What Doesn’t Kill Her

by Max Allan Collins

  Jordan was impressed. “Now that is cool,” she said.

  “I am hoping,” Phillip said, gesturing to his ravaged countenance, eyes traveling around the table, “to find the man who did this to me. You see, I have… anger issues. Issues that I would imagine are similar to your own.”

  Kay said, “You really think you can help us?”

  “I do,” Phillip said. “What you’re proposing isn’t that much different from what I’m already up to.”

  “Any questions?” David asked their new member good-naturedly. “Or did you pick up everything already, from next door?”

  Phillip smiled in his friendly yet ghastly way and said, “I’ve got the general idea, but I missed a beat here or there.”

  They looked to David, who took on the task of bringing the teacher up to date. Five minutes later, Phillip let out a sound that Jordan assumed was the scarred man’s equivalent of a low whistle.

  “And the police have no idea,” he said, “that one individual may be responsible for all or most of these other atrocities?”

  “The police assumption is,” Jordan said, “they’re separate cases.”

  “Which is still a possibility,” Phillip said, smiling that awful smile. “Listening to you folks talk, you might well be caught up in mini-mass hysteria.”

  Jordan bristled. “If you’re not interested—”

  “I said, ‘might be.’ ” He had raised a lecturing finger; he was a teacher, after all. “And on the other hand, if you’re right about this, you may have discovered a serial killer that the powers-that-be have completely missed. And such perpetrators are not the epidemic that popular culture indicates, no—they are rare. Quite rare. They are jewels of evil.”

  Was Phillip some kind of poet, Jordan wondered. Or just nuts, like the rest of them?

  “Then you’re in?” David asked.

  “Oh, most definitely,” Phillip said. “Right or wrong, it’s a crusade, and I’m always up for a good crusade. But I have to admit—and you need to know this—that if I have the opportunity to remove this cancerous creature from God’s earth, I will. If the police get there first, well, good for them. But you all should be ready to live with what I might do.”

  Jordan liked Phillip more already.

  But David said, “We’re not vigilantes, Phillip.”

  “Oh, I understand. I’m not suggesting we go down that road… though if the opportunity presents itself…? Well, I’ve said my piece.”

  They drank their coffee and made small talk while Levi and Phillip traded contact information. The pair decided they would get together to start going over the cases, and Jordan would provide them with what she’d recently culled from the Net about the attack on her family.

  When the group broke up and left the coffee shop, she didn’t notice Mark Pryor in his blue Equinox parked across the street, possibly because the detective was sitting on the passenger side, as a surveillance technique.

  A good thing, too, that she didn’t see him, because she had decided she would call Mark, and see what information she could glean from him.

  And if she’d noticed him, maybe she would have changed her mind.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mark watched as Jordan and several friends from her support group drifted out of the coffee shop. He hunkered down a little, making sure the young woman hadn’t seen him. Then he used his cell-phone camera to take photos of her friends as they gradually went off to their individual lives.

  He knew none of them (other than Jordan), but recognized the thriller writer David Elkins, who had some national fame and had been covered extensively in local media even before the tragedy that struck his family.

  Of course, “tragedy” hadn’t struck his family at all—a maniac had, very likely a maniac named Basil Havoc.

  Despite his promise otherwise, Mark had followed Jordan home from the market the other day. He didn’t feel wonderful about that, and hadn’t made a habit of, well, stalking her. But now—on a rare day off—he had done so again, this time tailing her on a St. Dimpna’s visit.

  While she’d been inside, he had done a little investigating via his smart phone and discovered the facility hosted the Victims of Violent Crime Support Group meetings. That Jordan would, as part of release, be required to attend that group took no Holmes-like leaps of deduction. Nor was any leap required to figure that the little circle of friends with whom she left St. Dimpna’s, walking over to the coffee shop together, were also members of that group.

  Mark doubted they were just any members of the Victims Support Group, though, given what Mark knew about Elkins, and what happened to the man’s family. The young detective had never interviewed the writer—like the Sully murders in Strongsville, the Elkins homicides were not his official concern. Nor were the Rivera homicides, at least not until Sergeant Grant had brought him in to try to win Jordan’s cooperation.

  But in the several days since he and Jordan had talked at the market, she had not called… and pressing her, he felt, would only make matters worse. Now, however, he had another way to go—next best thing to getting Jordan to talk might be getting her new friends to talk for her.

  This would take precedence over pursuing Havoc. The exchange Mark had had with the gymnastics coach in that Italian restaurant’s parking lot made it practically impossible to stay on the guy. This was a solo effort on Mark’s part, after all, with only tacit approval from Captain Kelley—it wasn’t like someone else could take over surveillance.

  He would have to come at this another way.

  Two hours later, a sports jacket thrown over (and a tie added to) the short-sleeved blue shirt and jeans he’d worn staking out the coffee shop, Mark drew his Equinox up in front of the writer’s home. A broad two-story in need of paint, its front porch sagging slightly, the house itself had a melancholy cast, as if it hadn’t weathered the atrocities that took place in these walls any better than its owner had.

