The Killing Game

by J. A. Kerley

  What happened next?

  Gregory escaped after a depressing half-hour. The smell of Ema and the mamaliga and all the female odors of the house had fired up a shrieking pain that pounded his temples. He returned to his house to try again to clean his car, but grew livid with anger once more: the stains had set and the smell had gotten worse in the heat of the garage.

  There was no sign of the porn magazine the cops had found and brandished, as if it never existed except as a whip to flay him with. That seemed odd, and Gregory looked beneath the seats, in the glove box. The fucking thing was nowhere to be seen, nothing in the car but a stench as thick as cold mamaliga.

  He had to sell the car, his beautiful creamy Avalon. He could never get the stink out. A thirty-five-thousand-dollar car turned to dross by the morons. The two cops were subhumans from the robot caste and Gregory would grind them beneath his heel as if he was stepping on ants.

  Striving for calm in his writhing guts, he made himself walk to the utility sink in the corner to soak his hands in de-greasing soap. No, Gregory revised as his palms rubbed beneath the water. It wasn’t the ants. The real problem was the anthill. It wasn’t the two morons who had savaged him, it was the process that had created them, made them feel invincible. They were a Blue Tribe. Their own form of dress, symbols, rituals, special pledges and codes … all tribal.

  Gregory returned to the cool of his house and recalled lessons from history. When one tribe wanted to inflict great hurt on another tribe, they killed its chief, a symbolic beheading of the entire tribe. Behead your enemy and jam his head on a pike, a dripping and fly-encrusted trophy that said I Win, You Lose.

  Gregory suddenly felt a delicious calm in his tormented belly. He would humiliate the police, the Blue Tribe. It would take work, it would take planning, but he would behead the Mobile Police Department.

  He would kill its Chief.

  Moarte. Death.

  12

  “I think I have all the information I need for my article, Dr Szekely,” the young reporter said. She clicked off her recorder and closed her pocket-sized notepad. “Is there anything else you want to add?”

  Dr Sonia Szekely stared across her paper-strewn desk at her questioner: blonde, blue-eyed, skin the hue of a spring peach. The reporter wore a loose and flippy miniskirt, tank top, pink running shoes over short white socks, and represented the newspaper of a local university. I’ve got plenty to add, Szekely considered saying. If you’ve got the stomach for it, which I doubt. Instead, Szekely looked down at her age-wrinkled hands, fought her need to light a cigarette, and regarded the reporter with bemusement.

  “How old are you, my dear?” Szekely asked. Her eyes wandered past the reporter to her overloaded bookshelves holding such titles as Ceauşescu’s Orphanages: a History of Hell, The Pathology of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Psychic Damage in Early Childhood. Other titles were in Romanian.

  “I’m twenty, Doctor. Almost twenty-one. Why?”

  “The worst of what I’m telling you happened before you were born. The wretched Ceaușescu regime in Romania, the plight of the orphans, the decades of horror and human wreckage—”

  “I got that, Doctor. About how Cacesku—”

  “Ceaușescu,” Szekely corrected. “Nicolae Ceaușescu.”

  “Sure,” the reporter nodded, flipping open her notepad to glance inside. “Ceaușescu wanted to grow the country’s workforce so he outlawed birth control and demanded large families, but the country was so desperately poor the children couldn’t be cared for and were placed in state-run orphanages.” The reporter wrinkled her button nose. “Nasty places.”

  “Yes,” Szekely nodded, thinking, They were more than nasty, miss, they were hell on earth, a dark bloom of evil that poisons to this day.

  “But what does my age have to do with that nasty moment in history, Doctor?”

  Szekely felt her legs propel her to standing. Heard her voice grow loud.

  “It’s not history!”

  The reporter’s eyes went wide. Szekely waved her hand in apology and sat down again. Took a deep breath.

  “Forgive me. My work means reliving events of that time almost daily. Plus I’m a bit fearful you’ll view these orphanages as having no more hand in our present lives than a faded newsreel from World War II. Yet they’re with us today. That’s the real story.”

