Flash Point

by Colby Marshall

  ‘Or maybe they want us to think that’s their sole reasoning,’ Dodd countered.

  ‘Maybe, but humor me for a second. Why leave a witness if you’re leaving access to a full-length video?’ Jenna asked.

  From the side, Porter grunted a curious-sounding, ‘Hmph.’

  Jenna whirled to face him. ‘What? What did you just notice?’

  He smiled close-lipped, though it wasn’t happy. Just interested.

  ‘Vocals,’ he replied.

  Slate gray burst forth in Jenna’s mind, the same color that had tried to peek through moments ago after Porter’s comment about Ashlee Haynie being their favorite living witness. Of course. The color she associated with the sense of hearing. It wasn’t just images that would be burned into Ashlee’s memory. It would also be the screams, the chokes, the sputtering.

  And any words they said other than what they told her to pass along to us.

  ‘I need to talk to Ashlee Haynie again,’ Jenna said. ‘I need to find out what else she heard.’

  Eight

  ‘No, no, no, no, no!’ Ashlee’s voice got louder with every word as she shook her head, eyes squeezed shut tighter and tighter. ‘I don’t want to!’

  ‘Ashlee, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t extremely important. I wouldn’t make you relive that nightmare unless I thought it could help me catch the people who did this,’ Jenna said softly.

  ‘I feel like I’m going to throw up,’ Ashlee said weakly.

  ‘Agent Dodd, will you get Ms Haynie a glass of water, please?’ Jenna said. ‘Take a few deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth, Ashlee.’

  Jenna watched the bank worker round her lips into an O, slowly blowing out a breath. The woman’s flushed, red complexion evened, and hand trembling, she accepted the paper cup of water from Dodd. She took a slow sip.

  ‘That’s it,’ Jenna said, nodding. As bad as she needed information, eyewitnesses were sketchy at recalling moments under duress. Uncooperative, hyperventilating eyewitnesses made for even worse testimonies. If the terrorists had simply wanted to pass the phrase important to be earnest on to the cops, they could’ve just written it on the same note that warned authorities they would strike again. But they hadn’t.

  Instead, they’d left them a living witness instructed to give the message.

  Which was why Jenna now knew that whatever else Ashlee had heard come from any of their mouths was vital. They’d have known the video wouldn’t have audio. They’d have also known that leaving a witness alive meant leaving a standing, testifying account of any vocalizations they made inside the building – be they statements made directly to the witness or not. Rookie cops might discover this nugget and think it a goldmine, but Jenna knew better.

  Quite an oversight for a precise attack executed without so much as a hiccup, bank alarm, or errant cell phone call made by one of the twenty-two people inside the bank as it was being overtaken. Nope. It wasn’t an oversight. Leaving Ashlee Haynie alive was deliberate.

  And so was anything they allowed her to hear.

  ‘OK,’ Jenna said, her voice light and soothing. ‘Now, I want you to think about the moments inside the bank after you heard the woman scream. It’s going to be hard, but remember, you’re physically OK. As you’re imagining those minutes that your mind is fighting so hard to forget, in the back of your mind, I want you to let yourself know that it’s safe to remember those things. Not comfortable. Not OK by any definition of the word, because no one should have to remember what I’m asking you to. But you are safe. The events are physically in the past.’

  Ashlee nodded, eyes wide. She wrung her hands in her lap. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘That’s all I can ask for,’ Jenna said. ‘OK. I want you to close your eyes and go to the moment inside the bank when you heard the woman near the door scream. Can you hear her?’

  Ashlee winced. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  The ache in the woman’s voice stung Jenna to her core. Before she’d come back to the BAU last year, she’d spent years helping patients cope after unfathomable traumatic events, coaching them on how to control reliving their nightmares at a speed that wouldn’t overwhelm them. These days, it was commonplace to consider talking through experiences healing, but in truth, for some people, calling to mind memories of the incident that had catapulted them into therapy in the first place actually exacerbated all kinds of symptoms. And, in that setting, she had a chance to develop a rapport with the patient, establish herself as an ally.