  Mark climbed the few steps to the porch, which creaked under his shoes, then rang the bell and waited. His fingertip was poised to try again when the door opened and Elkins stood before him.

  Mark had seen photos of the writer, in the papers and in the case files; he’d watched interviews of the confident, even charismatic writer being interviewed about his latest book, before the world had crashed around him. This was a shell of that man, the navy polo and jeans loose on him, like clothes on a hanger.

  “Yes?” Elkins said.

  Mark already had the fold of leather out, open to his gold shield. “I’m Detective Mark Pryor.”

  Elkins nodded, barely. “Detective Pryor. How can I help you?”

  “I’m doing some follow-up on the recent homicides in Strongsville, exploring some similarities to previous crimes in the greater Cleveland metro area.”

  “All right.”

  Man, this guy was making him work.

  Mark said, “I’d like to talk to you about the perpetrator responsible for the loss of your family.”

  Elkins’s eyes were unblinking and distant. “I don’t think so.”

  “Sir?”

  “Detective… frankly? I’d really rather not put myself through it again. Can you understand that?”

  “Well, certainly, but—”

  “I’ve told this story too many times over the years, to an endless succession of detectives, and it just never leads anywhere except to another sleepless night. I’m going to pass.”

  The writer started to close the door, but Mark gripped its edge, like a pushy solicitor, and said, “Mr. Elkins! I’ve been anxious to talk with you for a very long time. It took a devil of a long time for me to get the authority to do so. Please, sir, don’t deny me.”

  The strained earnestness of that, the desperation, embarrassed Mark even as the words careened out; but at least it gave his reluctant host momentary pause.

  “… Look, son, I’m sure you’re a real go-getter, but I am just not interested in the betterment of your career. And if your superiors refused to let you
talk to me, maybe they had good—”

  “Sir,” Mark interrupted, and the words came out in a tumbling rush, “I’m convinced your wife and daughter were murdered by a serial killer, who is still at large, and very much active. You can’t wish what happened to you and your family upon anyone else. Help me stop him.”

  Elkins just stared at the young detective—though Mark not getting the door shut in his face was a start, anyway.

  “Give me five minutes,” Mark said. “I’ll share my theory with you, and if it strikes you as nonsense, just show me to the door. I’ll go away and never bother you again.”

  And still the writer just stood there, with a poleaxed expression.

  Then Elkins did something that Mark could never have expected: he smiled, just a little.

  Then he stepped back, and motioned Mark inside.

  “Thank you, sir,” Mark said, “thank you.”

  The interior of the house somehow matched the outside, nothing really wrong, but something off-kilter. The living room was orderly. A television sat on a low stand to the left of the door; bookshelves rose almost to the ceiling on either side of it. On the far wall, a doorway led to the dining room, a formal table and a couple of chairs visible from the front door. The wall on the right was home to a sofa and a recliner, both facing a flat screen on a stand, an end table nestled between them.

  Ordinary enough.

  “Have a seat,” Elkins said, gesturing casually toward the sofa.

  “Thank you,” Mark said, sitting.

  “I can offer you a beer.”

  “No thank you, sir.”

  “Well, I’m having one.”

  And his host exited. For a moment Mark wondered if Elkins would return with a shotgun and run him off his property.

  As he waited, Mark put together what it was that didn’t feel right about this place. Though everything appeared neat enough, a thin patina of dust covered most surfaces—bookshelves, end tables, base of the TV, the stand itself. The carpeting, a high grade, hadn’t been vacuumed in some time. The recliner nearby had regular wear patterns; the sofa on which Mark perched appeared barely used.

  Like the exterior, the interior of the Elkins house remained in mourning.

  Elkins returned with a bottle of Michelob and sat on the edge of the recliner, like a football fan studying an instant replay. The thriller writer had, on closer inspection, an even rougher look than had been obvious in the dim porch light. Dark circles camped under Elkins’s blue eyes in a face drawn and pale.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, sir,” Mark said.

  Elkins managed an unenthusiastic nod.

  Okay, Mark thought. So much for sympathy. Down to business.

  “Mr. Elkins, I’ve followed your case from the beginning.”

  He frowned, half in irritation, half in curiosity. “You couldn’t have been on the force back then, not unless you’re older than you look.”

  “I’m twenty-eight, sir. I was a rookie, fresh out of the academy.”

  “So, then… you didn’t work any part of the investigation?”

  “No, sir,” Mark said, well aware he’d gotten on the wrong end of the questioning. “My interest was because I was already looking—quite unofficially, I have to admit—into the somewhat similar murders of another family.”

  “Really. What family is that?”

  “The family of a friend of mine.”

  “Don’t be evasive, son. Not good interview technique. No way to open up a subject. What’s your friend’s name?”

  Elkins was a thriller writer—he knew police procedure, even if only from research.

  “Jordan Rivera,” Mark said, not anxious to reveal that he had seen Elkins with her just hours ago, but having no choice, really.

