Con Game

by Alex Westmore

  Oh, if only it were that easy.

  Megan danced into the kitchen, bearing a plastic baggy full of chicken parts. Her long, blonde hair, knotted in a French braid down her back, bounced freely behind her.

  “Aren’t you in a fine mood,” Connie noted, planting a kiss on Megan’s cheek before returning to peeling potatoes.

  “Why of course! You’re looking at a gal who scored the highest grade in her boring econ class.” Megan twirled around once more and held her face out for Gina to kiss the other cheek.

  “That’s fantastic!” Gina cried, taking the baggy from her and giving her a hug. “Our genius.”

  “Let’s celebrate.” Opening the refrigerator, Connie pulled out two bottles of champagne.

  “You knew,” Megan said, throwing a suspicious look toward Delta, as she came through bearing a bag of groceries. “Delta Stevens, you told!”

  “I couldn’t help it,” Delta said. “I’m so proud of you, I had to share it with somebody.”

  Megan took the bag from Delta, set it on the counter, and laced her arms around Delta’s neck. Megan was the only woman Delta had ever been with who could put her arms completely around her neck without having to step on tip toe. “You’re such a sweetheart. Thank you.”

  Pulling chilled glasses out of the freezer, Connie stepped out the door and onto the patio, where she popped one of the corks and tossed it for Cagney, her large Doberman, to chase after. Cagney could tear a hole out of a man’s leg or play gently with the smallest object. It’s what made her so special.

  “Someone else is in an awfully good mood,” Delta noted, watching Connie carefully pour the champagne into the long, fluted glasses. “What’s up with her? You guys have a good day together?”

  Gina shook her head as she emptied the chicken out into a bowl. “I wish. No, my little angel is in such a fine mood because she finally got beyond the first level of that damned computer game. You should see her. She’s hooked.”

  “It doesn’t usually take her this long to finish, let alone get beyond the first stage, or level, or whatever-the-hell she calls it.” Delta winked at Connie through the sliding glass door.

  “I know. That’s why she’s feeling a bit triumphant.” Rummaging through the grocery bag, Gina pulled out barbecue sauce and popped open the lid. “She spent the better part of the afternoon at that damned computer.”

  “I suppose it’s better that she chase after warlocks and goblins than other women,” Megan offered.

  Gina shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t suppose another woman would be able to keep her up as long as that game has. She didn’t come to bed until almost ten this morning.”

  Delta peered through the glass door as Connie tossed the second cork for Cagney to chase. “I have to admit, Gina, that I haven’t seen her so involved in one of those silly games as she is with this one.”

  “Maybe we could send her to Adventure Games Anonymous,” Megan offered. “You know, `Hi. My name is Connie, and I’m addicted to computer games.’”

  Delta grinned. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Connie needs her own little world.”

  Gina sighed heavily as she slapped barbecue sauce on the chicken. “It doesn’t usually bother me, but I’ve never seen a game get to her like this one. At one point, she slammed her fist on the desk and yelled at the monitor. It’s frustrating the hell out of her.”

  “Good. Look at it this way: it’ll keep her honest. We certainly don’t want her thinking she’s a genius.”

  Delta winked at Gina, who smiled weakly at her and said, “I don’t know, Del. It feels as if there’s more to it.”

  “Well, you would know. Five years is a long time to spend with a computer dork.” As everyone laughed, Delta looked up from the cutting board and studied Gina’s face. Delta always thought Gina was a handsome woman, and as she approached forty, her temples were the only part of her hair starting to gray. Gina used to say she got ten gray hairs for every patient she failed to help. The gray gave her a distinguished appearance, and Delta always hoped that she would age as gracefully as Gina had.

  “Want me to talk to her?”

  The sliding glass door opened, and Connie leaned in the doorway. “You guys coming or not? I can’t drink all of this delicious champagne by myself.” Connie entered the house and placed her hands on her hips. “Okay, what’s going on here? No, wait,” she said, holding a hand up to stop them, “don’t tell me. You guys are talking about me spending too much time on the computer, aren’t you? I can tell by the look on my lovely gal’s face.” Sidling up to Gina, Connie nuzzled her neck.

