Double Vision (11 page)

T
he sun was creeping over the horizon by the time they arrived at the home of Sheila Maxwell, the unfortunate soul who had stumbled across the disturbing scene that was Brooklyn Satterhorne in the Target parking lot in Fredericksburg. The location told Jenna their killer was within a small radius of Quantico. Scary that the FBI could be based here and yet could be as clueless as they currently were as to who the hell was at the root of all this madness.

The cream-colored, Mediterranean-style home looked more like something Jenna would've expected to find in Boca Raton than Fredericksburg, Virginia. The stucco villa's lawn was just screaming for a palm tree or two. Looked like somewhere Hank would've wanted to live. He'd always said, back when they were together, that one day he wanted to live closer to the beach. She'd been the one to go back to her home in Florida after they broke it off, even though it hadn't been near the waterfront. But back then she'd always thought that one day they'd retire together and move close to the sand.

He'd died there, in her home.

Jenna pushed the thought of Hank's frozen, staring eyes toward a happier image. Ayana's lively, energetic eyes. Copies of Hank's.
God. I miss you, A.

Dodd knocked on the front door, and Jenna pushed the thoughts of everything from Hank to missing Ayana to the Cobbler out of her head to focus on what she needed to know from Sheila Maxwell.

A brunette of about five-foot-two answered the door.

“Ms. Maxwell?” Dodd asked.

The lady shook her head. “No, I'm her sister. Come in. Sheila's resting on the couch.”

Sedated?
It wasn't uncommon for doctors to medicate someone who'd seen something like what Sheila had, but Jenna only hoped they hadn't given her something too heavy. Maybe it was cruel, but witnesses could remember a lot more clearly when they were conscious.

Jenna and Dodd followed Sheila Maxwell's sister through the hallway and into the wicker-clad living room. Another brunette, much taller than the sister who'd greeted them, lay on the white wicker couch, her eyes red from tears, her hair mussed. Her legs were curled toward her chest to ensure she fit on the tiny sofa, but the position made her look somewhat like a giant on the type of furniture usually reserved for brief perching as neighbors carried on polite conversations about the weather during patio cookouts.

When she saw Jenna and Dodd, Sheila sat up and wiped her eyes as though she thought they wouldn't be able to tell she was distraught if she had no tears visible.

“Sheila, these are the detectives I told you were coming,” her sister said.

“Agents,” Dodd corrected.

Jenna shot him a look, then turned back to Sheila. “Ms. Maxwell, I know this is a horrible time for you, and I can't imagine what you're going through . . .” True enough statement. Jenna had seen so many dead bodies, she could no longer remember what it was like to see a scene and be so disturbed she lay on the couch and cried.
Depressing.
“But we do need to ask you some questions.”

Sheila nodded quickly, though experience told Jenna it was out of anxiety rather than eagerness. Luckily, the woman didn't seem
very
drugged.

“Ms. Maxwell, what was the first thing you noticed in the parking lot?”

The woman stared at Dodd like he was made of the same wicker as her furniture. She blinked. “A body.”

Points for explaining.

“Could you tell us what you noticed about the body specifically, Ms. Maxwell?” Jenna clarified. Dodd apparently hadn't done this in a long time. “Which way it was facing, the physical condition . . . just describe to us exactly what you saw.”

The woman nodded again. “Um . . . she was lying on the ground. On her back.”

Bullet impact threw her backward. She
was
facing the shooter.

Sheila Maxwell pulled her knees to her chest now, childlike. “Red soaked her arms and her torso, and her eyes didn't look normal.”

Jenna gave an encouraging nod. “What happened next?”

The woman dug her nails into her black trousers. “I screamed. I screamed, but for some reason, I went toward her anyway. I looked down at her as I got closer, and there were coins over her eyes. She wasn't moving.”

“Ms. Maxwell, what did you do after you saw the coins?” Jenna asked.

“Nothing. I waited. Some other people ran past me and knelt by her. I heard someone say she was alive. Other people called nine-one-one. I just . . . stood there,” she said, sounding ashamed.

“Ms. Maxwell, you went through a terrible experience. You can't fault yourself for being shocked. Your reaction was a very natural one. Your scream alerted help. You did a good job,” Dodd said.

Jenna glanced at him, not positive she'd heard him right. Surely that couldn't have been Dodd . . .

