Myron nodded. “You told Win that you think Greg may be connected?”
“Oh, he’s definitely connected. That doesn’t mean he did it. But that’s the thing. Let us suppose that there is a serial killer at work here. We are still tracking it all down, but right now we have seven murders we believe he’s responsible for.”
“You said ‘he,’” Myron noted. “The serial killer is a man?”
PT sighed. “I said ‘he’ because I’m an old man, and I don’t want to make this more convoluted by saying ‘he or she’ all the time or making you think it’s the plural by using ‘they.’ Plus, ninety-one percent of serial killers are male. So for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to say ‘he’ for right now, okay?”
PT bent down and picked up an old-school briefcase. He placed it on the table, opened the latches with his thumbs, took out a folder. He took his reading glasses out of his suit jacket pocket and put them on.
“You know about the murder of Jordan Kravat, and you know about the Callisters. So keep those in your head as we go through this. There’s also the murder of a woman named Tracy Keating in Marshfield, Massachusetts. She was hiding in a rental unit from an abusive boyfriend named Robert Lestrano. He found her and killed her. Easy conviction. We also have a wealthy tech entrepreneur from Austin, Texas, who was killed by his own son over a money dispute. There was a man abusing a woman online from New Jersey who was killed by the woman’s brother. A farmer who was murdered on his soybean farm near Lincoln, Nebraska, by two migrant workers.”
“How are they connected?” Myron asked.
“You tell me,” PT said. “What stands out in what I just told you?”
Myron nodded. He was starting to see it. “The cases are solved.”
“Good,” PT said, like a pleased mentor. “Go on.”
“You caught the perpetrators. They were tried and convicted.”
“Some are still going in the trial stage,” PT added to clarify. “But yes.”
Myron shook his head. “My god.”
PT couldn’t help but smile.
“Explain,” Win said.
“Don’t you see?” Myron replied. “That’s how a serial killer would get away with it in today’s era.”
“Elaborate,” Win said.
“These aren’t open cases. Just the opposite. They are closed right away. So there’s no way to discover a pattern.” Myron leaned forward. “When a serial killer murders someone or makes them disappear, the case remains unsolved. Eventually, you start seeing patterns. Or an MO. Or a bunch of unsolved murders. You start searching for links between victims. But in this case, if I’m following the logic here, this serial killer isn’t just murdering someone — he’s setting up someone to take the fall. He’s done it in Las Vegas, Texas, New York, wherever. The cases are then” — Myron made air quotes with his finger — “‘solved.’ In the case of Jordan Kravat, for example, it’s pinned on Joey Turant via DNA. Joey takes the fall. Case closed. With the Callisters, the DNA points to Greg Downing. He takes the fall.”
“Case closed,” Win said, nodding, seeing it now.
Myron turned to PT. “I assume the same thing happened in the other cases you mentioned — the soybean farmer, the father-son from Austin?”
“Yes.”
Myron sat back. “So someone set Greg Downing up.”
“Not so fast,” PT said.
“Isn’t that the obvious take?”
“No, Myron, it is the one that best suits your narrative.” PT shifted his large frame in his chair. “Another take is that the FBI has been painstakingly searching for strands that connect the various cases. Combing through the evidence for overlaps. The murders happened in different states. The victims are from various backgrounds and genders. Nothing connects any of them — nothing at all — except we’ve now found one overlap between the cases of Jordan Kravat and the Callisters. And that overlap is...?”
PT stopped and waited.
“Greg Downing,” Myron replied.
“Bingo, Myron. Do you believe it’s just bad luck that Greg Downing is the only connection we can find between any of the victims?”
“It could be,” Myron said.
“But do you believe it?”
“No,” Myron said. “I don’t believe it.”
“So that means we know what one thing for certain?” PT asked. “Whatever is going on here, whoever or whatever is responsible for all these murders — it’s directly connected to your old nemesis, Greg Downing.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
You stand under the red awning for the Michelangelo Hotel on 51st Street near Seventh Avenue. A rain so light it is barely a mist falls. The wind blows it under the awning. For a moment you close your eyes and enjoy the feel of it on your face. It brings you back to your childhood. You’re not sure why. You always liked the ocean. You remember sitting on the edge of the jetty rocks, the waves crashing near you, closing your eyes like this and feeling the spray. You’d open your mouth and stick out your tongue so you could taste the salt.
You open your eyes and wait. You are patient. It is one of your learned strengths. It didn’t come naturally to you, but you could now be called detail oriented, overcautious, plodding even. But you know. One mistake could end it for you. That has never been clearer.
And a mistake has been made.
Half an hour goes by. You have walked up and down 51st Street from this awning on Seventh Avenue down to the Major League Baseball flagship store on Sixth. There is a line to get inside the baseball store. You scowl at that. Grown men buy baseball jerseys for two hundred dollars. Not children. Grown men. They wear baseball jerseys of their “heroes” in public.
You shake your head over that.
You can’t help but think it would be nice to pop one of these guys in the head just for the fun of it.
And you do have a gun on you.
You didn’t used to think that way. Or wait, maybe you did. Maybe we all do. Just for a fleeting second. Look at that douchebag in the sports jersey, we all tell ourselves. Be nice to... But then we stop, of course. We smile to ourselves. It’s all just fun and games. We don’t really want to hurt anyone. We don’t ever let ourselves go there because if we do, if we go there even once, we may not ever come back.
That’s what happened to you, isn’t it?
You hear this about the addictive quality of, say, heroin. You may be tempted to try it, but if you do, if you get even one hit, they say you may never come back. That may be true, that may not be true. You don’t know.
But for you, it was true about murder.
It is then, when you look back down toward Seventh Avenue, that you see Myron and Win leave Le Bernardin.
You turn toward the baseball store and pretend to window-shop. There are mannequins in full gear, including cleats and those bizarre stirrup socks. You wonder whether some losers actually buy the entire uniform of a favorite player. You remember a long time ago going to the US Open tennis tournament in Queens and seeing some spectators dressed in full tennis gear — collared shirt, shorts, sweatbands — as though one of the playing pros might call them out in mid-set to join them on the court of play.
Pathetic.
Stop, you tell yourself. You’re getting distracted.
You step closer to the window. Your collar is turned up. You have on a mild disguise because you are always smart enough to wear a mild disguise. Nothing flashy. But no one who knows you would recognize you. It would be hard for witnesses to accurately describe you.
Myron and Win cross Sixth Avenue. They don’t talk. They don’t seem to need to. They just walk side by side.
You have the gun.
You mostly watch Myron Bolitar. You wish you had more time. You are rushing and that is never a good thing. But there is no choice now. It is all moving fast. You wonder.