Double Vision (22 page)

“Yellow, Jell-O, mellow. What
else
dost thou have for me?” Irv answered.

“Irv, when you're done with the other stuff I need you to look into the other Triple Shooter victims, and pass along word to Saleda, Teva, and Porter to start digging, too. Find out if the other victims—the single victims, not the grocery store—had a seven involved with their deaths anywhere. The number seven.”

She only half listened to his assent, too busy paying attention to the drumming of her own heartbeat in her ears. She didn't know what the third three the Triple Shooter had seen was, but now that the purple she'd been seeing for so many days without recognizing it had finally manifested into a clear-cut association, none of that mattered.

Seven. Jenna associated the number seven with this very purple she'd seen. There'd been seven victims at the grocery store. The Triple Shooter had deliberately stopped at the seventh, but he hadn't killed his intended target. Now here were sevens again, and she was almost sure that when the team dug into his past victims, they'd find sevens hidden in the scenes or circumstances there, too. This killer wasn't only preoccupied with the number three. He was seven-obsessed, too.

But it wasn't the number that had Jenna's blood down to the same temperature Pesha Josephy's was now. It was the other thing she kept associating with that same shade of violet. Until now, she'd not only failed to place the color association, but she had somehow managed to overlook that the same color had appeared in connection with this case over and over again. Her gut usually put puzzle pieces like this together
for
her, but this time her internal assembly line had malfunctioned disastrously.

Maybe she'd missed it. Maybe the oversight was the result of fatigue or the confusion of the case as a whole before they'd realized that another perp was somehow in play. That alone was probably skewing her perceptions, even those of her oh-so-reliable color dictionary.

But as Jenna hung up with Irv, she knew that none of those reasons were why she'd not seen the connection. She held the phone in her hand, staring at it. Another phone call might be in order, but to whom and for what, she wasn't sure. It had to happen, but the situation would have to be handled with care. Right now, she didn't have any idea of the best way to protect, the best way to explain . . . the best way to
move.

She hadn't seen this connection because it was too hard to fathom. And she hadn't wanted to.

The gunman fired at the seventh victim. Seven. Purple.

The same color she had seen every single time she'd been in the presence of little Molly Keegan.

A
fter updating Dodd and then calling Saleda to fill her in on the development, they all decided that as much as Jenna's heart might be telling her to run, snap up Molly Keegan, and put her into witness protection, that course of action wasn't the way to go. Yet, anyway.

Still, as Jenna dialed her next contact, her stomach clenched painfully. The thought that that sweet, precocious little girl could've been the target of a mass shooting cut straight through her.

No time to think like a mom. Be a cop. Figure out who did this.

The phone rang four times without answer, and Jenna left a quick message and hung up. She dialed Yancy.

That was the problem, though. All of the Triple Shooter's victims had been adults. First, they needed to figure out how Molly lined up with threes and sevens—or they with her. Another big question that needed answering: who else was involved in the grocery store massacre to make the shooter change MO? That led to maybe the most important question of all: if they were right, and the shooter changed MO because someone else was involved, then why was that mystery person involved? There were only a handful of reasons for being associated with a mass killing, and the most likely among them happened to be that you wanted someone dead. They'd been trying to identify the Triple Shooter's true target inside the grocery store, but what if another of the patrons was a target, too? What if another patron was the target of the mystery person involved with the Triple Shooter? Which patron were
they
? Even though the mama bear in Jenna was coming out, the truth was, if Molly was the Triple Shooter's target, she was most likely safe. His pathology made it highly unlikely that he would come back to finish off a victim. She wouldn't have known this right after the grocery store shootings, since if he was frustrated enough and killing a particular target was his first priority, it was possible he would obsess over it and not move on until he'd succeeded. And yet he'd clearly moved on. Brooklyn Satterhorne was dead, signifying one specific regarding the way he determined his targets and carried out his rituals in killing them, and that was that even if they were preordained to die by higher beings in his mind, his ritual did not include the need to complete one before moving to another.

In certain types of pathologies, killers might hold a grudge against an escaped target, but this pathology just didn't ring true of the Triple Shooter against the rest of his profile. That disorganized cornflower blue. Brooklyn Satterhorne hadn't been part of some large-scale plan that also still involved Molly. Brooklyn became a victim because the Triple Shooter was finished with the grocery store and had seen his next set of threes. He would then become fixated on that set of threes, the last completely out of mind. After all, he wouldn't live up to being the obsessive that his profile suggested if he was still thinking of Molly. Stalking and killing Brooklyn because of her threes was passionate. It showed commitment that required unbroken attention.

Eldred Beasley's face popped to mind, his confusion as he rubbed the knot on the side of his head from where the intruder had bashed him.

The accomplice, on the other hand . . .

Yancy's voicemail picked up.

