Chapter Six
THERE WAS MORE to my comment than bluster. John christened it my “batshit crazy” defense. I discovered it walking home from the bus stop one day after high school.
The route leading from the bus stop to my home went down a long, winding street called Montis Avenue. Montis was once one of the more scenic residential streets in Cleveland Heights, comprised mostly of older yet well-maintained homes.
Never ones to be satisfied with a good thing, city planners decided Montis could be improved. Over the objections of its residents, the city purchased and razed ten houses on each side of the street with the goal of adding an additional exit to the I-90 freeway. The demolition of those homes took place four years before I entered high school. More than fifteen years later, there was still no sign of the promised exit. Over time, the razed area became an unmaintained dumping ground with tall grass used by teenagers as a hiding place to drink and smoke weed.
I wasn’t thinking about any of this when I walked home that day. For reasons long forgotten, I was angry over something that had happened in school, and the fury was still with me as I strode past the vacant Montis dump. Lost in thought, I never noticed as three teenage boys, all older and considerably larger than me, stepped out from behind a tall patch of grass directly into my path.
Not paying attention to your surroundings could be a fatal mistake, but this was a rare instance it might have worked in my favor.
The tallest one, clearly the leader, looked at me and sneered, “Hey, asshole, you got any money?”
Still feeling the effects of my after-school funk, I snarled back in a voice even louder than his, “No, shithead!”
I don’t know who was more shocked, him or me. Thinking they must have missed something, the three assholes stepped back from the sidewalk and gave me room to pass. It was then my brain finally caught up with my predicament, and I realized they would catch me quickly if I ran.
With that in mind, I continued walking slowly and deliberately down the remainder of Montis Avenue. When I was a safe distance past the lot, I turned around to see all three of the assholes still watching me. The leader gave me the finger, but he made no move to follow.
Not being a total idiot, I took an alternate route past that section of Montis for the rest of the school year. Later, I also talked my parents into letting me take kickboxing and judo classes at my neighborhood rec center. With practice, I became pretty good at both.
The walk down Montis taught me the key to the batshit-crazy defense—most people are terrified of a lunatic. In the years since, I used the same technique at least four or five times, and it worked on each occasion.
With those early encounters in mind, I decided to make Olivia Moore my first visit. When I called to verify her availability, Mrs. Moore confirmed she’d already spoken with Father Lawrence. Before I asked, she also assured me her children were out, and we could have our conversation in private.
Olivia lived in a small, 1970s-style bungalow a few blocks from Saint Edmund’s. When I arrived, she was outside working in her rose garden, roses being one of the few flowers I could recognize. I parked across the street, taking care to ensure my Glock was safely concealed in its holster.
I owned two other guns, but I’d taken to the Glock 19 as my weapon of choice. Wearing men’s jeans allowed me to carry the Glock in an inside trouser holster, convenient if you don’t want to advertise that you are, indeed, carrying a gun. I wouldn’t normally take such precautions when talking to a woman in her midforties, but Father’s warning stuck in my head. I didn’t want to place all my bets on attitude.
After locking the car, I stepped across the street and introduced myself to Mrs. Moore. She invited me into her home and pointed to a seat on the couch. She then earned a special place in my heart by offering me some of her homemade chocolate chip cookies. My stomach was still rumbling from eating at the Capstone. I needed real food, even if it was only bakery.
Unfortunately, our discussion yielded little in the way of new information. After telling me to call her Olivia, Mrs. Moore verified she’d been to Saint Edmund’s for confession on the two days in question. She noticed only one person she didn’t recognize—a young woman, possibly pregnant, likely in her early twenties.
After finishing my cookies, I thanked Mrs. Moore and stood up to leave. With an impeccable sense of timing, that was also the moment her sons chose to arrive home.
Theodore and Mark were of a type, both muscular with short blond hair and well over six feet tall. Upon entering, Theodore, the older brother, saw me standing by the couch and sneered, “Mom, why did you let a fag into our house?”
The insult didn’t concern me. They were standing between me and the door, however, and I had no wish to become involved in a fight. I considered removing my gun from its holster, but that didn’t feel like the low-key course of action Father Lawrence would have advised. It was then that Olivia, my sweet, chocolate chip cookie friend, made any action on my part unnecessary.
In a voice loud enough to be heard in the next county, she said, “You two shitheads get away from the fucking door!”
While she was at least six inches shorter than her sons, they almost knocked one another over in their hurry to comply. I even started to move, and she wasn’t yelling at me.
Despite her sons’ acquiescence, Mrs. Moore wasn’t nearly finished. “Mr. Luvello is a guest in this house. You two apologize to him immediately!”