  The young woman frowned. “But if the Romanian orphanages have been changed and the children saved—”

  “Physical salvation differs from psychic salvation. Physically, the children may have been removed from conditions of horror, but in many cases the horrors have not been removed from the children.”

  “Sure, Doctor. Some poor kids probably have nightmares and things. I know I would if I’d started life like that.”

  Szekely began to speak but closed her mouth. The intern reporter had most likely grown up in a bright home with a green lawn and white picket fence. Enjoyed large and healthy meals each day. Generations of adoring family would have surrounded and coddled her. Her bedroom held toys and dolls and lace curtains, cool in summer and warm in winter. She would have spoken at two years of age, walked at three, been in school at five. Interacting with her fellow humans would have been as natural as giggling.

  Could the young woman in any way comprehend what happened to children who grew up in a box with no human interaction? Wallowing in their excretions? Feeding on slop, like hogs? Could the pretty young thing ever envision what some of these broken children became as they aged? It was an impossible task. Szekely knew; she had been studying such children for years and was herself still capable of awe at the horrors inflicted on the innocent.

  Szekely looked into the eyes of the reporter, the woman’s pencil now tapping the notepad. She was impatient to get to her next assignment, something to do with a circus in town.

  “I’ll see you to the door,” Szekely said, standing.

  They strode along the hall to the reception area and out the door into a bright Gulf Coast morning. A faux-wood plaque on the side of the red-brick building said Coastways Behavioral Medicine, LLC. Beneath it were the names of several psychologists including Dr Sonia Szekely. Under Szekely’s banner a small sign proclaimed EEOSA.

  The reporter thanked Szekely and promised to send a copy of the article when it was out, a month perhaps, or more, depending on how much of the paper would be devoted to sporting triumphs.

  “Remember,” Szekely called to the woman’s departing back, “it’s not history. It lives with us today.”

  But the reporter had already hidden inside her iPod. Szekely shook her head and watched the woman’s tiny silver Honda buzz from the lot. She was turning toward the building when her eyes fell across a familiar face in an automobile near the front of the lot. The face suddenly looked embarrassed and sank two inches, as if trying to hide below the dashboard.

  Szekely waved and walked close. “Goodness, Ema, what are you doing here?”

  “I, uh, was out driving and—”

  “Needed to see me about something?”

  The woman’s fingers drummed a nervous tattoo on the wheel. She started to speak, swallowed.

  Szekely frowned. “Is anything wrong, Ema?”

  “No … I mean, I uh … guess I just need some reassurance.” A sigh and a self-deprecating smile. “Like always, Doctor.”

  Szekely grinned and nodded toward the offices. “I’ve got a group session at one, Ema. I’m yours until then. How about we grab some coffee and have a nice girl-to-girl chat? That should make things better.”

  13

  Night had fallen. Gregory sat in his living room surrounded by pages he’d gathered from Google, copies of everything available on Chief Baggs, mostly mentions in newspaper articles. The data focused on Baggs the cop, which was fine, but Gregory wanted more: what centered the entity known as Carleton T. Baggs? Where did he live? How did he live? What patterns could be discerned in his life?

  If it’s seven fifteen on a Tuesday evening in summer, Gregory thought,
making notes as he went, where, statistically, would I expect to find Carleton T. Baggs?

  When he’d pulled all the newspaper data on Baggs, Gregory frowned at the paucity of his file and considered where other information might be found. On a whim he tried YouTube, entering Baggs, Chief, Mobile, Alabama, Police.

  Nothing.

  But there was a hit on Mobile Alabama Police, one titled Det. Carson Ryder Lauded for Bravery. It had been logged into the system a couple days before by someone named Janet Wing. Gregory expanded the screen and hit Play.

  He leaned back in his chair as the camera panned ranks of cops in a large room, some in uniform, others in street clothes, slack-jawed droolers getting taxpayer money to sit on their asses. The camera zoomed in on a slender, suited man standing from a front seat as someone called his name, Detective Carson Ryder. Ryder seemed about six feet tall, dark hair falling over his ears.

