough to cover for Miller and naïve enough to think it was virtuous to do so. She could push him now, she thought. But he was still clearly under Miller’s influence and was loyal enough to believe he owed Miller something.

  She couldn’t help wondering what he would be like after a stint in prison. For just a moment, some tiny part of her wanted to do nothing about Donnelly’s murder. Mason was a decent guy. He would not be interested in killing again for sport or profit or ego. He had loved Tami Sheraton and been driven mad by hurt and grief and outrage.

  But he had deliberately killed Mark Donnelly. He could have called the department. He could have called Vallejo or Brenda. He could have done a million things other than kill the man. He had made his choice and would have to accept the consequences of that choice. She wondered if her assumption that Miller had manipulated the kid into killing Mark Donnelly was based on anything real. She pushed this away to focus on Harding.

  She could push him, she thought, and get him to confess to the murder. But he wasn’t her target, not really. She could come after this kid later. If she got a confession and arrested him now, the crooks might roll up their rugs so she could never find them.

  “I have to get back to work,” he said, again looking at the big building that loomed over them. “Okay?”

  “Sure. Okay if we talk again sometime?”

  He nodded and unfolded himself to leave her car. He loped across the parking lot and was swallowed by the black cube.

  Had she done the right thing by letting him go for now? Only time would tell. She drove slowly out of the sole point of authorized entry, offering a wooden smile to go with the returned guest badge. She wished she hadn’t come to see Harding. Unsure where else to go, she ended up back in Tori’s office. She slumped in the chair in front of the desk, waiting while Tori finished a phone call.

  “Finally,” Tori said, hanging up and reaching into a desk drawer. “Scotch, anyone?”

  “God, yes.” Brenda smiled. “You always were a mind reader.”

  Tori came around to sit in the second captain’s chair facing her desk and the window, and they sipped decent whiskey out of badge-adorned coffee mugs while they watched the sun set.

  “I wonder if Peterson can see it.” This was an echo of the question she’d asked herself while watching the last sunset, and she pressed her lips together.

  Tori sighed. “I don’t know what to think, Bren. It seems really unlikely three people connected to you and Donnelly would randomly disappear at about the same time. But Peterson has been a mess for years, and retirement can be deadly for an alcoholic police officer. And I don’t know anything about Staci Smith, and neither do you. Maybe she found a sugar daddy. Maybe she reconciled with her family. Maybe her baby daddy was abusive and he showed up and she’s on the run from him. Teresa Fortune is a marginally functional drug addict, according to you. People like her go missing every day.”

  “You’re right.”

  Tori laughed. “Wow, that was surprisingly easy.”

  Brenda shook her head. “Fortune? I can see it. She could have taken off for any of a hundred reasons. But why would Smith leave her daughter behind? Have you seen the photos of her apartment? Everything in there says she was a devoted mom.”

  “I agree.”

  “That was surprisingly easy.”

  They shared a quiet laugh. Then Brenda turned to stare into Tori’s bright, startled eyes.

  “What?”

  “What are we gonna do, between us I mean?”

  Tori was saved from answering by a sharp trio of knocks on her office door. “Hold that thought.”

  They both rose to greet Chief Walton, who offered Brenda hearty congratulations on looking well rested and gently broached the subject of her return. She intimated it was forthcoming and left it at that. She let him guide their conversation and hardly heard a word he said. She was abuzz with two warring interests: her de
sire to figure out where she stood with Tori and her need to focus on resolving the work she’d started because of the death of Tami Sheraton and the disappearance of three innocent victims.

  She mindlessly agreed to whatever Walton said and smiled and was, she hoped, reasonably gracious and professional. Tori’s physical presence outshone the wordy symphony of nonsense between the three of them as they stood in a loose triangle in the gathering darkness of the fading sunset.

  Finally Walton made his goodbyes and strode out, closing the door behind him, and Tori turned to Brenda with a wicked smile. “Did you hear a thing he said?”

  Brenda shook her head. “Not a word.”

  They laughed as quietly as they could out of consideration for their recently departed boss. Within seconds, though, they clung to each other with helpless giddiness and cackled as gleefully as any two crones. They staggered together to the small sofa and collapsed onto it as one. They laughed until Brenda was breathless and sore and utterly drained. She sat pressed to Tori’s side, and it was only after several minutes of silence that she looked down and noticed they were holding hands.