Both boys quickly, if grudgingly, apologized. After thanking Mrs. Moore for the cookies and her time, I stepped past her now-mute sons and walked to my car—the brave detective saved by a forty-five-year-old mother of two. Sam Spade would have been proud.
I was still considering Sam’s reaction when I heard the sound of a loud pop, similar to a firecracker. The noise seemed to pass right next to me at shoulder level. Though not a marksman, I’d visited the range often enough to know a gunshot when I heard one. My first thought was that one of the Moore boys, fresh from being humiliated by his mother, had decided to take it out on me with a weapon.
It was then I saw a movement next to one of the cars parked behind mine. Not wanting to get into a gunfight on a suburban street, I ran the few remaining steps and managed to gain cover with a clumsy dive in front of my car.
Lying there, my gun now out of its holster, I could see little directly in front of me. Glancing toward the Moore household, I noticed Olivia at the screen door, cell phone in hand and no doubt calling the police. She yelled to see if I was okay, and I gave her a thumbs-up. I put away my gun once I heard the sirens, the shooter having presumably run off long ago. Knowing the police would ask, I also pulled the carry permit from my wallet.
When the Westlake police arrived, they asked me some basic questions before speaking to Mrs. Moore and her two sons. Other than the sound of the shot and my embarrassingly awkward dive—the Moore boys were quite descriptive on that one—none of us had much to offer. After the police finished talking with the Moores, they checked our hands for powder residue to ensure none of us had also fired during the exchange.
I wondered how I was going to explain my reason for being in the Moore home. I had no interest in lying to the police, but I didn’t want to relate my true purpose in front of Olivia and her two sons. Fortunately, the cops requested that I come back to the station to answer additional questions. There, I spent the next two hours talking to a Westlake detective about my connection to Saint Edmund’s and the potential link between the Tully and Gruber homicides. While he wasn’t pleased, he let me go after calling Father Lawrence to verify my story.
My original intent was to visit at least one more individual on Father Lawrence’s list, but I decided to rethink. It wasn’t the gunshot itself that bothered me. In truth, this was the second time someone had tried to shoot me.
The first had been an intoxicated, overweight husband who noticed me taking pictures of him through the window of his hotel room as he was in flagrante delicto with his mistress. It took three minutes of drunken staggering for him to find his gun, and I shot plenty of additional pictures during his struggle. His soon-to-be ex-wife found one of these shots, a beached-whale-like photo taken after he fell out of bed, to be especially amusing. She eventually had the image pressed into coasters for use by party guests in her now, solely owned home. The gunshot itself did little damage other than to the hotel room window.
Arriving back at my apartment, I called Father Lawrence to tell him I was okay and ask who else might know about the situation at Saint Edmund’s. He assured me he’d told no one else except his Jesuit superior and the bishop of Cleveland. I believed him, but that still left a potentially wide group of individuals who were aware of our secret.
I needed to think, and I thought better when I wrote. I took out my laptop to construct an outline of the case:
Tully/Gruber Murders
June 3rd – Saint Edmund Church: Man confesses to Father Samuel he intends to kill a woman within the next week. Confessor declares he will kill with knife slash to the throat.
June 6th – Cleveland: Angela Tully killed
Throat stabbed
Is this our confessor or a coincidence?
If not a coincidence, why did the killer choose Saint Edmund’s? What is the connection?
June 11th – Saint Edmund Church: Man (same voice as in #1 above) confesses to Father Samuel he will murder again. Woman mentioned as victim, method not specified.
June 11th – Saint Edmund Church: Father Lawrence contacts Paul and asks him to set up a meeting with me.
June 12th – Saint Edmund Church: Father Lawrence and I meet
Reasons cited for my involvement vs. police
Broad concern over confessional privilege
Desire for more low-key investigation
Discussion with Father Samuel
Covers all Saturday/Sunday confessions with Father Lawrence providing coverage on Tuesdays
States no prior, similar incidents while in Cleveland or at his previous post in New Orleans
Samuel clearly hostile—reaction to me personally or other reasons?
June 12th – Avon: Sarah Gruber murdered
Throat slashed
Discovered lying in bed by husband, Ethan Gruber
Time of death (5:00–6:00 p.m.) eliminates husband as a suspect
No signs of forced entry
Was there a struggle? Consider asking Detective Page.
