The Killing Game

by J. A. Kerley

  Chief Baggs’s memo had pulled a third of the force to my award ceremony. I figured he’d had a PR person write his speech, since he never said anything similar to me.

  “… talent of the MPD marksman who took out the woman perpetrator as Detective Nautilus simultaneously incapacitated her male counterpart…”

  I’d asked Harry to share in the award, but he refused, claiming he’d been beside me for a half-dozen other citations and this time I was on my own. Cal Mallory, our senior marksman, declined as well, not wanting to remind his neighbors his livelihood included shooting people in the head.

  “… ladies and gentlemen of the force and guests, I present Detective Carson Ryder…”

  I strode to the dais as Janet Wing tracked me with a camcorder. Wing was a student intern in the PR office. Our main PR person was Carl Bergen, a retired cop supplementing his pension. Ask Carl what he thought of the New Media, and he’d say he really enjoyed cable TV. Wing, on the other hand, had the department on Facebook from day one and trumpeted the MPD across venues most cops would never see. I figured the net effect was near zero, but Wing was a determined type.

  “… known to everyone in the department. Ladies and gentlemen, Detective Carson Ryder.”

  Chief Baggs recited a few more words and handed me a framed certificate that would look nice in the closet with the others.

  That’s when things got weird.

  Everyone stood, hands pounding as if I were Hank Aaron at his retirement game. Not knowing how to respond, I held the cheesy plaque high, strutting like a card girl at a prize fight. The applause turned to cheers as I sashayed across the stage, some cops singing a tuneless version of “I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)”.

  A perplexed Baggs dismissed the gathering. I went to the foyer, where cheers turned to good-natured insults. Most folks headed to Flanagan’s, a loud and rowdy cop bar. Harry and I booked to a quieter joint a few blocks away. I was still pondering the surreal action at the ceremony.

  “Jesus, Harry,” I said, “it was like everyone made me king for two minutes.”

  My partner tried to hide the smile, couldn’t. “I take it you didn’t read the memo sent out by the new PR intern?” He reached into his jacket pocket for a copied document, slid it across the table.

  The award ceremony for Detective Carson Ryder will be held tonight at seven p.m. in the City Building’s auditorium. Past ceremonies have been sedate and we’d prefer to present a more positive face to the public. Thus when Det. Ryder receives his award I encourage everyone to be upbeat and demonstrative…

  “Upbeat and demonstrative,” I sighed. The whole thing had been a big joke and Wing – now introduced to cop humor – would be more measured with her words in the future.

  A week passed, and I survived the next two academy classes, Wendy Holliday remaining the standout, the sullen Wilbert Pendel her counterbalance. I came to work later on post-class mornings, figuring each two-hour class cost me seven hours in actual time and prep time. I was crossing the room at half-past ten when Tom called across the floor.

  “Carson, see you a moment?”

  I turned to see him hanging up his phone. Tom was leaning back in his chair with his cowboy boots on his desk, hand-tooled, silver-tipped, lacking only spurs to complete the effect. He picked up his Stetson and spun it on one finger, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Please don’t tell me Baggs has set up another award ceremony,” I said.

  Tom grinned, looking like an amused basset hound. “I heard the guys were planning to have a little fun.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Little.”

  He went serious. “Listen, Carson, what was that thing you told me about psychopaths and animals? The markers?”

  “A huge per cent of serial killers have three markers in their history: pyromania, chronic bedwetting, and cruelty to animals.”

  Tom sighed. “The dispatcher got a call from Al Hernandez in Animal Control and it got bumped to me. Can you spare a few minutes to talk to the guy?”

  I called Hernandez. What I heard had me in my car five minutes later, roaring to northwest Mobile, up where the auto graveyards and carpet outlets turned into farms and woods.

  Hernandez was on a small county road, against a white van with DEPARTMENT OF ANIMAL CONTROL, MOBILE, ALABAMA on its side. A rope-skinny guy in a brown uniform, sleeves rolled up, sinewy forearms, he had a high forehead, inquisitive eyes and a neat mustache. He led the way to a slow-flowing muddy creek below the bridge, a shallow pool on the upstream side, sandy hummocks downstream. Trash thrown from above was everywhere.

