Color Blind (11 page)

J
enna hopped out of the SUV at Pembry Pawn Shop after the chopper lifted them a few towns over. She flipped her badge to the guards at the crime scene line, then ducked under it behind Hank and Saleda and walked into the shop. The bell tinkled to announce the big guns were here.

The cops there stood around, waiting for them as they’d been instructed. This crime scene was officially FBI territory now. One of the men stepped forward, offered his hand to Hank. “Lieutenant Glease, Gainesville PD. You must be—”

“Hank Ellis, Special Agent in Charge. This is my team. Special Agent Saleda Ovarez, Dr. Jenna Ramey. This is Detective Richards of the OPD. What do we have?”

“Shop owner. Marley Ostin, forty-six-year-old male, shot twice in the head at close range. The place is covered in prints. Perp made no effort to clean up other than that it seems he took keys off of Marley. Bloody footprints led to the office, which probably explains the missing security tape. Not sure why he took it since we have so many prints and a vehicle. We’re running the prints, but I understand you probably have a good idea who they belong to.”

“Why would he take the security footage and leave prints and the truck, you suppose?” Hank asked.

“My guess is he’s shaved or dyed his hair,” Saleda answered. “Oops. Irv calling. Be outside.”

“She’s right,” Jenna said. “Or he’s otherwise disguised. He’s got more work to do.”

Hank stepped toward the counter behind which Marley Ostin’s body lay splayed. “I’m pretty sure he didn’t hesitate.”

Jenna’s eyes roamed the wall, the glass behind the counter, which provided the sickening canvas for where Marley’s brain matter had exploded out the back of his head. She looked down at the cheap countertop, which shone with massive palm prints. The palms were set at a strange angle. Thadius had questioned the guy. Interrogated him. Held him here, gun to his head. What had Thadius asked?

She looked back at the gunshot victim. “Double tap. Thadius wanted him extra dead. Maybe one shot for the kill, the second for good measure—and appeasing anger.”

Hank looked up at her from where he squatted next to the body. “And what did this joker have to do with Emily Grogan’s death, do you suppose?”

Jenna shrank to the floor next to Marley and gave him the once-over. His pupils were fixed straight ahead. “I don’t know. Maybe we’re asking the wrong questions. We’ll know more after we talk to Detective Hardeman about Emily Grogan’s case. Let’s get some people on the details of what the pawn shop sold in the past several years, possible relationship between Grogan and Marley Ostin. In the meantime, I think we need to find more people who
knew
Thadius Grogan. Who he hung around with, where he ate dinner, that kind of thing. Isaac Keaton
met
Thadius Grogan somehow. Had to have. Find out more about Thadius’s activities, maybe we can find someone who knew Isaac Keaton.”

Hank stood and turned his back. “Or what Isaac Keaton saw in Grogan to make him think he could set him off. Better yet, why did he want to?”

“Now
there’s
a good question. Is Keaton doing this for fun or for a reason?” Jenna followed Hank out of the pawn shop.

“I’d say both.”

Saleda was on the phone outside. When she saw Hank and Jenna, she signed off with Irv, telling him to let her know as soon as he had any more information on Marley Ostin.

“No records of a housekeeping service, no checks cleared that look like they might be to one. And the mythical Howie Dumas has a phone number, but that’s about all he has. No records of anything else anywhere, including birth or death certificate,” Saleda said.

Hank nodded. “I’ll line up a press conference about Grogan. The public needs to be on the lookout. I want you and Richards door-to-door in Grogan’s neighborhood. See if anyone’s seen a housekeeper coming or going. Also, float the name ‘Dumas’ by the neighbors. See if it rings a bell. Maybe a van in the neighborhood with those letters, anything like that, though I doubt Keaton would leave that kind of a trail. Keaton called the person who phoned from the Dumas fake office. They have to be in cahoots somehow. Jenna and I are going to talk to the detective in charge of Emily Grogan’s murder case, see if that’ll open up any new holes. Richards, can you put together a lineup containing Isaac Keaton’s photo to show to Yancy Vogul?”

“Sure thing.”

So Hank thought her idea was a worthy one, after all. Yancy Vogul’s chances of having seen something at the theme park were good, even if Yancy didn’t realize he had. Stranger things had happened.

“I know this is a long shot, but do we have any video from the park?” Jenna asked.

Hank shook his head. “Park video had a technical malfunction the night before, and it wasn’t up and running again, as luck would have it.”

“Luck,” Jenna repeated. “Big coincidence, don’t you think?”

“May be. Worth checking on. We better get a move on. We’ll be late for our date with Detective Hardeman,” Hank said.

As Jenna climbed into the front seat of the SUV the local FBI branch had waiting for them on the scene, she couldn’t help but picture Isaac Keaton sitting in his holding cell, thinking about what other surprises he had planned for them. He’d written her mother a letter. What next
?

“Hank, do me a favor,” she said, hesitating.

“Yeah?”

“Get the visitation logs for the Sumpter Building. I know it’s doubtful, but I want to see exactly who’s visited Claudia in the past few years.”

S
ebastian Waters sidled into Conference Room B on the first floor of the hospital, hovered near the wall, and poured himself a cup of coffee. The nurse insisted on bringing him down in a wheelchair, but as soon as she disappeared, he’d ditched the chair. Made him feel too conspicuous.

Others chattered in groups of two and three. Everyone seemed to know each other, just like Isaac told him they would.

“Hi! Are you new here?”

Sebastian turned toward the voice behind him. A wraithlike girl with drapes of hair the color of a raven stood in front of him. Before he could stop himself, he winced at the battlefield that was her face, the right side scarred and melted.