  Here, Jenna knew good and well her intentions weren’t first and foremost to preserve Ashlee Haynie’s mental health. Her job as an investigator was to extract the damned memories inside the woman’s head at whatever cost and use them to protect future lives. Never mind the life right in front of her that still needed saving.

  Ashlee might’ve survived the attack inside the bank, but really, she wasn’t so different from Jenna. The screams. The blood. They’d formed a single, defining moment of her existence. One she couldn’t return from, couldn’t erase.

  Bloody handprints … the door, so close.

  Ashlee Haynie might be alive, but a part of her had died inside that bank just like the others. Jenna knew it all too well.

  After all, Jenna was a survivor, too.

  ‘OK. Where are you when you hear her scream?’

  A sharp intake of breath as if Ashlee was being pierced with a needle. ‘Right inside the door of the drive-through teller room. I turn and see the people coming in, and I back up to the wall. I crouch down. Before I chicken out, I crawl as fast as I can out the door and across the carpet until I’m under the teller counter.’

  ‘And what’s the next thing you hear?’

  Ashlee bit her lip, her face contorting in a pained expression. ‘Grunts. More screams.’

  ‘All right,’ Jenna said fast, cutting off the stream of consciousness. If Ashlee got lost in the terror of the moment, she would miss any pertinent information that she might have locked in her memory. ‘Try to think about the very first singular noise you can separate from the rest. The next thing to hit your ears that doesn’t just muddle together with the other sounds in the building—’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘You can. You’re physically safe in this room, and a dozen or more FBI agents are surrounding the outside of the building now in addition to the handful surrounding you in this very room. You’re safe here,’ Jenna said. The bank employee might never again feel safe, and it was wrong to tell her that her trauma was over. It might be months or years. Might be never. But Jenna had learned over the years that, just after a trauma, reminding victims of their immediate physical safety – something that didn’t insinuate their plight was easy or their distress was being downplayed, but rather, addressed a valid immediate concern rightly held – was one of the few things that eased panic.

  Ashlee’s eyes flew open, widened. ‘How do you know that?’ she squealed.

  A shade of blue flashed in, and Jenna begged her mind to recognize it. She inwardly flipped through the shades of blue in her lexicon, mental images attached to some of them that might spur clarity. Her thoughts landed on a freeze-frame of Ayana catalogued in her mind, one where her daughter was coloring a picture of a princess in a coloring book. With a blue crayon.

  Wild Yonder Blue was its name, according to Crayola. The color she associated with the normal, everyday mundane long before she’d even conceived Ayana.

  Everyday life.

  Of course Ashlee would question her safety even if, under normal circumstances, dozens of Feds would make a person feel untouchable. It was the reason the terrorists had chosen this normal, everyday bank in a normal, everyday place to attack. It was easy for people to convince themselves that they wouldn’t be subject to a terrorist attack, in a small, off-the-radar town or unlikely place. Much harder to pretend you didn’t go to the bank as part of your weekly or even monthly errands.

  ‘Because these criminals don’t want to get caught,’ Jenna said truthfu
lly.

  ‘How could you know that?’ Ashlee asked, blinking and staring at Jenna. ‘I’ve seen movies where guys who leave a note … where the note means they secretly want to be found! What about them?’

  ‘It’s my job to read people. Criminals. It’s the reason I’m called for cases like this. To give my opinion on their mindsets. It helps us form a picture of who we think they are based on what they did. It also helps law enforcement find them by predicting what they might do next. Based on this crime scene …’ Jenna stopped. Took a deep breath. Honesty. Honesty is still best. ‘Ashlee, I wish I could tell you my reasoning for thinking this, because I have very solid reasons to think it. But right now, with the case still under investigation and you our only reliable witness—’

  ‘Your only witness,’ Ashlee cut in.

  ‘—it’s important that we keep your statements uninfluenced, and that includes by us as the investigators. That said, I believe the perpetrators have tried to get as far away from the crime scene as possible because they don’t want to be caught, and I believe it for reasons other than just assumptions. OK?’

