He had blond hair but almond-shaped eyes. His skin was a beautiful golden brown, and his hair tried to fluff itself into an Afro though it grew past his collar. He was a glorious mix of races, and obviously pretty intelligent. In the right environment, with the right—or wrong—brain chemistry, I could see how he could come to believe he was Jesus returned. I always figured Jesus would get his own reality show in order to put the good word out to the masses, but this was an interesting way to go, too. False statements on purpose? Deliberately bringing down federal heat? Was he trying for federal lockup without the murder, theft, and/or terrorism that usually led to such accommodations?
Who are you?
“I am a thief,” he replied, startling me since I was 90 percent sure I hadn’t said that out loud. “I’m a liar. I am … an inveterate troublemaker. I’m all of those and none of those. You know, like Mudd on Star Trek. He never told the truth, so when he said he was lying, the android had a nervous breakdown.”
“I don’t know what inveterate means,” I confessed.
“Chronic. Incurable.”
“Like epilepsy?”
“Like diabetes.”
“Oh. I didn’t say ‘Who are you’ out loud, right? Right.”
He smiled at me; I could not recall ever seeing a kinder expression on a human face. “‘A sword shall pierce through thy own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed,’ my daughter. And you have many hearts. Don’t you?”
“Um, okay,” I replied. If not for the smile, I would have decided to get extremely terrified. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Fear not for me, my child. My father watcheth over me.” He held out his arms (Christ-like! All he needed was a cross.) and slowly turned until his back was to us.
“Whoa.”
His entire back, from the nape of his neck all the way to the waist of his pants, was covered with a tattoo of a stern-yet-loving God, complete with long white robe, long white hair and beard, and kind yet stern eyes.
“God!” I exclaimed, as weirded out as I was dazzled. It was a beautiful tattoo. And … were God’s eyes following me? It seemed like they were following me. “That’s … God.”
“Yup.”
“He’s got your back?” George guessed.
“He’s absolutely got my back.”
“So what’s it like, being insane?”
“It’s working for me,” Jesus replied comfortably.
“You’re one to talk,” I muttered, but George only shrugged, dazzled.
After that there wasn’t much to do but read Jesus his rights and arrest him. He gave us no trouble, as we’d guessed; Jesus was delighted to be persecuted. “Now I can get on with my work.” He sighed happily as the cuffs clicked home.
Once the son of God had been safety tucked into the system, George was so exuberant he hugged me, which was as loathsome as I always imagined it would be. “We have the fucking greatest jobs ever!”
I wrenched free. “Michaela has to find a way to save BOFFO. No way can I do something ordinary after arresting Jesus.”
“I think we’re all agreed on that. And George, points to you. You were remarkably restrained. Wait’ll I tell Shiro,” Emma Jan teased. “She won’t believe it.”
“I don’t believe it. We haven’t seen the last of Jesus, tell you that right now. I’ve just met my new wingman. Once Michaela comes up with a plan to save all our asses, I wanna hire him. There’s gotta be something at BOFFO for the son of God.”
“Because that’s what it’s all about, really,” I said. “Your happiness.”
“Yeah.” George beamed, unaware of (or not caring about) the sarcasm. And sometimes I wished we could change places. For George, everything was easy.
For Jesus and me, not so much.
Wait. Did I just make like the son of God and I had troubles in common? Yeesh. First the swearing, then the delusions of grandeur. George was contagious.
chapter twenty
Half an hour later, the three of us were back at the crime scene in West St. Paul. Though it had been processed and the body run to the ME on Chicago Avenue, there were a few stragglers. The uniform let us past the tape, which, after what Greer had said to us the last time we were there, was a pleasant surprise.
I’d also called Dr. Gallo and asked if he could meet us there. We had to question him further anyway, he’d already contaminated the scene,
(Or made the scene. No, probably not, but what if?)
he had experience with this sort of thing after what had happened to his poor nephew, and he’d worked with Paul at a murder scene before. One of the things I liked about BOFFO was how we could bend the rules. Always provided there were results.
