Kill Game

by Francine Pascal

  The Hogan’s Alley Retirement Home was a drab, modern, three-story building with a horseshoe-shaped driveway in front of it. The entire area was roped off with yellow police line tape. Three police cruisers were parked inside the tape in a crescent around the driveway. Five or six uniformed policemen were positioned around the building entrance. Will could see several elderly men and women gathered to one side, where a uniformed cop was detaining them, keeping them from entering the building. Catherine led Will and the others in that direction.

  It’s only been “five minutes,” Will remembered. Just five minutes since we got the call.

  It was a strange sensation, dealing with the game’s “frozen time.” It was almost like everything that had happened the night before—the trip to Johnny Ray’s, the fight Gaia had gotten into, the detour to Kelly’s house, and the early-morning reprimand from Special Agent Malloy—had never happened. They were back in Hogan’s Alley, where just minutes before they had been going through the pockets of a murdered fourteen-year-old named Nathan Hill.

  “FBI,” Gaia told the uniformed cop. She flashed her badge. “Where’s the officer in charge?”

  The cop pointed at a plainclothes detective, closer to the building’s front door. Will thought he recognized the cop as one of the busboys from the steak house exercise two nights before—clearly the same actors played multiple roles. He firmly put the thought out of his mind. It’s real, he told himself. Not playacting—real. If you don’t believe it’s real, you can’t win it.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, ma’am,” the investigating detective told Gaia. He was a small, dark-haired man in a baggy brown suit and a beige shirt, his gold detective shield clipped to his belt. “I’m Detective Okuda. The lab boys just got here—they’re upstairs—but nobody’s touched anything yet.”

  “Could we have the particulars, please?” Gaia asked. Beside her, Kim closed his eyes, getting ready to listen.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Okuda flipped open his spiral notebook. “Uh, at ten-twenty this morning, fifteen minutes ago, residents of the home”—Okuda gestured behind himself—“called 911. They explained that Mr. Abe Kaufman, a resident here, uh, seventy-eight years old, grandfather of six—had not come down for breakfast. The callers—they explained that they’d gone upstairs to room 231, Mr. Kaufman’s door, where, uh—”

  “Slow down, Officer,” Will said, in what he hoped was a soothing tone. “Take it easy. You’re doing fine.”

  Okuda nodded. “They knocked on the door, and there was no answer. So they called 911. Unit 631 responded; uniformed officers Kagan and Duff went upstairs and couldn’t get an answer at the door, so they forced it open. Once they got a look inside—” Okuda swallowed, clearly shaken. “Well, they called in for backup. This was now twenty minutes ago. I got here, and Detective Goldblatt, who’s upstairs; we knew there was a federal investigation in progress, so Sheriff Landy called you.”

  Okuda spread his hands, indicating that his narrative was over.

  “Thank you, Detective,” Gaia said, giving Okuda what Will noticed was a dazzling smile. Seeing her smile that way, Will forgot all about the case. He was imagining Gaia in a dinner dress, smiling at the arriving guests, the South Carolina sun flashing in her blond hair. He had to deliberately, firmly shake the image out of his head.

  The four trainees were vaulting up the stairs to the second floor. Will and Catherine were looking around, inspecting the stairwell for any obvious clues. Gaia had a package of white latex gloves and was handing them out.

  “That wasn’t much from the cop,” Catherine said. She was snapping the rubber gloves onto her slim hands.

  “He’s freaked,” said Kim. “Cathy, any significance to the room number? 231?”

  “What?” Catherine said derisively. “No. These aren’t numerological crimes.”

  “Why are you so sure?” Will wanted to know. They were moving down a drab, badly lit corridor, looking at the room numbers. He could already smell an unpleasant, metallic aroma—the smell of blood.

  “SAVED,” Catherine explained simply. “Look, if I see what I think is a significant number, I’ll let you know.”

  The door to 231 was wide open. As they got there, Will had a strange feeling—he felt his legs wanting to slow down. I don’t want to go in there, he thought plaintively. It was like some part of his mind was six years old again. Daddy, don’t make me go in there.