  Ashlee nodded, bit her lip. She seemed wary, but in a second, she closed her eyes again. The signal to resume.

  ‘All right. Here we go,’ Jenna said.

  She took Ashlee back to hearing the woman scream near the door and walked her through to the point they’d left off before when Ashlee had just crawled out of the room behind the teller line to hide under the teller desk. ‘Are your eyes open or closed?’ Jenna asked softly. If Ashlee could focus first on a little detail about herself unrelated to the horror gripping her, maybe it would remind her she had made it through OK. Help her home in on the finer details around her.

  ‘Closed,’ Ashlee said quickly.

  Jenna nodded even though Ashlee’s eyes were closed now, too. ‘Good. After you made it under the teller counter, was the next sound you heard close to you or far away?’

  ‘Close,’ Ashlee whispered.

  ‘How close?’

  Ashlee clenched her eyes tightly. ‘Very close. Someone goes near the stairs.’

  ‘How can you tell that’s where they are?’

  ‘Their footsteps. Running.’

  The guy on the video who made a break for the stairs leading down to the vaults. Of course they hadn’t actually seen his death play out; he was out of the video frame and into the stretch of hall that led to the stairs by the time one of the attackers caught up to him. But it definitely had played out, because they’d seen the body of the same middle-aged guy who they had seen running away on the video dead at the top of the staircase during the crime scene walkthrough.

  ‘OK. The next sound after the running steps?’

  ‘A yell,’ Ashlee said, her body tensing. ‘Then a few more slow steps. A thud.’

  Sounded like she’d heard the moment the runner hit the ground, succumbing to the wounds the attacker who’d caught up to him had inflicted.

  Goddamn, I wish I could help you instead of force you to remember this right now, Ashlee.

  Jenna looked at her hands in her lap, closed her eyes. ‘Then?’

  ‘A voice!’ Ashlee said, almost a gasp, as though she was surprising even herself.

  Questions of male or female, young or old flew through Jenna’s mind, but she reigned them in. ‘Where did it come from? How close is it to you?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Ashlee said. ‘Farther away than the steps. Across the room, maybe.’

  ‘Closer to the door where you heard the scream, or in the other direction?’

  ‘I … I think in the middle of them somewhere,’ Ashlee said.

  Jenna nodded, ignoring the colors popping in and out of her mind, fighting for dominance. Later.

  ‘Good. And what did the voice say? Words?’

  Ashlee nodded soundlessly.

  ‘What did the voice say?’

  ‘Rich … eh … loo. Like one word. Rich-eh-loo,’ Ashlee said, eyes still shut tight and cocking her head as though trying to think.

  Two colors surged in together, both strong and urgent. Damn this crime scene and its competing profiles.

  Jenna latched on to one of them – the same deep lapis lazuli that she’d seen with ‘important to be earnest.’ Classical intelligence. Literature reference.

  She grappled to identify the second color before it slipped away. It had been in the yellow family. Or maybe the browns? What was the exact shade?

  But like sand through her fingers, it was gone too quickly for her to hold on to it once it had started to leak. Fucking better not have been important.

  ‘OK. And after the voice, was the next sound closer than it was or farther away?’

  Ashlee jumped, startled. ‘Closer,’ she said, panic mounting in her voice. ‘A lot closer!’

  ‘What do you hear?’

  ‘Slams. People climbing on top of the counters. Screams! Oh, God! Nicole!’

  Jenna knew she had to be thinking about the stocky blonde teller in her thirties who had died just feet from where Ashlee had been hiding.

  ‘Deep breaths, Ashlee,’ Jenna encouraged. ‘What other than screams?’

  ‘Um … um … um …’ Ashlee stuttered, shaking her head, eyes clenched, clearly trying to sift through the horror in her head to identify something useful. ‘Gurgling,’ she whispered.

  ‘OK. Keep going,’ Jenna said. Ashlee did not need to get caught up on that noise.