  “I was just mentioning how frustrated it’s made you,” Gina explained.

  “You do seem to be a bit . . . entranced.” Delta looked over at the computer screen. The monitor displayed the paused game, showing outstanding graphics that appeared almost three-dimensional. The still picture on the screen looked like an opening to a cave, with large green trees and shrubs all about. It could have been a snapshot, the graphics were so advanced. “Did you just now stop playing?”

  Connie nodded. “About two minutes before you got here. I left it on because I wanted to show you.”

  Delta glanced helplessly at Gina, who merely shrugged.

  “Del, this is one of the toughest games I’ve ever played. Last night, there was this beast with the body of a dog and about fifty snake-heads. I had to find a way to kill it before I could get to the next level. Before I knew it, it was eight in the morning, and I was still battling away.”

  Her interest piqued, Delta started for the computer. “So, how’d you do it?”

  “Oh, no,” Megan groaned, “not you, too.” Taking Gina’s arm, Megan headed for the porch.

  In a flash, Connie was in front of Eddie II with a joystick poised in her hand. She reminded Delta of a little kid showing her best friend all of the toys she got for Christmas. “Here. You try.”

  Delta took the joystick. After Connie released the pause button, Delta maneuvered the dwarf to a position where she could strike with the sword. As soon as the blade went through one of the beast’s heads, another head struck the dwarf character, killing it instantly.

  “What happened?” Delta asked.

  Connie grinned. “That’s what I wanted to know. I stayed up all night trying to stab the right head.”

  “And did you?”

  Before Connie could reply, Gina and Megan entered the room and, as a unit, swiftly pulled their partners away from the computer.

  “This is family night, remember? Quality time, remember? No shop talk and absolutely no computers!”

  For the remainder of the dinner, talk centered around a variety of issues, none of which had to do with police work or computer games.

  Around ten o’clock, Delta and Megan decided it was time to go home.

  “Next week’s family night is at Megan’s, right?”

  Megan nodded. “I’ve reserved the hot tub, so bring your suits. Or

  don’t. It’s all up to you. I thought we could play dirty password among the bubbles.”

  Gina grinned, as she slipped her hand through Connie’s. “Sounds like fun.”

  “Absolutely decadent,” Connie mused. “See you tomorrow night, Del.”

  “You bet.” Delta hooked her arm through Megan’s and started down the walk. Before reaching the car, Delta stopped and turned back toward the door, where Gina and Connie stood arm-in-arm.

  “Hey, Connie, how exactly did you kill that beast?”

  Connie smiled a knowing grin—one that said she had hooked Delta into the mysteries of the game.

  “I poisoned it.”

  “S-10-12, we have a 187 at 2121 Wharton Ave. See the lady.”

  Delta and Jan exchanged glances. Another murder so soon after the last?

  “This is S-10-12. Please 10-13.” Jan asked dispatch to advise them of the condition of the scene.

  “S-10-12, you have a 2-19, suspect fled scene. Owner will meet you at front gate. Copy?”

  Delta glanced a
t Jan, who spoke calmly into the mike. “Dispatch, is that a two one niner?” Jan asked.

  “10-4.”

  “Multiple victims?”

  “Negative.”

  “10-4. Who’s backup?”

  “S-10-11 and R-19-21 will back-up and establish perimeter. Copy?”

  “S-10-12, we copy. S-10-11, what’s your twenty?” Jan asked, wanting to know where S-10-11 was and how long it would take them to arrive. S-10-11 immediately answered.

  “This is S-10-11. We’re four away. We have a 2-13 we’re just clearing. Over.”

  “10-4.”

  Suddenly, dispatch came back on. “S-10-12, the woman specifically requested a female officer.”

  Jan smiled into the mike. “Then you requested the right unit, didn’t you?”

  As the patrol unit zipped through the maze of streets, Jan cleared her throat and stared out the window. “You think it’s him, don’t you?”

  Delta nodded, her stomach quietly convulsing. Since the call was a stabbing, it already fit his M.O. “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Could be gang-related.”

