The Killing Game

by J. A. Kerley

  The third morning found me awake before dawn, sitting on the deck as a storm front dragged toward the land, smelling rain well in advance of its arrival in howling sheets that beat the gray sea into a froth. By the time the front had passed, leaving low dark clouds that drizzled erratically, I was in my bedroom pulling on my darkest suit.

  Today was the day of Tommy Brink’s funeral.

  Given Ms Brink’s attitude toward police, I probably wasn’t welcome, but killers sometimes attended the services of their victims, enthralled by their handiwork. Harry would be there, as well as two guys chosen for their ability to spot unusual behavior while blending into a crowd. I’d hoped to enlist a woman, but all were on other assignments.

  I thought a moment, tying my tie for the fourth time, and reached for my phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Wendy, this is Carson Ryder. Doing anything for the next two hours or so?”

  “I was going to study for your class. Got another offer?”

  I was on my way to pick her up ten minutes later. She stepped from her apartment in a pitch-perfect dress, charcoal gray, mid-calf, with dark hose and black pumps. She carried a small black clutch purse and an umbrella.

  When we arrived at the cemetery, the rain had returned, the sky as gray as slate. Harry was standing by his old red Volvo wagon, hiding his surprise when Holliday exited my truck.

  “Are we ready?” I asked, looking toward the white tent in the distance.

  “As I’ll ever be,” Holliday said.

  “Once again into the breach,” I said, taking a deep breath and pushing my feet forward.

  I’d always felt the funeral of an elderly person should be on a bright day where the sun shone down and the world resolved into tight detail, a day for celebration, since a person who had made a long passage – long and healthy, hopefully – should shine hope across the attendees and lighten their natural sorrow. But I also felt the funerals of children were best served by days of rain and chill, dark clouds hovering, since a life drawn short was an ugly thing, and for the sun to warmly and merrily illuminate such an occasion seemed far too harsh an irony.

  But I was reconsidering my thoughts as I walked to the gravesite, Harry and Holliday at my side, our umbrellas beaten by rain. Bright and open days are best for all such events, I thought, with cloud-free skies of depthless blue and our sorrow wide in the light of a blazing sun as we balance life against grief. Low gray skies and a mocking rain serve only to compress us into ourselves, perhaps the worst place to be at such moments.

  I kept my eyes moving as we walked among others heading toward the gravesite. But the poor and ragged folks I saw had no hint of the madman or killer in their eyes, only grief.

  There were perhaps four dozen in attendance, more women than men, the women mostly past fifty. I saw Arletta Brink at the graveside, staring blankly as a young and suited man from the funeral parlor held an umbrella above. No one had told her to dress in black or, if so, she’d ignored or forgotten it, her scarlet dress short and with a low neckline. Beside her was the sixtyish woman we’d seen at the hospital, her face a mask of sorrow, a tissue at her eyes.

  I let my eyes wander the encircling marble monuments, many holding baskets of flowers real and false. My focus drifted across the open grave to Harry, hands crossed at his waist, his eyes scanning. To the right I saw Preston Fuller, a lifelong beat cop who’d seen everything and could spot an out-of-place person the way most people could tell blue from red.

  When the service was over and the simple box had descended into the earth, Harry and I crossed to pay our respects to Miz Brink as she stood leaning against a tree and smoking a cigarette. The older woman was six paces away, staring into the open grave. I saw that she was shaking, though the morning was becoming hot.

  “What you po-lice doing here?” Brink asked as we walked up.

  “We came to pay our respects, Miz Brink,” Harry said. “We’re sorry for your—”

  “I doan need y’all’s respect. Ain’t nothing but a lie anyway.” She stomped away and I approached the woman beside the grave.

  “Excuse me, ma’am. You’re Tommy’s grandmother?”

  I don’t think she heard. I felt a hand on my arm and turned to a frail and elderly woman in her eighties. The hand drew me from the woman at the grave, a few paces away. “That’s Miz Francine Minear, Tommy’s aunt on his mama’s side,” the woman whispered. “She’s all tore up inside. That boy was her whole life.”