  “Come on.” Gaia was poking him in the back, propelling him forward. “Get moving.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Will said absently, but his heart wasn’t in it. Now he could see into the room, and the first thing he saw was bright red blood—that particular, rich, dark red that was unmistakable. It was wet—whatever had happened had happened not that long ago.

  The room was fairly large and well lit. Its single, plateglass window faced the street, where the white, overcast sky was shining brightly. The walls were covered in cream-colored wallpaper. The wallpaper was spattered with blood wherever Will looked.

  All four trainees stopped walking instantly. They were alone in the room except for two criminologists crouching down, swabbing the floor, a young man in a beige jacket with a mop of curly, sandy hair who had to be Detective Goldblatt, and the body of Abe Kaufman.

  This is worse than looking at pictures, Will thought, swallowing weakly. Way worse.

  The old man had been skewered repeatedly. He lay on his back, his arms curled defensively by his sides. There were bloody slice wounds in his gnarled, arthritic hands. It made Will want to cry. You could picture old Mr. Kaufman flinching on the floor, trying to ward off the stabs that he knew were killing him.

  The coffee table had been upset, pulled to one side so that a stack of Retirement Life magazines had spilled onto the floor. A side table had fallen over, spilling an ashtray full of brown cigarette butts. There was a great deal of clutter in the room, standing on various antique-looking side tables, including what had to be pictures of grandchildren.

  They’ll all grieve, Will thought sadly. Every one of them. They probably came over here to watch TV with Grandpa, or they saw him for the holidays.

  It didn’t matter that this was a staged setting. Will knew that Agent Bishop had drawn from real crime files when she had put together this masterful simulation. Maybe this scene wasn’t real, but it was probably based on something that had really happened.

  “Detective Goldblatt?” Gaia said, walking up to him. “Gaia Moore, FBI.”

  “Hi,” Goldblatt said roughly. He seemed choked up. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I knew him. Abe—he came in on my poker game sometimes. I’m—” The mop-headed detective’s jaw clenched.

  “Detective, this is Special Agent Sanders,” Gaia said. “She’s taking complete control of the crime scene as of right now. Your people are to follow her orders down to the last detail.”

  Catherine’s eyes widened as she looked at Gaia.

  “Detective,” Gaia said more quietly, “given your personal relationship with the victim, maybe it would be best if you left the crime scene to us. It will give you a chance to compose yourself and adjust to the shock, and our team is going to need all the room we can get in this small apartment.”

  “Well, yeah,” Goldblatt said, nodding. He seemed embarrassed. “Okay. I’m sorry—I’d like to stay and help.”

  “You’ve already done all you can,” Gaia said soothingly. “It’s not your fault, Detective. When it’s someone you know”—Gaia seemed hesitant, swallowing before going on—“it’s different.”

  Will realized he was gazing at Gaia in frank admiration.

  You’ll get points for that one, he thought. Very well done, Ms. Moore.

  “Okay, um—you two,” Catherine said to the criminologists. They both stopped their work and looked up at her expectantly. “I want you to give fiber analysis a high priority. The wallpaper’s going to need a complete fingerprint scan, along with—we’ll have to get people to come with ultraviolet equipment. In the meantime do everything you can to re
trieve the most fragile and perishable materials from this rug.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” one of the criminologists said.

  “And the ashtray,” Catherine continued, pointing. “I want distinct samples of the ash, and I want the butts individually bagged and tagged, with vacuum seals. Be particularly careful with the butts; they could have tooth marks on the filters.”

  “Gaia,” Will said quietly. He was crouching by Abe Kaufman’s body. Gaia came over and after a moment crouched beside him. She seemed hesitant about getting too close to the body. Will pointed. “See the way the chest cavity was cut open? You can’t see it on Nathan Hill since the ME cleaned it up. But here—”

  “What?” Gaia leaned closer. From her face, Will guessed that it was the last thing in the world she wanted to do, but she was making herself do it.

