Beginning - Chapter 1

   He woke up late in the morning. If it wasn't a work day, it had become his habit to lounge in bed for a little while. A half hour at the very least, an hour on average, more if he felt like it. The orange striped tomcat rolled over and observed the man. The man looked at the cat, and fussed over his head and neck.

   "Yeah, you know its not a work day, huh."

   The cat was holding back slightly. Their alarm clock had gone off like every day. The man hadn't jumped up and gotten ready and left, true. Yet, he could still be doing something other than work. But, if he went to the bathroom and came right back to the bed, maybe with a cigarette and a coffee? Without rushing it all into the shower? No, that was almost always the signal he would be home, and probably all day and all night.

   "Well boy, let me get to my litter box, okay…"

   And the man went to the bathroom. The cat stood and watched him disappear around the corner after the kitchen, heard the flush and the man was padding back… oh, there it was, the cat came to the kitchen counter to congratulate him… on choosing to stay home all day with the cat. He had stopped to get an instant coffee going. He stopped again. As if deciding. Then, he took a light cigarette out of a half full pack and lit it.

   The cat knew what was coming next, and went over to the weirdly shaped multi-tiered big homemade wrap-around desk in the corner of the living room, attached to the kitchen. The fact that this man seemed to use his "living room" for a living room/bedroom/office did not seem to annoy neither the man nor the cat. The cat was waiting patiently on the desk, and the man sauntered over and sat down. He turned on his laptop, his bigger desktop computer, the two bigger monitors behind the laptop, another power strip or two. Then while everything was booting up, and passing text by on three different screens, he lit his smoke and took a sip of the hot instant coffee. He didn't get but a few sips and another good drag on his morning smoke before both computers were fully booted and running.

   The cat seemed happy to watch over the man working at the computer, and the cat obviously had his own spaces on and about this multi-layered desk/shelves/workstation. The man would smile and talk to the cat while working on the computer. His fingers would work the keyboard, the mouse, and the cat at different times.

   "I don't know what to do now, fuzz. You got any ideas?"

   The cat didn't seem to have any. The cat did offer its support by purring, rolling over to be a little closer on the desktop, and rubbing his cheek on the man's wrist a little.

   "Yes, you're such a good project manager, aren't you little fuzzball… daddy's… little… project… manager… kitty…"

   He punctuated the little affection scratches with loving tones and words.

   The cat sat up, and bopped the keyboard a few times with its paw. The man smiled and petted it again and it laid back down. The cat had inadvertently key-stroked something on the man's laptop keyboard, that contained a long list of frequently used sites. Other random paw-keys had opened sites.

   "Well, that's your idea then, Mr. Fuzzy? Hey, I got nothing. I was up half the night trying. Let's give your idea a try, little boy."

   In the course of looking at which sites the cat had accidentally opened up, one site had opened up three or four instances of itself. Which sort of made this site… "win". Later when asked exactly why it was that the multiple instances of the genealogical site had interested him so much, he really had no answer. He had to admit later though, doing a genealogical research project across the project he was working on? Wasn't even on the radar, it was more or less "the cat's idea" as he would later explain it. A happy accident, divine providence, or something more sinister? No matter what philosophical perspective a person viewed things with, the universe clearly wanted that site used. As well as the cat, obviously.

   He put everything on hold, and this time minimized all the windows so the cat wouldn't disrupt his workflow. Before? He had just been looking, thinking, imagining, making up stories in his head to satisfy various theories interconnected… but, this was different. This was his other mode. He was on to something. He now had a purpose.

   He smiled and gathered the cat into his arms on his lap and gently hugged his cheek against the cat's cheek. Mr. Fuzzy responded and touched noses with the man lightly a few times, then pressed it firmly against his nose.

   "Yes little fuzzball… you've just made a lot of work for daddy, haven't you? Well that's what a good project manager does now, isn't it. Good boy… but, we're going to need some supplies for this. What do you think? Hmm?"

   The man went to the fridge, and got out a fair sized plate of sliced ham. A little stack of two kinds of his favorite sliced sandwich cheese. Hard Swiss, the kind with random holes. Monterey Jack. The cat had relocated to the top of the back of the man's work chair, in order to better observe these exciting new developments.

