What Doesn’t Kill Her

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.

Ahead, the alley came to a T and his only real chance to catch Perry the Perv, as the youthful perp was known to the neighborhood, was anticipate which way the kid would go and beat him there.

“Left,” Mark said between gasping breaths. A command, though Perry couldn’t hear him. Almost a prayer.

Perry’s nickname, incidentally, came from everyone knowing that he collected jars of his bodily fluids in his rathole apartment and applied their contents in various unspeakable ways to, in, and on various mentally challenged teenage boys, who he also collected.

Right now Perry was lathered in sweat, and the last thing the detective wished to do was lay hands on this noxious sex offender, and shooting the creep would prevent that. But how could you explain it to a shooting board? Bringing down a guy armed only with a thong.

Mark picked up speed and cut a diagonal line toward the left corner — if Perry went right, then he was in the wind, good and g.d. gone. But the young detective was betting on left, because Perry hadn’t done anything right in his whole pathetic life...

True to his nature, Perry veered left, where Mark was coming up fast. The detective launched himself, his shoulder driving into the Perv’s ribs. He’d been the team kicker back in high school, but he knew how to tackle, all right. As much as he despised having to touch this lowlife, Mark hugged him tight and together they flew.

“Motherfuh...”

That was as far as Perry got before his nearly bare body skidded into the pavement, Mark on top of him, and the air whooshed from Perry’s body like a balloon a fat kid sat on.

All that bare flesh had made a body’s worth of skinned knee of Perry, and the pebble-and-trash-strewn alley put up more fight than he did. Mark could imagine how painful that was — his knee burned where he had skinned it on the concrete and torn his pants. At least he had another pair at home. Of course, the jacket was filthy now and a mustard stain decorated a sleeve.

He cuffed Perry’s hands behind him, then stood, brushing alley crud off as best he could. Perry lay on the ground, blood leaking from cuts and scrapes, wheezing like a fish on the deck of a boat, whimpering, trembling.

“What were you chasin’ me for anyway?” Perry finally managed pitifully, as Mark hauled the scraped, bleeding, living carcass to its feet. “I wasn’t doin’—”

“You have,” Mark interrupted, “the right to remain silent,” and continued to Mirandize the Perv, who continued to insist he’d done nothing wrong.

Mark said, “Nothing wrong? You were in your bedroom getting ready to rub God only knows what onto Cleotis Redington.”

This in reference to a mentally challenged teenager Perry had violated on more than one occasion.

“That was strictly consexual.”

“Consensual, dipstick.”

“Consenting, consexual, whatever.”

“Perry,” Mark said with a sigh, “I already told you, you have the right to remain silent. Do us both a favor and do so.”

Perry shut up and this gave the prisoner a chance to take stock of his situation. “Hey, man,” he said. “I hurt. I’m really hurting.”

“Then you shouldn’t have run.”

And Perry started to cry, the way a little kid does who had skinned his knee. In this case, all over...

A heavyset guy in a cheap suit lumbered up next to Mark and stopped, hands on his knees as he sucked air. Detective Robert Pence.

“Good... good... good,” Pence panted. “You... you... caught... him.”

Six-three, near three hundred pounds, a few months from retirement, Pence had been assigned to keep an eye on the rookie detective. But to Mark, it sometimes felt the other way around.

Out of shape or not, pretty much over the hill maybe, Pence remained a good, smart cop.

“We got him all right, Bob.”

“The helpless twerps of Cleveland can rest tonight,” Pence said. “But it’s your bust, Marky Mark, not mine.”

“Your snitch’s tip led us here.”

“Yeah, caught the Perv in the act, and isn’t that one for the memory books? But kiddo, last thing I need in what’s left of my career is another bust. What are they gonna do, add another five bucks to my pension? Use this, sonny boy — take it to Captain Kelley. Get on his fuckin’ radar.”

Mark winced.

“I know you don’t like that kind of language, kiddo, but this’ll get his attention. And then we — you — will have his attention on that other little matter.”

“Think so?”

“I know so.”

“He shrugged it off last time.”

“That’s because you insisted I take the lead. To him, I’m yesterday’s news, and he’s not wrong. This will be your show. I’ll be long gone, kiddo. Do it. Convince him.”

An hour later, as the older detective booked Perry the Perv downstairs, Mark rapped on Captain Kelley’s pebbled-glass door.

“Come,” Kelley said.