She shrugged. “It’s okay. Not everyone’s used to it. I’ve had a few years. I heard you were in the big park shooting? What was that like?”

He blinked at her, not sure how to answer. As instructed, Sebastian had told the staff psychiatrist about how nightmares plagued him every time he closed his eyes. Had to look pained, the consummate victim. “They won’t look at you twice,” Isaac had said.

Them, too, huh?

The psych had told him all about the support groups for traumas like this, how in fact, one met in this very hospital. The doc got him a meeting schedule, told him to have the nurse bring him down to the next one if he was up to it.

In the meantime, he’d spent a lot of time imagining how to interact with these people, to seem like one of them, like his life had been disrupted on one random day instead of every day of his life he could remember. Now here was this girl, acting like he’d just filmed a movie with Denzel Washington instead of being shot.

“Um, well, it’s been a blur,” Sebastian replied. Strange, how the honesty came out easily when someone actually asked his opinion.

“I know what you mean,” she said. Her lip caught her gums when she spoke. “Mine was a chemical bomb.”

“Those happen?” he blurted out.

She laughed, and a slight sucking sound emanated from her throat, like the weird straw the dentist used. “Hard to believe, huh? Yep. Some kids set off homemade bombs at my high school. Not really sure why. The whole day is foggy to me.”

“All right, folks, come on down,” a heavyset black guy in his forties called to them from the front of the room.

The group meandered away from their little cliques and queued up in the metal folding chairs.

“I’m Les Quaney,” the guy at the front said. “I run things around here, but please, don’t think that means I have any control over the quality of the coffee. It’s all donated.”

Most everyone laughed.

“If you’re new to the group, welcome. We’re pretty informal in here, but we’re also into keeping things real and calling people on their crap. So whatever you do, don’t feel
too
sorry for yourself. We allow everyone their own quota of personal pity parties, but we also want you to self-soothe. We’re all dealing with our own recoveries, so we can hold hands, but we can’t mop you off the floor, if you get my drift. Those needs are better addressed with your pdoc upstairs. Now then, who wants to go first?”

“I will,” the girl Sebastian had been talking to said.

“Go for it, Zane,” Les Quaney said, and he lowered his hefty frame into a chair.

The raven-haired girl stood. “Hi, everyone. I’m Zane, and I’m a survivor of a violent crime.”

“Hi, Zane!” the group echoed.

She gave a sunny little wave. “Since our last meeting, I’ve had a few bad dreams, but nothing I can’t handle. I haven’t journaled any, but I’ve been busy with planning the event next week. By the way, I hope you’ll also consider coming out to the City Walk this weekend. There’ll be lots of music and acts. We have some live bands, dance troupes. And no worries, because they’ll have plenty of nonalcoholic drinks and snacks for everyone. Big celebration of healing.”

Sebastian started to zone—maybe the atmosphere, maybe the morphine—but he kept snapping back to attention. Zane’s voice grated on him, but it also lulled him like a stiff drink.

He shook his head hard. Isaac would kick him clear
into
the weekend if he knew he wasn’t paying attention.

But Isaac wasn’t here now. He was sitting in jail. Zane giggled again at something she’d said, the suction of her laugh catching in her throat. For someone who’d been marred for life by a random bomber, she sure was in a good mood. In fact, all of these people seemed to be.

You can do this. You have to.

Sebastian ripped his gaze from Zane’s mottled cheek, the way her lip curled with words that started with a vowel.

You deserve to do this. Just like Isaac said.

“D
etective Hardeman, thank you for seeing us,” Hank said to the slight man who greeted them with a nod in his garage shop.

Hardeman hadn’t exactly made any concessions for their visit, of course. His wife had answered the door, brought them here. “Tolerating” would’ve been a more accurate term than “seeing.”

“Mm,” the middle-aged man grunted, his focus returning to a bottle on the table in front of the old exercise bench where he sat. He picked up something that looked like one of those plastic back scratchers from the dollar store and hooked a flat Lego to it. He inserted it into the skinny mouth of the bottle, deposited the Lego into the wider chasm within.

Words flew through Jenna’s head. Patient. Calm. Pensive. Unhappy.

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Hardeman growled. “What do you want to know about the Emily Grogan case?”

Haunted.

He continued plugging away at the Legos in the bottle, but spoke softly out of the corner of his lined mouth. “Saw your press release on the six o’clock early news. Thadius Grogan finally snapped, I guess. Question is, why does the big bad FBI finally care?”

“Thadius Grogan might be involved with another case we’re looking into,” Hank answered.

“Hmph. Figures,” Hardeman grunted again.

“Detective Hardeman, you said ‘finally.’ I take it Thadius has been unstable for a long time?” Jenna asked.

Hardeman placed the next Lego gently atop the bottom one inside the bottle. “Unstable. Angry. Grieving. Perfect storm.”

Grieving was an interesting word choice. “
Did
Thadius Grogan grieve his daughter’s death, Detective Hardeman?”

For the first time, Hardeman’s hand stilled, and he glanced up and drank in Jenna’s appearance. “Of course the man grieved. Someone murdered his daughter, Detective.”

“Doctor,” Jenna corrected. “Don’t misunderstand. I know he was aggrieved by his daughter’s death, but he may not have attended to the process of grieving. Everyone handles grief in their own way, but he might not have accepted the loss. If he turns that energy to creating a space where he doesn’t
have
to accept it, we have a different ballgame than if he was grieving and had, say, a psychotic break where he’s hearing voices.”