Chapter Forty-Four

WIN

Myron?" I say again, hearing the alien pleading in my tone. "Myron, stay with me."

But he isn't. I can see that now. His skin is gray, his lips already blue. Blood bubbles up and pours freely from his neck. I clamp my hand over the spot, apply pressure. I turn to a man who is standing next to me, filming this.

"Call 911," I say in my most commanding voice. This is what you do. You don't just yell out randomly for someone to make the call. Too many people will stand around and assume someone else will do it. You assign someone the task and make sure they act on it. "Call now."

The man nods and starts to dial. I don't know whether it matters because I imagine someone has already notified the authorities. Chaos reigns. I keep my hand over the gushing wound. Myron's blood is trickling through my fingers.

He is losing too much blood.

"Hang on," I tell Myron, the tone sounding faraway and unfamiliar in my own ears. He isn't conscious anyway. He can't hear me.

I can see several things going on at the same time in my periphery. Grace Konners is on the ground. She is dead. Her eyes are open and unblinking. Her blood slowly leaks toward the Imagine mosaic. Greg Downing, the one who shot her, sprints toward Jeremy. Jeremy's complexion, like his biological father's, is ashen. Jeremy is wisely holding up his bloody stump of a hand above his head, like it's a torch, staring at it as though surprised it's there. Greg rips off his coat and wraps it around the wound.

I don't know how long we all stay there.

At one point a woman kneels next to me. She is maybe fifty years old with reddish hair tied back in a ponytail. "I'm a doctor," she tells me. "Keep applying pressure." I will later learn that her name is Dodi Meyer, and that she works in the Emergency Room at New York-Presbyterian. She rolls Myron onto his back. I don't dare move my hand from his neck until the paramedics arrive and relieve me.

I pull my hand away then and climb into the ambulance with him. I stare down at my hands as the ambulance speeds away. My hands are drenched in Myron's blood. Later, I will wonder when I cleaned off the blood, because as many times as I have replayed that night in my head, I have no recollection of doing so.

And yes, that's an odd thing to be wondering about.

Myron dies twice. Once in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Once again while on the surgeon's table. We oft hear how tough humans are, how we are built for survival, but it never fails to startle me how fragile and subject to the whims of fate we end up being. Here is Myron Bolitar, one of humanity's best specimens on so many levels, an empathetic soul from hardy stock who has also been imbued with remarkable physical strength and intelligence. And yet. And yet despite doing everything right here, doing the moral thing, the courageous thing, the wise and careful thing, all it takes is a madwoman with a readily available weapon to snuff out such a force. We like to think the universe is just or orderly, but we all know that it is not. It is cruel and random. We think that we have evolved as a species, that it is the survival of the fittest, but in fact, the best of us, the strongest of us, the most intelligent and brave, were sent to battle centuries ago and died no matter how, like Myron, brave and skilled they were, while the feeble and cowardly stayed home and reproduced. That's who we are. The byproduct of the feeble and weak. The fecal wreckage, if you will, of history. We want to believe that there is an ethical center to our being, that our world is peaceful and kind, and yet anyone who has seen even five minutes of a wildlife documentary is reminded that we must kill to survive. All of us. That's the world whatever higher being you believe in created—a world of kill or die. No one gets a pass on that, including you smug vegans, who plow fields and in doing so sacrifice living creatures so that you too may survive.

This isn't a pleasant realization, but do you want pleasantries or truth?

And now, as I watch the life force drain from the man I care about most in this world, I beg to a higher being that I don't believe in and I know isn't listening, as many of you sit there and tell me this is part of some master plan.

Imagine being that na?ve.

You want to sleep at night, so you tell yourselves fairy tales. Like a child.

But I digress.

Myron is in the hospital. He still has trouble communicating.

That is why, with your permission, I am finishing this story for him.

