Color Blind (40 page)

Jenna held back a sharp intake of breath. “
Biscuit time . . .
and the omelet?” she asked.

“The omelet?” he repeated.

“Yes. You said something about an omelet. Was someone making you an omelet?”

Not that the answer mattered. If Isaac truly had the episode, he wouldn’t remember it. Either way, the statement wasn’t cohesive with the hallucination he was presenting her with. Too random. Too ready.

And it sounded just like something Claudia had said a lot. She always asked about biscuit time.

Isaac Keaton’s acting skills were admirable, but he hadn’t studied the right material. He’d studied
Claudia
.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“Back to the hallucination where someone said they were taking things. Did they intend to hurt you?”

“The man I saw was going to take my sister. Hurt her. I just knew. You should understand that, Dr. Ramey. He was going to hurt my
sister.
”

As Isaac said the word, he looked up at her, blue eyes cold. Charley’s pallid child face popped in, and Jenna’s pulse quickened.
Don’t do it. He’s fucking with you.

Isaac had learned everything from Claudia.
Everything.

“What did he look like?” Jenna asked, a specific detail in mind.

“Tall, lanky. Slit-like eyes.”

“Did he have hair?”

“Yeah. It was short, like a crew-cut.”

“What color?”

“Black,” he answered.

Bingo.

“What color was his shirt?”

“Black.”

“Did you see any colors on him?” she asked, forcing her breathing rate not to change.

Isaac looked straight in her eyes. “No. He was black and white. All black and white.”

Jenna smiled, then bit her lip, trying to stop. She couldn’t. The grin broke, and the laugh jerked its way out of her.

“What’s so funny?” Isaac asked, his eyes examining. He thought she’d cracked, she was sure.

She stood up. “You should’ve done more research, Isaac. Claudia isn’t
really
schizophrenic. You know that. Not only is she not schizophrenic, but you didn’t even
know
her after she started portraying her schizo
character
.”

He stared at her, but he didn’t speak. For the first time, he looked less than sure of himself. Fearful.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he finally said.

Jenna plopped the guard report on the wooden chair the nurse had brought in for her interview. “The omelet was a bad choice. Gave you away.”

“I don’t—”

“Papers always talk about my mother and her hallucinations, and the
interesting
‘fact’ of how I saw her as black, the black widow. You mentioned it to me when we talked that first day. I told you back then I didn’t see her as black, but even then, you didn’t realize you’d made a wrong move. You’d read all those reports about my mother’s ‘black and white hallucinations’ and the coincidence that I saw her as that color. But the reports were inaccurate, Isaac.”

Isaac’s mouth twitched slightly. She should leave now while he wondered, just like when she’d told him she didn’t see Claudia as black. But she couldn’t. For once, passing on the knowledge was too delicious to pass up.

“Claudia never claimed to have visual hallucinations, Isaac. She feigned auditory ones. And even if she
had
claimed visual hallucinations, real schizophrenics don’t hallucinate in black and white. They see colors.”

I
saac leapt from the bed, closed in on Jenna. “You stupid, horrible, smelly cunt!”

Jenna backed away, but she didn’t have much room to get away. She was locked in.

“Guard!” she yelled.

“Miserable piece of shit! Claudia should’ve killed you when you were a pissant cunt kid!” All pretext was gone from Isaac’s voice now. He knew he’d been beat.

“Easy, Isaac. They’ll be keeping you in lockdown now, don’t want to give them any reason to lengthen your sentence any more than it’s already going to be. Though trust me, I wouldn’t be sad,” Jenna replied.

Isaac cornered Jenna in the infirmary cell. “For your sake, Jenna, you’d better
hope
I never get out of here. You
and
your little girl! I’ll get you both.”

“Sure you will. Just like Charley, huh? He’s fine, by the way. You sure went to a lot of trouble to orchestrate the climax of your little plan to revolve around him for it to not pan out. Hope you just saw his name on a flier somewhere and that sparked your idea for the rally. I’m sure if this idea wasn’t a whim, you’d have scouted a location he was playing, made sure nothing was left to chance. You know. Put your best foot forward? It’s okay, though. I’m sure you’ll plan better for that first prison shower.”

Then Isaac charged her, his plaster cast poised to crush her. Jenna ducked, beat the walls, screaming for the guards.

“You miserable bitch!” Isaac yelled, finally upon her. He knocked her across the face with the cast, his good hand reached for her throat.

Jenna scrambled underneath him, kicked as hard as she could into his groin. He grunted when she made contact just as she heard the doors unlatching.

Guards rushed in, one took down Isaac Keaton with a Taser. Another helped Jenna to her feet. “You okay, Dr. Ramey?” he asked.

Jenna stared down at Isaac Keaton, who was now frothing at the mouth. Depended what “okay” meant. Before this encounter, Isaac Keaton probably had nothing but curiosity about Jenna, however dangerous that curiosity might’ve proven. He might’ve hurt her in the midst of trying to prove he was even better at the game than Claudia herself, but any pain he’d planned for her and her family before was entirely incidental. All for the cause.

Now he didn’t just want to test her skills as a worthy opponent. If he ever had the chance at her again, this time he’d be out for blood.

She looked away from the pitiful creature on the floor and brushed off her slacks. “Nothing a nice long bubble bath won’t fix.”

As she turned to leave the cell, Isaac’s voice grated after her.

“Dr. Ramey, you’d better pray they keep me here forever or kill me, because if they don’t, I swear to God, I will finish what your mother started. I swear, I will take you
out.”

