Color Blind (33 page)

L
yra sat on the cold earth in the dark, waiting. She’d come as soon as she’d sobered up—enough to call a cab anyway. No way she’d be brave enough to try this without a drop of alcohol in her system.

This was the only plan she could think of, though. The one thing that might be worth a try, the sole idea with the potential to help Isaac out of this impossible scenario he’d dug his way into.

She checked the glowing face of her phone for the hundredth or so time. Ten minutes had passed since she last looked.
Be patient.

Freaky, hanging out in this place by herself. Hard to be still, keep the jitters in check. But Lyra couldn’t risk moving, giving herself away until
she
came. The woman might leave without showing herself, or worse: sneak up on her.

Lyra couldn’t be sure what told her to be here. Somehow she knew the woman would show up, and it had everything to do with the fact that
Isaac
would if he were in the same situation. She’d learned a lot about his patterns over the years.

Lyra wandered down to the lake one day after her Girl Scouts meeting. Their dad said her brother had gone outside carrying sheets and blankets to build a fort. Super cool. Lyra knew she could help him.

When she reached the bank, she didn’t see Isaac anywhere. He wasn’t on the dock soaking his feet in the water, nowhere around the boathouse. Maybe he was in the boathouse . . .

The door pushed open without a sound. Isaac faced the wall, tearing a sheet into strips. He ripped and ripped, harder and angrier, until only shreds remained. He hovered over them, still facing away from her. For a moment, she thought he was staring down at the strips, examining them, until she heard the trickle. He was peeing on them!

Isaac turned, and Lyra crouched. For a split second, her breath caught. Had he seen her?

His gaze lingered on the door, but then he kept moving. He climbed into Dad’s boat, lifted the bench seat. Under each section, he placed a strip of soiled sheet before returning the seat to its regular position.

Before she could think, he was out of the boat and heading her way. Hide!

Lyra tried to sneak behind the door, but a hand grabbed the back of her neck, yanked her to her feet. “You wanna be nosy, Lye-RUH? Huh?”

Isaac shoved her nose into the side of the boathouse, and a splinter pierced the soft skin on its tip. She didn’t yell. She shouldn’t.

He leaned close to her. “Don’t follow me, Lye-RUH. Not ever. I take care of you. You don’t try to keep secrets from me, understand? Don’t try to know things about me I don’t tell you, either.”

She’d tried to nod, but her face was too smashed into the wood. “Promise, promise.”

The pressure slackened. Her nose stung, but her heart hurt worse. Tears burned her eyes as she faced him, ashamed but even more bruised by his words.

“Oh, Lye. I’m sorry,” he said. He hugged her tight. “If you did that to other people, they might hurt you. I had to teach you that lesson. Understand?”

“Uh-huh,” she said, burrowing her face into his shirt. His underarms smelled so strongly of sweat she could barely smell the urine in the boat anymore.

“Why’d you do that to the boat?” she asked, her face still buried in his arm.

“Funny prank,” he said. “Don’t tell, okay?”

She promised again.

It wouldn’t be the last time Lyra saw him do that, though it was definitely the last time she let him catch her watching. Sometimes he put the sheets in the boat, other times the car. Always places sure to cause a musky problem no one could find, least of all Dad. Isaac always had an excuse for what happened to the old sheets. They’d blown into the lake, he’d forgotten one in the woods. Once, he told Dad they used one to make a kite that got away.

After a while, Lyra added two and two and realized this ritual occurred on days after her father chewed Isaac out for wetting his bed. She’d never tell Dad, though. She didn’t blame Isaac. He and Dad had huge screaming matches about how Isaac was too old to wet his bed, and Lyra felt bad for her brother. Isaac couldn’t help it. Everyone always said when you had to go, you had to go. She’d never been told this applied only to a certain age, and she was always sure Isaac hadn’t, either.

As an adult, Lyra recognized the difference, but it didn’t change her level of sympathy.

Even after Dad was gone, sometimes Isaac still went to the boathouse and piled sheets in a musty corner there. Lyra never understood it, but it helped him some way. Somehow it cauterized his shame.

It was like all of the habits Isaac had, the ways he would visit places that meant something to him. Something dark she didn’t always understand. But even if she didn’t understand what they meant or why he visited them, his habit of revisiting his own little chaotic memories was the reason she always knew how to find him, even if the first time, only intuition led her to him.

It was the same reason that now Claudia Ramey would show up here.

•   •   •

A
n hour or two passed before Lyra sensed someone in the graveyard with her. She steeled herself to be strong for her brother. She was his only hope.

The footsteps came closer and closer still until they were almost upon her.
Please, let this be the right thing to do. It’s all I have.

“
Who are you?” Claudia’s cold voice asked when she saw Lyra sitting beside the gravestone.

“I’m L-L-L-Lyra Mintelle,” she stuttered.

“Oh, I see,” Claudia said, amused. “You come here often?”

The woman was playing with her, Lyra knew. Claudia had to be well aware Lyra was there waiting for her.

Lyra’s body shuddered as though she were in the middle of the Alaskan tundra.

“I need your help,” Lyra said.

Claudia Ramey practically cackled. “Help
you?
Why would I want to help
you?
”

“Because I know things that would be mutually beneficial.”

Claudia cocked her head, examined Lyra like she was a strange artifact in a museum. “What could you possibly know that could be of any service to
me?
”

“I know things about your daughter. Jenna.” Lyra trembled, afraid to say the next part. Once she did, there would be no taking it back. “And I know how you could get to her, hurt her most if you wanted to.”

“Is that so, young lady?” Claudia asked. The woman sounded skeptical, but Lyra could tell she’d touched a nerve by the way Claudia’s eyes widened, the wildness reflected in the moonlight.

Lyra nodded.