June 13th – Westlake: Meet with Father Lawrence, Detective Page at Capstone Diner
Never, ever go there again
June 13th – Westlake: Meet with Olivia Moore
Mrs. Moore attended confession on June 3rd and June 11th
Mrs. Moore noticed nothing unusual on either visit
Confrontation with Moore sons, Mark and Theodore, upon leaving
June 13th – Westlake: Shooting attempt
Incident took place when walking across the street in front of Moore home
Likely shooter location: behind a parked car, 4–5 houses north of Moore home on the opposite side of the street (unconfirmed)
Potential escape route—through the backyard to the adjoining street
Potential motives
Derail investigation into stabbings/link to Saint Edmund’s. Those aware of the investigation:
Father Lawrence
Father Samuel
Saint Edmund’s secretary?
Detective Page
Potentially anyone within Cleveland’s bishop and Jesuit Midwest Province offices
Moore boys’ involvement
Did Olivia, suspecting their involvement, relay the bogus church break-in story to her sons before my visit?
If they were aware of other break-ins, was the shooting arranged to keep me from discovering other incidents involving the boys? The argument against—they were genuinely surprised to see me talking with their mother.
Could the shooting be personal? Prejudice against LGBTQ in the neighborhood? While prejudice exists, highly unlikely
Need to call Detective Page and make her aware
My cell phone rang after I closed my laptop. I didn’t need to call Detective Page after all. Not surprisingly, she wasn’t exactly happy.
“When I said you needed to let me know of anything that might be remotely relevant to this case, didn’t you think you getting shot might fit into that category? Why did I only hear about this from the Westlake cops?”
“In fairness, it was a miss. I never actually got shot.”
“Keep it up, smart-ass. Do you want to get thrown off this case?”
I apologized. The truth was, I liked Detective Page, and I needed this case. Fortunately for me, she accepted my apology, and we decided to meet for supper and compare notes.
She asked if I liked Mexican, and we chose “Homenaje a Los Gordos,” one of the newer eateries in Cleveland’s Tremont district. When it first opened, I thought the restaurant’s name had flair. That lasted until John, who’d paid more attention in Spanish class than I did, told me it translated to “Tribute to the Fat.” You had to admire a place that appreciates its customers.
We planned to eat at seven-thirty. Unsure of what to wear, I donned my best vintage Stevie Rae Vaughn T-shirt, hoping I wouldn’t be too underdressed. As it turned out, Detective Page also dressed in vintage style, wearing jeans and a Star Wars/Luke Skywalker T-shirt that could have time-traveled from the 1970s.
After we were seated, she took a long, disdainful look at my outfit. “Do you have any shirts with guitarists who aren’t dead?”
I noticed she had a way of smiling sweetly while sounding utterly sarcastic. “Big talk from a Star Wars nerd. You shouldn’t make fun of a guy in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
“Don’t mock Star Wars. Besides, it was you I was making fun of, not the guitarist.”
“I would never mock Star Wars; I’m just more of a Star Trek guy. Captain Kirk got to make out with green alien women. That always had a certain allure.”
Our old-movie banter dispensed with, we agreed to call each other by our first names and proceeded to order our meals, a burrito for me and two extra-large tacos for her.
Hannah caught me staring as she wolfed down her dinner. “Don’t judge me,” she said. “If you’ll recall, lunch wasn’t exactly five-star. At least this food is edible.”
“I am impressed. We should probably ask if they have an eating contest.”
She was chewing and couldn’t reply, so she compensated by showing me her middle finger.
Actually, the food was good, though the restaurant décor was a little unusual, kind of Southwest glitzy. I told Hannah it looked like Aztec human sacrifice meets Las Vegas. She said she didn’t care what they did in their off-hours so long as their food was worth eating.
We moved to discussing the case. After berating me one more time for not calling after the shooting, Hannah agreed that my incident and our two murders were likely related. I gave her more details regarding my conversation with Mrs. Moore and the shooting, leaving out my embarrassing dive in front of my car. Since I wasn’t a direct participant in the police investigation, there were also some questions I hoped she could answer.
“The news report on the Gruber murder mentioned there were no signs of forced entry. What about signs of a struggle?”
“There were some,” she admitted. “Mostly overturned furniture. Unfortunately, there were no skin scrapings under her fingernails or anything else linking back to the killer.”
“Any sign of sexual assault? The report I heard said she was clothed when her husband found her on the bed.”
“She was clothed. No signs of rape.”
“I heard even less about the Tully murder. Beyond the stab wound to the throat, were the other circumstances similar?”
“Beyond the neck wounds, they were similar in the sense there were only minimal signs of a struggle and no indications of sexual assault. In the Tully case, the body was found in the first-floor living room.”
“One other thing you need to know,” she continued. “Your shooting this afternoon resulted in another change. The Cleveland and Avon police departments are now working these cases as a joint investigation with me as the lead investigator. That means the Tully and Gruber cases now both fall under my jurisdiction.”