I
rv sent Lyra Mintelle’s address to Yancy with the text:
You with Jenna and Hank? Can’t get either. Please pass along.

In the car, waiting. Waiting in the car. No Jenna, no Hank. Thadius Grogan might be at Lyra Mintelle’s right now. If Thadius got to her first, she might not live to tell what Isaac put her up to. If she lived and they could get it out of her, Lyra could be the key to keeping Isaac behind bars and from following in Claudia Ramey’s footsteps.

The choice seemed obvious.

Yancy caught a wheel pulling out of the prison parking lot. He’d text Jenna so she’d get it when she was out. His plan for when he got there, however, was pretty much nonexistent. At best, maybe he could make sure Lyra didn’t let Thadius in if he showed up. Maybe Yancy could stop Thadius if he was already there.

This might be the stupidest thing you’ve ever done, buddy.

The address turned out to be all the way in the boonies. Maybe Thadius hadn’t found it, because Yancy wasn’t sure he’d taken all the right turns, even with the help of the car’s built-in GPS. Finally, he reached the driveway.

No car in the drive. The garage door was closed, so someone could be in there.

Yancy didn’t knock, but instead tiptoed around back as best he could with one metal foot. The porch was screened in. Should be easy enough to get in there.

Turned out, way easier than he’d thought. The screened porch was unlatched, and Yancy let himself inside. The home was quiet except for some distant music. Classical?

Upstairs.

Yancy pulled his gun, which he’d demanded back from Hank post-rally. He let the barrel lead around the corner at the top of the staircase.
Checking all the downstairs rooms first would’ve been good, smart guy. Some cop you’d have turned out to be.

Too late for intelligence. Balls to the wall recklessness for the win.

Yancy proceeded into the bedroom, gun first, following the music. He was closing in on it. Had to be. It swelled, an orchestra reaching a crescendo.

A twenty-something-year-old redhead lay on the bed, limp.
Oh, man.

Yancy ran to her, felt for a pulse. Nothing. She was still warm.

He yanked his phone from his pocket. The battery blinked red. He pressed speaker, dialed 911. Then he started CPR.

Was that a breath?

He leaned closer to her lips. Yes. She was breathing. He’d brought her back from . . . something. She had no apparent wounds.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

Please, battery. Live through this call.

“Yes, I’m at 6514 Chestnut out in . . . heck, I don’t know where I am. There’s a woman here who’s unconscious.”

“What appears to be the trouble?”

“I have no idea! Just
get
here!”

“Who are you?” Lyra Mintelle asked, voice faint.

Her eyes fluttered open and closed, and Yancy glimpsed the green flecks in her irises.

“I’m . . . help. Help is coming. Did Thadius Grogan do this to you?”

She coughed and tilted her head back, trying to breathe better. “Thadius?”

“Yes! Where is he?”

She tried to shake her head, but it made her cough more. She grappled at Yancy’s shirt collar like a life line.

“I don’t know where . . . Thadius hates me now. I don’t blame him . . . I hate . . . me, too.”

If this was Yancy’s only chance to find out about Isaac Keaton, he needed her to talk, but he’d be damned if he knew what to ask her. On the way here, he’d imagined fighting Thadius Grogan on a rooftop, not trying to question a half-conscious Lyra Mintelle on her bed.

“Why?” was all that came out of Yancy’s mouth.

Lyra coughed again. “I . . . horrible things . . . I knew . . . tried to help anyway. Now I’ve only . . . hurt . . . lots of hurt.”

“Where’s Thadius, Lyra?”

“Gone,” she answered.

“He was here?”

A terrible rattling breath came out of Lyra. “Yes.”

“Did he do this? What did he do?” Yancy asked, panic gripping him. That sound couldn’t mean anything good.

“He told me . . . I had . . . to live . . . with . . . myself.”

Then Lyra’s breath rattled one more time and stopped. Yancy tried starting CPR again, but this time, nothing.

Shit.

That’s when he saw the envelope on the nightstand. It bore the handwritten words “For Isaac” in the middle.

Contaminate a scene when cops were on the way, or wait patiently for someone to come so he could explain the situation. What a choice.

Yancy grabbed the envelope and ripped it open.

His eyes skimmed the paper. A suicide letter to her brother.

In it, she didn’t call him Isaac.

Joey,

By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. I did everything I could to protect you. I really did. It’s only . . . I understand why you needed to do the things you’ve done, but your way and my way were never the same. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep going. I did the best I could. You needed to meet her, find out why she was how she was. I think I get why. She did things we couldn’t do, especially as far as Dad was concerned. We couldn’t save him, and I know how much you tortured yourself over it.

“Yeah right,” Yancy mumbled. Isaac, if anything, had only wanted to meet Jenna to find out one thing and one thing only—how to win. If Yancy had learned anything in profiling, it was that Isaac didn’t want to meet Jenna because of some emotional need. Sociopaths never did. They needed power, and in Isaac’s eyes, Jenna was the most powerful person he knew of. Beat her, and he was invincible. Beat her to become God.

Yancy read on.

Knowing what I do, I don’t know if you’ll ever come home, and facing a world without you in it is something I’m not sure I’m capable of. Knowing the things I’ve done, I’m not sure I could live even if you were by my side to help me. I know I’m weak, and you hate weakness, which makes me despise myself even more. I’ve let you down, and for that, I’m sorry. Please just know that I’ve tried to do what you needed all along. I sent the letters and the package, but I also took steps to make sure even if you don’t ever come home, the end will do you justice.