  Gregory whispered “troglodyte” as Ryder approached the podium, his suit looking like it had cost fifty bucks with tie and shoes thrown in. The haircut was a ten-minute, ten-dollar job by a barber named Mort or Ralph. The knot of the Ryder-ape’s tie would have been more at home on a bowline.

  But when the man forswore the step-stairs to the stage and took the half-meter jump as a natural extension of his stride, troglodyte suddenly didn’t fit. The man moved with a fluidity Gregory had noted in athletes, though nothing about him seemed particularly athletic save for shoulders a bit wider than the norm.

  The man stepped into white light beside a podium. The camera panned left and Gregory’s breath froze in his throat. Baggs was the voice who had summoned Ryder to the podium. They touched palms in an imitation handshake and Baggs handed Ryder a framed certificate.

  Gregory froze the video and studied his adversary, Baggs, a large man with veiled eyes and mottled skin, attempting to hide encroaching baldness with a comb-over, which merely served to highlight the condition. He looked stupid, which Gregory had expected, needing only a line of drool down his chin to complete the picture.

  This is my quarry, Gregory thought as his heart increased its rhythm, burning the image in his brain. This man is dead. Gregory re-started the video, hoping for additional footage of Baggs.

  But he found something more interesting. When the Ryder-cop took the certificate, the camera image widened to show an audience leaping to their feet with hands pounding. Ryder studied the crowd, then commenced what seemed to be a ritualized step-pattern, holding the award aloft. Was Ryder dancing? His action further inflamed the crowd. Somewhere in the room chanting started, the words indiscernible but clearly known by everyone.

  Braka ros n’da hasun…

  I faw telawan telawon

  When Ryder finally stepped from the stage he was enveloped in a sea of cops. Baggs stood alone on the stage, looking shrunken, uncomfortable and even more stupid.

  Puzzled by the contrast, Gregory did a Google search on Carson Ryder, discovering he’d been the youngest patrol officer to make detective, recipient of a dozen commendations for bravery and resourcefulness. He’d been an Officer of the Year when in uniform, had twice been Detective of the Year. Archived photos showed Ryder receiving commendations from the last four mayors, three chiefs of police, and two citizens’ groups.

  Gregory closed his eyes and saw Ryder holding his victory citation high. He added the applause. The cheers. The chanting. The rush of the crowd when Ryder stepped from the stage. There could be only one conclusion…

  The man named Carson Ryder was the Blue Tribe’s Warrior.

  Though the Chief was the MPD’s head, Gregory realized, a warrior was the department’s heart. Baggs himself was meaningless, as replaceable as a hat. It showed in his face when the crowd ignored him to pay cheering tribute to Ryder.

  It was Ryder who was irreplaceable. Thus it was Ryder who had to die. But Ryder couldn’t die in battle. That would turn him into a martyr. He had to die in the worst way possible for a warrior …

  In shame.

  Gregory turned his attention back to YouTube, saw one remaining video under Mobile Police Department. Four minutes and thirty-nine seconds in length, it carried the title of Random Nightmares. Gregory pressed Play.

  Five minutes later Gregory had a perfect plan to destroy Carson Ryder.

  Heart racing like he’d just found a cat in the trap, sweat glistening across his palms, Gregory stood and held his hands high, mimicking Ryder’s dance steps at the ceremony and aping the MPD’s praise chant.

  “I faw telawan telawon … I faw telawan telawon…”

  Harry and I spent several days working a case, trying to put the hammer down on a dope dealer who thought a nine-millimeter was the best way to deal with competition, a not-uncommon career move in the illicit-substances biz. We’d returned at six to read the newspaper. Alcohol was not allowed in the shop, which was why our beer cans were hidden in foam jackets.

  Footsteps behind me turned into the Buddha walking our way in a three-piece suit, a smile on his round face, his head as bald as a melon: Don Shumuchuru.

  “Don,” I said. “Great to hear your mom’s doing better.”

  “They adjusted her meds and she’s like a new person. Thanks for handling the classes. And don’t worry, I’m back in the saddle again.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I’ll pick up on the sessions.” He grinned. “You just got two nights a week of your life returned, buddy.”