   "I'm thinking ham and cheese, Mr. Fuzzy. Okay?"

   He got a quiet meow back.

   "What?"

   This time he got a louder and longer meow back, and it turned into a "talking" sort of soft "mow-wow-wow" until he brought "it" out.

   The cat stood straight up at attention, licked its lips and practically danced in place, eyes alive in amusement. "It" was the large squeeze container. It was a buttery, creamy, cheesy, squirt-able spread, and the cat knew what it was. The man made himself several thick ham sandwiches, with a slice or two of both cheeses on each, and some of the squirt spread.

   The plate had a pile of thick ham slices not on any sandwich, seemingly in place of a side dish. The man took one of the large sandwiches as he sat down and set the plate down off on the cat's side of the desk. The cat sat patiently until the man remembered to get the squirt bottle going over the ham slices. Then, when done… he held out the squeeze container steady, and the cat inched in, and of all things he squeezed a drop or two out and the cat snatched it. On his tongue.

   "You can't have too much, Fuzz, or you'll get the shits again. Sorry."

   So the man put the squirt bottle back in the fridge and returned to the workstation. He munched on his sandwiches slowly off and on, paying no heed to what the cat did with the plate. The cat was allowed to get into "his" stack of meat with cheese slices and squirts of heaven. The man didn't care and moreover seemed to enjoy being close with his companion while he worked.

   "Well, Fuzz, if you're curious… this is one of them. I find out who his daddy was. Then I find out who his daddy was. Then, its a game to see how many daddy's back I can get to. You see?"

   The cat didn't say anything.

   "Okay, so you do think I should do some more then?"

   A silent cat, was looking back at him.

   "Okay then, that's what we'll do. That's why you're the project manager, you know. Such a handsome little guy."

   The man proceeded to trace the first one back further than was even remotely necessary. His software logged all the steps back. Son, to father, to grandfather, to great grandfather, and on back until you ran out of source material. He had a fairly long list of names and addresses and biographical data. He did the same thing for every one of them on this particular list. Then he went back and started scanning every list… but nothing poked out.

   He had some kind of error though. He was getting some kind of "match" several generations back, and that was ridiculous. He was trying to get any kind of similarities that might relate these names and addresses in any way at all. He wanted to find out something, like some town had a lot of the people on this list associated for any reason. Living, work, related, school… anything.

   He wasn't getting anything like that, he was getting "ignore matches", IE matches that meant little to nothing. The fact that one person's great great grandfather lived in some small town that happened to be a letter or two away in town name from some other great great grandpa's Alma Mater? Nothing,

   When he finally exhausted all his energy looking at what he figured might turn something up, he turned to look at the nothing matches. That was where he thought it was weird. He had three different people on his list, that listed some far back relative within a fairly similar geographical area. Two more, were close to each other the same number of generations back, just in a different state. Really nothing, but still.

   He started taking off on random tree branches off the family, following it back, but back and forth across marriages. Then went back and did it on some other branch, just poking and prodding with a stick. Seeing if anything was down in the mud, buried. Waiting to be discovered like a diamond in the rough laying on top of a pile of coal dust. He had a little bit less of the strange almost matches? But a couple different people now clustered, again several generations back… real close to each other.

   Now this was becoming less and less of a statistical anomaly. It just kept creeping up, and it couldn't be explained. He had access to "random pools of people", which were randomly chosen groups of people, but you didn't get any "steal the identity" information… this allowed a person to see if they could duplicate whatever they were seeing in the way of weird matches on their list.

   Theory being, if you can duplicate the same "almost matches" that were popping up, except on the random pool… then you could rest assured you weren't seeing some puzzle pattern you were picking up on… you were just being human, and seeing seemingly related bits of errata that were only superficial. Humans are great at seeing little insights, but unfortunately humans are horrible at estimating the importance level.

   It was actually incredibly difficult to produce any number of almost matches back like that with any of the random pools used for controls. That was indicating that there might possibly be some association between the people on this list, the problem being it was not across the board. Two or three were associated by close geography several generations back, but in weird patches.