  Swatting insects from my face, I followed Hernandez to the downstream side and smelled decomposition. Scattered across the ground were four small carcasses, cats. All were burned and split open, like they’d been gutted. Three lacked tails. Hernandez had the right instinct: the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

  “Couple kids from a farm down the road found ’em,” he said. “I figure the carcasses got flung from a car, expected to float away. Some probably did, but these landed on high ground.”

  I studied the stinking ruination at my feet, sighed and ran to my cruiser, back thirty seconds later with latex gloves and a twenty-gallon trash bag.

  “What you gonna do?” Hernandez asked.

  “Get myself on the pathology department’s shit list for about a month,” I said.

  6

  “Autopsy a cat?” Clair Peltier said, frowning at the lumpy bag in my hand. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  She was assembling instruments for a procedure. With her coal-black hair and outsize arctic-blue eyes, Clair Peltier, director of the southwest division of the Alabama Bureau of Forensics, was the only person I knew who made formless surgery garb look sexy. She flicked a switch, testing the high-powered light above. I made the mistake of looking up.

  “Actually, several cats,” I said, blinking away shapes floating before my eyes. Clair thumbed a button and water washed down the table. Satisfied with the flow rate, thumbed it off.

  “For what case, specifically?”

  “You know how the maniacs start, Clair. Bedwetting, fire—”

  Clair nodded to names on a whiteboard: four postmortems scheduled for today alone. “Autopsies are backlogged, Carson. The human kind. And I’m short a pathologist.”

  “Please, Clair?” I lifted the bag of dead cats and tried to appear needy.

  She shook her head. “There’s not even a case file to assign to the work.”

  “Clair…”

  “Sorry, Carson.”

  I was three steps gone when I turned and emptied the bag onto the gleaming table. Clair’s eyes flared. “What are you…” A tailless carcass caught her eye. She frowned and leaned closer to the charred husks that had once been living creatures, reading every mark and torment on the pathetic remains.

  “Put them in cooler eight,” she said. “I’ll invent a case number.”

  Gregory’s fingers tapped the keys of the computer on his desk, developing software for precision heat delivery in ceramic coatings applications. It was supremely boring. The company was located in Birmingham, but there was no need for Gregory to work on-site. In fact, he’d only visited the headquarters once, when he interviewed for the position. Because of his unusual health history, he’d undergone a trial period, but surpassed his employer’s expectations several times over. He worked an average of a dozen hours a week, though he billed for thirty. And was still lauded for his productivity and “elegant” shortcuts.

  He stood from his chair, stretched, ran a few faces found in a recent magazine – Congestion-free at Last; Travel Opportunities Await; Concerned About Inflation? – then went downstairs to find fuel.

  The carpeted stairs led to Gregory’s living room, low black-fabric couches and chairs with burnished-steel frames, the floor polished oak parquet, the lamps mere stalks with globes. The entertainment center held a large-screen television and the latest audio devices, including surround sound. The other r
ooms were decorated in the same spare and sleek fashion.

  Gregory had bought the house after qualifying for his inheritance. The first month his sole furnishings were a mattress on the floor, table and chair in the kitchen, an overstuffed reading chair and lamp and a television to provide items to talk with the morons about.

  Life had been simple and perfect.

  Three weeks after Gregory’s arrival Ema had visited unexpectedly. He inspected his visitor via the door lens, seeing a pink pendant floating between a double chin and milk-white cleavage. For a split second his knees loosened and his breath seemed to stick in his throat. Inhaling deeply, he’d opened the door with a broad expression from a dishwasher-soap ad, You’ll Say WOW at Sparkle-Clean Dishes!

  “I knew it’d take you for ever to invite me over,” Ema said, already apologizing. “I hope you’re not angry with me dropping by and—”

  “It’s a wonderful surprise. I’ve just been working.”

  Ema entered the living room. “Goodness, where’s the rest of your furniture?”

  “I, uh, haven’t had time.”