  ‘Other screams, clattering under the counter where I was,’ Ashlee said. ‘A bang, the counter jarring beside me.’

  The other teller trying to get away from the guy with the long sword.

  ‘What next?’ Jenna prodded.

  Ashlee’s eyes flew open. ‘I don’t know anymore! The next thing I remember is my wrist being grabbed.’

  Jenna forced back the colors trying to come in. She had to keep Ashlee right where she was, keep her talking. ‘And then what next?’

  ‘He told me to take him to the safe,’ Ashlee said.

  Consistent with her previous statement. Not that Jenna expected anything different, but when they caught the bastards responsible, Ashlee’s unchanging testimony would be huge in court.

  ‘I want you to think hard about that move from under the counter down to the safe,’ Jenna said. ‘Go through every movement it took to get there. Take every footstep or crawl.’

  Ashlee nodded.

  ‘As you go there, tell me what other things you notice,’ Jenna said.

  Eyes tightly closed, Ashlee breathed faster, heavier. ‘It’s such a blur. I tried hard not to look at the ground, keep my eyes toward the stairs, up. Something on the floor near there.’

  A body.

  ‘We walked down …’ her voice trailed. ‘Wait. I heard something else. Someone tell someone else something.’

  ‘OK,’ Jenna said. ‘Good. What was it?’

  ‘Someone said, “Scout, keep it together. DNA.”’

  Jenna blinked rapidly, surprised. Lapis lazuli flashed in. ‘Are you sure that’s what they said?’

  Ashlee nodded hard. ‘Positive.’

  Jenna stayed in the moment, pushing for details like how far away the voice had been, whether it was male or female, and if anyone had reacted to the statement. Jenna walked Ashlee through the exercise all the way to the vault and being locked in, just in case her witness had anything else to reveal, but all she could think about was talking to Irv.

  Finally, they reached the point when Ashlee had been found inside the safe by police, and Jenna could wrap this up. She had what she needed from Ashlee’s memories; now, she needed the interview to end so she could do what had to be done with it.

  ‘Ashlee, that must’ve been so difficult, and I appreciate you being brave to go through it again. You rest now. An officer will drive you to the hospital to be checked out just to be safe. If you need something to help with anxiety, be sure to ask for it. I’ll be in touch in the next few days, OK?’ Jenna said.

  Ashlee nodded at her, looking like she was ab
out to cry. ‘I can’t believe this really happened,’ she muttered.

  Jenna reached across, closed her hand over Ashlee’s. ‘It never should’ve.’

  With that, she stood and left the room.

  As soon as she closed the door, Jenna whipped out her phone. She clicked to open her texts, thinking of Irv, but smiled to see texts from Vern and Charley that said only, ‘Bobblehead’ and ‘Clementine,’ respectively. Then Yancy’s text of his safe word ‘Smorgasboard,’ along with an ‘I love you.’ She exhaled. Smiled. Ayana was home safe.

  She snapped back a quick text to Yancy: I love you, too, hot stuff.

  Just as Jenna was about to text Irv and ask where they stood in their hunt for someone Jenna really wished they didn’t have to find, she noticed Saleda descending the stairs, approaching.

  ‘What do you think now?’ her team leader asked.

  Jenna sighed. That we have one hell of a problem right now.

  ‘I think we should go back to Quantico and watch that video until it’s so burned in our memories that we can call it up anytime, anywhere in our heads. I think we should use it to start profiling every single individual killer within the group, because I think it’s going to be one of two giant steps we’ll have to take to profile and nail the actual group.’

  ‘I’m assuming you’re going to explain why, but say I trust you for the moment. What’s the other giant step?’

  ‘Irv needs to find my literature and linguistics contact. Put the profiles of the individuals together and find her and I think we’ll know a little more what we’re dealing with.’

  Assuming we can deal with Grey Hechinger herself first.

  Nine

  An electronic doorbell sounded as Yancy entered Yorke’s Custom Prosthetics and Orthotics.