She shook off her surprise. Maybe he had one or two good bones in his body after all.

“Do you remember what the victim looked like?” Jenna asked.

Sheila Maxwell bobbled her head. “Red hair. Curly. That's mainly what I remember.”

The second redheaded victim. Coincidence? Ainsley Nickerson, who'd been one of the original three victims, had been murdered in her bathtub. Her hair was more auburn, though. Brooklyn's was carrot, ginger. “What else?”

Sheila Maxwell rubbed the invisible goosebumps on her arms. “She had on a blue sweater. No, wait . . . purple.” The lady blinked rapidly. “I remember her . . . oh, God. I remember seeing her!”

She choked out a sob as her hand flew to her mouth, but Jenna was too intrigued to worry about Sheila Maxwell's comfort.

“Ms. Maxwell,
where
did you see the victim?” she asked.

“In the store,” Sheila whispered. “She was shopping with another girl.”

Another girl?

Jenna leaned forward. “This is very important, Ms. Maxwell. Do you remember anything about the other girl?”

Sheila shook her head, but Jenna could tell by the look in her eyes she was searching her brain.

“The friend was wearing blue. Maybe a shirt from the community college,” Sheila said. She closed her eyes. “I think she was carrying an iPhone. It had a pink case, maybe? I'm not sure . . .”

Jenna leapt up and left Dodd to continue the questioning. She walked into the hallway, Irv's speed-dial button already pressed.

“How can I help you, my Color-Coded Queen?” Irv answered.

“I need a cross-reference of everyone in Brooklyn Satterhorne's college classes with her phone calls and texts in . . . let's say the past twenty-four hours. Kids shopping together call each other first, right?”

“Oh, for sure. I
always
call my buddies before we hit up the Fashion Bug.”

Jenna couldn't hold in the laugh. “The Fashion Bug? They still have those?”

“Claire's?” Irv said.

“Try again . . .”

“Burlington Coat Factory? Rue 21? Aw, screw it. I'll have the cross-reference to you in five.”

“Thanks, Irv,” Jenna said, smiling in spite of herself.

She hung up and shoved her phone back into the clip. If a girl was with Brooklyn Satterhorne at Target, she was their best bet at finding out why Brooklyn was killed . . . and who might've done this to her.

I
t was morning time when Eldred opened his eyes. He was back at his apartment. Carmichael Manor, was it? No. Carmine. Yes, that was right. How had he gotten here?

He staggered through the tiny hallway to the kitchenette. Nancy still sometimes checked him out for trips to her house, and sometimes he slept there in a twin bed next to her bedroom. It was better there than here. Here, it smelled like old people.

Dying people.

Eldred scratched his head, felt a knot there. That was right. He'd hit his head. Somewhere.

He reached for the box of Cocoa Puffs on the counter. He wasn't supposed to eat them, he knew, but the bran cereal Sarah always brought him didn't taste as good.

No. Not Sarah. Sarah was gone.

His heart stung, his chest clenched. His Sarah. Gone. Always gone.

It was Nancy. Nancy brought the bran flakes.

He shook some cereal into the bowl, and again, something tickled his mind. What couldn't he remember? Something someone had told him, maybe? Something about Nancy?

About Sarah?

Unable to help it, his hand holding the box trembled as his sadness became frustration. He gripped the cereal box harder until its edge crinkled under his hand. He yelled and threw it across the room into the little two-person table. Not his table! Not his and Sarah's table!

“The kitchen isn't big enough for that table, Dad,” Nancy had said when they'd moved him in. “I got this smaller one for you. Isn't it nice?”

Where was his table? Sarah's table?

He noticed the Cocoa Puffs on the floor. How had those gotten there?

Eldred picked up the dustpan and small brush hanging beside the sink and ambled over to the mess. He crouched down and swept the cereal into the pan. Cereal. Boxes. Loud noises.

He stopped sweeping, tears stinging his eyes. It was on the tip of his tongue, right there.
Remember. Please.

The phone mounted on the wall rang. Then again, interrupting the ever-so-close memory he'd been grappling to seize. He groaned as he heaved himself off the floor, leaving the dustpan full of cereal where it was. Whoever this was had ruined his chance of remembering! They would hear. They would hear from him . . .

“Hello!” he barked.

“Hi,” a tiny voice on the other end of the phone replied. “Um, my name is Molly Keegan. I met you at the grocery store.”

