While the writer stammered for an answer, Jordan felt a tingle at the back of her neck. She knew she would want to talk to David, and away from group. The crime against him and his family bore at least vague similarities to her own family’s tragedy, despite some jarring differences. She and he had both been spared. In her case, at least, it had been intentional. Had the same been true in David’s?
Glancing up, she noticed that the group was wrapping up with David, eyes again slowly turning her way.
Jordan tried to think of how to say that she had nothing to say when the man bearing signs of plastic surgery spoke up, in rescue.
“I’ll go next,” he said in a measured baritone. “My name is Phillip. This is my second meeting.”
Heads swiveled in his direction. Phillip had short brown hair and, unlike the other more casually attired members, wore a white shirt and red tie under a navy blue vest, with navy slacks and black loafers. He sat square in the chair, both feet on the floor, his hands folded in his lap.
Then there was his face...
Angular, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin, his skin unnaturally white, his eyes light brown, his nose little more than nostrils, like two holes poked in snow. Lips virtually nonexistent. Though his speech was relatively normal, his breathing between words was clearly audible.
“I didn’t speak at the last meeting,” he said, “but now the time seems right for me to share my story.”
Everyone watched him expectantly. Though the damage to his face made it hard for Jordan to estimate his age, he must be somewhere in his thirties.
“Go ahead, Phillip,” Dr. Hurst said.
“I was walking my dog in Rockefeller Park,” Phillip said, sitting woodenly on the metal chair. “Near Wade Avenue Bridge.”
Knowing nods; a well-known area.
“What kind of dog?” someone asked.
Dr. Hurst said, “That’s really not of any—”
“English bulldog,” Phillip interrupted. “Named Cromwell.” He smiled and it was fairly ghastly. “I named him after a hero of mine.”
This elicited a few impressed smiles and nods, but Jordan had no idea who Phillip was talking about.
“Anyway,” Phillip said, “I was walking with Cromwell — this was two and a half years ago, winter. Cloudy, getting dark, but we’d walked that route, oh, hundreds of times before.”
Jordan allowed herself to be drawn into the man’s account. She knew what he had to say would be terrible, and rather than bother her, it made him seem an ally.
“Cold evening,” Phillip said. “Snowing earlier, but wasn’t when we were walking. I saw a man coming toward me with a shovel in his hands. I assumed he was a park employee, who’d been out clearing the sidewalks.”
Phillip paused, inhaled, the sound resonating, punctuating silence that sat among them like another member of the group.
“As we neared each other, I nodded at him,” Phillip said, eyes flicking around the circle. “When we were almost even with each other, the man swung the shovel, hitting me in the face.”
Two members, a woman, a man, shuddered, as if feeling the impact.
Unconsciously, a hand rose to brush his wounds. “It felt like he hit me with his car, but only in my face, my head. Everything went black, not in the sense that I lost consciousness — just vision. My feet went up and my head went back.”
Phillip’s hands moved behind him, miming his effort to break his fall.
“I felt my balance go, but I couldn’t get my hands down fast enough to brace me. When I hit, I cracked my head on the sidewalk.”
“My God,” the woman halfway around the circle said. Then she covered her mouth, as if to prevent further comment.
“Still, I didn’t lose consciousness. I was awake, seeing flashing lights — seeing stars, as they say — with blood running into my eyes. I knew what he was doing, though. Every single thing. He stole my wallet, my watch, my dog.”
“He stole your dog?” someone asked.
Phillip gave a weary nod. “I’m afraid Cromwell wasn’t much of a watchdog. I like to think he looked back at me with regret, as my assailant dragged him off. But I heard no whines, much less barks. Canines can be fickle.”
Next to Jordan, Levi blurted, “Did they catch the jag-off?”
“Cromwell or my assailant?” Phillip said with dry humor. “Neither, I’m afraid.”
“Did you see your... your assailant’s face?” someone asked.
Phillip shook his head. “He wore a hoodie, up, and it was getting dark. It all happened so fast. And yet I remember it in slow motion...”
There was a long silence.
Finally breaking it, Phillip said, “But I learned one thing, at least, on that cold winter night.”
They looked at him the way a disciple might at Christ or maybe the Dalai Lama. Would the secret of life be revealed?
“I can take more than I ever dreamed I could,” Phillip said matter-of-factly. “And I learned that you have to focus on what’s important in life. Which is two things, come to think of it.”
But what, Jordan wondered, if you didn’t have anything important in your life?
Directing his comment to the stalled writer, Phillip said, “You have to do what you were put here to do.”
By whom? God? The same God who allowed terrible things to happen to damage these people?
Dr. Hurst asked, “And what is that for you, Phillip?”
He smiled, and this time it wasn’t ghastly at all. “I’m a teacher.”
As they shuffled out after the meeting, Jordan mulled it all. Among the people she had met here, one was still trapped by what had happened to his family, while another had managed to turn an attack on himself into something positive.
David Elkins was a survivor, but one who had been absent at the time of the crime. The survivor Phillip, like her, had been personally attacked — perhaps not to the extent she had, but certainly violently assaulted.
Two survivors — one positive, one negative. She felt close to both men, in their misfortune.
But closer to Elkins.
Was she crazy, thinking his family’s intruder might have been hers?
She was well aware that she was posing herself this question while walking on the grounds of a mental institution.
Chapter Four
Mark Pryor sprinted up the alley, the material of his Men’s Wearhouse two-for-one suit pants straining, suit jacket unbuttoned and flapping, tie flapping too, his white shirt cool with underarm sweat, his Florsheims scuffing on the concrete.
“Freeze!” he yelled, but why did he bother?
The kid he was chasing, on this warm spring day — white, maybe twenty, surfer-blondness undermined by the dopey dragon tat running down his left arm — was way out in front, running as effortlessly as a track star among wannabes. This was probably due in part to the perp’s better aerodynamics — after all, he wore only Reebok running shoes and a red leather thong.
Mark had ten years on the freak, but even so was still the youngest detective on the Cleveland PD, only recently promoted. Right now, he felt like the oldest, lungs burning, legs aching, as the mismatched pair entered block three of the pursuit. The detective had his gun in hand, but that was mostly just a threat, and might have been a baton he was hoping to pass to a relay runner.
Charging hard, Mark entertained the thought of shooting the perp — he was barely closing the distance between them — but that was only a fantasy. The paperwork and condemnation that would follow, even if he just winged the guy? Not worth it. Not close to worth it.
Anyway, Detective Mark Pryor had never shot anybody.