  “Uh, thanks Don…”

  Don shot me a thumbs up and retreated. Harry was staring at me across his coffee mug, an eyebrow cocked in interest.

  “What?” I said to my partner.

  “Looks like school’s out,” he said.

  14

  Gregory was cross-legged on his living-room floor. He’d done an hour of Bowflex and taken a shower. Supper was protein powder with honey and three slices of organic wholewheat bread.

  Beside him was his favorite object, a compound bow, its profile resembling a mechanical bat with outstretched wings. It had a sixty-pound pull that fired an arrow at over two hundred miles an hour. Gregory had asked the decorator if the bow might be hung over the fireplace in place of the scribble-painting, but the man’s face had told Gregory he was in one of those areas where he lacked understanding.

  The bow had been a thirteenth-birthday gift from his stepfather so the two could enjoy deer season together. Gregory’s stepfather had grown up on a farm in central Alabama and when his parents died had inherited the six-hundred-acre tract. By that time he was living and working in Mobile, but he’d kept the farm, leasing it to tenant farmers and hunting in the two-hundred-acre woods. Whenever they went out together, the old man was always blabbing about how much he enjoyed hunting, loved the woods, loved the streams.

  Over there, son, is where my father bagged a fourteen-point buck. How I loved to walk these woods with him, Gregory, and I wish I could have just one of those days back…

  A tear rolling down the old man’s cheek, weird.

  Gregory was fascinated by the word Love. The morons used it as if it meant so much, but also to mean very little. People said they loved other people. Some said they loved their automobiles. Others used the exact same word about canaries, or cats or dogs. People loved Mexican food. Or their shoes. Or a paint color. It was another trait of the morons that they had no solid meaning for a word they used like water.

  Gregory had been to funerals where the word seemed to dominate … yayaya loved his children, yayayaya, a lover of humanity yayayaya we will miss his love yayayaya … and all the morons who had loved the piece of dead stuff laying in the box would cry and howl and moan and act like death had happened to them. The person was gone: find someone else to do what they did for you.

  But no, it was Love, death, pain, love death pain … which was really pretty interesting when you thought about it.

  Despite its liquid character, Love somehow had a big influence on the idiots, and Gregory knew whatever the word meant to the morons, it must have been something like what he
applied to the bow. Probably even more: people said they would die for love, but there was no way Gregory would fucking die for the bow. It was, after all, just wood and metal and plastic. If it was him or the bow, the bow would be out the window justlikethat.

  Gregory stopped thinking about Love – an un- understandable concept – and picked up his bow. He and his new gift had been inseparable for weeks, the boy caring less for hunting with his stepfather – and listening to all those stories – than waiting for the old man to go on some errand so Gregory could hide in the woods and shoot at everything that came into view: birds, rabbits, groundhogs, dogs…

  Gregory had come close to being in trouble once when he shot a neighbor’s dog, but claimed he’d thought the yellow Lab was a coyote.

  “Yellow Labs don’t look nothing like a coyote,” the neighbor had said. “That boy’s lyin’ through his teeth.”

  “You hold it right there,” Gregory’s stepfather said. “Anyone can make a mistake.”

  “My dog got shot twice, once in the hindquarters and once in the head. I think that boy crippled him for fun and killed him when he got bored.”

  “You hold your tongue, now—”

  “That dead-face kid may be some kind of mental wizard but that don’t make him right in the head, everyone in the county knows it too. You owe me five hundred bucks for the dog or I’m bringin’ the sheriff in.”

  Gregory’s father had said nothing, but the bow disappeared. Gregory regained it two weeks later by telling his stepfather how much he loved hunting, especially with you and could we do it some more real soon? Please, Daddy?

  He grinned at the memory. Call the limpy old fucker Daddy and Gregory could get anything he wanted, kind of like pulling Ema’s strings.

  Kayla Ballard shook her strawberry-blonde hair over her shoulders and patted her face with a bandana, the air in the university’s greenhouse dense with humidity. She studied rows of five-inch-tall cotton plants in individual planters, making notes on their size and health. Each plant was graded on eight points and turned into statistical models.