Color Blind (18 page)

“Attention,” Jenna whispered

“Oh, very good, Jenna! A-plus!” Claudia said, clapping her hands, patronizing. “And what do we take from this little lesson?”

Claudia might have more ulterior motives here than a politician buying a puppy, especially if she
was
lying about knowing Isaac. He puts her up to setting off the ferry shooter just like he set off Thadius Grogan, and then bodies sizzle from here to Timbuktu. And yet no denying Claudia had a point.

“You think he’d be pissed he wasn’t getting the credit?”

“Wouldn’t you be? Go to all that work just to have What’s-His-Name take your glory and your spotlight like every other time in your lowly, unnoticed life?”

“How do you know he was unnoticed?” Jenna prodded.

Claudia raised her eyebrows. “How do you know he wasn’t?”

The scream Yancy described before the ferry shooter started firing, the subservient nature, hesitancy to shoot. All of it said he didn’t get cold-blooded pleasure from the killing, but had his own reasons. The profile did suggest he wanted attention. Damn.

“Do it, Jenna. Make
him
come to
you
.”

It seemed too easy, too wrapped in a bow. All kinds of things could go wrong, too.

“Why would you tell me this?” Jenna asked, even though she knew she wouldn’t get a straight answer.

Claudia looked at her pinky nail, started to wiggle it at the joint. “If this Isaac Keaton does know me, he’d expect me not to tell you what I really think.”

Then her mother lifted her eyes and looked straight into Jenna’s. “And I
do
hate to do the expected.”

O
n campus at Florida Calhan University, it wasn’t hard to blend in. Cap on, jacket—he could be just any other professor who’d eaten too many donuts, heading to the dining hall for lunch. Why the cops didn’t have men watching the campus for him, Thadius would never know. Then again, they didn’t have any way to know he’d be here. Not yet anyway.

The kid who’d killed his Emily was a student, or had been at least. Thadius was sure of it from what Woody had described. Now, to find the MM Society.

He looked up at the building in front of him. No better place to ask someone to show a stranger around than the Christian Life Center. Those people had to be nice to you, right?

Thadius pushed through the creaky wooden doors. “Excuse me, miss. I’m looking for a kid I met at the coffee shop who said he’d give me a good deal on setting up my wireless network. He gave me his number, but I can’t find it anywhere. He’s in some club on campus, though. Hoping I can find him.”

It was a crappy story at best, but he was under a lot of pressure. Waving a gun in this girl’s face wasn’t on his to-do list.

The redhead turned from where she was spraying Windex on a curio cabinet filled with faceless angel figurines. “Do you know his name?”

Lie.
“Pete Something. Sommerton, I think.”

She shook her head. “Don’t know him, sorry.”

Thadius fished in his pocket, pulled out the sketch Woody had drawn. “He had this on his shirt. Does that mean anything to you?”

The girl looked into Thadius’s face, skeptical. Did she know? Had she seen him on the news?

Then she looked at the drawing, and the doubtful look faded.

“Oh, yeah. That’s the Movie Making Society emblem. They’re over in Baynor Hall. If you go down this road and turn right on Paine, it’s the little brick building next to Shillings. That’s where they have the meetings anyway. Not sure of the meeting schedule, but it’s probably posted in the Student Center.”

“Right. And which way is that?”

She gestured behind her. “Back up towards McDavid. White columns.”

“Got it. Thanks,” Thadius replied.

He turned and left the Christian Life Center. Hell if he was wasting his time with the Student Center. Somewhere around here had to have Wi-Fi.

•   •   •

T
hirty minutes later, Thadius strolled into Grover, one of the coed dormitories on campus. After a while at the computer in the library across from the Christian Life Center, he’d found the meeting schedule for the Movie Making Society. It didn’t meet again until next Monday. Luckily, he’d also found the name of the president of the club. A quick search of Hallie Majors’s name on the campus website showed she was also a resident assistant in Grover, so the chances of her hanging around there were pretty good.

He smiled at the girl manning the front desk. Some old guy looking for a girl in her twenties was bound to look crazy, so his best hope was to appear like a worried father so she didn’t call security before he got to ask question one.

“I’m trying to find Hallie Majors,” he said, his expression worried and confused.

The heavyset blonde quirked her head. “You’ve found her.”

“Oh! Hi!” he stammered.

“Can I . . . help you?” she asked, suddenly wary.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to . . . here,” he said, laying the piece of paper out. “I’m looking for a guy who used to be part of your film society. Back in oh-seven, I guess it would’ve been.”

Now he’d come to it, the part that wasn’t explainable. Holding the girl hostage in the middle of a dorm wasn’t an option, both because she had nothing to do with this
and
it was impractical. Should’ve thought this through better.

“This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but my daughter used to go here, and she dated this kid. He, uh. Well, my daughter is, um. She passed away recently. He, um, he has some of her things, and I was hoping to sort of find him and see if he has something that’s of particular sentimental value. I, um, I don’t know how to look him up at all, because she never brought him to meet us.”

This sounded like bigger bullshit than he’d fed the girl in the Life Center.

“So, um, I don’t have a name or anything, I just know they were involved in the club here,” he finished. Hopefully Hallie would mistake the frustrated tears stinging his eyes for true desperation to find the “artifact” he was looking for.