His road back will be a long, arduous one. There are few guarantees. A full recovery, whatever that might look like, seems unlikely. A full month after the shooting, when he's no longer comatose and in the ICU, Myron is moved into a private corner room in the Milstein Building at New York-Presbyterian. I arrange this via a sizable donation. A cot is placed in the corner near the window. Terese sleeps there. She has taken a leave. She rarely leaves his side.

I won't go into the details of his injuries because I don't see the point. Myron spends most of his time in a fog of pain and medications and procedures. It is hard to know what he comprehends and what he doesn't. I try to explain to him what I can. It is hard for him to focus for long stretches. I repeat myself because I fear that he either forgets or the material doesn't quite stick.

So let me answer the questions that I can. I have told this to Myron too, though I am condensing dozens of conversations with him into this summary for you:

First off, Myron's biggest concern: Jeremy.

As soon as the first bullet hit Myron, Esperanza realized that something was very wrong. She hit my speed dial, patching me into the line as a three-way. Oddly enough, I was already up and moving. I had heard the shot and the ensuing pandemonium from my apartment across the street. I didn't know Myron was the victim, but perhaps something instinctive inside of me realized that it was a strong possibility. I knew that Myron should be crossing the park around that time to see Jeremy, who was seated next to me when Esperanza called.

I reacted fast. Jeremy, having perhaps inherited some of his father's gifts, reacted faster.

It was Jeremy, not me, who arrived on the scene first. Youth, I suppose. I can run, but Jeremy shot past me with ease. Seemingly with zero concern for his own safety, Jeremy acted the hero that he obviously is. He dove straight for Grace's gun—and he paid for it when Grace pulled the trigger.

Jeremy lost the ring finger and pinkie on his right hand.

They are working on some kind of prosthetic device for him down at Walter Reed. No, Jeremy was not discharged three years ago, and no, he did not work in IT at Dillard's. As Myron had theorized—perhaps more out of hope than cold analysis—the discharge, the name change, and the IT job were all part of Jeremy's elaborate cover. He did indeed work clandestinely to keep this country safe. I can't say more because I don't know more.

It is, in the words of Jeremy, classified.

Second: The Setup Serial Killer.

According to the official FBI statements, the investigation remains ongoing. According to PT, the "unofficial official" conclusion is that Grace Konners was that rare (though not completely unknown) bird known as the female serial killer. The FBI has so far tied her to six murders and subsequent frame-ups, but there are at least three other cases the FBI is confident will circle back to her.

PT believes—and I concur—that there are probably more, and that law enforcement, despite its best efforts, may never know how many victims. Awful, I know. I think about that—that there are innocent people in prison for murder who will most likely remain there.

What makes this investigation even more unwieldy for the FBI is that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of convicted killers now claim that they, too, were framed by Grace Konners. She is their get-out-of-jail-free card. They are demanding that their own verdicts be overturned. You can imagine the headache, can't you? Almost all are lying, of course, but the FBI cannot afford to make a mistake. The task of looking into the claims is a time-consuming resource suck, overwhelming even the most seasoned of investigators.

Three: Why was Greg Downing's DNA at the Callister scene?

There are two schools of thought here. The main one, the one the FBI believes is most likely, is that like most serial killers (or addicts of any kind), Grace Konners needed a stronger dopamine hit as time went on. In short, she wanted to both "up her game," if you will, and rid herself of the one person in the world who could stop her.

Greg Downing.

Greg also controlled their wealth, which would be hers and hers alone if he were to end up in prison. She would be off the hook for what she'd done, able to start completely anew. And talk about a psychotic's rush—imagine being able to not only kill a former supermodel but frame your own partner for the crime.

Myron makes a face when I tell him this part. I don't know if I buy it completely either, but it seems close.

Four: How did it all start?

I think some of this is hindsight being twenty-twenty, but I will tell you what the FBI believes. When they investigated Grace Konners's past, they found a lot of troubling signs. As a child, she had been abused by a violent uncle. Pets and animals in her neighborhood went missing. Both Spark and Bo, her sons, spoke of physical trauma at her hands and their belief that their father, who died after purportedly falling in the shower, may have met a more devious end at the hands of their mother.