“Well, well, well. If that’s the case, you might be my new best friend.”

Z
ane’s father washed his hands three times while Jenna and Hank questioned him. Keeping yourself busy always made it easier not to panic while talking to cops, right?

“Mr. Krupke,” Hank said, “think one more time. Was anything different about your house when you came home this afternoon?”

Krupke dried his very clean hands on the dirty dishrag next to the sink. “I told you. I’ve
been
home. I cooked dinner, had the boys over. Haven’t left.”

They had to be going about this wrong. It would help if the man didn’t think they wanted to trap him in some kind of drug bust. They hadn’t explained what was missing from Zane’s room yet, but only because, as Zane pointed out, her father didn’t know much about the contents of her room anyway.

“Did anyone besides the boys come over today? Any pizzas delivered, maintenance men come by?” Jenna asked. Thadius had to have had a chance to gain entry to the house, but how? All the access points were intact, no locks tampered with. Mr. Krupke hadn’t gone out, so Thadius must’ve come in and taken the book while he was here. Too stoned to notice maybe?

“Nothing like that, I told you! Just been us,” he said. Then, to Zane, “The one guy from your group came by, but he left shortly after—”

“Wait, what guy?” Zane asked.

“You know. The guy you sent over for the record thingie.”

“What?”

“Mr. Krupke, what record
thingie
are you referring to?” Jenna asked, heart thumping.

The man dried his hands on the towel again, which was more soaked than his palms at this point. “Guy from the victim what-a-jig. Zane sent him over for that picture keeper thing she has for the get-together-whatnot.”

“Did he go in and
get
it?” Jenna pushed.

“I’m not
that
much of an ass! ’Course I didn’t let him go in my daughter’s bedroom. Went in and got it myself.”

“Dad!” Zane gasped, head in hands.

Jenna couldn’t help but feel bad for her. Retrieving the notebook for a stranger seemed so stupid. But really it wasn’t. The pretext was simple. Perfect. Thadius Grogan, master of disguise.

“What did the man look like?” Jenna asked, even though she already knew.

As expected, Krupke gave a pretty decent picture of Grogan: on the large side, older. He didn’t have a mustache or beard anymore apparently, but they’d known for a while he’d probably have shaved.

“Wait, wait. Back up. You said he asked you for records. He knew Zane wasn’t home?” Hank asked.

Krupke opened the fridge, stared into it blankly. “Nah. He wanted to see Zane, come to think. Told him she wasn’t here. He asked when she’d be back. Told him I didn’t know, that Eva was bringing her home. Then he asked when he could come by tomorrow, that he needed to get together with her on some stuff for an event.”

“What’d you tell him? How’d the records come up?”

Krupke shut the refrigerator door, seemed to think better of it, and opened it again. “I said she wouldn’t be here tomorrow, either, because she had that thing-a-ma-jig. He said oh yeah, he remembered that. He needed to meet up before it, because she had some records about it he was organizing. Asked me if I could find the information for him. ’Course, I didn’t know when Zane’d be back, and the guy was kinda frazzled. I didn’t wanna make him freak out. I went in there and looked around, found the thing he seemed to be talking about. Brought it to him. He left.”

“Dad, how
could
you?”

“How could I
what?
He was helpin’ out, I thought.”

Jenna turned to Zane. “Who’s Eva?”

Zane blinked, stuck between being pissed at her dad and answering the question. “A friend. She was supposed to pick me up tonight, but then she didn’t show up.”

“Last name?”

“Delaney.”

“Call Saleda and have her find Eva Delaney, pronto,” Jenna said. God willing, Thadius Grogan had no reason to have a beef with this girl, but Jenna wasn’t willing to bank on it.

Hank nodded and pulled out his phone.

“How
did
you get home tonight, Zane? Sebastian didn’t bring you, right?” Jenna asked.

She shook her head. “No. I called a taxi.”

Zane’s eyes darted toward her father, but he was still busy expecting the contents of the refrigerator to magically change or multiply.

“All right. We need to station an agent here at the apartment with you tonight, Zane. For your own protection,” Jenna said.

At this, Mr. Krupke slammed the refrigerator door. “No way.”

Hank covered his ear not pressed to the phone listening to Saleda. He stepped away from them.

“Sir, I know it’s inconvenient, but the man here earlier is extremely dangerous,” Jenna explained. “Zane’s safety has to be our first priority.”

The dad shook his head back and forth. “They have protocol for that, yeah? Protective custody and all?”

“It’s important we don’t
move
her, either,” Hank cut in as he hung up with Saleda.

“I don’t have to consent to this!”

Hank leaned on the counter toward the man. “And
I
don’t have to ignore what I’ve seen at this apartment so far, but I’m willing to, if you cooperate.”

“Seen? Seen nothing! I haven’t done anything wron—”

“Are you kidding us with this?” Hank replied. He cocked his head toward the men on the couch. “Those two would probably
bleed
weed if we stuck them right now.”

“I’ll stay.”

Jenna turned, wide eyes on Yancy. As if Hank didn’t think he was interfering enough already. This would be a doozy.

“What? I’m not a cop, so the Pot Brigade here has nothing to fear. I can keep lookout without being conspicuous,” Yancy said.

“Yancy, you chased Thadius Grogan down a painter’s scaffold, for God’s sake! He’d recognize you in a second!”

“Might be all the better, actually,” Hank said.

“You’re not serious.” This was unbelievable. Now Hank was trying to get Yancy killed outright?

“I mean it. Grogan knows Yancy will confront him, plus Yancy
could
theoretically know Zane through victim support. May be better for everyone if we walk out and leave no reason for anyone to think Zane’s being tailed, just in case
Sebastian’s
watching. Yancy’s less of a threat,” Hank said, and he glanced at Yancy’s leg. “No offense.”