Mark went in. He had not bothered to clean up, let alone change out of the filthy, torn suit. He stood there for a long moment while Kelley studied the screen of the laptop on his desk and continued typing.

Captain John Kelley — rail-thin, titanium-hard African-American with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, a pencil moustache, and a hawk nose where half-glasses currently perched — had a reputation for being consistently hard and occasionally fair.

After an eternity that was perhaps thirty seconds, the captain looked up. “Well, don’t you look like shit? Tell me the other guy looks worse.”

“Yes, sir, he does,” Mark said. “Bob’s booking him now.”

“Good. Very good.” He waved dismissively. “Go take a shower. You have spare clothes here?”

“I do.”

Kelley returned to his laptop, then glanced up with a frown. “Is there some reason you’re still here, Detective?”

“I knew taking this lowlife down was a priority for you, Captain, and I thought you’d like to know we got him cold.”

“I gathered that. Congratulations. Go take your shower.”

Mark risked a smile. “I thought I might have bought a little... goodwill.”

“You did, huh?”

“Maybe... five minutes worth?”

“Try three. As long you aren’t hoping to sell me that crackpot theory again.”

And now Mark took an even greater risk. He sat in the chair opposite his captain. “It’s not a theory, sir. There’s nothing crackpot about it.”

Kelley removed the glasses and pinched his nose. This meant the captain was getting a headache, and Mark knew his time here would be less than five minutes.

“You believe,” Kelley said with zero enthusiasm, “that a serial killer is operating in Cleveland.”

“I do, Captain.”

“You do understand, that despite what the movies and television might have you believe, there is not an epidemic of serial killing in this nation. That it is in fact rare. And that on the rare occasion it does turn up, it is not our business — it’s FBI turf. You do know all that?”

Mark nodded. “I would be happy if we could convince the FBI to take over.”

“To take over what? There is no investigation.”

“Sir, the killings in Strongsville follow the MO.”

“MO,” Kelley said, and closed his eyes. Whenever Mark used a term that was commonly heard on TV, the captain closed his eyes like that. Finally he opened them. “The FBI doesn’t feel there’s a serial killer at large here, which means there is no modus operandi. No ‘MO’ for a killer that doesn’t exist.”

“Sir — the Strongsville murders—”

“Are not our jurisdiction, FBI aside. The father in that slain family was an investment banker. You don’t think he destroyed enough families that somebody couldn’t have gotten a little payback?”

“But, sir, it’s a family again...”

“Christ on a crutch, Pryor, years separate these murders, which only have vague similarities and many differences. That’s not the makings of a serial killer, especially in a city of this size.”

Mark got to his feet and leaned his hands on Kelley’s desk. “I’ve done some digging on my own, Captain. On my own time. I don’t think he’s killing just here.”

Kelley gave him a long, cold look.

The thing for Mark to do right now was say, Yes, sir, thank you for your time, sir, and go clean up as requested.

Instead, he said, “I think we’re just the perpetrator’s home base. I’ve found other murders, following a similar pattern, in several other parts of the nation.”

The captain said nothing.

“They all take place between the murders here in the greater Cleveland metro area. It’s almost like the killer traveled for a period of time, committed one of these atrocities, then traveled some more, committed another, then eventually, would complete the circle with another instance here in Cleveland.”

Kelley shook his head in slow motion. “You don’t even hear me, do you, Pryor? You know the feds keep track of such crimes. They gather statistics, using sophisticated algorithms that are beyond our capacity. This allows them to focus on patterns like you’re talking about. If what you’re saying was the case, they would know.”

Mark shrugged. “That leaves two possibilities. They already know and are working without our support, for some reason. Or... they missed one. They may be sophisticated, sir, but it’s not an exact science.”

“Pryor...”

“At the very least we need to alert them. But what we really need is a citywide task force, spanning all the suburbs and surrounding towns.”

Kelley’s clipped laugh was a pit bull’s bark. “I wonder if the FBI will appreciate the free advice? The way I appreciate being told how to operate courtesy of a rookie detective.”

“Not my intention, sir. Just providing input. The day you welcomed me to the detective bureau, you said my input was always welcome.”

“That was one ‘welcome’ too many,” Kelley said. “I must have been in a really good mood. I was in a good mood, briefly today, when you told me you’d bagged that pervert. But do you think I’m in a good mood now?”

“Possibly not, sir.”

