Color Blind (28 page)

He took her by the shoulders. “I didn’t say you did. But I can’t do it, Jenn. Can’t. Won’t. Take your pick. I can’t miss a dozen gigs—one of them huge—and hide like a scared rabbit. Besides, Claudia’s not stupid. She knows she can’t get away with that I’m-insane-but-not-insane bullshit again. She’s not coming after us.”

All of Jenna’s blood rose to her face. “She doesn’t work that way, Charley! She doesn’t always think with her brain!”

Her brother let go of her, walked past. “Well, neither do you.”

It felt like he’d pulled a rip cord in her heart. “What is
that
supposed to mean?”

Charley yanked off his bandanna, worked the knot slowly with his fingers. He frowned. “You’re thinking with your heart and your
past
right now, Jenna. Do you really think uprooting Ayana is best for everyone?”

Jenna stared at him, stung. “If I remember correctly, thinking with my gut saved your guitar-playing ass once before!”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said
no
. Your gut got Claudia charged, but she still stabbed my guitar-playing ass, if you’ll back that memory up a few megabytes.”

Tears battled toward the corners of Jenna’s eyes. She couldn’t argue. He was too right. Technically, she hadn’t saved any of them.

Charley noticed her watering eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m only trying to say we can’t live our lives running, Jenn. I don’t think she is, but if Claudia’s planning to catch up, she’ll do it. No hiding place will be good enough.”

“Charley, please . . .”

“No, Jenn. No. Take Dad and Ay if you have to, but I’m staying put. If Claudia comes back here, I’ll knife
her
this time.”

For the first time since this whole mess started, Thadius Grogan finally made some sense. Logic and reasoning only went so far. Jenna could deduce everything about Thadius’s state of mind through profiling, but until now, it had all been theory to her. Keep records and notes and the system will help you, she’d thought. Put her away the right way, just like the rest of the criminals she worked for years to put behind bars.

Yet against all odds, despite Jenna’s trust in the system, Claudia was free. Thadius’s kid’s killer was never caught, and here Jenna was, hunting Thadius like she wouldn’t do the exact same thing if someone hurt Ayana.

But Jenna would want someone to stop her.

This whole time, she’d been so intent on learning Thadius in order to learn Isaac, which would in turn help her catch the ferry shooter. What if she was going about this all wrong? What if by learning Thadius, she could find him and put an end to his misery? Then along the way she could
ask
him who Isaac was.

Now her brother wouldn’t come with her to the safe house, which was one
more
thing to worry about. Sure, he’d learned a lot over the years. But so had Claudia.

“Please think about it, Charley,” Jenna said. “Ready, Dad?”

“As ready as I’m gonna be,” he said, shooting Charley a glance.

Jenna lifted Ayana, nuzzled her nose to hers. Charley or no Charley, this little girl wasn’t ending up in any crime files. “Ready, Freddy?”

But Ayana had eyes only for Charley. She curled her finger once to beckon him toward her, as though to tell him they were ready to go. Jenna’s heart cracked right down the middle.

“Not this time, kiddo. See you later, alligator?” Charley said, cheerful.

Ayana grinned behind her pacifier. “After while, cr’c’dile!”

A
fter they got Vern and Ayana settled at the safe house, Jenna and Yancy set off for the next stop: the university where all of Thadius’s troubles began. Irv might be a magician, but even he couldn’t seem to get past the bureaucracy that was the university system of Florida. Either that or their record-keeping skills sucked harder than a brand-new Hoover.

“The college used to keep up with everything by social security number, but some bright individual eventually figured out that wasn’t the best method on earth,” Irv explained on speakerphone.

“Maybe not the most
secure
,” Jenna replied.

“Ergo, they dumped
all
records leading up to the switch. Numerous lawsuits. Hence a giant ever-loving gap in the student history.”

“Perfect,” Yancy grumbled.

“You’re telling me. The registrar wouldn’t even be able to give the Pope information if he called for it. This was before everything went digital. If my computer doesn’t have it, no one’s does,” Irv said.

“While I have you, anything on the Land of Valor Celestials?” Jenna asked.

“Eighty-three Celestials in the East Coast top thousand. Fifteen of those accounts dropped in rank near the first Gemini killings. I’ll have those names to you ASAP. I’m digging up some details on them first. Those bastards try to keep those files private, but we’re bitch-slapping them with a subpoena as we speak.”

“Great. Thanks.”

Jenna hung up. If just one solid lead would come through on any of these, maybe she could get somewhere with either Thadius
or
the ferry shooter.

“If neither the registrar’s office nor the MM Society has records, the next place to look might be individual professors’ offices. What do you think? I know Coppage’s files have been taken as evidence, but surely there are others.”

“Gotta be a faster way,” Yancy said. “Remind me about the MM Society.”

“Movie Making Society. The guy in the firework store said the kid had a button on his backpack. Grogan made him sketch it. Hank and I talked to the kid who runs it now.”

Yancy hit the dashboard. “That’s your answer! Way faster than digging through tons of old professors’ records hoping to find some student with some
random
connection to Emily Grogan. We don’t have a clue which classes she took. It’d take forever.”

“I told you already. We checked with the MM Society. They don’t have records.”

“Don’t need theirs. We can find out easy who was in the MM Society. Colleges keep plenty of records that have nothing to do with registrars. Yearbooks.”