  “These aren’t stabbing cuts,” Will explained, pointing at the lacerations. “See how the fabric of his shirt is separated? These are lateral cuts. Like, I don’t know, slicing a steak.”

  “You’re right,” Gaia said. She leaned on Will’s shoulder in order to stand back up, and for a moment the feel of her hand pressing on his shoulder was all he could think about. “Hey, Catherine?” Gaia called out. Catherine was on the phone, giving instructions to someone. She covered the phone with her hand and looked at Gaia inquiringly. “Make sure a photographer is coming—we need much better pictures than they got with the previous victim.”

  “Gaia,” Kim said, stepping over.

  “Yes?”

  Kim didn’t answer. Instead he pointed off to one side, at the darker corner of the room. On the wall, in the shadows, behind a standing, shaded lamp, a word was painted on the wall.

  SAVED

  The word had a cross painted above it.

  Will felt a chill crawl over his body. It was such an acute feeling that he actually reached to pull his jacket collar closer to his neck.

  Identical MO, he thought. It’s official—we’re looking at a serial killer.

  “Gaia,” Will said. “Something just occurred to me.”

  Gaia raised her eyebrows.

  “Nathan Hill was killed in his bedroom,” Will said. “With his mom and dad a room away. The killer couldn’t go anywhere else; he had to be careful not to awaken the parents.”

  “Right.”

  “But this is a private apartment. So we’ve got to pay real close attention to the other rooms.” Will was pointing at the three doors they could see: bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen. “The killer had free run of the place probably before, during, and after the murder.”

  With Gaia following, he walked into the bathroom, reaching with his latex-gloved hand to snap on the light.

  It was an ordinary bathroom. Will’s nostrils caught the geriatric scent of soap, medicine, and that nameless “elderly person” scent that wasn’t unpleasant, but that he couldn’t really identify.

  He and Gaia looked around. There was a white porcelain sink, a toilet, a bathtub with rubber daisies stuck to its bottom so that you wouldn’t slip in the soapy water. There were more pictures of grandchildren—just snapshots—in small frames on the wall. The medicine cabinet was open—its white shelves were bare except for a hairbrush with a silver handle.

  “Guys!” Catherine called out. She was slapping her phone shut. “We should get over to the crime lab. Data’s coming in from the other crime scene—from the Nathan Hill murder.”

  Gaia nodded. Will wasn’t sure if she was listening—she was staring through the bathroom doorway at the corpse and at Abe Kaufman’s bloody torso. The old man had a thick head of white hair—he was probably very proud of it. Will’s uncle Casper wasn’t much younger and was totally bald.

  Will looked over at Gaia, who was chewing on her thumbnail, staring at the corpse—and, more specifically, at the wound in Abe Kaufman’s chest.

  Something about that really gets to her, Will thought. But why?

  He couldn’t begin to think of an answer.

  “You’re right,” Gaia said to Will. It was like she had suddenly come out of a trance. “We’ve got to inspect all the other rooms. Catherine, why don’t you and Will head over to the lab and we’ll join you?”

  Catherine nodded, all business. Will raised his eyebrows.

  “You don’t want me to stay?”

  “I want Kim to stay,” Gaia explained. “He needs to see this place close-up, not on a computer monitor. Meanwhile you can make some of your brilliant deductions at the lab.”

  Will was listening for traces of sarcasm—and he couldn’t detect any. He was surprised. Gaia wasn’t even thinking about him anymore, he realized—she was moving toward the bedroom door, walking carefully to avoid disturbing the spilled magazines.

  She’s not messing around, Will thought. No jokes, no distractions.

  Will didn’t know what Agent Malloy had said to her, but whatever it was, it had certainly had a potent effect.

  She’s trying to overcome something. She wants to win—to prove something.

  But Will didn’t understand it any more than that.

  I WAS BLIND

  The crime lab was outside Hogan’s Alley, in one of the drab FBI campus buildings. It was early afternoon, still muggy and overcast—about an hour after they’d begun their inspection of the new crime scene. Rain was coming.

