What Doesn’t Kill Her

Chapter Seven

“Jimmy was just about the best older brother a girl could hope for,” Jordan said. “I could share any feelings, any secrets with him. He kidded me, sure, but he’d been through so much himself.”

Tears welled and Jordan stopped, swallowed, glancing around the circle at the encouraging smiles and nods of the Victims of Violent Crime Support Group.

“He’d been through a lot,” she said, “’cause, well, ’cause he was gay. It was something he hid for a long time, and I was the first one in the family that he... came out to. He was so afraid I’d be disappointed in him. But I didn’t care. And neither did Mom or Dad. He was just Jimmy... kind, loving...”

A box of tissues was passed her way and she used them, dabbing her eyes, blowing her nose, everyone just waiting.

Finally Levi asked, gently, “Did you see him?”

Jordan’s head jerked up. “Huh? What?”

“The killer. Did you see him?”

It had all been so positive, so shockingly easy, talking about her mother, father, and brother. As if she and a girlfriend on a sleepover were in her darkened bedroom, on a comfy bed, leaned back talking about wonderful times, the way you might before drifting off to sleep after a fun day.

But the door to the rest of the house was cracked open, the light a bright vertical slash, and what was waiting out there, the horror of all that, she couldn’t face, much less share.

She could not open that door.

Chin lowered, Jordan said, “That’s all I have to say right now.”

Dr. Hurst’s expression was kind and so was her voice as she said, “Jordan, I know it’s difficult. You’ve done very well, sharing the positive memories. But we need to push past those, and face—”

Jordan shot her a look that melted the doctor’s pleasant expression into pale blankness.

Before the situation could deteriorate, the woman who seemed to be friendly with David, and was now seated across from Jordan, spoke up: “I’ve been trying to make myself talk about my family, too. Thank you, Jordan, for giving me the courage.”

All eyes turned to her.

“I’m Kay,” the woman said.

A little taller than Jordan, her naturally red hair with some streaks of white, Kay was about the age Jordan’s mother would have been. What had once very likely been a striking figure had plumped up some, and her pretty face bore lines that gave it a perpetually melancholy expression that smiling didn’t entirely erase. Her eyes were big and blue behind bifocal lenses with dark-blue plastic frames.

“My sister, Katherine, and brother-in-law, Walt Gregory, died two years ago.”

The group listened in respectful silence, the keen interest and sympathy of everyone quite obvious to Jordan.

“I went over to their house for dinner,” Kay said, “but when I got there, no one answered. The doorbell just rang and rang...”

Though she occasionally glanced around the circle, her eyes briefly drifting past Jordan, Kay didn’t seem to see any of them. Her voice never changed pitch. She might have been reciting a poem or sharing a recipe.

“When I tried the door, it was unlocked. I didn’t think anything of it, really — Katherine might have been in the kitchen, using a noisy appliance or something, and Walt could have been watching the TV in the den. So I just went inside. But Katherine wasn’t in the kitchen, Walt wasn’t in the den, they weren’t anywhere downstairs.”

Next to Jordan, David fidgeted. No one else here had heard this story, she felt, but he had. The toe of the writer’s sneaker was grinding at the tile floor like he was trying to stub out a cigarette butt.

“I called and called, but no one answered,” Kay said. “Just my own voice a little bit. They had a huge great room with a vaulted ceiling and the echo just seemed to bounce around in that big empty space. But after that... just silence. There had to be an easy explanation. They’d forgotten I was coming over, maybe, or got called away. No reason, really, to be uneasy, or scared. But I was. I was.”

This woman had felt the same kind of fear that Jordan had, on her own terrible night.

“Finally,” Kay said, swallowing, “I worked up the nerve to go upstairs...”

The tissue box made its way around to the speaker. She nodded thanks, took one, and instead of using it to dab at tears, wound it around her index finger, unwound it, and wound it again as she continued.

“They were on the bed, holding hands. They each had a single bullet hole in their temple, and a pistol was on the floor, next to Walt’s side of the bed.”

Kay was shaking a little now, the tears coming, the tissue finally finding its purpose.

“The police called it murder slash suicide,” Kay said, then, with a nervous, embarrassed smile, seemed to have found her composure. A moment later, she began weeping uncontrollably.

Jordan rose and crossed to the woman, vaguely aware that all eyes were on her, but for the weeping woman’s, whose face was buried in her tissue-held hands.

“Jordan...” Dr. Hurst began.