“Oh, man. I’m sorry to hear that. I doubt I can help any, though. I wasn’t at school here then.”

“Don’t you all keep records of who was in the club way back when or something?” he fished.

She laughed. “We’re
supposed
to have officers. A historian is
supposed
to do that. But you know how college is. Midterms, frat parties. Sometimes those things slip through the cracks. Our records are close to nil.”

Thadius’s chest deflated. What now?

She must’ve seen it on his face. “You know, you could try checking with Dr. Coppage. He teaches the history of film classes. I’m pretty sure he taught them to the velociraptors and woolly mammoths, too. Most people in the MM Society take his class at one point or another, even if they aren’t filmmaking majors. He probably has better records than we do.”

“Good thought! Any idea where I find him?”

She pointed out the window. “Right over there in Fine Arts. I was in his office an hour ago to pick up a makeup test for one of my friends who’s sick. Room 201.”

Thadius extended his hand, which Hallie shook in her meaty fist.

“Thanks a million, Hallie.”

“No prob. Hope you find whoever you’re looking for.”

“Y
ou want me to
what?
” Hank asked when Jenna arrived back at the precinct building where Isaac Keaton was being held.

“Release Keaton’s name, picture, everything we have. I don’t even want the ferry shooter so much as breathed about.”

“Jenna, the public will blow a gasket if they think we’re not looking for the other Gemini.”

“I know. But so will the ferry shooter.”

Hank rubbed his head. “This is Claudia’s influence?”

“I know, I know. Believe me, I don’t like it any more than you do, but you have to admit the profile backs it up. We should’ve known without her,” Jenna said.

“Let’s forget for a second that for
me
the lucidity of this conversation is in question. It could backfire. Heck. Could
work
, but in the way that we end up with a severed head on our doorstep.”

“Severed head, Hank? Seriously? The guy barely had the stomach to fire more than a few times when he had the means to take out a few dozen people. He’s not severing any heads.”

“Unless he was told to,” Hank replied.

The theory said that the UNSUB might deviate from any and all plans if his buttons were pushed. No matter how much over the years Jenna had sold law enforcement officials on the “behavioral science” of profiling, the truth was, it was never exact. It was like a lot of other sciences: a start based on educated guesses.

“We don’t have other cards to play, Ellis, and I have no doubt Keaton
has
told him to do
something
. We have no clue what it is, and I for one don’t want to cool our heels and wait to find out. Let’s roll the dice.”

Hank flipped over a picture he’d been looking at of the fourth Gemini victim. Beth Abney had been shot twice in the neck at Rawlings Insurance Company’s annual spring picnic in Delaware right after her boss had been killed by a single shot to the head. Her kids were two and six. Both boys.

“If you want to release it, I say we release it. Let’s just make sure we’ve got a lot of people to answer tip lines, because the crazies are going to swarm like termites in a log cabin.”

“Fine,” Jenna replied.

She sat across the table from Hank while he talked to Saleda on the phone and instructed her to call a press conference. This was either a really good idea or a really bad one. No in between.

When he hung up, he said nothing. He continued flipping through the photos.

“Thanks,” Jenna whispered.

He shook his head. “Don’t thank me yet. This could be an exceptionally bad call.”

Jenna wanted to look back through those files Irv had sent of the Sumpter Building workers. Isaac Keaton had to have worked at the psych hospital. It was the only way he could’ve met Claudia. If Jenna had a name, she could find out who Isaac was connected to in Denver, find out who he was connected to
everywhere.
Put away the ferry shooter, and put away the person who’d helped Isaac Keaton terrorize her family.

“Can I ask you something, Hank?”

“You just did.”

Always the insufferable know-it-all. “A third question?”

Hank looked up from Rowen Lasder, victim number five. He and his twenty-year-old son had been shot having a drink at an outdoor pub. “Hit me.”

Jenna swallowed hard. “Do you ever regret anything?”

Clearly not what he’d expected. The focus of the case melted from his eyes, and that deep-rooted thoughtfulness set in, the one once reserved for discussions about things like that breast cancer scare a while back. Most of the time it was easy to remember why she didn’t want to raise Ayana with him, but when that face showed up, it was hard to imagine why she hadn’t.

“You mean us?” Hank asked quietly.

The lump in Jenna’s throat kept her from answering. She nodded.

He did, too. “Yeah. Sometimes I do.”

They stared across the table at each other, both obviously not knowing what to say. So much had happened between them, so much of it not fixable. And yet Jenna couldn’t deny this man was part of her life, inseparable from the good or the bad.

The door at the side flew open.

“Irv found the MM emblem,” Saleda said. “FCU. Movie Making Society.”

She and Hank jumped from their chairs in tandem, as if powered by one brain.

“Let’s go,” Hank said.

•   •   •

J
enna would’ve thought with a technical analyst at their disposal that it would’ve been easier to find Hallie Majors, president of the MM Society. College students weren’t always where they were supposed to be. According to another resident assistant in her dorm, Hallie had left duty early to pick up something at the health center.

Finally, after chasing the phantom Hallie Majors around campus for far longer than they should’ve had to, they found her at one of the dining halls. She played with her mashed potatoes while reading a tattered copy of
The Hobbit.
She matched the description, and had a tote bag with the MM emblem sewn on.