  I heard a soft wail and looked to the woman at the grave. Tears were racing down her cheeks and dropping from beneath the veil.

  “Do you have any idea why someone would try and hurt Tommy, ma’am?” I asked the woman at my side. “Has anyone said anything about why?”

  She shook her head. “That boy was pure joy, never made an enemy. Arletta prob’ly didn’t tell you Tommy was set to get a new operation where they change the insides of your bones. It makes your body fix itself. Five more months, Tommy would have been fixed.”

  “How could I do that?” the woman at the grave whispered.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the woman beside me said, stepping to Tommy’s aunt, who was shaking as if she was being ripped asunder from within.

  “I could have taken that boy as my own,” she said to herself, voice growing louder. “God knows Arletta gave me reason enough. But I failed him, always hoping Arletta would learn what a fine little angel she’d been blessed with. It should be me down in that ground, but it’s an innocent lamb never did nothing but love people.”

  I’d seen stress hysteria before and knew she was slipping fast. The elderly woman by my side waved for the other mourning women then threw her arms around her distraught companion. But Francine Minear tore free and dropped to her knees beside the hole, head craned toward the sky.

  “Take me, God,” she screamed. “And bring Tommy back! Kill ME!”

  A half-dozen women in black raced to the aunt, the minister running in as well. “KILL ME INSTEAD,” Tommy’s aunt begged the clouds, her make-up dissolving down her face, her hat and veil tumbling from her head and into the grave. “PLEASE KILL ME!”

  “I think we’re done here,” I said.

  It was late afternoon when Gregory pulled into the cemetery, the recent rain rising as steam toward a clearing sky. Assuring himself the path was clear – five hours now since the service – he parked and strode the grass with a bouquet in hand. He passed the mounded dirt of a fresh grave, the small stone engraved with the name of Thomas T. Brink and the ten-year span of his existence.

  Gregory continued to a large slab of marble commemorating the Weisses, Johanna and Howard, dead for over a decade and their grave flanked by two flower-filled urns. Gregory reached into an urn to retrieve a video camera the size of a pack of cigarettes. Aimed at Tommy Brink’s service, the recorder had vacuumed two hours of data.

  He was on the road minutes later, taking another surveillance run past a house on the southern side of Mobile, one inhabited by a pair of men. He’d added it to his list of potentials a few days ago, and was now making observations several times a day.

  I returned home at five and walked Mr Mix-up along the strand, weaving through tourists and letting giggling kids pet my odd-looking pooch, a hundred-plus pounds of patchwork parts and colors. Mix-up responded by rolling in the sand, his tail whipping circles and his tongue darting at every face that neared.

  But it was more than children who found fascination with Mix-up. His impromptu admirers included a number of women in their late twenties and thirties who studied Mix-up’s jaunty saunter for several moments before running over to lavish attention.

  It didn’t escape me that many were tourist ladies in swimwear, the newly purchased suits too abbreviated for casual poolside at their northern apartments or swim clubs, but perfect for coastal beaches where sun sought skin and the anonymity of a one-week stay kept bright shreds of cloth flying from the shops of Dauphin Island. In the past – and here I’m going back weeks – I might have allowed
Mix-up to lead me past laughs and explanations about his name into drinks on my deck as the sun hid under night and the white moon turned pleasant talk to husky whispers.

  Instead I let him lead me away, down the beach and home, my only deck companions my dog and the hiss of low waves on wet sand. I was too benumbed by the day to seek anything but quiet and, truth be told, the one woman that seemed to fit in my mind was Wendy Holliday.

  24

  “Grigor?” A man’s voice. “Are you hungry?”

  Gregory was dreaming. He rarely dreamed or, if he did, a special wall in his mind never let him see himself dreaming. When he’d first come to America, he had terrible dreams. Dreams he could walk through, as if a path had been installed within the dream. When nothing stopped the dreams, Gregory heard a voice in his head. “Build a wall,” the head-voice said. “A wall between you and the dream. They can’t hurt you when you don’t see them.”