Suddenly, the memory he'd been reaching for flew into his waiting hands, slammed them with the weight of a crashing plane.

The little girl who'd dived between the cereal boxes. Why he'd probably hit his head. What he'd seen.

What he knew.

•   •   •

G
rown-ups always said you shouldn't talk to strangers, but there were plenty of exceptions to that rule. Teachers on the first day of school, the man behind the ice cream counter when he asked what flavor you wanted. Police who asked questions after something bad happened.

Besides, the old man Molly now knew was called Eldred Beasley wasn't a stranger. Not really. She'd met him before. And people could just as easily be good as bad, right?

After Liam and her mother had left to meet with the funeral people that morning, Molly had pulled out the piece of paper where she'd written down the number for Carmine Manor she'd looked up in the yellow pages book in the kitchen drawer. She asked the nice lady—a stranger—who'd answered the phone about the man in the store, only she didn't tell the nice lady she knew him from the store. She'd told her she'd found something of his she was hoping to return. After all, grown-ups also fibbed. They told people they looked pretty even if they looked silly. Liam told a church member everything would be okay with her husband who had cancer even though he knew it might not be.

Grown-ups said lies were okay as long as they were small and for the right reasons.

The lady had known who the man was as soon as Molly described him. She'd given Molly another name of someone to call about talking to him, saying the man might not understand why she was calling, but Molly called him anyway. Somehow, she knew she had to talk to him and only him. No one else would understand, even if she couldn't explain to anyone—including herself—why.

Now, as she heard the voice on the other end and gripped the phone tighter in her hand, she knew exactly why she'd needed to talk to him herself.

“Molly, you said? You were on the cereal aisle . . .”

His voice sounded hazy, the way hers did when she first woke up from a dream and couldn't tell if it had been real or not.

“Yes, sir,” she said. She hadn't really planned what to say to him when she called. She'd spent so much time finding him, it hadn't occurred to her she'd need a plan.

“You . . . right before the last . . .”

Molly nodded hard, feeling more than knowing that this man was realizing something he hadn't before. He hadn't been in the room, and she didn't know why, but right now, it seemed like it was because he had forgotten about the grocery store altogether.

“Yes, sir,” she said again. “I was with you right before the last shot.”

“Oh, my dear, sweet Lord,” Eldred Beasley breathed. “I need to talk to the police.”

Y
ancy put his Prius into park outside the little bungalow on Peake. As much as he dreaded having to explain to CiCi how the modifier worked that allowed him to control the accelerator with his left foot instead of his prosthetic, he'd rather do that than walk to her house only to have her look at him like he was nuts if he thought she was going to walk ten blocks to the coffee shop. Some girls weren't outdoorsy types, and even if this wasn't a date, he could still be a gentleman.

Not a date, huh, jackass? Then what is it?

He wasn't cheating on Jenna. He wasn't. They'd never agreed to be exclusive. Even if he
did
have a ring for her in his pocket, they'd never decided to date only each other, and though this wasn't a date, it was “legal” even so. They'd done and would do nothing sketchy, and even if they had or did, coffee wasn't a lace-teddy-and-chocolate-dipped-strawberries date by any means. Besides, no real date took place before eleven a.m. This didn't even qualify as brunch. The only people who met for coffee before brunch were business associates, mommy playgroups, and acquaintances.

On his way up the walk, he tried to imagine explaining to her why he'd asked her to get coffee, though. Even if this wasn't a date,
she
probably assumed it was. Why else would a man ask a woman out for coffee?

Then again, what kind of married woman would accept without knowing his motivations?

The kind who is desperate, lonely, and abused.

Yancy climbed the three steps of the porch. Just as he raised his hand to knock on the door, though, he heard raised voices coming from inside.

“Where's the
money
, CiCi?” a man's voice growled.

Holy shit.

Yancy eased to the side of the porch, glancing in the big bay window in front. Movement in a room toward the back of the house, but he couldn't see anything else. He rushed down the porch stairs and rounded the right side of the house toward the room in question, yanking his cell phone from his pocket and dialing 911.

“Nine-one-one, can you please hold?”

The stiff air of the hold hit his ears.

“When I find out who took this call, I swear I will get your protocol-ditching ass fired, then boot you out the door with my own metal foot,” he muttered.