   Now he felt he might have something, but he honestly didn't know what it was. He went and logged into another website, that was all statistics. In the forum, he read a few posts and zeroed in on a member he thought would be able to help him. He rattled of a message to him, then logged back off to wait.

   The cat seemed to approve of the man playing a computer game for a couple hours while he waited for a response. Because he had large dual screens and a laptop as well as a desktop running and linked up, he knew in the middle of his game when the message in noise popped up out of the clutter of electronic noise. The man hurriedly finished up and saved his level, and went and read it.

   "Hi Panic. I looked it over. Yes, definitely, I think. You do need a stat run on it though. You know the rules, you gotta have some numbers to look at. Try number four, and if you get anything in the range of over point five oh on the confidence interval, post it up! (you have my permission to use my screen name in your post)."

   He then started the long process of trying to slowly enter all of the data required into the statistical analysis he had been pointed at. If all of his work was judged to be correct and no errors pointed out, then the higher the confidence interval, then theoretically the higher the percentage chance that there was some relationship among these seemingly random people.

   It all boiled down to i. If the i came out to be low, for instance .1 or .2 ? That was a low i, low confidence interval, low possibility of any relationship. High confidence interval, perhaps .8 or .9? would indicate an almost certain relationship of some kind, or just a weird statistical anomaly. Hey, it does happen.

   The man did know that on one occasion, in Monte Carlo? everyone had watched in amazement as black came up on the roulette wheel, spin after spin, an insane number of times. The more times black came up, the more people would bet even more on red, and every time black came up the crowd ooh-ed. The odds, later tabulated to be in the stratosphere, had happened though. You never wanted to be the victim of the "Monte Carlo Fallacy", and have it pointed out to you. Such would make you look like a rube.

   He spent almost three hours setting it all up, then it took his computer another 15 minutes to figure and tally it all up. He looked at his confidence interval… and it just couldn't be right. He spent another hour and a half, going over it all again, trying to make damn sure. Same result. He spent another hour, all to no avail, the same result was staring him in the face.

   "Mr. Fuzzy, do you think this is right? What are your thoughts on the matter?"

   The cat walked over and got on his lap and got comfortable.

   "Yes, that's what I was thinking, Fuzz."

   The man leaned back to take it all in. It just… well, it just couldn't be, he thought. Yet it sure as hell seemed to be.

   The man spent some time rubbing his hands slowly all over his cat that had bundled itself up in a ball of purring fur in his lap while he tried to think. Did he have enough? Would he get teased? Probably, who gives a rat's ass.

   "You gotta strike while the iron's hot, Fuzz…"

   And with that, the man seemed to have arrived at a decision. Fuck it.

   He fired up the browser and popped onto "Deddit". Deddit was an offshoot website. A lot of people didn't know that many huge popular sites? Were launched on free software. The "first version" that many big sites launched with, is often freely available in source code form. Deddit was a re-spelling of the original chat site, using the original free software… it just didn't have 1 percent of the user base. It was dedicated to people coming together to talk about mysteries, and particularly cold murder cases.

   Everyone "worked" their favorite case(s), and if you got anything, you posted it. Some real life serial murder cases had their solving started right here, although the credit always went to whatever police managed to actually click the cuffs on the asshole. These people weren't here for work, nor money, nor was fame a potential outcome… nothing except the possible immense joy of being "the one" that solved some big puzzle.

   The only tangible thing that you got for yourself, in the unlikely event that you actually found or figured out some nugget of wisdom that ended up being the lynch pin that set off a new trail for the cold case, directly leading to the solution. "Solved" was a tag on a thread or series of threads that were badges of honor. It was preserved for eternity what screen name user had started a thread, developing novel material, that produced a solution.

   Everyone also knew that lots of real life cops and investigators were on the site as well, one just never knew who was actually a badge in real life. People that claimed to be, usually were not, and people that were cops, usually pretended not to be. Internet ghouls that were obviously just interested in collecting gory crime scene photos were slowly weeded out by moderators going by IP and screen name.