  “You’re here late tonight … Doctor.” A woman’s voice. “And you look sad.”

  “Ceaușescu’s time has been over for four years, Nurse Vaduva. We’ve been too far from prying eyes, but it’s all dissolving. Our time is nearly over. Are we alone?”

  “Until dawn … Emil.”

  “Who sits at the guard desk tonight, Sorina?” the Doctor said. Gregory couldn’t see his real face, it was behind a mask turned inside out. He couldn’t even see the mask, just its rippled and yellow backside. Over the mask the Doctor wore opaque metal glasses. Sometimes a slit opened in the mask and displayed three silver teeth, two canines up, one incisor down. They filled the quivering slit with vampire light.

  “Big Petrov and Cojocaru,” Sorina Vaduva said. All Gregory saw of the nurse’s face was a pair of high and angular cheekbones that resembled bat wings. Her body was full within the gray uniform.

  “Ah, our very good friends and midnight companions. But what about the, uh, oversight?”

  “Tonight’s Securitate officer is old Anatolie Lungu. Give him a few leus and a bottle of vodka and he’ll go home and get drunk. Who else might be invited?”

  Dr Popescu scratched his chin and pretended to think. “How about that hot dish of spice from the records staff?”

  “Little Dragna Negrescu? The one who looks like a girl?”

  “And who has the appetites of a woman. Several women.”

  A nervous chuckle. “Dragna Negrescu scares me. A records clerk makes a few strokes of a pen and I might drop two grades in pay. Or disappear.”

  Popescu laughed. “Even your paranoia is sexy, Sorina. Plus Dragna Negrescu can’t scare you too much – I’ve noticed you and Dragna enjoying one another.”

  “I enjoy many things, Emil. Especially your little robots.”

  But the wall hadn’t worked tonight. If Gregory knew he was dreaming the wall had failed. He had no choice but to step onto the path and be propelled through his dream. The step pulled him…

  Into a cavern of shadows. A small lamp flickered from a corner. Gregory knew this place; the large supply room behind the kitchen, stocked with cans of food, barrels of cooking oil, metal bed frames for the floor, mattresses, light fittings and bulbs.

  “You have splendid vodka tonight,” the nurse named Sorina said, raising her glass. “And such food!”

  “Plus tuica made from plums as sweet as your mouth,” the Doctor said, taking the woman’s hand and licking her fingertips. “There must be food: carnati, piftie, mamaliga. 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.”

  The room spun to show the far side, a broad set of double doors. The Doctor appeared beside the doors and they opened with a sound of thunder. Gregory watched a white trail drift into the room with a slinky, feline grace. The trail was the smell of food. It began to fill the room like fog.

  The Doctor made his way to a bed where a young boy with huge eyes and pale lips sat, his nose inspecting the scents in the air. The boy’s eyes did not register the man beside him, his face held no expression. It was the face of the orphanage.

  The Doctor leaned until his mouth was at the boy’s ear.

  “Grigor?” he whispered. “Are you hungry?”

  From the far side of the long room another door opened, the one from the girls’ dormitory. Four small balloons floated behind Sorina Vaduva. They drifted into the fog and disappeared.

  The dream-path delivered Gregory to the supply room. Several adults were there now, and the balloons were children. The Doctor led the children to the kitchen, where plates of food awaited.

  In the supply room a huge man and a smaller one were pulling mattresses from a stack by the wall and setting them on the floor. They wore blue uniforms. The uniforms were wrinkled and poorly washed and Gregory could smell the men’s bodies. The nurse took another drink from a bottle and went to the bathroom, an open pipe that led to a trough in the basement, from there to the river.

  A second woman watched from a small desk. She had a petite body and was eating from a plate of sausages and licking her fingers. Her mask was a doll’s face held in place with string, pink cheeks and lips as red as apples. The eyes were bottomless holes. Her name was Dragna Negrescu and she had unbuttoned her official tunic. Gregory saw her breasts bobbing within the folds.