  “You brainy types. We’ll start at the stores this weekend.”

  “I … have someone helping me already,” Gregory invented, aghast at the prospect of spending hours in Ema’s company, his face going into spasms with the effort of matching her enthusiasm for each color and pattern and item of furniture.

  Ema clapped her hands. “You hired a decorator!”

  “He’s coming this week,” Gregory said. “I can’t wait to get started.”

  Cursing his fate, he contacted a decorator minutes after Ema padded away. The man arrived the next day, a leather-trousered robot that walked as if it were dancing. Gregory’s instructions had been simple: “Make it look like someone lives here.”

  “Don’t you live here?” the decorator replied, puzzled.

  Gregory felt his intestines begin to constrict as his mind raced to find the solution. Then the deco-robot clapped its hands and laughed as if in appreciation of a joke. “Oh, wait … I get it. You want a lived-in quality. Something comfy. No problem. I just need your preferences in style, colors…”

  Gregory retreated to his Faces room, digging through magazines and expelling gases from his painful tubes. Five minutes later he handed the man a page from a magazine. “This is it.”

  The deco-robot studied the page, puzzled again. “Danish ultra-Modern. Not what I picture as old-shoe comfy.”

  “That’s what I want,” Gregory said, tapping the photo. “It looks easy to care for.”

  “I’ll contact sources, show you photos. I’ll call soon with choices in—”

  “No,” Gregory said. “You do it. Colors, furniture. Everything.”

  The man showed confusion again, but Gregory spoke four words he’d found helpful in dealing with the robots.

  He said, “Price is no object.”

  The decorator said, “Whatever you want, sir.”

  The empty spaces had been filled with couches, chairs, sleek floor lamps, accessories such as the red glass vase on the mantel. Above the mantel hung a huge, multicolored mish-mash the decorator had called “an abstraction redolent of Kandinsky”.

  Interested in the odd phenomenon of hanging someone else’s scribbling on one’s walls, Gregory had borrowed books on modern art from the library. He now knew what Kandinskys were, but couldn’t understand why. The only works he understood were by Andy Warhol. Products, packages, people, faces, all reduced to flat simplicity and repeated endlessly in different shades…

  Warhol knew.

  Gregory continued to his kitchen and blended organic power bars with almond milk, honey, protein powders and vitamins, drinking the foaming concoction. He felt a rumble in his bowels as the food filled his stomach, a sharp pain in his tubes, the new food pressing vapors from his body. His knees loosened and his face went slack. His hands began to shake and long-gone voices filled his mind.

  “You have splendid vodka tonight. And such food!”

  “Carnati, piftie, mamaliga. Tuica made from plums as sweet as your mouth. Call Petrov and Cojocaru. And, of course, sweet Dragna. Tell them time grows short and we must enjoy our remaining nights to the fullest. Hurry, then we’ll go select tonight’s robots.”

  Gregory leaned against the counter and caught his breath.

  What happened?

  It was the remnant of a dream, he knew. He had built a wall between him and his dreams, but on rare occasions images pushed through. He must have dreamt last night, a piece of dream finding a crack in the wall. He looked around the room, needing to focus on something beyond unbidden voices and pictures.

  Bong bong bong…

  Gregory heard the alarm ring on his computer upstairs: time to go out and check his trap. The dream disappeared within a quickening pulse and he swiftly changed into outside clothes. He had another cat, skinny and white with brown spots. It mewed plaintively and pressed against the furthest corner of the wire mesh, shaking with terror.

  “Don’t worry,” Gregory grinned, the bad dream eclipsed by his new acquisition. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  7

  “What was that, Detective Ryder … did you say lack of effect? What kind of effect?”

  I was starting to think Wilbert Pendel would never graduate from the academy. The kid wasn’t stupid, he just seemed unable to listen or focus.

  “I didn’t say E-ffect, Pendel,” I explained. “I said Af-fect. A common characteristic of someone suffering antisocial personality disorder – sociopathy – is a lack of affect. Can anyone tell me what I’m talking about?”