  Tori was the first to let go. She bumped Brenda’s shoulder with her own. “Déjà vu, huh? Let’s finish this thing, if we can. Do right by Sheraton and Peterson and the two girlfriends so we can. Is it wrong to say this? Put it behind us?”

  “I’m sure there are people who could do both at the same time.”

  “But you’re not one of them.” Tori laughed. “Maybe I’m not either. So putting aside our big, messy personal stuff, where do we go from here?”

  She shook her head. “I have no clue. Actually I have too many clues and none of them help at all.” She kissed Tori’s hand, holding it for an extra few seconds just because she could. Then she stood. “For now, let’s just say we’ll sleep on it and start up again tomorrow.”

  Tori stayed seated on the sofa. “Could you ever let it go?”

  She searched Tori’s taut features. “I’m working on it. What happened that day didn’t happen in a vacuum. I see that now.”

  “I am sorry. I wish—anyway, I’m sorry.”

  She spoke so softly she wasn’t sure Tori heard her. “So am I.”

  Part of her wanted desperately to cross back over to the small divan and lean down and kiss Tori’s soft lips and touch her smooth hair and convince her they could make things work a second time. She thought she saw receptiveness in Tori’s eyes, in the laxness of her mouth, in the way she seemed to be waiting for Brenda to approach her.

  But something held her back and the moment passed. An invisible wall arose from she knew not where, and it was as immutable a barrier as she’d ever encountered. She actually rocked forward on her heels and felt the impassability of the shield as a physical thing.

  Part of her thought the notion was fanciful. Still, she could not cross the boundary. Tori watched her, and something like comprehension washed over her features. They said formal goodbyes as if they were and had only ever been friends, and Brenda wondered if she looked as disappointed as Tori did.

  Brenda swam into her detachment as she drove slowly home in the cool evening gloom. Something had stopped her from following her impulse to rekindle intimacy with Tori, and she tried to figure out what that something was. Was it fear? Hurt? Bitterness? Anger? Was she giving in to the negative feelings that had been engendered by Tori’s adultery? Was she yielding to the guilt she felt over the opportunities she’d missed in their relationship? She wasn’t sure. She felt pangs of loss, but she also felt immeasurable relief.

  She rolled down her windows as if to escape her thoughts and cold air rushed in. Salty and sweetened by briar-rose greenery, the wind buffeted her hair and face and arms and distracted her from the impossible tangle of her feelings. Briarwood rushed past as she sped along the coastal road, both in a hurry to get home and not.

  Tami Sheraton’s murder had changed things in a way Brenda could never have anticipated. Arresting Mason Harding was something she would need to do, whether she put the cuffs on him or not, and this would feel very much like another kind of loss. He seemed a basically decent person who’d been overcome by grief and had done the unthinkable.

  She’d never met the man before today, but she was heartsick. And now she needed to know who was implicated along with Harding. Without a single scrap of evidence in front of her, she knew he’d killed Donnelly. She would gather the evidence and arrest him. But if someone else was involved, if Harding was someone’s puppet, she needed to know that. Miller? Walton? Vallejo? Trimble? One of the commanders? Shay? Tomorrow would be about doing what Harding said Sheraton used to do: map the events that led to the outcome.

  She’d survived failures. There had been cases she couldn’t solve and suspects she couldn’t build a case against. There had been criminal groups whose activities she’d only managed to stunt at the local level. Satan’s Lair still haunted her, despite what everyone else seemed to see as a shared victory over its evils.

  Friends had left or drifted away or pulled back or become people she couldn’t respect. Lauren had died. Tori had left. Peterson had disappeared into a bottle long before he retired and then vanished from the bar. But she’d continued to cling to her fairy-tale version of their enchanted lives in their mythical town, ignoring anything that didn’t jibe with her mythos.

  Now that mythos was gone, dissipated as quickly as a drop of fresh water in a wide, polluted sea. The world, her world, was a new place, and she grieved for the loss of the old one with a strange neutrality that she supposed was the closest she could get to peace.

