Color Blind (6 page)

A lump formed in Jenna’s throat as the images of the house on Oak Hollow Road flashed in her mind like a picture reel: she and Charley playing tag in the front yard while her dad pushed the old, stinky lawnmower just past the wooden fence. Her dad hoisting her to the peak of the Christmas tree to plop the star on top. Running through the house, passing bloody streaks on the walls. Standing in the kitchen doorway when the police took Claudia away. Watching from her SUV as the wrecking ball dealt the old house its first blow.

She bit back her reaction, swallowed hard. No more Oak Hollow Road house with its perfect picket fence and perfect driveway. Now she had wrought iron gates and the generic, impersonal parking lot of a high-rise apartment building. Better.

“You from around here, Isaac? You sure do know a lot about me for someone who’s not,” she snapped back.

“Vern doing well?” he countered.

“Daddy issues, Isaac?”

A smirk crossed the killer’s face. “How about Charley? Ayana?”

Motherfucker.

“Back in a while, rock star,” Jenna countered. It was a weak response, but it was the best she could do at the moment. She’d lost this round, but she wasn’t down for good.

Isaac winked. “You stay out of my family, I’ll stay out of yours.”

•   •   •

E
ven though he was waiting for the call, the vibration of the phone made Thadius jump. He fumbled the cell as he pulled it out of his pocket. Second ring. Third.

“Please be there. Please don’t hang up,” he mumbled. He finally reached the button to answer. “Yes?”

“Mr. Grogan?” A woman’s voice, Australian accent.

Thadius gripped the phone harder. “This is he.”

“Mr. Grogan, this is Sheila, Howie Dumas’s secretary. Mr. Dumas is tied up this afternoon, but he asked me to pass along the information he’s collected for you.”

He concentrated on easing up on the phone. Wouldn’t help if it broke before he heard. “Yes, ma’am. I’m ready.”

“The gun was purchased at Pembry Pawn on Forty-fifth. Purchased the day before, no waiting period.”

Thadius’s pulse quickened. The police had released almost no details about Em’s death, not even to him. He’d believed them, depended on them. Trust the system, he’d thought. They’d find him, the sick freak.

Over the years he’d come to realize they weren’t withholding because they knew something crucial. They weren’t telling him anything because they had no freaking clue what they were doing. It was the exact reason he’d hired someone to find out
for
him. Someone
competent.

“No bullets purchased, but we expected that, since the gun wasn’t loaded or fired,” the secretary continued.

Thadius beat his head into the main beam of the living room doorway, eyes shut tight. If only the coward
had
shot her. At least it would’ve been over fast. As it was, one of the few things Thadius
had
been able to discern from the snippets the cops had told him was that the bastard used the gun to scare her into letting him inside. It’d been found in the smoldering ruins that were her house.

“I’ll e-mail the full report. Will that work?” the secretary asked.

Thadius nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see him. “Yes. Fine.”

He clicked his phone off, pounded his head against the door frame one more time. Then he sniffed hard, blinked away the moisture in his eyes. Coat, keys, wallet.

Thadius didn’t bother to lock the door on his way out.

He wasn’t planning on returning home.

L
yra Mintelle dumped the contents of the bathroom drawer into a garbage bag. No. A garbage bag was a dumb idea. The fireplace was better.

She grunted as she lugged logs inside, threw them into the little cove. Flames danced in front of her eyes after she lit the pile, and for a minute she couldn’t turn away. Seductive. Appropriate.

Next, she knelt beside the white plastic bag of the drawer contents, pulled out the first piece of paper. Sure, Isaac hadn’t told her to do this, but she had to protect him. Even someone as brilliant as him couldn’t possibly think of everything, right?

Then again, Isaac would be furious if he knew what she was up to. Lyra’d seen evidence of that temper more times than she’d like to admit. She clenched her teeth as she threw the first envelope into the fire, where it crinkled into itself, a slug dying in the hot sun. Soon it collapsed into a pile of black soot. Only ashes remained, just like her memories.

“You told her we went to Seattle together?” Isaac yelled, standing from the dinner table.

“I . . . I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to,” she stammered. Why did he care that she told someone she was taking a trip?

Isaac’s face reddened, his height seeming to double with the angry breaths expanding his chest. “Lyra, you don’t understand how people are! They talk to each other!”

She threw up her hands. “So you took a few days off work for us to spend some time together. Big whoop! People do it every day!”

He snatched up his plate of lasagna. “I’ll eat upstairs. Things to do.”

“But, Isaac! I haven’t seen you all day! You’ll be gone to the Dallas conference all week. This isn’t fair!” Calling him that had taken time, but now it was second nature.

He wheeled back around, nostrils flaring. “Fair? Don’t lecture me about fair, Ly-RUH! Unfair is you going around telling people our private business!”

Her own name sounded foreign in her ears, the way he said it—emphasis on the opposite syllable than he used in affectionate times. “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she stuttered.

He laughed, loud and cold. “Sorry, huh? You’re sorry. That does me a lot of good.”

Lyra’s eyes filled with tears, which she hastily tried to blink back before her brother caught them. One dripped off her chin and plopped onto the pinewood table. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

At this, Isaac sighed heavily, and before she knew it, he wrapped her in his arms, kissed the top of her head. “Don’t do it again, Lye, okay?”

“Promise, promise,” she parroted, just like she had when they were kids.

Now Isaac was in trouble, but he’d trusted her to keep herself together. He’d trusted her to follow through, to handle it. Yet here she sat, burning items he hadn’t told her to and without his consent.

Lyra tossed paper after paper into the bizarre bonfire and muttered, “Stupid, Lyra. You’re such an idiot.”

