Color Blind (16 page)

“I
point out the lack of pizza to you guys, and you
still
don’t bring the pizza,” Yancy said when S.A. Ellis, Dr. Jenna Ramey, and Detective Richards showed up at the door of his one-bedroom apartment. Cops.
Can’t live with ’em, can’t get away from ’em.

“How’re you feeling?” the pretty brunette Dr. Ramey asked.

On second thought, she wasn’t a Fed or a cop anymore. She was a shrink. Perfect.

“Get back, Oboe!”

Yancy nudged the dachshund away from the doorway with his prosthetic. He noticed all their eyes were drawn to it. Typical. “Some people call it a challenge. I like to think of it as genetically enhanced.”

“Do you mind if I ask how—”

Yancy cut off Special Agent Hank Ellis. “Aw, no. But the genetically enhanced thing was a joke. I wasn’t born with it. Crushed it in an elevator shaft, believe it or not. Training exercise while I was with the Department of Law Enforcement. The trainees were conducting a firearm training simulation that was supposed to be a routine sweep of an abandoned building, taking down the people playing the bad guys as we went. Part of the exercise involved rescuing someone playing a victim from an elevator shaft. Unfortunately, that building had been
really
abandoned, and its structure unchecked for too long for it to be used for games like these apparently. I went in to assist in the rescue, came out without a leg. Now I run websites. Good excuse for playing on a computer all day. Funny how freak accidents can make you a freak.”

Both Ellis and Detective Richards kind of jerked, uncomfortable. Jenna Ramey smiled.

“You’re dark. I like that,” she said, smooth.

She would, of course. Some things you can’t afford
not
to joke about. Not if you wanted to survive.

He’d read all about her during his internship. Most people had at some point or another. She’d published several great articles about profiling, but mostly, people in the field knew her because she’d been the first person to suspect her mother of being a sociopath. At only thirteen years old, she’d begun to profile her mother, keep detailed records of her thoughts and findings. That journal led to Claudia Ramey’s arrest—and maybe to Jenna’s dad and brother’s own attempted murders. Apparently, if her mother was going down, she wasn’t planning to leave any witnesses. Too bad for her that her daughter turned out to be really good at wielding a shower rod.

“Feeling better, by the way. ’Twas merely a flesh wound,” he said in a mock British accent.

“
And
a Monty Python fan.”

He laughed and plopped down in the leather recliner. “Got the whole collection on DVD. So what brings you folks out here without time to stop for a large supreme?”

Richards opened his briefcase, removed a few sheets of paper. A lineup.

“Yancy, we’d like you to look at a few photos and tell us if you saw any of these men at the park.”

The detective offered the laminated papers to him, and Yancy focused on the pictures. The lineup was like a Who’s Who of All-American Football Players.

“Nobody told me this killer was a former Mr. America. How long did it take you guys to find enough prisoners pretty enough for this lineup?”

Nobody answered.
Stop trying to be funny, cool guy.

The first page, nothing. Second, nothing. On the third, his gaze fixed on the last photo. He pointed to it. “He looks familiar.”

“From the park?” Ellis asked.

“Familiar. Maybe the park. I don’t know. I guess I could’ve seen him anywhere in the city, but I can’t place where. Just familiar.”

The guy’s face floated in Yancy’s mind. He’d been walking. No—running. Where?

“Yancy, can you remember any details? Was it indoors? Outdoors?” Jenna Ramey asked.

“I’m almost sure it was out. He was moving somehow. I can picture it vaguely. I want to say I passed him.”

Yancy shut his eyes tight, held the face.
Motion. Jogging. Bumped. “Sorry,” the guy said, but he wasn’t. Guy was in a hurry.

“I’m sorry,” Yancy said. “I’m just not sure.”

His one chance to really help somebody, to do what he’d been trained for, and he couldn’t.
Are you a good enough investigator to detect failure, cool guy?

“So asking for a name would be—”

“Setting me up for the privilege of saying, ‘I have no idea’?” Yancy cut off S.A. Ellis’s question.

