Color Blind by Colby Marshall

any new acquaintances become prominent in his life after his wife died?”
    The detective sat back down at his ship in a bottle, resumed the tedious task of inserting the Legos into their delicate places. “Nah. Not really. That victim support group was really the only place he ever mentioned going that I can think of.”
    Victim support. A breeding ground for anguish and eggshells.
    “Thank you, Detective. We may have some follow-up questions later,” Hank said, acknowledging Hardeman’s return to his ship as his signal that his patience with the interview was over.
    “Hmph,” Hardeman grunted as Jenna and Hank walked out the way they’d come.
    “Victim support,” Hank echoed her thoughts as soon as they were out of earshot.
    “Only place better to suck in someone who wants to believe would be a church,” Jenna mused. “I want to see that website, too. Once Thadius decided to find things for himself, he’d have looked for someone more sympathetic than the police. Or someone who seemed sympathetic. Biggest issue now is which came first for Isaac, the support group or Thadius?”
    “Has to be Thadius, right? Surely you can’t wander into an AA meeting hoping to stumble upon the perfect target,” Hank said.
    She glared at him. “Are all victims and survivors alcoholics now?”
    “Emphasis on the anonymous, Jenna.”
    Jenna stopped walking. “But they aren’t anonymous.”
    “What?”
    She’d never found the beauty in getting together with a bunch of people who “shared” her journey in being part of the lives and deaths of a psychopath. Maybe it was because she knew she’d never be understood. The other people in those meetings didn’t help catch their mothers.
    Still, just because Jenna didn’t want to sit with a group of strangers and sing “Kumbayah” didn’t mean others didn’t. Her own brother was one, in fact.
    “Anonymous is a misnomer. These groups aren’t anonymous. It’s one reason Charley started going by Padgett, so his music career wouldn’t suffer for his name being Ramey, but also to divert media attention. He didn’t want there to be a record of him at meetings.”
    “They don’t take attendance, right? Participation would take a serious dive . . .”
    “No, they don’t take attendance, but the odds of people who meet there staying strangers are slim to none. They get to know one another, become friends. Overlap of names is inevitable. So-and-So knows Billy Bob Smith from survivors’ assistance. So-and-So goes out into the community to—I don’t know—a play, where So-and-So meets Whatsername. They sit together, and pretty soon, they’re looking at their programs. Billy Bob Smith’s name appears in black and white. So-and-So says, ‘Oh! Billy Bob Smith! I know him! He comes to survivors’ assistance meetings with me!’ Bam! Anonymity blown.”
    “Why did Billy Bob’s parents not own a baby name book?”
    “ Point is , we turn up some names of the people in that group with Grogan, we narrow our list of potential Isaacs to something manageable.”
    Hank smirked. “You think these not-so-anonymous people who’ve had enough crime in their worlds to last them a few lifetimes and then some will walk willingly into a police investigation? I think you of all people should know better than that.”
    Jenna put her hands on her hips. “You underestimate the value of being one of them.”
    Red flashed in. Empowerment. If Hank wasn’t the one she was talking to, she might’ve never felt challenged. Yet here she was, volunteering to open up to people she didn’t know at all. By her own account, it was the exact thing Thadius Grogan had done that got him into trouble.
    Hank couldn’t hide his slight smile. “You said it, not me.”

T hadius Grogan stepped off the bus at the Greentree Shopping Center, thoughts of the teal stripes in his head. Em had always been artistic, eccentric. She liked lots of makeup around her eyes, bright colors. One day, she’d come home