  Class was nearing its end and again the students had drifted to homicide investigation. Though most homicides were depressing sagas of love gone wrong or gang avengement or drug-driven slayings, everyone seemed fascinated by the Mansons and the Bundys and the Gacys.

  My question launched a smattering of hands, the majority of students pretending to study the array of cell phones, laptops, iPads and other electronic wizardry on their desktops. On my first day I had questioned the need for the gadgetry. It was politely noted that I had compiled digital photos and words in PowerPoint and was writing on a five-thousand-dollar interactive digital whiteboard.

  I indicated the nearest palm. “Yes, Miss Holliday?”

  “Doesn’t affect mean, uh, showing your feelings? So wouldn’t lack of affect be showing no feelings?”

  I nodded. “Affect is emotion displayed by facial and body gestures, laughter, tears. Show most people a fluffy puppy and they’ll ooh and ahhh and gush about cuteness. A sociopath views only an object captioned Dog. A puppy, a choking baby, a blind man in traffic, all carry zero emotional weight. Lacking a conscience, a sociopath feels neither guilt nor shame. Ditto for morality, responsibility, compassion, love … all as foreign as the topography of Pluto.”

  “Having zero conscience sounds like complete freedom, in a way,” Terrell Birdly said quietly, his legs crossed in the aisle. “There’s nothing to keep you from doing anything you want.”

  The skinny black kid with the heavy-lidded eyes could cut to the heart of an issue. “No boundaries.” I nodded. “It’s what makes the violent ones so dangerous.”

  “Aren’t they all violent?” Jason Kellogg asked.

  “Most are content to disrupt the lives of those nearest them through lies and manipulation. Only a few develop homicidal leanings, thankfully.”

  “Do they feel fear?” Birdly asked; another good question.

  “Heart-pumping, fight-or-flight adrenalin?” I said. “Most shrinks don’t think so. What socios do have, the bright ones, is a powerful drive to avoid negative results, such as incarceration.”

  “If sociopaths show no emotion, how do they get by?” Amanda Sanchez frowned, her round face framed by close-cropped chestnut hair. Her silver hoop earrings seemed large enough to pick up broadcast signals.

  “They can be superb mimics, training themselves to display correct emotional responses. Sociopaths are self-pr
eservation machines and the better they blend into the crowd, the more they can accomplish. False emotions are their currency.”

  Wendy Holliday’s hand rose haltingly. “I might have once heard a notion, called functionalism or something like that, which says emotions are an evolutionary response to stimuli and are designed to keep people safe. Like smiling when meeting someone to show you mean no harm. Or displaying sympathy to create a bond. Sociopaths don’t only learn the rules of emotion to blend in, it’s essential for manipulation.”

  “Exactly,” I said, my voice curt. “See me after the class.”

  A moment of uncomfortable silence as eyes turned to Holliday, now shrinking in her desk. Another hand lifted.

  “Miss Lemlitch?”

  “I was just thinking that it seems a lonely life. Being a sociopath.”

  “The closest they probably come is feeling a lack of someone to manipulate. What we call loneliness can’t occur in a sociopath.”

  “I don’t get it. Why not?”

  “Normal humans define and mingle interior and exterior relationships. We experience the idea of Me, plus the broader concept of Us, the world of relationships and commonalities. Knowing the world of Us, the normal Me can feel loneliness when Us is lacking. Sociopaths exist solely in the realm of Me. When you are your own universe, there’s no place for Us.”

  “But they have to deal with the Us,” Amanda Sanchez said. “Doesn’t that pull them into the real world or whatever?”

  I said, “Take it, Holliday.”

  Confusion in her eyes. “Excuse me, Detective?”

  “I’m ceding the floor. Answer the question: How do sociopaths deal with the concept of Us?”

  Holliday swallowed hard. “Uh, I guess in their world it’s not Us, it’s Them. Me versus Them. Me is inflated via pathological megalomania or narcissism, while Them is demoted to insignificance, a collection of idiots and fools.”

  “Good,” I said. “Us is an inclusive collective, Them isn’t.”

  “My head’s spinning,” someone said, sparking laughter.

  “Are such people born or made?” Jason Kellogg asked.