“We’d better get this guy quick,” George muttered as we passed the uniform in the hall. “BOFFO needs a win.”
“A save,” Emma Jan corrected.
They were both right. Now we didn’t just want to catch him because he was killing random innocents and we wanted him to knock it off. Now BOFFO’s rep and future hung in the balance. Did ‘lost our funding’ mean we could never, ever get it back? If we caught him tomorrow, would that change anything?
I’d called Patrick to let him know it would be a while before I made it back to our (!) house. He commiserated and promised to have some red velvet cake waiting. The man was a god. Not a god like locked-up Jesus was a god. A culinary god. A god of pastry! And he was mine and we lived together because my life was
(almost normal. No, never normal.)
getting better.
I sighed happily, which was inappropriate to say the least. Luckily George was once again prowling the crime scene, mindful of the tape and fingerprint powder, raking his long fingers through his hair and muttering dark things, and Emma Jan had seen me behave in even more peculiar ways.
“Your boy better get used to that,” she said, nodding to my phone, which I was just tucking back into my bag. “A do-gooder’s work is never done.”
“Yeah, good point. Still, it’d be nice if I didn’t have to drive that point home on Moving Day.”
“That’s how he knows straight up what to expect. No one to blame but himself if he doesn’t like it.” Emma Jan sounded weirdly cheerful as she pointed that out. I realized I had no idea what her home life situation was: boyfriend, girlfriend? Divorced, single? This wasn’t a job for cultivating warm and loving relationships.
“This isn’t, this isn’t, this isn’t right at all,” Paul Torn said from the doorway. “Does anyone else taste blue?” He held up a copy of the Star Trib. “There’s blue in here, in here, but also red and green and black.”
BOFFO’s maddest mad scientist had arrived, vibrating in the doorway and lugging around a newspaper. An actual newspaper. Made of paper! Aw, Paul was so adorable. What looked like the random weather forecast, crime blotter, and classified ads from the nation’s sixteenth largest metro area often resolved themselves into patterns only Paul Torn could see. I was once again struck by the ordinary exterior for the extraordinary mind clicking and whirring inside that big ol’ skull.
Paul was a pacer, too. Egad, he and George would probably collide pretty soon. Was this something I wanted to prevent, or encourage?
Encourage? Of course not!
What was wrong with me lately?
“Hi, Paul. Sorry to wreck your Friday night.”
“He or she or they wrecked it, hi, Cadence, not you, you didn’t wreck a thing, how are you, Cadence?”
“Um…” Fine? Tired? Pissed at Sussudio? Wondering if Gallo had had to cancel a date to get here? Hungry for my baker’s red velvet cake? “Fine?” It seemed the safest answer.
“Hi, Paul.”
“Time like Thyme, Special Agent Emma Jan Thyme.” They shook hands. “I like how your skin is dark but red underneath. I like how it’s two things even though it’s one thing.”
“Thank you.” Emma Jan’s polite smile got very big very quickly, and I saw her sizing him up with new appreciation.
After they shook
hands, Paul remained in the doorway, snapping his fingers and shifting his weight from foot to foot. “It’s not it’s not right. In fact it’s all wrong.”
“Just how we put it, except when we said it, it made sense. Will you get your freaky ass in here, please? I’m not having a conversation with you in the hallway.”
“George,” Paul confided to me as he reluctantly came forward, “smells black.”
“Like evil,” I agreed. Paul was close enough to tower over me; he was large enough to be a pro basketball player, with long gangly legs and arms, but was terribly far-sighted. His glasses were thick and right out of the fifties: he looked like an African-American Buddy Holly. I loved that he wore them, too. Because he looked weak and distracted and afraid, he was occasionally targeted for what would be called bullying if he were still in high school. What was bullying called when a thug who should know better picked on a skinny black genius who’d earned a black belt between doctorates?
Hilarious. That’s what it was called.
“I guess I should say something corny,” a new voice said. “Like, ‘We should stop meeting like this.’” Max Gallo smiled at me from the doorway. “But it’s always nice to see you again, Sag.”