Ellis opened his mouth to say something but glanced down instead. “What the—”

“Oboe! Stop!” Yancy leapt out of his chair and scooped the dachshund from where he was happily humping the Special Agent’s left shin. “Excuse me. Excuse
him
. I’m so sorry. He probably needs to go outside. Always tries to get attention when he does. Be right back.”

Yancy pulled a leash from the coat rack, clipped it onto Oboe’s collar, and pulled the wiener dog out onto the back porch.

“Seriously, dude,” Yancy mumbled, “I don’t know why you do this to me. I’m not kidding. I don’t want to snip your manhood, but you’re leaving me no choice.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be too hard on Oboe.” Jenna Ramey joined him on the back porch. “Hank deserved it. He’s humped a leg or two in his day.” She closed the door behind her. “Thought I’d come out here and—”

“Profile me a little? Talk to me about my abandonment issues?”
Shut up, smart ass!

Jenna Ramey laughed. “Well, it wasn’t what I had in mind, but if you want.”

“Not in the traditional sense maybe. I can’t figure out why no one
will
abandon me.”

She leaned against the porch rail and crossed her arms. “I’m familiar. Believe me. No, I actually just needed the fresh air myself. I’ve been around those two all day. Breathers are good.”

“I take it you aren’t notifying everyone like this, or the lineup would be all over the news. What makes you think I can help you, Dr. Ramey?”

“Call me Jenna if I’m supposed to call you Yancy,” she said. “I guess I could give you some BS about how your color clued me in to your photographic memory, but it wouldn’t be true. It’s what most people hope for, though.”

She was
real
. Rare. “That’s good, because I don’t have a photographic memory. What’s the boring truth?”

“We dug up your file and found out you had a history in investigation, thought you were a more reliable witness than most.”

His shoulders sagged of their own accord. “Sorry to disappoint.”

She waved him off. “Memory’s a weird thing. It still might come to you. In the meantime, we’ll check other angles.”

“So this isn’t any kind of victim profiling?” he asked.
Nosy bastard.

“I wish. Having a victim profile makes things easier, but the Gemini don’t work like that. The victims seem random. No discernible connection other than they were all killed in public. All from different states, races, socioeconomic backgrounds. Of course, we’re running victim profiles like in any case, but we’d be wasting our time to focus on it.”

God, he wanted in on this investigation. He’d tried so hard to stay out of drama since his accident, to stay away from people. And yet somehow it
found
him, magnetized to him. Had to be the metal foot.

“The Gemini
aren’t
after one-footed wonders, then?” he cracked.

She smirked. “Doubtful. Probably more like thrill-seekers, people who want to lord the power of life and death over others. That sort of thing . . .”

“Only one would be that, though, right? You’ve written about team killer mentalities in journals before and said that.” He jerked his head toward the apartment. “The one in the lineup is the ringleader, huh?”

Jenna squinted, lifted her chin. “What makes you say that?”

“Uh, he’s handsome. Groomed. Probably charming, but I’m basing that on looks, so I could be wrong to the point of detriment. I remember his voice actually. He said, ‘Sorry,’ when I bumped into him. It was cold, but not meek. I think the ringleader idea is just a gut feeling.”

“Hm,” she said.

“It’s part of his game, right? That’s the ringleader, and he’d pull in the other guy purely because it would amuse him . . . being able to manipulate someone weaker into doing something that evil. Am I right?”
Press your luck, smarty-pants.

“Jenna!”

The yell came from the front of the apartment. Oboe pulled to the end of his leash, barking insistently. “Stop it, Oboe! Shut up!”

S.A. Ellis grabbed the drain pipe at the side of the building to rein in his turn as he charged into the backyard. His dark face was as pale as it probably ever got, panic across it like a mask.

“Jenna, we have to go. We need to go now. Ayana—”

Jenna went pallid. “What’s wrong? Jesus, Hank! Tell me what’s going on!”