“Shit,” Jenna muttered.

At the beep, she left a message for him to call, but as soon as she hung up, she composed a text message:

Need to meet with Eldred. When?

“Any word?” Dodd asked, stepping back into the bedroom from where he'd been questioning the ill-fated Pesha's married squeeze.

“Left two messages, sent Yancy a text. I still say Eldred wasn't the accomplice's prime target, because if he was, how hard could it be to kill a weak old man in an assisted living home any time you wanted?”

“Maybe he doesn't like getting his hands dirty. He couldn't even finish the job when he broke in to silence the guy,” Dodd answered.

“But then why involve the Triple Shooter and wait for a grocery store? If Eldred is the man the accomplice wanted dead, and the accomplice clearly didn't want to kill Eldred him – or herself, why not hire someone to kill him? Or hell, if convincing the Triple Shooter to go on a homicidal rampage is his thing, convince him Eldred Beasley . . . I don't know . . . double dipped his tortilla chip in the communal salsa and needs to be punished for breaking that unwritten rule of society,” Jenna said.

Dodd laughed. “I'm not sure Eldred has enough teeth for tortilla chips. Besides, I always double dip. It's stupid to only get to enjoy dip on a third of the damned chip. Germs boost immune systems.”

“He must have needed to use the grocery store for some reason. The numbers
did
line up, so easy enough to lure the UNSUB to the place. The Triple had to have had a target there, too, or else UNSUB B could've talked the Triple Shooter—”

“UNSUB,” Dodd said.

“—the UNSUB into thinking the person UNSUB B wanted dead . . . well, it's like what we were saying about Eldred. If UNSUB B wanted the other UNSUB to kill Eldred, it wouldn't be too tough. Just make the maybe-the-Triple-Shooter-UNSUB think Eldred didn't have a copy of
Emily Post's Etiquette
in his book collection. If maybe-not-but-probably-the-Triple-Shooter didn't have a target at the store, too, UNSUB B could've convinced him he did.”

Dodd smirked. “What, like he said, ‘Hey, that god-awful kid over there just picked her nose, rubbed the booger on the white shoes she was wearing after Labor Day, then passed gas while chomping loudly on her gum as she stands blocking the entrance to the escalator. Why don't you go kill her on this day of threes . . .'”

Jenna rolled her eyes. “Something like that. But point is, if the most-likely-the-Triple-Shooter-UNSUB didn't have a target at the store in
addition
to the target of UNSUB B, yes, UNSUB B could've planted the seeds to suggest his
own
target so that the UNSUB would believe UNSUB B's target was simply his all along. If that happened, UNSUB B could've just let the very-clearly-the-Triple-Shooter-UNSUB kill the target any time, any place, no instructions necessary,” Jenna said.

Dodd nodded. “The MO would've looked slightly different upon investigation since up to then the Triple Shooter had only killed adults. But single, female victims and similar rituals would probably be plenty proof it was just another sad victim of the Triple Shooter, not too many extra questions asked.”

“Exactly!” Jenna replied. “But that's
not
how it was done, so the Triple Shooter must've had a target, too. And if he did, then two bodies would've been left in the attack, a shocking change of MO
sure
to draw attention. So UNSUB B needed something else . . .”

Fuchsia flashed in as she said the words, the color she'd realized meant “misleading” in her color dictionary one day when she was around eight or nine. Her dad had been planning to take Charley and her to the go-cart tracks that afternoon but said they had to clean their rooms first. But while Dad had run to the pharmacy to buy some bug repellant for them, Jenna had gotten distracted by a show on TV. Lucky for her, about halfway through the program, Claudia had come into the living room to start dusting and told her she'd picked up Jenna's room, but that if it ever looked like a tornado had ripped through again, it'd be Jenna's business. Later, while putting on her shoes to go to the go-cart tracks, her dad had asked if she'd cleaned her room. “Spick-and-span,” she'd said, feeling only slightly guilty. After all, it hadn't been a lie. Just a little cleverly worded was all. Misrepresentation, at most.

“I'm guessing the drastic shift in the MO was UNSUB B's—the manipulating UNSUB's—brilliant idea. He somehow uses the alignment of threes to talk the Triple Shooter into attacking—”

“The UNSUB,” Dodd cut in.