•   •   •

I
n the bowels of the University Library, Jenna and Yancy sat at a huge oak table with an aging volume of
The Crusader
. The yearbook was only six years old, but judging by the dust, Jenna wasn’t the only person who’d forgotten these things existed. God willing, no one would ever think to look up her class albums. She liked to think her previous hair styles had never been the product of characters on popular television shows. Why did everyone on earth think that just because the “it” girl of the moment had the right face shape to pull off a trendy bob, it meant they must, too?

They flipped through the pictures of students and finally reached the shots of organizations and clubs.

“Jewish Life Center, Intramural Referees . . . Movie Making Society. Just sitting here waiting for us,” Yancy said.

Jenna’s heart leapt, and she jabbed at a kid in the left-hand corner of the photograph. “That looks like the guy in the pawn shop photo!”

Yancy skimmed the caption, which named the members from left to right. “Sebastian Waters.”

The skinny youth in the picture looked harmless, like any other kid Jenna had ever seen at any college in Anywhere, USA. She texted the name to Irv with, “Pronto.”

“That name sounds so familiar to me,” Yancy mumbled.

Now that he mentioned it, Sebastian Waters’s name tickled the back of Jenna’s mind, too. She examined the picture harder, but the only match she could come up with was the profile in the pawn shop photo.

The light on Jenna’s phone blinked, and she opened the text from Irv. In all caps, it said:
CALL ME.

She punched the callback, and Irv answered on the first ring.

“Not sure if this is like Christmas morning or Halloween night,” he said.

“Hit me with it, Irv.”

“For starters, Sebastian Waters is a former client of a Mr. Jasper Jeremiah Higgins, also known as the lawyer Thadius Grogan popped between the eyes last night.”

“Oh, my. That’s solid.”

“Hold your horses, sweet pea. The other half is cuter than pictures of a senator with his mistress the day before an election. Sebastian Waters was one of the shooting victims at the theme park.”

“What?”
Jenna gasped.

“What is it?” Yancy asked.

She mimicked writing something to ask for a pen. Then, to Irv, “Like, a dead one?”

“No, ma’am. Alive and schtickin’.”

Jenna’s brain fuses blew before any of the connections could lock in. She managed, “His history?”

“So glad you asked me that, Dr. Ramey. It would seem that as a juvenile, Waters was arrested for possession with intent to harm other students at his high school. Court psychiatrist cited maladaptive behaviors, anger management issues, and severe anxiety. Problems with daydreaming. Fast-talking lawyer got him off on probation. Argued he had some problems, made a mistake, but that he wouldn’t have gone through with an actual shooting. He was
such
a fine kid, excellent moral compass and all. Came from a good family, raised right. Nothing a little counseling couldn’t iron out. Waters completed court-ordered anger management classes and went on to the university. Led a quiet life riddled with depression. Treated by one of the on-campus health center psychiatrists.”

Yancy handed Jenna a scrap of paper from his wallet and a pen, and she scribbled
Waters = theme park victim
on the slip. She ignored his gasp to keep on track. “Perfect recipe for a bigger, badder killer with less remorse to swoop in and lead him on his righteous path to destruction.”

“This is why you get paid the big bucks.”

Still, the colors gnawed at Jenna. The ferry shooter’s blue clashed violently with the colors she associated with Emily Grogan’s murder. The girl had been strangled with her own intestine. The red of ultraviolent crimes didn’t make much sense. Could the ferry shooter have changed that much over time?

She pushed the thoughts of the colors away. “I’m guessing you’ve already cross-referenced Waters with the Land of Valor names?”

At last they would find out who Isaac Keaton really was. The question still remained as to how in God’s name he’d found Grogan and how he knew what the guy would do. He’d set Grogan off on track to find Emily’s killer, who he presumably knew ahead of time was Sebastian. Smooth way to get rid of
that
loose end, but what about Grogan? He was a loose end, too. Keaton wouldn’t leave one and not the other.

“No dice on the Land of Valor game, but like I said, I still have some work to do to get info on all these names. I’ll keep you posted.”

“Does Hank know?” Jenna asked.

“He and Saleda are already en route to Waters’s home address.”

He won’t be there.
“Okay, great. Let me know on the names.”

She hung up with Irv, and the string of curse words Yancy had been holding back flew out.

“Bastard! Isaac
shot
the guy to help him get away! That is
insane!
”

“Unfortunately, it’s as sane as it comes,” Jenna replied. She shut the yearbook and shoved it back into the pile in front of her. “Come on, we have to move fast.”

“Where are we moving?”

“Hank’s on his way to Waters’s house, but Isaac will have planned all this. Waters is long gone. But if Grogan knows what we do—and he
does
since he just offed Waters’s lawyer—he’ll do what he’s done every other time and head for where he knows Waters was last.”

“The hospital,” Yancy supplied.

“Yep,” Jenna said, jogging toward the elevator. “Waters isn’t still there, but Thadius Grogan is about to be.”

T
hough Jenna had called the police to get them to head toward the hospital, too, when Jenna and Yancy arrived, no sirens and no cars.

No backup.

They hurried toward the entrance.

“I’m still amazed Isaac knew Waters killed Grogan’s daughter. Even for Keaton, that’s pretty specific targeting,” Yancy said.