She sniffled. Such a disappointment, as always. She’d called Thadius Grogan just like Isaac had told her to. She’d followed the plan, done her part. Isaac always came through, and she had to believe in him, not divert. But because she was such a whiny moron, she had to do this one thing, this thing her gut wouldn’t ignore.

She extracted the final envelope from the bag and stared at it a long moment. To her lips she brought it, kissed it like a dying lover. Then she tossed it into the flames.
He trusts me.

Lyra hugged herself, rocked, and repeated the thought over and over in her mind. The mantra calmed her, a sedative.

He trusts me. Only me.

•   •   •

W
hen Jenna exited the box, Saleda was on the phone with the BAU’s technical analyst.

“Trace on the number went to a landline. A dummy company set up under the name of Howie Dumas,” Saleda repeated what the technical analyst was telling her.

Hank’s eyebrows lifted. He had to be thinking exactly what Jenna was.

“Big mistake to make, leaving that number traceable,” she said.

“Not a mistake,” Hank replied.

Saleda pressed a hand to her ear to block out noise, nodded to the person on the other end. She lifted her chin from the phone to talk to them again. “Call went from that number to a Thadius Grogan two minutes after hang-up. Waiting for more on Grogan now.”

“Anything to go on with the dummy office?” Hank asked.

“Not yet, but the tech’s working on it after he finishes tracking Grogan. Better him since we have a name,” Saleda replied.

“Good call,” Hank said. He rolled his head around, then spoke more quietly to Jenna. “I’ll send Saleda to interview the Gemini victims at the hospital. You up for a road trip to find Thadius Grogan or the mythical Dumas, whichever comes first?”

Ayana’s face flashed in, followed by the ash gray of guilt. Dad or Charley could read her
Green Eggs and Ham
tonight maybe. But
only
tonight. “You sure know how to woo a girl, Ellis.”

Hank’s unamused grunt said more than anything. “You know what they say. You don’t make the big bucks without being a ladies’ man.”

“Is
that
what they say?” Jenna asked. Then she added, “Sure. I’m game, but you’re paying for gas.”

•   •   •

T
hree hours later, Jenna rode shotgun in the black SUV the FBI field office had sent for the BAU team members. They traveled the expressway nearing Jacksonville after an hour of trying to find a judge to sign a search warrant based on a phone call. It’d been a long drive with Detective Richards’s constant, one-note hum from the backseat presumably every time he picked up his pencil to add to the notes he was reviewing, but the city was too close for them to have taken a plane.

Hank chatted with his technical analyst on his cell. Jenna had worked with Irv at the BAU. She could still picture the chunky Goth kid turned pro hacker plugging away at his desk, his long hair pulled back into a ponytail to keep it from getting in the way of his quick fingers.

“Really? Wait a minute, let me put you on speaker.” Hank jammed the phone’s side and tossed it in the cup holder between them. “Hit me with that again, Irv.”

“Hey, yeah, boss. Thadius Grogan, Jacksonville native, fifty-five. Owns a local pizza place turned chain called The Big Cheese.”

From the backseat, Richards called, “Love that place. Best breadsticks anywhere.”

“Shh!” Jenna hissed.

Irv was undeterred. “Independently wealthy, self-built the empire. Franchised the place last year. So far, seven Big Cheeses have been built around Florida. Seems like Papa Bear has the life, but he isn’t so lucky. His daughter, Emily Grogan, was murdered five years ago while she was in school at Florida Calhan University. Police never caught the UNSUB. No leads, no closure.”

“Other family?” Hank asked.

Irv groaned. “Second pothole. Married Narelle Phillips in 1977, mother of their only child, Emily. After Emily was killed, Narelle spiraled into depression. Took her own life about a year after Emily’s murder with a fistful of painkillers and nothing but a note to say she was sorry.”

“Christ,” Hank mumbled.

“Still working on Thadius, but Papa Bear seems to check out. No trouble with the law, no history of violence that we know of. After Emily’s death, he got heavily involved with a local victim support group, big into rights of victims’ families, donates to a lot of victim support funds. He’s there every time the doors open, advocates every waking minute. Seems to be work, work, and more work for this guy.”

“Or action, action, and more action,” Jenna replied. “Anything on the police investigation into the daughter’s death?”

Jenna heard keys click on Irv’s end.

“Ha. The police investigation was kept tighter than a Baptist’s butthole, so not much was released to the public. Not much released to the
family
, either. They spoke out in the media several times about their frustration, looks like. There are a couple articles here that’d make good toilet reading when you have the chance, but the gist is the cops never gave an official cause of death, nothing. Said they needed to keep it closed for investigational purposes. They didn’t even sign a death certificate ’til three years later, and then with the cause of death in the report listed only as injuries related to homicide.”

So the manner of death was specific and gruesome. Check. But what the hell did this have to do with Isaac Keaton? Could he have killed this girl? Killed her and was torturing her family by calling them now? It didn’t make much sense.

Yet.

“Okay, that’s the official version. But even Baptists are at the mercy of a good proctologist,” Jenna coaxed.

“One rectal, coming right up,” Irv laughed. More key clicks. “Oy.”

“What?” Hank said as he made a right-hand turn into The Pines subdivision, the entrance to Thadius Grogan’s neighborhood.

“Emily Grogan was beaten, stabbed, sexually assaulted, and strangled. Still not entirely sure what got her first—blood loss from stab wounds or asphyxiation . . .” Irv’s voice trailed over the last word.

Jenna closed her eyes as the deep crimson flashed in. At crimes she’d investigated in the past, her mind seemed to reserve the carmine color for only the most brutal of violent crimes. She blinked it away. “Asphyxiation with what, Irv?”

The technical analyst took a long pause. “Her . . . um . . . her own intestine.”