The sound of the doctor’s voice caused Kay to look up. When she did, the younger woman bent over and awkwardly wrapped her arms around Kay and held her close.

The older woman, still crying but less savagely now, clung fiercely to Jordan, who hugged her back, even harder.

When the tears subsided, still in the young woman’s embrace, Kay looked up at her. “That was... was very kind, dear.”

After a tiny smile and tinier nod, Jordan straightened and walked back to her seat and resumed her previous rather stiff posture, as if nothing had happened.

Dr. Hurst said, “Jordan, as Kay said, that was a very kind gesture... no, not gesture, but impulse. What prompted you to... express yourself in that way?”

The look Jordan gave the doctor was a withering one. “If I knew, it wouldn’t be an impulse, would it?”

This seemed to momentarily stun Hurst, but a few small smiles blossomed in the circle, including David and Levi.

Later, outside in the sunny coolness of the early spring afternoon, David — with Levi tagging along — approached Jordan. Kay was lingering nearby as well, but didn’t join in.

“Sometimes Hurst just doesn’t get it,” Elkins said.

“Yeah?”

He nodded. “Not everything has to be discussed. You saw somebody crying, it touched you, you showed a little support, end of story. Not everything needs to be analyzed.”

“Or,” Levi said, hands in his jeans jacket, “psychoanalyzed.”

“I guess she’s just trying to help,” Jordan shrugged, not quite believing she actually said that.

“We’re gonna get some coffee,” Elkins said. “Wanna come?”

“I don’t think so. Thanks.”

Levi said, “Aw, come on. You kind of owe me one.”

“I do?”

“Yeah. You scared the ever-lovin’ piss out of me last week. I thought you were gonna tear my head off.”

Jordan smiled a little. “Sometimes I overreact.”

“Not that you aren’t cute enough to hit on. If I was into that.”

David gave her half a grin. “Come on, kid. You’ll love the place.”

The coffee shop, a couple of blocks away, had been renovated from an old bakery. The counter where Jordan ordered her coffee was a display case that dated back to that original purpose, filled with baked goodies that once upon a time would have called out to her. She used to have a terrible sweet tooth. The night she lost her parents, it left. Jordan figured Dr. Hurst would have some windy explanation about the meaning of that; but to her it just meant empty calories she didn’t have to worry about.

She took her coffee over to David and Kay, who were already sitting at a high-top table near the shop’s front window. The writer gave her a nod, and Kay added a warm smile, as Jordan sat down. Of the dozen or so tables and booths, maybe a third were full. Levi had been just behind Jordan in line, and caught up with them.

David, she assumed, wanted to talk to her about the similarities between the murders of his family and hers. Maybe not tonight, maybe this would be socializing to lead up to that, but she felt that was what this was about.

She didn’t know anything about Levi’s situation — similarities between his tragedy and theirs, she wondered? — but she assumed that Kay was joining them only because David seemed to be her ride.

Jordan was glad they had avoided a booth. Sharing a side with somebody might make her uneasy. Having her own chair, her own space, made this easier. The skinny skater boy sat down next to her, the aroma of his caramel-Frappuccino-whatever invading her space in a much more welcome way.

Levi managed to find room to open his laptop on the small table and fire it up.

“First, let me introduce myself,” he said. “Levi Mills.”

There were no last names in group — she only knew David’s was Elkins because of his status as a best-selling thriller writer.

Levi was holding out his hand.

Jordan didn’t take it. “Sorry. Germaphobe. But my last name’s Rivera, if that helps.”

Kay said, “Isenberg is mine,” and nodded and smiled.

“I think you know who I am,” the writer said.

“Right.” She bounced her eyes from David to Levi. “We’ve been in group together three weeks. Let’s skip the b.s. What’s this about?”

Levi, his fingertips resting at the bottom of his keyboard, said, “I think you know. Your case.”

“My case? You mean, my family getting butchered?” The words came out with a little more attitude than was probably necessary.

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.”

Turning to Elkins, Jordan asked, “Meaning no offense, you’re not a gay man who had a straight wife and a family, are you?”

The writer gave her a wry smile. “No. Nobody gay in my immediate family. I don’t think there’s any family in America that if you look hard enough, you won’t turn up a gay cousin or aunt or whatever, but... no.”

Levi said, “Add to that, when my family was killed, I didn’t even know I was gay yet.”

Jordan said, “Really?”

“Well, not in any real way, I mean I hadn’t even come out entirely to myself yet, so how the hell did the killer know?”