  Delta nodded. “Perhaps.”

  As they walked into the large, immaculate grounds of a Spanish-style home set far back from the street, a near-hysterical woman in her mid-50s jumped out from behind a limousine parked in the circular drive-way. Frantically waving her arms in the air, and mascara running down her post-facelift cheeks, her eyes were wide with terror.

  In the floodlights that brightened the entire front yard, Delta noticed a tall, rather husky man in his 30s leaning against the limo. When he saw Delta, he stood up straight and removed his hands from his pockets. He didn’t say a word but pointed to the woman, who raced around the yard, grabbing her head and her chest and crying “Ohmygod, ohmygod, he’s . . . he’s . . . ”

  Immediately, Jan strode over to the woman and tried to calm her, while keeping a wary eye on the man by the limo. As soon as Jan touched her arm, the woman sat down on the grass and sobbed.

  “I’ll take her into the house and try to calm her down, Del,” Jan said, helping the woman up from the lawn.

  Delta radioed they had arrived before slowly approaching the man.

  “I’m Jordan Martin,” the man said in a deep baritone. “I’m a neighbor.”

  Delta quickly sized him up. For all of his apparent macho nonchalance, the man appeared quite shaken and was trying to hide it, but Delta knew the signs. His face had a pallor to it, and the heavy line of perspiration dotting his upper lip indicated his nervousness.

  “Can I see some ID?” Delta asked, not taking her eyes off his hands.

  Jordan Martin reached into his back pocket and pulled out an old brown leather billfold. As he handed Delta his driver’s license, he told her that he lived behind the old house.

  “I came running as soon as I heard Mrs. Griffin scream. My wife will tell you as much.”

  Keeping one eye trained on the man, Delta looked at his driver’s license and saw that he was, in fact, Jordan Martin, who resided in the house behind the property. This didn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, make him innocent in her eyes. It simply meant he was who he said he was.

  Handing his license back, Delta’s surveyed the property. “Where’s the body?”

  Jordan’s head jerked backwards. “The other side of the car. Hope you haven’t had dinner recently. It’s a pretty gruesome sight.”

  “Well, Mr. Martin, my partner and I would appreciate it if you would have a seat on the porch over there until we can take a look around and ask you a few questions.”

  “I’m not in any trouble, am I?”

  Delta straightened up to her full height. He was still taller than her by a few inches. “That depends. You just stay there while I take a look around.” Delta watched as Jordan lumbered over to the porch and sat down, then rounded the black limo’s front bumper.

  As she came around the driver’s side of the bumper, Delta first saw two shiny black shoes, lying heel up. For a moment, the universal clock rewound itself to that split second in time when she had rounded the bumper of her patrol car to find Miles’s bullet-ridden body bleeding on the pavement.

  So intense was the memory, so deep the wound, that Delta had to steady herself against the limo before continuing.

  What she saw when she came to the front of the limo brought the sour taste of bile to her throat. Lying face down on the pavement, with the back of his head split open, was someone dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform. His head looked like two halves of a watermelon, with bits of gray matter slowly oozing down either side. The grotesque nature of his gaping wound wasn’t the sole reason vomit threatened to escape Delta’s stomach. The slimy brains glistening under the porch lights seemed almost surreal, and the amount of blood almost too vast to comprehend. The hardest element for her to focus on, were handless arms that ended at a puddle of quickly congealing blood, outstretched, as if he had tried to crawl away from his assailant.

  “Oh shit,” Delta muttered, moving to the front of the limo and wiping her mouth with her handkerchief.

  “Pretty nasty stuff, huh?” came Jordan’s deep voice from the porch. Trying to keep the contents of her stomach from flying out of her mouth, Delta inhaled slowly and deeply before walking over to question Mr. Martin, who, as his wife confirmed, neither heard nor saw anything of the attack. He had simply come running to the older woman’s screams.

  When Jan and Mrs. Griffin came back from the house, Delta was covering the body with a sheet from the back of her unit.

  “Del, she says she’d like to stay out here with you and Mr. Martin, if you don’t mind.”