“He somehow uses the alignment of threes to talk the
UNSUB
into attacking a place at a time when his
own
target will be there, but he's smart enough to know the ideal way for this plan to go down without leading back to him—something he's clearly desperate to do considering he's already manipulating another killer into committing his murder
for
him—is to make it look like a crazy, isolated incident perpetrated by a gunman no police would be familiar with. UNSUB B knows that if the Triple Shooter goes in and kills just two targets—the Triple-Shooter-
like
UNSUB's and UNSUB B's—that two things will happen. First, the Triple Shooter, assuming he's our UNSUB, is connected to another body. Already a diversion in MO enough to spark questions about a famous serial killer suddenly changing habits that might lead to theories of another person's involvement. And second, when those questions crop up, UNSUB B knows he is connected to the Triple Shooter. It might be a close affiliation, might be vague, but he's far safer and less likely to be caught if he's never linked to a serial killer who is probably crazy, a factor that means being linked to a serial killer that, at some juncture, will probably be caught. I'm guessing UNSUB B told the first UNSUB during planning to just go in and run amok as long as he got the jobs done, and I'd bet, in the UNSUB's number-obsessed mind, he just ended up taking down seven bodies because the number was a soothing one because of whatever it is about the numbers he's fixated on.”

“You're on the same page as me. Somehow UNSUB B knew the first UNSUB, whom we believe to be the Triple Shooter, and convinced him to be at the grocery store for whatever reason. UNSUB B somehow knew our presumed-to-be-the-Triple UNSUB's next target already, or—”

“Or he set him up at the grocery store without a target,” Jenna blurted. The thought was a brand new one, and she wasn't sure of it by any means. More just trying it on for size.

“How so?”

“The date, time. Maybe UNSUB B knew
his
target would be at the grocery store, so somehow influenced the Triple based on the date and times lining up in threes. There's a seven we haven't found yet, other than the number of victims, but maybe it was enough to draw the Triple to the spot if the manipulator was clever enough and knew what to say. The Triple is paranoid. It probably wouldn't have been hard, given that lineup of threes,” Jenna said.

The beginnings of a headache throbbed behind her eyes. They were still missing something. For every piece of this thing that made sense, one stubborn detail wouldn't fall into place. It was like Molly Keegan's Rubik's Cube. If Jenna had tried to fiddle with that thing, the same thing would happen that always did when she got one of them in her hands: she'd be able to line up all but one square within a row, but when she'd try to correct it, even more would be thrown out of whack.

“That's a theory,” Dodd said. “But no matter how you slice it, unless we get a new lead, to find UNSUB B, we still need to know who the first UNSUB, allegedly the Triple Shooter, is. We can't figure out who the hell knew the Triple Shooter
well enough
to manipulate him without knowing
him
first.”

If only Dodd wasn't as right as he was. The Triple Shooter was the key to the second UNSUB, who was the key to the Triple Shooter. It was the most annoying sort of case, and right now they were chasing their tails. “Though if we find UNSUB B's target, we might have a chance of figuring out who wanted them dead. Even if Eldred Beasley wasn't UNSUB B's big show, I do think he has some knowledge UNSUB B doesn't want us to have.”

Jenna glanced toward Victor, who was talking with the coroner. Pesha Josephy had been loaded into a body bag and was about to be on her way to the ME's office. With any luck, the autopsy would magically show someone's DNA besides her married “friend's” latest deposit.

She nodded toward Mr. Power Tie Boyfriend, who still sat on the couch, now tapping his fingers nervously on the side table. His leg bounced in time with the whir of the ceiling fan. “Anything new from lover boy?”

Dodd shook his head. “Swears he didn't see anyone different, notice anyone keeping an eye on them, or anything like that. I'm inclined to believe him, too. People having affairs are pretty reliable when it comes to noticing whether or not someone's watching too close. You know what they say about paranoia, and there are all those great private eye, share-the-awful-pain-of-your-two-timing-spouse-with-the-world reality shows now to remind cheaters to keep their guard up.”

“True,” Jenna replied. “That's another weird thing, though. Up to now, we've been sure the Triple Shooter was punishing people for things the Furies in his head were telling him needed avenging. Even if UNSUB B's target—Molly—wasn't the presumed-to-be-the-Triple-Shooter-UNSUB's target, in order for UNSUB B to sic the Fury-hearing freak on her, UNSUB B would've had to have at least made the Triple Shooter think she deserved to be punished by the Furies, too, right? What does a six-year-old do that's up there with adultery and kicking over a homeless guy's life savings?”

“You ever seen
The Exorcist
?” Dodd asked, smirking.

“I'm not joking here, Dodd. This kid . . . you've met her. She's pleasant, smart. Do we seriously think she's done anything UNSUB B could use to convince the Triple Shooter that she invoked the wrath of some Greek goddesses of vengeance?”

He shrugged. “So are you thinking our profile is off base? That we need to go back to square one?”

Jenna closed her eyes, letting the purple color that had connected all of the things only moments before wash over her again, hoping something new would surface. It didn't.

“No. I'm just saying that even though I'm sure about this, it feels like jamming that one puzzle piece you have left into the only open slot, trying to force it in because you don't want to admit that somewhere in there, you've got another piece jammed in, too,” Jenna said.