“Sometimes the people around you know before you do.”

“But only somebody really close to me.”

“How about a teacher, or a counselor?”

“I don’t think so. But we do have another commonality — the Sully brother in Afghanistan is a survivor.”

“Four families murdered,” David said. “Each with a single survivor.”

Jordan said, “He said he wasn’t going to kill me because he wanted me to tell his story.”

Levi’s grin was a little crazy. “Only you clammed up on him. Sweet.”

“But,” David said, “maybe that’s what he thrives on. The crime, the atrocity he’s committed, lives on... because the survivor carries it on. And, he hopes, shares it with the world. Of course, Jordan, you cheated him out of it.”

They all sat and thought about that.

“We each bring something to the effort,” David said, with a general gesture. “Levi is a computer whiz, I’ve researched crime intensively as a backdrop to my fiction writing, and Kay has a way of providing keen insights, from the sidelines, that we might miss.”

Finally, with a bit of a smirk, Jordan asked, “What do you think I can add to your little Serial Killer Support Group?”

“Information,” David said.

Levi added, “The more we have, the easier it will be to determine if there’s a pattern or patterns... and maybe even how to catch the guy.”

“I like the sound of that,” Jordan admitted.

“Obviously,” Elkins said, “when we know enough, we take it to the police.”

That she didn’t like the sound of, but kept it to herself.

“All right,” she said. “I’m in.”

David and Levi exchanged smiles, both saying, “Good,” and Kay nodded. So far Kay hadn’t offered any of those “insights” that David had mentioned, and really just seemed to be along for the ride. Literally. But what the hell — every team needed a mascot.

And every survivor of violence had to find meaning...

Jordan checked her watch. “I’ve got to go now, but after the next meeting, we’ll dig in. Hard.”

They said their goodbyes and the others stayed on in the coffee shop. Outside, she unlocked her scooter, started it up, then headed home, the cool air bracing, her mood upbeat.

As soon as she rounded the corner, Jordan knew the black Ford parked in front of her building didn’t belong there.

She came up from behind the Ford, on the driver’s side. As she neared, she caught the reflection of the driver’s face in his rearview. A middle-aged African-American male, kind of good-looking for his age.

Jordan didn’t look at him, but she didn’t exactly look away either, as she rode by. She checked her mirror. He was noting her passage. As she glided by her building, she saw another man, white, in a rumpled suit and an unconvincing hairpiece, showing something in his billfold to the building manager. Streetlight glinted off that something.

A badge?

She turned the corner and pulled over. She supposed she knew that someone would come sniffing around at some point. The murder of her family was very old news, but her release from St. Dimpna’s was new news, and maybe enough to get the police to revisit the case, in a perfunctory way probably. All it meant to her was more questions she had no desire to answer.

Screw it, no reason to avoid these guys. If she did, they would just keep coming around. Gunning the scooter, she went around the block and came up behind the Ford. The white cop in the rumpled suit was back in the car, obviously waiting her out.

She stopped the scooter directly beside the driver’s door, leaving him no room to get out. Raising the visor of her helmet, she smiled at the detective, who actually jerked a little when he realized who had him pinned inside his car.

His window came down.

“Ms. Rivera,” he said in a deep voice that seemed to start somewhere around his shoes.

She just looked at him. Did they know she had started talking again? Probably, but no reason to hand it to them. She just stared at the man. He had kind brown eyes, a short Afro, and a tidy goatee.

“I’m Detective Grant.”

Silence.

He nodded toward his partner. “This is Detective Lynch.”

The detective with the obvious hairpiece leaned over so she could see him, giving her a weak smile.

“We’d like to ask you some questions,” Grant said. “How about inviting us inside?”

“No.”

Grant frowned, more confused than irritated. “Ms. Rivera, this is important. It has to do with the death of your parents and brother.”

“Has there been a breakthrough in the case?”

That took Grant by surprise. He managed to say, “No, no, it’s just that we’d like to talk to you about your family and—”

“If you have new information to share, I’d be happy to hear it. Otherwise, no.”

“Ms. Rivera, we never had the chance to interview you after—”

“It’s still too painful. I’m in therapy. Check with my doctor — Dr. Hurst? At St. Dimpna’s?”

“We understand, but if we’re going to apprehend whoever killed your family—”

She sharpened her voice. “What part of ‘it’s too fucking painful’ do you not understand?”