Kelley smiled, or anyway pretended to. “All right, rookie — you want a task force? Fine. You think we have another Mad Butcher? Okay.”

The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, Cleveland’s most infamous serial killer, had murdered at least a dozen people in the nineteen thirties. The Butcher had worked for years, undetected, before police realized the scope of their problem. In the end, though suspects emerged, no arrest was ever made.

“Now,” the captain was saying, “how are we going to pay for it? And what cases are we going to pull detectives off, what crimes do we have them ignore, all so they can hunt a monster that no one on the planet but you thinks exists?”

That was a lot of questions, but Mark knew enough not to answer any of them.

Kelley let out a long breath, pushed back in his chair, away from the desk a little. “Look, son... you’re smart. That’s how you went from uniform to plainclothes so quickly.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“But are you smart enough to know what I need, to be able to take your theory upstairs?”

“Evidence,” Mark said.

“And what do you have?”

“A pattern.”

“That overstates it. I’d call it... a hunch. You think you might have a pattern. And you know you have no evidence yet.”

“But I’ve uncovered information, facts, that may lead us to actual evidence.”

“I should hope so. Or do you think the chief or the mayor or God almighty is going to let me set up a task force based on a rookie detective’s hunch?”

Dejection washed over Mark, mingling with the mustard, crud, and pervert’s sweat that stained what was left of his suit. “Sir, this is the third time I’ve brought this to you.”

He nodded. “Actually the second. Last time you let that poor bastard Pence risk his pension on it. And frankly, that you sold Bob Pence on this thing is probably why this conversation has gone on as long as it has.”

“People are dying. Someone has to care.”

The implication of that, of course, was that Kelley didn’t care. Mark felt the way he had as a kid and had overstepped with his dad. An explosion would likely follow, and it wouldn’t be pretty.

But Kelley was only looking at him, hard and unblinking. It took forever for the words to come, but they came: “You’ve got two days to get your shit together, then bring it in to me, Detective. I’ll look at it and if you’ve got something, we’ll kick it upstairs.”

Elation flooded through him. “Yes, sir.”

“But if you don’t convince me that there’s something to do, you’re never going to bring this up again. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

A bony finger pointed itself at him. “And, Pryor, that goes for even efforts on your own time. If there’s nothing there, you will leave this shit alone, forever. Otherwise, you’ll drive yourself crazy with this kind of shit, or worse... me. Agreed?”

“Agreed, sir.”

“Now, get the fuck out of my office.”

Mark did so.

Driving home, Mark was on automatic pilot, his mind racing. He was exhilarated by the opportunity he had practically forced from his captain. But he knew he lacked objectivity. He knew that he had... what was it, a blind spot? A sore spot? Whatever it was, it dated all the way back to high school, and a girl he still loved though they’d never even kissed.

He had been working up the courage to ask Jordan Rivera out on a date when his hopes and dreams were interrupted by her family’s slaughter. Those brutal, tragic deaths had sent her to St. Dimpna’s as a mental patient. High school senior Mark had felt helpless, unable to do anything but follow the unsuccessful investigation in the newspapers.

Somewhere along the way, he must have said to himself, I could do better than this. But he had no conscious memory of it. Still, he knew very well that the Rivera tragedy had sent him down the path to law enforcement.

He had stayed close to home after high school, enrolling at Case Western Reserve University in downtown Cleveland. During Mark’s senior year, the famous thriller writer David Elkins had suffered a tragedy similar to the Rivera girl — the rest of his family shot, then mutilated.

The case made national news, though only the local papers covered the police efforts to find a connection between the Rivera and Elkins homicides. Captain Kelley may have thought Mark picked up MO from TV, but actually the press coverage had provided him that — the differing modus operandi having discouraged investigators from continued pursuit of any link between the crimes.

Jordan’s family had been knifed while the Elkins family had been executed by gunfire, the latter victims disfigured by knife slashes almost as an afterthought. The Riveras’ door had been forcibly thrown open, but at the Elkins residence there had been no sign of illegal entry. Elkins had, in a later magazine interview, gone so far as to mention unlocking the door when returning home with a pizza.

In his early days on the PD, Mark was discouraged to find he still had no access to either the Rivera or Elkins case files, and no way to investigate either. He approached the detective who was in charge of the still open Elkins case and had been told to ef off.