He turned the corner to see a screened porch in the backyard. He crept in.

The voices were louder now.

“Please, Denny,” CiCi's high-pitched voice choked. It sounded like she was being strangled.

Shit.

Yancy headed for the door that led to the house's interior.
Bad idea, buddy. You might not be a cop, but you do have training enough to know you shouldn't be moving in. You don't know the layout, you don't know the situation. Back off and call help.

The knob turned under his hand. It was unlocked.

Yancy eased it shut again. He reached for his prosthetic, hit the hidden latch custom-built just for him.

In a flash, he held his Ruger .380.

He noiselessly turned the knob, opened the door.

In a crouch, he took the room in, listened closely for the direction of the voices. From the movement he'd seen in the window, they
should
be off to his right.

“CiCi, God help me, if you spent all that money again—”

Right.

“I didn't. I put it . . . somewhere safe.”

Yancy crept through the halls, then leaned against the wall next to what seemed like the room where the conversation was taking place. The kitchen.

“You're lying,” the man rasped. “And you know what I do to liars . . .”

Yancy swung his left leg around, weapon trained. “Let her go.”

The dark-haired man released CiCi Winthrop's throat and spun around. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I'll be your worst goddamn nightmare if you don't walk out of this house right this minute,” Yancy said.

Denny smirked, laughed.

Then, before Yancy knew what was happening, Denny's right hand flew to his waistline. A gun barrel appeared.

Yancy pulled the trigger.

CiCi squealed as the bullet caught her husband square in the chest.

Denny blinked for a moment, a confused look on his face. Then his face contorted, and a few strange noises came from his mouth as though he was having trouble getting words out. He fell to his knees and slammed both palms to the floor.

Oh, shit. What did you do?

Yancy's hand holding the gun fell as he stared at Denny on the floor for a long minute.

Denny's arms went limp, and he face-planted into the white tile.

Do something!

Yancy rushed to his side, rolled him over. He touched two fingers to his wrist, then his neck. Nothing.

Oh, holy God help me.

Yancy tilted Denny's chin back.
You better live, you motherfucker.

He leaned into the man he'd shot and pressed his lips to Denny's. He breathed a slow breath.

A strange wheeze, then a wet spray. Blood had spattered from Denny's chest.

“Do you have plastic wrap?” Yancy said heatedly.

“What?” CiCi squeaked.

“Plastic wrap. Cling wrap. His lung is punctured. Do you have any?”

“Um, maybe,” she said, and she started opening cabinets.

Yancy's head fell to his chest. It wouldn't matter even if she found it. One lung collapsed wouldn't have made his pulse disappear. The bullet had to have hit a major artery.

“He's . . . dead,” Yancy said softly. “Your husband's . . . dead.”

What can you possibly say to a woman whose husband you've just shot, even if you did it to defend her? Oh, God. He had to call someone. Do something.

“He's not my husband,” CiCi whispered.

What?

He turned from Denny's fixed stare to look at this woman he'd come here to take out for coffee. Her hair was matted to her face with sweat, tears streaking her cheeks. She held a hand over her mouth, the pink nails chewed to the quicks from nervous nights in this very home. So many times he'd talked to her at the height of panic in moments she wasn't sure she'd live to see another day. It'd been so easy to assume the man cutting off her air supply seconds before was the same phantom of a monster Yancy had come to hate since he'd started taking calls from her. So many times he'd thought about being able to save her, even though he didn't know her. The almost palpable fear in her voice during every call, the sharp, rapid breaths she'd take while staying on the line waiting for help, trying to be quiet so he wouldn't find her hiding place. No one deserved to live that way.

But this wasn't him. Who the hell had he just shot?

“Who . . .”

This man had been asking her for money. Demanding it.

Oh, God, I've killed someone.

As scenarios flew through Yancy's mind of what would happen next, what kind of trouble he might be in in addition to the guilt coursing through him, he shook his head back and forth. This wasn't happening. Couldn't be.

“CiCi, we have to call an ambulance . . . the police . . .”

Yancy stood and pulled out his cell phone again, but a hot, sweaty grip around his wrist stayed his hand.

“We can't! Yancy . . .”

For the first time, her eyes met his. She had to be thinking the same thing he was: “So it's you.”

“Yancy,” she repeated.

“Um. Hey,” he said. Then, he tore his eyes from hers. “As much as I'd love to have met a little more formally, we have to call someone!”