After their father's death, Grace would go into her sons' beds at night. The less said about that, I think, the better.

In terms of the chronology, the first Setup Serial killing victim was Jordan Kravat. Grace had originally chosen to kill Kravat, not because she was a budding serial killer but for the most basic of reasons—Kravat was tormenting and destroying the life of her son. But somewhere along the way—perhaps before she killed, perhaps seeing an opportunity after—she realized that she could kill two birds with one stone by murdering one nemesis (Jordan Kravat) and framing the other (Joey Turant).

Grace's children back this theory, by the way. Bo Storm has admitted that the Vegas district attorney did not pressure or threaten him. His mother told him that she had killed Jordan Kravat to protect him, and that now she needed him to point the finger at Joey the Toe.

Finger, toe. I made a funny.

Anyway, the FBI behavioral heavies believe that Jordan Kravat was the Patient Zero that led to the outbreak known as The Setup Serial Killer.

Next question (I lost count—what number is this?): How did it end?

You probably know this, but I'll spell it out: Greg shot and killed Grace. When Myron left Emily's to confront Jeremy, his two parents—that is, Greg and Emily—worried that Myron might have too strong a bout of ethics and report the found phone to the FBI. For that reason, Greg decided to go and try to join them. He had the burner phone in his pocket, which was why PT geolocated it as being near Myron in the park. Greg heard the gunshots, he ran toward the sound…

… and when he saw Grace turn the gun on his son…

Kaboom.

I wonder though: If Greg had run up and seen Grace about to shoot Myron again, would he have shot her?

Hmm.

I also wonder: Did Greg, in fact, arrive a few seconds earlier? Did he just choose not to shoot until his own son was in jeopardy?

Answers: I don't have any, ergo my use of the term "wonder."

Last question: What about Greg Downing? Surely, he must have known the truth.

Once again, there is more than one school of thought.

The first is that Greg didn't know at all. The couple had a strange relationship, according to Greg. He told the authorities that he and Grace often traveled separately and lived apart for months at a time. There were only—and I realize "only" in this sentence is extraordinarily relative—six definitive kill scenes over the course of five years. That is a little more than one per year. How hard would it be to keep that secret from your partner? There are many instances where a male serial killer has kept his thirst for death from a partner. Most recently, the wife of Rex Heuermann the Long Island killer has claimed no knowledge of her husband's barbaric crimes. Most of us accept that she is being truthful. Might it be sexism to think that Grace Konners wouldn't be able to keep all of this from her boyfriend?

Good question.

The second school of thought is that Greg did suspect what was happening, or perhaps Grace worried that he was getting too close to the truth. That, of course, would contribute to her decision to plant his DNA at the Callister murder scene.

It adds up, I suppose.

There may be holes, I say to Myron (and by extension, you), but if so, they seem small to me. I have never seen a murder case that didn't have at least a few discrepancies. If a case is too solid, well, haven't we all just learned a valuable lesson about murders that seem too open and shut?

Either way, I tell Myron, it is over. We may learn a few more things, like how the victims were found or chosen or if there were additional motives. But I don't see how that will change things in a material way. The FBI seems more interested in putting out the fires this murder spree created rather than adding fuel to them. Greg is traveling again, having purchased a ticket to Cairns, up by the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. There are rumors he may get lured back to coach the New York Knicks, but for now, he is staying off the grid.

So that's the end.

I have compressed months of personal debriefings with Myron into those above few pages. You probably guessed most of it. I hope that I was able to scratch whatever last itch remained.

I give Myron this summary too when he is well enough. He stays silent throughout, which is something I'm still not used to. Myron is normally a talker. He likes to interject, probe, distract, interrogate, cajole, agitate. But talking exhausts him now. Today he just sits up in bed and listens without uttering a word.

When I finish, when I say to him, as I have above to you fine people, "So that's the end," Myron speaks up for the first time:

"No it isn't."