Somehow George Pinkman will pay.
“Thanks for coming out,” I said, ignoring the compliment. Pretending to ignore it. Loving the compliment. Oh, damn it. “Sorry if we messed up your plans.”
“The Game of Thrones fanfic site isn’t going anywhere.”
That earned laughter from George and Emma Jan, and a sour smile from me. Right. A gorgeous single doctor who gave off an aura of danger had nothing to do on a Friday night but hang out in chat rooms. I wasn’t nearly as clever as Shiro, but that didn’t mean I was a drooling idiot. Most of the time.
“It’s Paul, right?” Gallo ambled into the living room and held out his hand for Paul to shake. “We met at the Mickelson crime scene.”
The Mickelson crime scene. It sounded aloof, almost cold. Detached. I knew why Max Gallo had said it just that way. It was a way to keep the barriers up. Because if they ever fell, would they crush him and kill him? Or worse, would it just leave him mashed and bleeding? Why would he ever want to take that chance?
“Yes, it smelled blue but we couldn’t figure out why and then we did, hello, how are you? It’s Doctor Gallo; I can tell by the color.”
“It is.” They shook, and then Max looked around with bright eyes. “This is terrible to say out loud, but I can hardly wait to see what you guys are gonna spring on this killer.”
“Your faith gives us hope,” George said, clutching his heart (or where his heart would be, if he had one) with a sigh. “Also, you’re not the killer, right?”
“Right.” When nobody said anything, he looked at all of us. “No, really. I’m not the guy. Pinkie swear.”
Paul shook his head so violently I was worried he’d pass out. “Dr. Gallo’s the wrong color. It’s not him, it’s someone who smells orange but looks blue. That’s what it is, that’s the trick. Dr. Gallo smells red.”
“Okay.” George had a file and made a show of scanning papers and making a check mark. “Glad we got that settled. Next?”
“Excuse me, Paul. ‘Smells red’?” Max asked politely. He was in what I was starting to think of as his uniform—beat-up leather jacket, worn scrub pants, clean but faded T-shirt. The clothes should have hung on his lean frame, but he had a wiry muscularity that was surprising, even disarming. He was so comfortable in his worn clothes that they seemed a part of him. I knew that for what it really was: Max Gallo was a man comfortable in his own skin, and I envied that about him. Except for George and Patrick, I didn’t really know anyone else who was.
George and Patrick: gah.
Max was still gently questioning Paul, who hadn’t stopped snapping his fingers once; those long thin dark fingers were a total blur. “Do you mean numbers smell, or people, or both?”
Both? Whoa. I caught Emma Jan’s glance—she was impressed, too. Gallo knew what Paul was; he was just making sure.
“If you know if you ask are you?”
“No, I’m not a synesthete. If we’d gone to the same college I would have cheated off you for all my exams.”
Paul laughed, a sudden cheery sound that startled all of us. I had never heard him laugh, not even when George called him Rain Man and then tripped over the punch bowl filled with carrots Michaela had set behind him. “You would you would but you wouldn’t need to. You’re a doctor now, you didn’t need to, you likely smelled red back then, too.”
“Tell that to my med school profs,” Gallo replied dryly.
“Well, this is all super fun and sweet, but maybe we could solve a murder? Or something?” George was either deeply committed to public safety, deeply pissed at the killer, or deeply interested in getting a win for BOFFO and saving his neck. Hmm, which could it be? “If it’s not too much trouble, girls?”
The smile never left Max’s face, but now his dark eyes were scrutinizing George as they’d abruptly sized up Paul. You had the feeling he knew exactly what George was, as he’d known about Paul, and wasn’t especially worried. “A harsh taskmaster, but I obey. How can I help the FBI this evening?”
“You can start,” George said as Paul began pacing the perimeter of the living room, taking everything in behind big eyes magnified by his glasses, “by telling us how you knew the victim.”