She shook her head furiously. “We can't. You don't understand . . .”

“I understand that we're standing in a kitchen with a dead guy . . . a dead guy you don't particularly seem too concerned about being dead. A guy who was demanding money from you a few seconds ago, but who isn't your abusive husband. What is he? A boyfriend? What?”

None of this made any sense.

“Not exactly,” she muttered.

“Look, I don't mean to sound like an insensitive prick or anything, but considering I just shot a guy to save your life, I'm pretty sure I deserve some
fucking
details.”

“He's . . . oh, God. Shit. Yancy, he's a . . .”

She stopped and closed her eyes. She looked like she might be about to puke.

“He's a what? A door-to-door encyclopedia salesman? A Sondheim fan? A towel boy for women's volleyball? What?”

She gulped, opened her eyes, and stared at him. “He's a pimp, Yancy.”

What the . . .

This nice-looking, all-American girl in front of him in her cozy house with planter boxes out front and a
WIPE YOUR PAWS
welcome mat in front of the door, a hooker? This just didn't add up.

Then again, desperate times . . . maybe she was trying to score some money her evil husband wouldn't know about to stash into a getaway fund? Or was there even a husband at all? Maybe this was the guy who'd been beating her all along. But if he was, why protect him every time? Why say to 911 dispatch he was her husband?

And if she didn't need to squirrel away cash to escape an abusive home that didn't exist, then why the hell did a woman like her sell her body to random men?

Don't ask. Not right now.

“Okay, so he's a pimp. All the better. No one's going to lose sleep over someone shooting a pimp in self-defense, right? We just call the police, tell them what happened. We can make up a reason you were involved with him. Maybe he just broke in or something . . . we can keep whatever your relationship is to him out of this . . .”

“Yancy, he's a cop!”

“What?”

“Yeah. He's a cop. A group of them are dirty, and they run a . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“A prostitution ring?” Yancy asked, bile rising in his throat. This wasn't good. Not at all.
Oh, Jenna. I need you right now.

“Exactly.” CiCi stared at the tile for a moment, her eyes shifting back and forth. Then she looked at him again. “Why do you think they never do anything about him when the nine-one-one calls happen?”

Yancy took a step back. “Well, I'd assumed it was because you backed off like a lot of women who are in domestic disputes and didn't have him carted off in cuffs, but seeing as how he isn't your husband, my next thought was you didn't want to be hauled off with him on prostitution charges. You mean it's always him? You said it was your husband—”

Do you even
have
a husband?

Angry tears bit CiCi's eyes. “I know what I said, okay! I lied. There! I've been lying this whole time. And now . . . oh, God, what are we going to do? They'll kill me. We'll both get killed.”

“Oh, damn, oh damn. Okay. It's okay. We can do something. We have options here. We can go to the state cops instead of the locals. I have . . . contacts . . .” Jenna's face drifted through Yancy's mind. What the hell would she say when he told her? How could he possibly even
begin
that conversation? “It's going to be okay.”

CiCi wept uncontrollably. She retched, put her hands on her knees. “You don't understand. It goes high up. I know for a fact a judge is involved. These guys—” She retched again, then spat some excess saliva onto the floor. “These guys are brutal, Yancy. A girl I knew—the girl who sent me to them when I was in trouble—she held out on them one too many times. She was found in an alley, beaten and raped. They cut her throat. Made it look like a gang initiation thing. Even planted evidence on some poor black kid in the projects. Only reason I know for sure it was them was because Denny”—she coughed, hacked—“told me if I didn't pay up soon I'd end up just like her.”

Oh, Jesus. This is bad. How the fuck do you get yourself into situations like this, cool stuff?

“They have witness protection—”

“We'd be dead before they could hide us away. I know too much about how their operation works, who's involved. They'd cut my throat before I finished answering the cops' questions. Besides, I can't just disappear. I have family to take care of . . .”

Jenna. Vern. Charley. Ayana.

They can come after them, too.

“Okay,” Yancy said, steeling himself. Before he'd lost his leg, he'd trained to go after these fuckers. Now he couldn't do anything about them except try with everything he had to think like they did. He could figure out whether or not she ever had a real husband later. Right now, he needed to move fast. “But starting right this second, every single move we make has to be perfect, or else we're as dead as he is.”