  Dragna Negrescu stood and went to the door to the kitchen, observing the children as they smeared their faces with food, eating without a word, as if alone. She walked to the Doctor and sat in his lap.

  “Like perfect little machines waiting to serve us. How do you do it, Doctor?”

  “I studied with Blaskov, Dragna. And Blaskov learned from Milovitch.”

  “I don’t know such names. Your education has me at a disadvantage.”

  “Does it, Dragna, my wily little mink?” the Doctor grinned. Gregory saw liquid drip from his mouth-slit with every word. “Your delicious wiles have me at a disadvantage.”

  “Please Doctor, tell me how you learned such magic.”

  Gregory looked on as the Doctor lit a cigar with a match, smoke roiling as the red ember waxed and waned. “President Ceaușescu recognized the importance of the trance state in unlocking information from some minds, burying it in others, and using advanced techniques to manage personalities. Milovitch, a genius, had been doing the same work for Stalin. When Khrushchev imposed his ridiculous reforms, Nicolae convinced Milovitch to work for us, and he taught Blaskov and myself. We refined the techniques.”

  “Do you do it with a swinging watch, Doctor? The way they do in the movies?”

  A deep chuckle. “Parlor tricks aren’t needed. It took several months of training, but…” He gestured toward his creations. “They come to this room and the smells relax them, the food fills them. They hear a few words from me, in my voice, and they become our sweet little robots.”

  “They become robots just like that?”

  “Such a state builds from special cues,” the Doctor said in a boastful voice. “The most potent are smell, followed by event references. Finally an object. That can be the swinging watch or a purple beret or an egg-beater – whatever you stick in a mind.”

  The woman named Dragna crossed her arms over her floating breasts and smiled. “Look at their faces. Like little machines.”

  “It’s not faces I want,” one of the mattress-throwers said, the hulking one. Everyone laughed. The light flickered and the children were no longer in the kitchen but the supply room. They stood naked in the vibrating luminosity, tattered clothes at their feet. The smell of food mingled with the smell of bodies. The children’s eyes were as black and shiny as obsidian. Their faces were smeared with gruel.

  “Mamaliga,” the children in the dormitories began to murmur. “Mamaligaaa…”

  The word became a chant that echoed through the building. “Shut the fuckers up,” the Doctor told Sorina Vaduva. She nodded and strode out the double doors. A screaming voice, the crack of leather over skin. Squeals of pain.

&
nbsp; Then silence.

  The nurse returned. There was a candle on the table now, beside it several glass vials and a hypodermic syringe. The vials glittered like black stars. Gregory heard a sound beneath the chanting and felt his head turn to the window. A white cat was sitting on the outside ledge, scratching at the glass. “Go away,” Grigor felt his mouth say to the cat. “Go away, it’s not safe to be—”

  “What’s that noise?” the man named Cojocaru said. He was naked and smoking a flat cigarette that smelled of burning broom straws.

  “Nothing,” the Doctor said. “Some idiot cat climbed the fire escape.”

  “Leave it to me,” the woman named Dragna said, now dressed only in her panties, her doll’s face craned toward the window. She set aside a bottle of tuica and opened the window, multiple panes grated with steel.

  “Here, kitty kitty,” she coaxed. “Nice kitty kitty…”

  She grasped the cat by the skin of its neck, her other hand under its thin belly, pulling it inside the room and holding it high like a prize. Dragna Negrescu’s hands moved to the cat’s neck. They made a fast twist and a cracking sound. The cat went limp as a wet dishrag and she threw it out the window.

  “Shall we work on tonight’s projects?” she laughed, turning back to the room. The man named Big Petrov clapped his hands and studied the row of children. He walked to them and licked his right forefinger with a lolling, lizard-like tongue. Gregory felt a wet finger glide over his forehead. Big Petrov lowered his voice to a sing-song whisper. “Pretty little robot with its pretty little lips.”

  The Doctor’s mouth opened and silver vampire light poured out. “What will you have the pretty robot do for you, Petrov?” the light said, pooling on the floor like mercury.