“Oh, sure,” Max replied easily. “We both thought about killing ourselves. That’s how I knew him.”
chapter twenty-one
“I told you I told you Dr. Gallo smelled red!” Paul cried, then went back to pacing the living room and mumbling.
A word about synesthetes: they are people who have a neurologic condition that allows them to see numbers as colors. Sevens are red, tens are yellow, twos are black … like that. But it goes beyond that: they also feel numbers. To Paul, a brilliant man whose mind I would never understand, numbers had shapes and textures and smells. He could interact with them; he had relationships with them. Numbers were literally his friends, whereas most people saw them as squiggles on a piece of paper or a computer screen. Synesthetes could do high math, design computer programs, speak multiple languages (Paul spoke Japanese, German, Mandarin, Spanish, Italian, and French—“Weirdly,” George would say, “but fluently.”) and many had near-photographic memories. They could do these things in a way no one, no one else on the planet, could. Paul was bitterly brilliant and deeply weird and BOFFO thanked God (or the equivalent) for Paul pretty much every week.
So when he said Dr. Gallo smelled red, I paid attention.
“I had a turbulent childhood.” Max said this with a cynical smile, doubtless because he knew he was in a room full of people who’d also had turbulent childhoods. “Which I decided to make even more exciting via substance abuse and a half-assed suicide attempt. Then I left home. After med school and my residency, I helped a colleague run some T-groups. Wayne Seben was in my group for people prone to suicidal ideation.”
(“Suicidal ideation” = medical term meaning thoughts about suicide, which sometimes manifests as coming up with a detailed plan for suicide without actually committing suicide. Suicidal ideation = “Maybe you should be talking to somebody.”)
Max went on to explain that it wasn’t a formal therapy group—he wasn’t their physician; he didn’t prescribe antidepressants; he didn’t prescribe anything. (“I can’t; it’d be ethically shitty. I’m not their doctor.”) The group didn’t meet at a hospital or a clinic; they met at the Baker’s Square in Burnsville. (“Sometimes, no matter what kind of crap day you have, French silk pie makes it better.”) He listened to their woes and shared his own experiences. (“Once, I got home and the old man was passed out cold on the kitchen tile, and I couldn’t decide if I should kill him or myself, so I went to the local Barnes and Noble and read graphic novels for three hours.”) Those in the group who expressed interest in discussing their inclinations with a professional would sometimes ask for a friendly r
ecommendation. That was it.
“Basically we’re a group of people who get together once a week and talk about (a) how shitty our lives have been but how they seem to be getting better, or (b) how our lives were pretty great but are getting progressively shittier. And sometimes we get French fries to go with our pie,” he added thoughtfully.
French fries. Red velvet cake. When had I eaten last? My stomach growled, which was embarrassing but broke the tension. Emma Jan giggled while George rolled his eyes; Paul didn’t notice, but Max’s bitter smile widened and became more natural.
“So your killer killed someone who was thinking about suicide,” Max finished. “This time at least. I don’t know any deets from the other scenes. Since BOFFO’s in it, I’m guessing he’s done this at least twice.”
Since he was here as some weird amalgam of suspect and consultant, I hoped the truth wouldn’t bite me in the behind: “Two other that we know of, yeah. All in the Metro Area in the last eight months.”
“You had your hands full with JBJ,” Max guessed. “But once that old bastard was put down”—he didn’t consider Luanne, the woman who had killed his nephew, the true JBJ killer—“you could deal with this?”
“Our computer didn’t spit it out as a serial until the second one, three months back. The third one, today … that’s when you came along. Again,” George added pointedly. I had no idea if George truly wondered if Max was the killer; I only knew that he didn’t care, except as to how it impacted Max’s ability to be his wingman. I could almost hear him: “He can’t be my wingman from Stillwater prison! So he needs to make sure he doesn’t get caught killing these guys. Or it’d be good if he wasn’t the killer, I guess.”
“That’s why it’s all wrong,” Paul added. “I told you I told you: it’s someone who smells orange but is blue.”
“Yeah, you did tell us. And weirdly, it didn’t make any more sense this time.”