  “Acceptance,” she whispered into the indifferent night, her voice lost even to her own ears. “Acceptance.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Captain Borelli, good morning. I’m so glad to hear from you!” Shay’s voice was warm and welcoming. “How are you? I heard you spoke with Mason.”

  “He called you?”

  “Listen, Captain Borelli, could we meet for lunch? Today?”

  “Uhhh, yes, sure. Would one thirty be too late for you?”

  “No, of course not. There’ll be a big food-truck thing at Livingston Plaza today. Do you know it?”

  She swallowed questions about the unusual choice. “Across from the boardwalk, right?”

  “Exactly. I can show you part of what I do for a living. See you then.”

  She hung up and called Andi, hoping the midmorning hour was a relatively slow period for the bakery and café.

  “Come on by. I want to talk to you.”

  The tension in Andi’s voice propelled Brenda to drive more quickly than she might otherwise have done, and after circling the sand-dusted beachside public lot for several minutes, she was squeezing into the last parking space at the far end of the last row. She trotted double time across the lot, glad the food trucks at Livingston Plaza had drawn large crowds that spilled over onto the boardwalk across the street.

  Two dozen restaurants-on-wheels crowded the shopping center across from the beach and boardwalk, and the smells of foods and spices from around the globe danced on the fresh seaside breeze like olfactory siren songs.

  She sniffed curries, garlics, onions and a hundred other scents as she headed toward the homier fragrances of Andi’s place. The café bulged with hungry visitors. Five aproned employees rushed to tend the customers, and Andi directed them with the cool confidence of a gifted maestro. She glided away from the controlled chaos and with a quick gesture disappeared into the back room. Brenda obeyed the wordless command and followed, ignoring the stares of the curious.

  As they hugged behind the swinging door, Brenda frowned. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Sorry if I scared you. I was just busy.”

  “I’m a little sensitive to crisis these days.”

  “No word on Jonas, still?”

  Brenda shook her head. “I’ll let you know as soon as I know anything. But now that I see you, I know you’re better than okay. So what gives?”

  Andi was glow
ing. Her dark eyes shone with good humor, and her wide mouth seemed determined to smile despite her best efforts to frown. “The kids have it under control, and I wanted to see you. We’ll be completely swamped for the next three days, so this is actually the best time to see for myself that you’re okay.”

  She shrugged. “What’s up?”

  Andi giggled. “Diane and I are actually going on a date. Not until Monday, because things are so crazy here right now, but we’ve been talking on the phone, and texting, and I feel like I’m seventeen.” She shook her head, sobering. “Like there’s this whole part of me that just went dormant when Lauren got sick. And it’s coming back alive.”

  She grabbed Andi for another long hug. “I’m so glad. I’m proud of you for being brave.”

  “Okay. Thanks, love. Get out of here now. Things are crazy.”

  She laughed. “Okay. Call me if you need anything and have fun. Does everybody come here for dessert after they eat all the spicy stuff across the street?”

  “Here and the ice cream place. They’re shopping too. Even the locals are spending money on sunglasses, hats, whatever. This is turning out to be great for everybody’s business.”

  “Rolling with the times, right?”

  “You got it. Stay with it or get out of the way. Sugar, I really appreciate you coming by. I know you’re worried about Jonas.”

  “Am I crazy for thinking he didn’t just take off? I know he’s been drinking a lot. I just don’t think he’d leave without a word. And it’s too strange, three people disappearing.”

  “You’re not crazy. You know him. The other two, I can’t say. But Jonas adores you. He would never leave you hanging like that. So you won’t leave him hanging either.”

  She wanted to ask for reassurance that Peterson was still alive, but she couldn’t bring up the possibility of his death without taking the shine from Andi’s eyes, so she stifled the question.

  Releasing Andi from a final hug, trying to mirror her friend’s delight, she escaped from the crowded bakery and stood at the boardwalk railing to stare out at the gently rolling waves. Seeing how happy Andi was, how thrilled she was to be engaged in something other than a caregiving role, was a gift. She would like very much to see Peterson safe and happy too. Did he even know how to be happy anymore? She wanted him to have the chance to try. She wiped away tears, unsure if they were grief or joy, and strode resolutely toward the food trucks.