The detective gaped at her as Jordan gunned the scooter and rode off, fast enough to earn herself a ticket, practically daring them to come after her. But when she’d rounded the block and turned the corner, the Ford was gone.

She turned down the alley, pulled into the compact parking lot behind her building. Spaces were at a premium, but there was a light post on one side that she could lock her Vespa to.

The scooter’s still-coiled chain was in one hand when two men stepped from the shadows of the storage shed behind the lot. One, a skinny Hispanic kid, had a knife that caught the dim light, the long slender blade pointed toward Jordan, like an accusing finger. The knife wielder wore black jeans and a black T-shirt, his curly hair combed back — it looked wet, like he’d just climbed out of a pool. His face had angular features and he would have been a good-looking kid if his close-set eyes hadn’t made him look so stupid.

The other one, a rangy white kid, was also in black jeans and a black T-shirt, though his bore the phrase DON’T BE SEXIST — BITCHES HATE THAT.

Staying consistent with his shirt, he said, “Gimme your purse, bitch.”

She held out her free hand, open palm up. “You see a purse?”

The pair traded frowns, and the white kid said, “Then your wallet, bitch.”

Jordan let one end of the balled chain slide out of her hand with a metallic rattle. “Say bitch one more time.”

“Ooooo, she got balls,” the knife wielder purred, apparently amused by the sight of the three-foot length of chain dangling from her hand.

The white kid blurted, “I said your wallet, you lezzie cunt!”

She shook her head. “Just fuck off, fellas, and we’ll be fine.”

The kid with the knife took a threatening step closer, and the big one gave her a wide-eyed, sneering look that she guessed was supposed to scare her.

He said, “And the keys to that shitty little bike, too, bitch.”

With a flick of her wrist, the end of the chain whipped out, whapping the white kid in the face, his nose breaking with a sharp little crack, sending him windmilling back, yowling, hands coming up to cover his nose where blood was erupting with scarlet insistence.

The skinny Hispanic lurched forward, thrusting with the knife, and she sidestepped, grabbed his arm, and dropped to one knee as he went by. With considerable force, she bent the skinny arm backward, then slammed into it with her shoulder. The arm snapped, the kid screamed, and the knife fell from splayed fingers to do a little hop, skip, and jump on the concrete, spinning when it landed. Rising, she backhanded his face with a fist, which shut him up momentarily as he spit blood and teeth. As he was staggering up to a half-standing position, she spun and kicked him hard between the legs and he crumpled to the cement where he alternated moans and sobs.

The bigger one charged her now, in a mix of fear and anger, his eyes white in his red-streaked face. Her chain lashed out and wrapped itself around his lower leg and she gave a sharp tug and his leg did a chorus-line kick before he dropped with a whump.

Jordan leapt, landing with a knee on his chest that sent blood and spittle flying from his grunting mouth. She twirled her hand and the chain wrapped itself around that hand, which became an iron fist with which she battered him, pounding him in the face, stopping when she was looking down at a blinking scarlet mask, not wanting the trouble killing him might cause.

She got off him.

The white kid lay on his back like an overturned bug. He was moaning and a tooth she had freed was sticking through a cheek.

She was breathing a little hard, but nothing extreme.

“Yo, bitches,” she said. “Come dance anytime.”

They said nothing, just moaning there on their backs. She went to each of her attackers and kicked them twice in the ribs — they responded with “Unh! Unh!” “Unh! Unh!” — and then she went over and found the knife and collected it. A switchblade. Old school.

She was chaining her bike to the lamppost when the Hispanic, his broken arm swinging like a busted fence gate, stumbled over to his friend and helped him to his feet and they hobbled into the dark, whimpering like the kicked dogs they were.

In her apartment, she put the switchblade in the silverware drawer as if it were a butter knife. She doubted those two would ever be back, but if so, she would be ready. Nice to know that what she’d taught herself could be put to practical use. Stepping to the fridge, she shadowboxed with the picture of the male face held by a magnet to the door.

She felt ready for what lay ahead.

Smiling, she stripped, went into the bathroom, and turned on the shower — hot as she could take. As the mirror started to steam, she stepped under the spray, the hot needles feeling just fine; she still felt exhilarated. She started to reach for the soap, but her fingers faltered.

Her stomach did a little back flip and her knees went weak. Slowly, she sagged and slid down to a sitting position, the hot water still pounding her. She just sat there, for quite a while, huddled in the corner in a fetal position. Maybe she was crying. Maybe it was just the shower spray. She would never tell.

Not even herself.