But now he was in plainclothes, a detective, and he could do things and go places denied to a uniformed cop. Still, if he were to call the Strongsville PD, and ask to talk to the detective there, Mark figured Captain Kelley would hand him his butt.

The Strongsville murders — the closest he had come to a fresh crime scene — were just the latest in a string of such crimes that were not several cases, but one collective case — his case.

A year and a half ago, a family had been killed in O’Fallon, Missouri. Again, similarities — family murdered, one survivor, a son this time. Like the Riveras, Frank and Carol Northcutt had been stabbed to death, and as in the Elkins killings, the pair had been slashed postmortem. But no shootings, and the surviving son, Lyle, was in his twenties and hadn’t lived with his parents for several years.

But that surviving son was why the case had attracted Internet notoriety — Lyle Northcutt, “Buck Knife” to his friends and fans, was bass player in a cult-favorite metal band, Throbbing Meat Whistle.

Speculation ran high that Buck Knife’s music had played a major role in the slaughter of the musician’s parents. Long before the killings, such songs by the band as “Fuck ’Em All” and “Kill the Bastards” had inflamed the debate about metal music, and post-tragedy, brought out self-appointed arbiters of popular culture who insisted that Buck Knife had no one to blame but himself for the deaths of his parents.

Internet stories provided a look into the musician’s parents, who apparently were white bread, All-American, churchgoing. Their only sin, their only break from Middle American conformity, was their pride in their son’s music and success.

Even Lyle had been a normal kid. Frank had coached Lyle’s Little League team and Carol had run the concession stand at those games. Members of the PTA, Frank and Carol helped organize the Planned Parenthood book sale every year and volunteered weekly at the local food bank.

Unlike the Elkinses and Riveras, who were very well off, the Northcutts had been firmly entrenched in the lower regions of the middle class — they were both retired teachers.

The Northcutts of Missouri, along with half a dozen other families scattered across the United States, had made it into Mark’s growing printout folder and expanding computer files.

Funny, or perhaps odd or even ironic, but the name Lyle summoned a memory of an event that had been minor in the great scheme of things but had a major impact on Mark’s formative years.

Elementary school bully Kyle Underwood, a mean-hearted little son of a biscuit, was responsible for Mark’s enduring aversion to swearing. The kid had sworn like a fourth-grade sailor himself, and maybe that’s where Mark had heard the words. He sure hadn’t heard them at home.

Bully-boy Kyle had prodded and picked on Mark, day after day, making a habit out of stealing the boy’s lunch money, and that of many of his friends. One day, after school, Mark had simply snapped.

Balling up his fists, he stood up to the bully and snarled, “Fuck you, Kyle! I’m not taking your shit anymore!”

But instead of fighting, Kyle had simply started laughing and pointing. When Mark turned, his father had been standing there. Usually Mom picked him up, and she always waited in the car. But here Dad was, frowning.

“That’ll be enough, boys,” Dad had said, and dragged Mark off.

Kyle Underwood would get his comeuppance another day, at the hands of another kid. This day was a black one in Mark’s memory. He thought maybe his dad would understand, even compliment him, for standing up to injustice. But all Dad did was ground him for a month, accepting no explanations or excuses, making Mark swear to never swear again.

For some reason, that took... and Mark got a lot of kidding over the years, even to this day, for having such a goody-two-shoes vocabulary. Had he learned anything from the experience? Maybe that fighting injustice wasn’t a license to otherwise break the rules. Or maybe he had just been so ashamed at disappointing his dad that he was still trying to make up for it.

Even though Dad had been gone, for how many years?

The houses around Mark now were part of the suburb of Strongsville. He knew little about the Sully family, who had lived in a nice white house on Cypress Avenue, just west of I-71 and the Mill Stream Run Reservation.

As he pulled to a stop in front of the Sully residence, Mark noted the police tape still X-ed across the front door. He got out of the car, trying to get a feel for the neighborhood. At dusk, the lights were on in neighboring homes, a breeze promising a cool night, with not another soul on the street except for a middle-aged woman walking her corgi two houses down on the other side.

A predominantly white neighborhood, where everybody on the block knew everybody else, yet a killer had managed to infiltrate, murder the Sullys, and take his leave. And all the while, no one heard or saw a blessed thing.

Why this house, when they all looked so much alike?

Why this family?

Why this street?

Why, why, why?

Mark asked himself those and a thousand other questions, not getting one g.d. answer.