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“A victim?” Myron said. “Of a serial killer?”
PT took another sip of wine.
“How can Greg be a victim?”
“Here is where I need your expertise.” PT pushed his plate to the side. “I know that you two took a good look at the murder of Jordan Kravat in Las Vegas.”
Myron nodded. “You told Win that you think Greg may be connected?”
“Oh, he’s definitely connected. That doesn’t mean he did it. But that’s the thing. Let us suppose that there is a serial killer at work here. We are still tracking it all down, but right now we have seven murders we believe he’s responsible for.”
“You said ‘he,’” Myron noted. “The serial killer is a man?”
PT sighed. “I said ‘he’ because I’m an old man, and I don’t want to make this more convoluted by saying ‘he or she’ all the time or making you think it’s the plural by using ‘they.’ Plus, ninety-one percent of serial killers are male. So for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to say ‘he’ for right now, okay?”
PT bent down and picked up an old-school briefcase. He placed it on the table, opened the latches with his thumbs, took out a folder. He took his reading glasses out of his suit jacket pocket and put them on.
“You know about the murder of Jordan Kravat, and you know about the Callisters. So keep those in your head as we go through this. There’s also the murder of a woman named Tracy Keating in Marshfield, Massachusetts. She was hiding in a rental unit from an abusive boyfriend named Robert Lestrano. He found her and killed her. Easy conviction. We also have a wealthy tech entrepreneur from Austin, Texas, who was killed by his own son over a money dispute. There was a man abusing a woman online from New Jersey who was killed by the woman’s brother. A farmer who was murdered on his soybean farm near Lincoln, Nebraska, by two migrant workers.”
“How are they connected?” Myron asked.
“You tell me,” PT said. “What stands out in what I just told you?”
Myron nodded. He was starting to see it. “The cases are solved.”
“Good,” PT said, like a pleased mentor. “Go on.”
“You caught the perpetrators. They were tried and convicted.”
“Some are still going in the trial stage,” PT added to clarify. “But yes.”
Myron shook his head. “My god.”
PT couldn’t help but smile.
“Explain,” Win said.
“Don’t you see?” Myron replied. “That’s how a serial killer would get away with it in today’s era.”
“Elaborate,” Win said.
“These aren’t open cases. Just the opposite. They are closed right away. So there’s no way to discover a pattern.” Myron leaned forward. “When a serial killer murders someone or makes them disappear, the case remains unsolved. Eventually, you start seeing patterns. Or an MO. Or a bunch of unsolved murders. You start searching for links between victims. But in this case, if I’m following the logic here, this serial killer isn’t just murdering someone—he’s setting up someone to take the fall. He’s done it in Las Vegas, Texas, New York, wherever. The cases are then”—Myron made air quotes with his finger—“‘solved.’ In the case of Jordan Kravat, for example, it’s pinned on Joey Turant via DNA. Joey takes the fall. Case closed. With the Callisters, the DNA points to Greg Downing. He takes the fall.”
“Case closed,” Win said, nodding, seeing it now.
Myron turned to PT. “I assume the same thing happened in the other cases you mentioned—the soybean farmer, the father-son from Austin?”
“Yes.”
Myron sat back. “So someone set Greg Downing up.”
“Not so fast,” PT said.
“Isn’t that the obvious take?”
“No, Myron, it is the one that best suits your narrative.” PT shifted his large frame in his chair. “Another take is that the FBI has been painstakingly searching for strands that connect the various cases. Combing through the evidence for overlaps. The murders happened in different states. The victims are from various backgrounds and genders. Nothing connects any of them—nothing at all—except we’ve now found one overlap between the cases of Jordan Kravat and the Callisters. And that overlap is…?”
PT stopped and waited.