  Gaia and Kim strode across the concrete court, where they’d all first been debriefed by Special Agent Bishop about the Hogan’s Alley game. Gaia’s handgun was bouncing against her side under her left arm as she walked. It was a strange feeling but one that she imagined she’d have to get used to.

  “What are you thinking?” Gaia asked Kim.

  It seemed to her like a reasonable question. Kim’s mind was very interesting to Gaia, not just because he was so insightful, but because he was so disciplined. Gaia had trouble imagining being as directed as Kim was. She admired it—it was a capacity she was realizing that she’d never really developed in herself.

  “I’m thinking,” Kim said, “about what we have to do to win this game.”

  “And?”

  “I’m wondering whether we’d be thinking the same way if this were a real case,” Kim went on. They had gotten to the base of the looming criminology building, and a blast of air-conditioning came out of the glass door that he courteously held open for Gaia. “See, in a real case, right now, having recognized that we’re dealing with a serial killer—someone killing a series of victims—we’d be desperate to prevent the next death.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But this is a game,” Kim went on. They were headed toward a bank of elevators, and they got their ID badges out. “So nobody’s really getting hurt. Which means if we wait for the next murder, we get more clues, and our investigation gets further along.”

  Gaia thought about what he was saying. “But we lose serious points for each death.”

  “Exactly,” Kim said. “I think the wrong way to play this game is to wait for more clues.”

  The elevator was chiming softly as it passed each floor. “You think we’ve already got the clues we need.”

  “Yes,” Kim said as the elevator slowed and stopped. “What we have to do is connect the murders. We need to figure out what the victims have in common.”

  Nathan Hill and Abe Kaufman, Gaia thought. An old man and a young boy. What do they have in common?

  Nothing.

  The corridor was bustling with people: lab technicians and business-suited agents passing back and forth. They followed the signs that pointed to Criminology Laboratory 18—below that were handwritten signs that added, Closed for Trainee Operations.

  “Then we can maybe find the next victim,” Kim went on. “And try to catch the killer before he strikes again. That’s the way to win this game.”

  Gaia could find nothing wrong with Kim’s logic. She nodded, more to herself than to him. Catch the killer. Maybe before he struck again—and maybe in the act.

  She realized she was shuddering. The air in the corridor was
cold, but as they passed through a big metal door, it got colder still.

  The door read Crime Lab 18.

  Inside was a large, cool, dark, windowless room. Computers were lined up along all four walls, and in the middle of the room were stainless steel tables holding microscopes and other technical equipment. Lab technicians in white coats and with cloth masks over their noses and mouths were working intently around the room. The main wall was lit up like a movie screen; several enormous bright images were enlarged there by digital projectors hanging from the ceiling. The left image showed a color photograph of the Nathan Hill murder scene. The right image showed a large statistical chart—Gaia wasn’t sure what it was, but she could recognize chemical formulas.

  Will and Catherine, also in lab coats, were walking around the room, talking to the technicians. Catherine seemed to be in charge. Will was holding a large plastic bag with an evidence tag that held the combination padlock from Nathan Hill’s pocket. They both looked up as their teammates entered the room.

  “Find anything else?” Will asked quietly.

  Kim shook his head.

  The four trainees looked at each other. None of them bothered to hide their disappointment. We don’t know how to do this, Gaia thought plaintively. It was a little girl’s thought, the whining of a young kid who wanted her daddy to fix everything. She shoved the idea firmly out of her head.

  “Catherine,” Gaia began. “Any progress?”

  Catherine nodded. In the dim light the computer screens around the room reflected in her large brown eyes.

  “I’ve got all the lab results from the Hill murder in the computer and all the victim data,” Catherine said. “We’re working to feed in the material from the Kaufman murder, but it’s taking some time.”

  “And?”

  “There are fifty-six separate blood deposits around Nathan Hill’s bedroom and none elsewhere in the house. The problem is that all the blood is the boy’s.”

  Kim had quietly moved off to talk to one of the technicians.