   This one wasn't even technically a "case" much less a cold one, simply because around half the people that read about it, leaned towards it was much ado about nothing. To these onlookers, it was just conjecture, wild associations, and a good yarn of a story all balled up into a palatable 222 pages designed primarily to sell books and videos, more so than finding some non-existent killer.

   Yet, around half were intrigued by the possible case. Similar graffiti found in a couple of the scenes, or in the area. It was the victim profile that stood out here. All the "victims" were a young, strong, smart go get-er. Average "victim" was a 16 to 24 year old, though usually 18 to 22 strongly predominated. Average victim was typically a student, sometimes high school but usually a college or university student. If they were out of college, it was soon after graduation. All of the victims tended strongly to be standouts in some sport or their academic studies, and usually both. The one common thread was that they were all drowning victims, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and all were male.

   People countered that none of the cases were related, that people were trying to "force" a theory that would connect the dots… that simply didn't exist. The man had encountered that argument early on, then did some amateur investigating on his own. To have drownings, either garden variety accidents or foul play, the man reasoned you simply had to have a body of water handy. When you go and look at what was called the "clustering" of the accidental drownings, there would be multiples all around the same body of water, in groups. Pins on maps inside police stations had been replaced by easy free graphics on the internet, for anyone who wanted to see the clusters.

   The man decided. Once you identified one "canon" case, IE, a case felt strongly by the group that believed in such to be an actual victim of whatever was going on? It took almost no effort, to locate several more that year. If you find a large population center, in and around water integral to the area with easy access everywhere? With one or more colleges nearby? You will suddenly see the number of "accidental drownings" shoot up and off the charts. Insurance actuaries were some of the only "professionals" on the side of the amateur sleuths; it was hard to find anyone competent to read the tea leaves that would not pronounce:

   "All I can tell you? Is that for the last how many years… we have an average of 3 unexplained drownings of young men like this, per year… in this city, in this area. For the last 6 years? It quickly rose up to average 12 a year. I can't explain it by population change. That's all I can tell you for sure."

   Other odd things just kept coming up and nothing made sense. These "clusters" if you even believed there was anything to it? Were all in the northeast of the United States, and in spots around the lower rim of all the great lakes and the various rivers and tributaries in the general area. There was a magical line across the country, below which this phenomenon did not seem to exist. It was a northeast, north mid-west thing.

   If you go too far north, too far above the great lakes and the northeast region? It quits. As soon as you got south enough the winters were starting to be milder? It quits. On the surface of it, it would seem explainable. College age kids, out having a few beers, one turns up accidentally drowned the next morning isn't unheard of. The big question though was, why the college kids? Why were only college kids drowning. Why weren't the local fishermen accidentally drowning. They were near the water more often and for longer periods, many of them drinking as well. Why weren't the high school kids drowning in elevated numbers to match the statistics. Why were they all male.

   You also had trouble finding a "canon" victim that was ugly, poor, stupid, lazy, crazy, on hard drugs… to a (possible) victim, all were doing very well by any standards anyone that knew them assessed them by. Sports, academics, education, active social life, family money and support… these young men had it all going for them, and none of them were majoring in Basket Weaving. No, they were in engineering, chemistry, mathematics, computer science.

   Statistically the last people that turn up accidentally dead for no good reason, let alone in elevated numbers.

   The man posted it all. Then he tagged it for LEO, and also for NEW, and also for "ADVANCED". By tagging it LEO, he was asking for any badges that happened by to please take a peek. By tagging it NEW, he was claiming to have found possibly NEW information to add to the case. By tagging it ADVANCED marked it so various professionals could easily pick it out from the chaos of the site, that it contained information at an advanced level; IE, it had statistical analysis purporting to show some relationship existed across multiple victims possibly. The only reason he was allowed to TAG it as ADVANCED was because he had been a member long enough, and had enough "points" awarded to him by readers that he had this elevated status. He didn't have a number of stars under his screen name? He had all 5 stars, and they blinked. Blinking stars indicated to the rest of the site, a long time and upstanding member.

   It had been a long time since anything "substantially new" had come up on this case and if he was right, this might be it. He clicked on "confirm post" and it was off into cyberspace. The man turned his attention back to the purring ball of fur on his lap for a little while, before going back to his game.