Kay said, “But we’re trying to put somebody in prison.”
“That door swings both ways,” Levi assured her.
“With that much information,” David said, “we’re going to need help to sift through it all.”
Levi said, “I’m the only one here with the computer skills to get that done... meaning no offense to Jordan.”
“Excuse me.” The male voice came from the table behind Jordan. “But, uh... I’m pretty good with computers.”
They all turned. Phillip, from group, was sitting at the next table, something approximating a smile on his lipless, alabaster face. He sat alone, a saucer under his coffee cup, a napkin neatly in his lap, his outfit brown and tan today. He wore a too-white shirt, tie brown with tan diagonal stripes, jacket a medium brown, slacks crisp and tan, loafers brown and buffed to a high sheen.
“You don’t even know what we’re talking about,” Jordan said, nastiness creeping into her voice unbidden.
“I’ve heard enough to have a pretty good idea,” Phillip said, the breathing through his noseless nostrils as loud as if he were deep asleep.
But he wasn’t.
“What,” Jordan demanded, “you think eavesdropping is cool?”
David raised a hand to intercede, but Phillip ignored him, his eyes on Jordan. “No. But you weren’t exactly whispering — any of you.”
He had a point.
“You’re lucky I’m a fellow group member,” he said. “A civilian might report you to the police... May I join you?”
He pulled his chair around and sat between Jordan and Elkins. Any irritation or even anger she felt was trumped by curiosity.
“Okay, man,” Levi said, and grunted a laugh. “What do you know about computers?”
“I’ve always taken an interest in technology,” Phillip said. “I was on the Internet years before it was widely in use.” Then, looking around to make sure no one else was listening, he added in a whisper, “But since my attack, I’ve learned to hack security video, and your odd state and local police system.”
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.