“That works out better for me,” I said. “I appreciate not having multiple go-betweens.”
We transitioned to other subjects, and Hannah asked how I became a detective.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re different than most detectives I’ve known.”
I knew what she meant, but I could also tell she was genuinely curious. I gave her the CliffNotes version. “In some ways, I fell into the job entirely by accident. I applied to law school after getting my bachelor’s. I was admitted, but I decided not to go. I knew law school would typecast me as some sort of crusader for a cause, and that wasn’t what I wanted.
“I sat around in my mother’s house for a month trying to figure out my next move when her next-door neighbor came over crying so hard I could barely understand her. From what I finally gathered, the neighbor and her husband had divorced the year before, and she and her ex had custody of their daughter on alternating weekends.
“After the daughter’s latest visit with her father, the mother went to pick her up and found no one at her husband’s apartment. The landlord checked, and the apartment appeared to be empty. The mother called the police, and the cops couldn’t find any signs of the father or the baby. After a week without any news, the mother was starting to panic.
“The neighbor mentioned her husband was out of work, so I figured he was staying with a friend or a relative. I asked her about both, and the most likely suspect appeared to be the ex-husband’s sister, who lived just over the Pennsylvania border.
“I figured I had nothing to lose. I asked the neighbor to give me a recent picture of her daughter and her ex-husband. I left my mother a note and drove to the sister’s address. Though it was out of state, it was only an hour away.
“I won’t go into all the details, but I was able to watch the house from a patch of woods overlooking the sister’s side of the street. About an hour in, I saw her come home from the store with several bags, one that appeared to contain diapers. That wasn’t definitive, but my mom’s neighbor had said the sister didn’t have any kids of her own.
“It took a homemade smoke bomb, but I was eventually able to trick the father and the sister into coming outside with the baby. I had my Nikon along, so I shot some pictures and contacted the local police. The cops let the sister go, but the father was arrested. My mother’s neighbor was able to pick up her daughter the following day.”
Hannah was fascinated. “You didn’t even know this woman, but you drove all the way to Pennsylvania to help her find her daughter. Mind if I ask why?”
“I was bored sitting around the house, and I hate being bored. After I found the daughter, I realized I liked being a detective and went back to school to get my associate’s in criminal justice. After graduation, the school got me hooked up with a PI firm for the rest of the training I needed for my Ohio license. Starting my own business was a tough go at first, but cases eventually started to trickle in. There aren’t many private investigators in Cleveland, so I didn’t have a lot of competition.”
Hannah and I finished our meals, and she appeared uncertain how to proceed. Her next question caught me by surprise.
“You see the couple sitting two tables to our side? Tell me what you think is going on with them.”
I’d already noticed the man and woman she was referring to. They were nondescript in every way, except the man kept taking sips of his water and managed to knock over his glass early on during their meal. The woman looked apprehensive throughout. I thought it might be a breakup, but then I saw the man’s other hand, the one not holding his water glass, tapping his pants pocket.
“I’ll go out on a limb,” I said. “I think he’s going to ask her to marry him. The pocket he’s tapping is holding the ring.”
Thirty seconds after my pronouncement, the man removed a small box from his pocket and handed it to his companion. From her smile, it was easy to see she accepted.
Hannah watched me even more intently. “Okay,” she said, “now do me.”
I had no experience with women, but I knew this was a minefield. John would call me an idiot, but I decided to be honest. After taking a deep breath, I said, “I think you’re an exceptional investigator. You believe that yourself, or at least most of you does. A part of you has doubts.”
Hannah’s gaze became almost savage in its intensity. I started to apologize, but she waved it away. “You don’t even know me. What makes you think I’m a good investigator?”
“Because you noticed the same things about the couple that I did. You didn’t ask for my opinion because you wanted to find out about them; you asked because you wanted to know about me and whether I was worth partnering with.”
Her smile remained almost predatory. I was wrong—she was enjoying this. “Now,” she said, “I get a turn. You think of yourself as a cynic, but you’re really a romantic. I saw the way you smiled when that guy proposed. You’d tell me it was because it proved you right, but I think you were hoping for a happy ending. I’ll go even further and guess that’s the real reason you became a detective. That hope drives you, but you’re worried it’s also a weakness. You wonder what happens if you run into too many endings you just can’t fix.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wanted her to be wrong. Deep down inside, I even needed her to be wrong. We’d been together for one dinner, and she’d diagnosed a fear I rarely admitted, even to myself. I felt exhilarated and terrified, somehow both at once. After what seemed like forever, I finally found my voice.
“Where do we go from here?”
“If you’re willing to follow me, I was hoping we could go back to my place.”