S.A. Ellis stopped, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “Your father got a package at the house. It was addressed to Ayana. Jenna, it’s from
him
.”

J
enna crashed through the door, saw Charley sitting on the couch, head in his hands. “Where is she? Where’s my baby?”

Vern appeared in the doorway holding Ayana, her daughter’s skinny bird legs wrapping his waist. “We just read
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
, didn’t we, Ay?”

Jenna blinked rapidly, shook her head. How could he be this cavalier when he knew a psycho knew about Ayana—was
contacting
Ayana? Knew her
mother
.

Ayana clapped her hands and rocked in her grandfather’s grasp. “Locks!”

The pressure of Hank’s hand on Jenna’s shoulder corked the spew of panic about to erupt. Deep breaths. He was right. No need to get Ayana worked up.

“I want to see the note,” she said to Vern sweetly as she kissed Ayana’s cheek.

Charley took his cue to take Ayana. “Come on, Ay. I’ll show you how to put the puzzle together so you never have to fix it again . . .”

“Charley, if you duct tape that farm puzzle, I swear—”

Her brother cut Vern off. “Duct tape? You can
see
duct tape.” He lifted Ayana onto his hip and pressed his nose to hers, Eskimo kissing her. “We’re using superglue!”

Ayana giggled, and her pacifier dropped to the ground.

Jenna picked up the pacifier. “We probably need to superglue this, too.”

She followed her father into the kitchen. She rinsed the binky under the faucet before turning to look at the box she’d seen her dad pick up. Hank was already examining the contents with latex gloves, though her father and brother had probably already compromised some evidence by handling it bare-handed, not to mention the mail carrier and whoever else had touched it in between. Still, prints and fibers should be somewhat intact, so no need to disregard procedure entirely.

Hank pulled out a stuffed purple and blue dragon, sniffed it, gave it the twice-over. He plunked it into a plastic evidence bag.

Hank used a pair of tweezers to lift the note out of the box at its fold, and it fell open.

“‘Dear Ayana, do you have a fishhook birthmark, or is that just your grandmother’s? Let me know. Love, Uncle Isaac,’” Hank read.

Heat washed over Jenna’s face, and her eyes darted to her own birthmark on her wrist, then to Hank, purposefully avoiding her father. No way she could handle that right now.

“Handwriting?”

“We’ll send it to an expert, but it’s block lettered, so even if he didn’t pen it himself, it won’t tell us anything,” Hank replied.

“Postmark?” Jenna countered.

“Denver, Colorado, but it apparently was mailed there from elsewhere, and before that, from somewhere else. He had a string of people sending this one so it couldn’t be traced.”

“I want to know every human being who touched that package,” Jenna said.

“We’re on this, Jenna.”

Did he not realize a serial killer had sent their
daughter
a stuffed animal? “We need surveillance at post offices where it was handled. Talk to whoever delivered it, the mail workers, everyone in the radius of where it was mailed—”

“Jenna. This isn’t my first rodeo,” Hank said slowly.

“It isn’t mine, either. I’m going to the Sumpter Building,” Jenna blurted out.

Now it was Vern who spoke up. “You can’t be serious, Jenna!”

They were
not
talking her out of it this time. She didn’t want to go any more than they wanted her to, but it was the only way.

“He’s met Claudia. There’s no way he could know about the birthmarks if he hadn’t,” she argued.

“The sick fuck could’ve seen
yours
, Jenna.”

But Hank shook his head. “He’d have no way to mail the thing since he’s been in lockup. He’s under tight surveillance.”

“Oh, surveillance, shmerveillance, Hank! You know how those places work!” Vern said, his face the shade of a radish.

“Dad, he’s right. Anything can happen in jail, but Keaton’s been in the box and in a holding cell. There’s nowhere and no one he could’ve slipped anything to yet. He had to have mailed that before he called me in there. Before he was caught. It’s postmarked Denver, for crying out loud.” Then, to Hank, “When was it postmarked?”