  Elkins was frowning again, this time in thought. “You and Jordan must be about the same age. Were you—”

  “In high school together,” Mark said, nodding, but wanting to finally get on the right side of this questioning, he added, “Sir, since I’ve never been able to question her about her family tragedy—she’s reticent, as you must know—I thought talking to you about your case was, uh—”

  “Better than nothing?” The writer was smiling again, a wry one this time, still barely enough to register.

  “No! I, uh—”

  “You could call not saying a word for ten years ‘reticent,’ I guess.” He took a swig of Michelob. “Before I consider answering any of your questions, I’ve got a couple more for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you seen Jordan since she got out?”

  “Once.”

  “When?”

  “A few days ago. We, uh, ran into each other at the grocery store.”

  “You mean, you tailed her there and arranged a meeting. I’ll bet she saw right through it.”

  Now Mark smiled a little. “Yeah, she did.”

  “You really aren’t very good at this, are you, son?”

  “Not yet, sir. But I will be.”

  Elkins studied him. “Maybe. Maybe you will. You have tried talking to Jordan about her family?”

  Mark shook his head. “She says she’ll let me know when she’s ready.”

  “The reason I ask is because she’s in my support group.”

  This was delicate. If Mark pretended ignorance, and got caught at it, this interview—maybe any interview with Elkins—was over.

  Mark said, “I thought you and she might be in group together.”

  “And why is that?”

  “The Violent Crimes Support Group meets at St. Dimpna’s. That’s where Jordan was institutionalized, and she’s a likely candidate.”

  “And I am, too.”

  Mark shrugged. “It’s the only support group of its kind in Cleveland.”

  Elkins nodded. He seemed to be buying it.

  “Detective, uh, Pryor, is it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We have a certain loyalty, you know. Group members. There’s a confidentiality that’s understood, like at an AA meeting.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  “And since Jordan hasn’t talked to you, I shouldn’t either.” Elkins sat back in the chair, but did not push back to make it recline.

  Mark felt he’d blown it—gosh dang it!

  Then Elkins said, “At least not about her case. If you want to ask about my family, I might answer your questions.”

  “That would be very helpful, sir.”

  “So ask. Listen, how new at this are you?”

  “I’ve been a detective a few months.”

  “So I should cut you some slack.”

  Mark grinned. “I wouldn’t mind.”

  Elkins grinned back at him. “Well, I’m not going to. You said five minutes, and we’re almost there.”

  No more stalling.

  “You were gone when the attack occurred?”

  “You already know that.”

  “And no one, none of your neighbors, saw anything unusual that night?”

  “Come on. You know that, too. I thought you were going to present your theory.”

  Funny—he seemed testy and good-natured at the same time.

  “Yes, sir. I started thinking about it back in high school, with Jordan’s family. There just didn’t seem to be any explanation for what happened to them, nothing beyond just… random evil at loose in the world.”

  “Nice phrase, son,” the writer said. “But get to it.”

  “The more I studied, the more likely this seemed to fit the classic mode of a serial killer. I know, I know that they are rare, no matter what our pop culture puts out there. And there were problems—one was that he left Jordan alive. Another was that there was no even vaguely similar attack, at least not until your family six years ago. Some killers of this ilk will take a hiatus between episodes… but six years seems inordinately long.”

  “I don’t disagree.”

  “As I got older, studied more, learned more, it finally occurred to me that this predator’s h
unting ground might be a far larger one than just the Cleveland metro area.”

  Elkins set his glass down and sat forward again. “And where did that thinking take you?”

  “Eventually, all across the country.”

  The writer’s eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yes. Some here, in this region, but… well, I think I can tie together at least a dozen family murders to this one killer.”

  Now Elkins leaned forward so far he was almost off the chair, his prayerfully folded hands dangling between his legs. “And no one else has put these pieces together? The FBI has profilers and investigators working on just these kinds of rare cases.”

  “Maybe so,” Mark said, “but there’s no indication of that. My captain would be in the loop if the FBI was investigating the Cleveland-area homicides.”

  “So why hasn’t the FBI noticed this killer?”

  “Our predator is highly intelligent, maybe genius level. He knows not to have an immediately recognizable MO, so his methods vary—there’s always extenuating circumstances that make the crimes look like something other than textbook serial killings.”

  “Such as?”

  “Home invasions, primarily. One instance on the East Coast was made to look like a mob hit. He takes an approach that I would call diversionary.”

  “Where nationally have you tracked these cases?”

  “Providence, the Bronx, the Midwest. So far, never the South, but with several out west.”

  Elkins was mulling it. “One man operating on that kind of scale—is it even possible?”

  “For a suspect who travels a lot—with his business perhaps—it would be feasible, even fairly easy.”

  Elkins got up, leaving the beer bottle behind on an end table, and began to pace, to prowl.

  “How would he go about targeting families?” the writer asked. “Randomly? My God, that’s somehow more horrifying than thinking your family had been targeted. Even a warped reason is, at least, a reason.”

  Mark had no answer for that. He asked, “No one ever found a commonality between you and the Riveras, did they?”

  “Not really,” Elkins said, returning to his chair, perching himself on its edge again. “We both had six-figure incomes, but that was about all.”