  Delta looked over at the petrified older woman. “No problem. Mr.

  Martin, would you mind sitting on the other side of the porch from Mrs. Griffin until the detectives arrive? They’re going to need separate statements from both of you.”

  “Why can’t I talk to you ladies?” Mrs. Griffin asked, eyes wide with terror. She reminded Delta of a fawn in the middle of the road, about to be hit.

  “Don’t you worry about a thing, Mrs. Griffin. My partner and I are just going to make sure that none of the evidence is destroyed.”

  Mrs. Griffin rubbed her eyes. “Evidence? What’s happening to the world?” Shuffling over to one of the porch chairs, Mrs. Griffin sat down.

  “Did she say anything that could help?” Delta asked Jan.

  Jan’s eyes narrowed. “Poor thing. She kept babbling something about hands. What have we got here anyway?”

  “We’ve got a body with a head split like a dropped coconut and no hands.”

  “No what?”

  “No hands. Cut off and gone.”

  “Oh God. Someone killed him and then cut his hands off?”

  “Or vice versa. I just want to get a good look around before Leonard and his men get here and move us out.”

  “Gotcha. I’ll take care of Mrs. Griffin.” Jan reached up and lightly touched the top of Delta’s arm. “Are you okay? You’re looking a little pale.”

  “If I can keep my burrito down, I should be okay. I don’t suggest taking a look.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t. Unlike you, I don’t have much interest in the macabre. I’ll give you some space.” Jan stepped out of the area, leaving Delta alone.

  Inhaling deeply, Delta forced herself to squat down and tweaked back the top of the cover to take a closer look at the handless arms. The smell of death clung to her clothes and hair like cigarette smoke in a bar.

  Leaning over, careful not to touch the body, Delta studied the pavement beneath the wrists and saw divot marks, one on either side of the wrist, which meant that it had only taken one huge hack to sever the hand from the wrist. Whoever had done this was extremely strong, and used a weapon both heavy and sharp. Examining the marks on the pavement, Delta saw that the ends of the divots were slightly shallower than the middle.

  Tucking her handkerchief back in her pocket, Delta exhaled loudly. With little doubt in her mind she
knew, by the unique manner of the attack, as well as the strength of the blows, who was probably responsible for this. She also knew she was damn tired of people on her beat losing their lives to some deranged psychopath.

  Scanning the area, Delta wondered if he was out there now, watching . . . waiting for his next move. Closing her eyes, Delta briefly listened to herself. She did not feel his ugly and insidious presence; just the spark of a rage slowly kindling beneath the surface. Inhaling slowly and opening her eyes, Delta uncapped her pencil and outlined the entire murder scene in her notebook. The spark had now ignited, and Delta felt the slow burn of anger and determination glow inside her. Delta Stevens didn’t take being on the losing side of anything very well.

  And this was one game she had every intention of winning.

  Even though District Attorney Alexandria Pendleton made it clear that they needed a suspect, Leonard had not handed one over to her. Delta knew it was because he insisted on linking the shooting to the other murders. If he persisted in his line of thinking, the shooting homicide would throw him so far off track, he might never find his way back. In the meantime, people were dying, and it was quite possible that two murderers were on the loose. The thought made Delta’s stomach queasy. Before entering the station, Delta popped two Rolaids into her mouth and chewed them quickly before heading to the bathroom to splash water on her face. When she looked up from the sink, she saw Connie’s reflection in the mirror.

  “Bad night?” Connie asked, holding a towel out to Delta. Pressing it gently to

  her face, Delta breathed deeply into the towel and tried not to think about her burning stomach or searing shoulders. Sighing painfully, Delta looked up from the towel. “Did you hear?”

  “I heard there was another murder, but didn’t get many details. They’ve had me combing the files for information on the shooting.”

  Delta rubbed the back of her neck. “It was bad, Con. Really awful stuff.”

  Connie took Delta’s hand and motioned for her to sit on the bench. Standing behind her, Connie gently rubbed Delta’s neck and shoulders as she had previously on so many nights like these.