Color Blind by Colby Marshall Page B

didn’t show the kid’s face well, but Thadius bought the youthful description. “Tell me more about his face, clothes. The backpack. Anything.”
    “I could tell you about his face, but I probably wouldn’t be right,” Woody said. “It was so long ago. The clothes . . . shady. The backpack. It . . . had a weird button on it. The MM Society. I remember thinking the words ‘secret society,’ but I don’t remember anything else. Didn’t ask about it or anything.”
    Thadius cocked his head. Woody was calmer, more helpful than Marley Ostin. Smart. “A logo?”
    Woody nodded, blinked more.
    “Draw it,” Thadius commanded.
    Woody looked straight on, never eyeing Thadius. He plucked a piece of paper from his printer, grabbed a pencil. He sketched feverishly, two letter M’s with the word “Society” down the middle of them.
    “I think it was red with black letters, but I’m . . . I can’t be sure.”
    Thadius grabbed the paper, folded it, and pocketed it. “One more thing. Did you sell him fireworks?”
    This time, Woody faced him, looked in his eyes. “I . . . yes. I’m sure I did. This is a fireworks shop, and he came in to buy. What is this about?” The man blinked some more, then said, “How can I help?”
    Thadius’s imagination had gone wild in the aftermath of Emily’s murder, and he had a clear picture of what her body might’ve looked like. It flashed in, charred beyond recognition, all except her face. Her striped hair.
    “You can’t . . . Jesus. Did he say what he planned to do with them?”
    Now sweat stuck Thadius’s shirt to his chest. It had seemed so obvious. All of it. But right now Woody wanted to help him, even with a gun to his face.
    Woody smoothed his palm over his mouth as he thought. “No. I don’t think he did. If he did, I don’t remember it at all. Sir, is there someone I can call for you?”
    Thadius kept the gun on Woody and backed away from him. “Don’t move.”
    This couldn’t be happening. It wasn’t right. Emily.
    “I’m sorry for this,” Thadius whispered.

J enna sat at the kitchen table typing on her laptop, Hank beside her. Try as she might to ignore her father’s disapproving eye from where he sat on the floor with Ayana and her farm puzzle, Jenna kept getting distracted.
    “Shouldn’t she be off that thing by now?” Hank asked.
    Jenna swiveled her chair so she couldn’t see Vern anymore, who was muttering something angry under his breath. “She’s still a baby, Hank.”
    “Pacifiers can cause tooth problems, can’t they? I tend to think the longer you wait to take it away, the more attached she’ll become.”
    “And I tend to think she’ll stop using it when she’s ready,” Jenna replied. Jenna modified the search criteria, hit the return key on the keyboard. “Bingo.”
    Hank leaned in to look at her screen, which now bore Thadius Grogan’s self-made website about his daughter’s murder. “Look no further for how Isaac Keaton knew what he did about Grogan.”
    “It certainly tells a thing or two about Thadius’s mental state anyway.”
    Jenna’s cursor naturally fell onto the tab marked “To Emily’s Killer.”
    Unlike the rest of the site’s soft pastels, this page’s stark white background contrasted with plain black lettering. The note described all of Emily’s activities, friends, charitable causes. It went on to tell the murderer he would be punished, labeled him everything from impotent to unintelligent.
    “Assumes a lot,” Hank said. “Takes for granted the killer didn’t have anyone who loved him, berates him for not knowing what it is to have family. Presumes he’s pathetic even.”
    Jenna shook away the orchid color that flashed in at Hank’s words. The shade corresponded in her color vocabulary to elitism and a mind-set of superiority, but she couldn’t let Hank’s ideas influence her. The color had popped up at his words and didn’t relate to her own gut feelings. It was something she’d