He held up a hand in a stop gesture. “Case is just a way to reference the crimes. It doesn’t really speak to the greater impact those crimes had on you. Or the ones that impacted me... or David... or Kay.”
These three people, like her, had been through ten kinds of shit. Chagrin flushed her.
Jordan said, “You’ll have to excuse me for being such a complete bitch. I haven’t been on the outside very long. I have the social skills of a biker on meth.”
David grinned at her. “What would you know about a biker on meth?”
“Oh, I saw half a dozen brought in at Dimpna, over the years.” She turned to Levi. “What did happen to you? I know their stories. What about yours?”
Levi gave her a smile that had nothing to do with the conventional reasons for smiling. “My family was killed two and a half years after yours. I was even younger than you were.”
“I don’t mean to sound cold,” Jordan said. “But were there any similarities...?”
He shook his head. “Not direct ones.”
“How...?”
“My parents... the word the papers used was perished... in a house fire.”
Jordan flinched at the thought. “That’s terrible. I’m very sorry, Levi. But that doesn’t sound like murder.”
“Oh, it was murder. The police think someone broke into the house, drugged Mom and Dad, then set the house on fire.”
“Jesus,” Jordan said.
“Yeah,” Levi said, and the non-smile returned. “It’s pretty fucked up, all right.”
“They were dead before the killer set the house fire?”
The young man shook his head. “The fire wasn’t even that bad — the house was actually saved, can you believe it?”
Kay’s eyes were lowered. She already knew this story. David watched Levi with quiet sympathy.
“My folks... they couldn’t get out because of the drug the killer gave them. How exactly he managed it, no one knows. But it was by injection, in fact a drug used in lethal injection. They were paralyzed and died of smoke inhalation. Succinylcholine, it’s called, what he drugged them with. Causes temporary paralysis. Mostly used to euthanize horses, or immobilize them for surgery.”
Jordan said, “I’m so sorry.”
Levi shrugged. “I was even a suspect for a while. Then the cops checked my story and found I was playing video games at my friend Rick’s house. Spent the night there. Didn’t know anything was wrong, till Rick’s mom got a call from one of our neighbors. Rick and I had heard the sirens, but didn’t think anything of it. You hear sirens at night sometimes.”
The young man cracked his neck, yawned, then took a long swig of his coffee.
Jordan leaned in. “What makes you think our... our cases are connected?”
Levi shrugged. “I don’t know that they are.”
“But it’s families,” David said, lightly bumping a fist on the table. “Your family was first, in Westlake, ten years ago.”
Like she needed to be reminded?
“Then,” David went on, “two and a half years later? A family is murdered in Ashtabula — Levi’s family.”
Jordan frowned. “Ashtabula? How far is that from Cleveland?”
Levi said, “Sixty-two miles up I-90.”
Not really a suburb, the town sat just off Lake Erie, northeast of Cleveland.
“Then two years later,” David said, “my family was killed.”
“That,” Levi said, “is when I really started putting the pieces together.”
“Pieces of what?” Jordan asked. “Three families murdered, but three different places, years apart, different methods, and excuse me, but nobody else here got raped, did they?”
Kay’s hand shot to her mouth. David had the expression of a slapped man, but Levi remained calm. He was almost smiling again.
“The police kept that fact to themselves,” David said, in a hushed voice.
“They always hold something back,” Levi said, pleasantly.
“Actually,” Jordan said, “I never told the police.”
The others took a few moments to digest that.
“Maybe that’s why he left you alive,” Levi said.
Jordan blinked at him. “What do you mean?”
“David and I were spared, too, if that nice little word can cover something that big and awful.” He glanced at the writer, then brought his gaze back to Jordan and continued: “We weren’t home. But you were in the house when your family was killed. And I always wondered why he didn’t kill you, too.”
“You seem convinced that it’s the same son of a bitch,” Jordan said coldly.
“Damn straight.”
Why wasn’t she pissed off at this kid’s calmness about the most traumatic event in her life? Instead she appreciated it.
David touched her arm and she jerked it away.
“Please,” the writer said, misreading her silence. “I know this is hard. It’s hard for all of us, but Levi has found some things that make me think that despite all the differences between our ‘cases,’ maybe, just maybe, we are dealing with one murderer here.”
She said nothing. She was thinking. Her plans for finding and dealing with the intruder had not included bringing anybody along. This was her fight, her responsibility...
“Maybe you just want to move on,” Levi said. “I mean now that we know what happened to you... what sent you into a catatonic state for ten years.”
“I wasn’t catatonic.”
“No?”
“I just didn’t have anything to say.”
Levi studied her for a few moments, then said, “Did you know there’s been another crime, a family in Strongsville? Pretty similar to your situation. It would have hit the news just about the time you suddenly decided you did have something to say.”
Was she that transparent? Skater boy seemed to know which buttons to push.
Her eyes swept the people around the table. “So,” she said. “What have you naughty children been up to?”
Levi grinned, a real smile this time, and David smiled a little, too. Only Kay remained impassive, her eyes on Jordan.
“Levi was way out in front of this,” David said, nodding to him. “Levi?”
The young man nodded back, then turned his attention to Jordan. “At first, all I did was dig into what happened to my parents. But when what happened to David’s family hit the media, I saw enough similarities to start me looking — looking deeper. For a pattern, for commonalities.”
Jordan asked, “And you found...?”
“When I added in your family, I had a kind of line of three, on the map. You in Westlake, David in Cleveland, and my family in Ashtabula. You were first, then me in the north, then David in the middle. But now Strongsville? That’s south and east of you. They were all in the greater Cleveland area, but there was no apparent logic to the locations, otherwise.”
Jordan nodded. “So it’s not geographic?”
David said, “Probably not.”
Levi shrugged and said, “That was just the first thing I looked at.”
“What about you and my brother?” Jordan said. “Both gay. Hate crime?”
“A real possibility,” Levi said. “The Sullys in Strongsville strengthens that notion. Brittany Sully, the daughter who died along with her parents? She actually made some headlines in the local media for asking another girl to be her date for the prom this year.”
Jordan had known that. “So Brittany was gay, too,” she said.
“Actually, no — her brother in the army is. He’s in Afghanistan. She wanted to show solidarity with him, so she asked a girl to prom. Seems her boyfriend was in college and not allowed to attend prom with her. So she asked a friend of hers, another girl, who is gay, and... it was really no big deal, but it made the news, and, of course, the Internet.”