The Killing Game

by J. A. Kerley

  Gregory pulled down the small lane, past the marsh where yesterday he’d reconnoitered the house. The gray Corolla was gone. Gregory knew it would be, a simple phone call having established the other man would be working for at least another hour.

  Gregory looked for nearby eyes and saw none. He wasn’t in his daily vehicle, but a beater truck he’d purchased for his work, nondescript, the license tag obscured with mud. If stopped by the police, he’d simply claim the mud came from driving past a construction site and he’d wash it clean as soon as possible.

  Thanks to Ema’s television-inspired ramblings on police procedures, Gregory had spent ten hours of the last twenty-four studying online law-enforcement sites. The amount of information was incredible.

  Plus he’d started recording the TV show Cops. On some cable channels it ran for hours at a time.

  Gregory pulled into the driveway beside a battered red Honda Civic. He flipped a cheap plastic messenger bag over his shoulder, the current choice for style among the hip. Gregory liked it because the unzipped top allowed immediate access to his necessaries and its plastic manufacture shed no fibers. He’d made a few other changes as well.

  Tumbling a penny in his gloved hand, he approached the door. Just before pressing the doorbell, he dropped the coin into his bag. He had a wonderful idea for the penny.

  It was going to make a statement.

  27

  Bong.

  Paul was dozing on the couch when the doorbell rang. The meter reader? That was usually Tom Jenkins, who read the meter at the back of the house and never said a word unless the door was open, when he’d call inside to say he was in the yard.

  A salesman, then, hoping to put siding or a new roof on the house. Or another of the congregation from the nearby Baptist church, wanting to press a tract into his hand.

  Bong.

  Paul’s bare feet slapped the floor. He smelled himself as he stood, having fallen asleep on the couch in his scrubs, too tired to shower. He shot a glance out the window as he padded to the door, saw a nondescript black truck in the drive, not a salesperson’s vehicle. Churchies probably.

  He replayed the last conversation he’d had with the Baptists, the one he figured would keep them from the door for ever.

  “Thank you so much for the information. We’d love to join a church that’s welcoming to people like my partner and myself.”

  “Partner?” one of the two stout ladies had said, frowning.

  “We’re queer. My boyfriend’s a Muslim, but he loves to sing the Christian hymns.”

  Ten seconds was all it took to see their rattletrap Buick retreating from the drive.

  Bong.

  “Coming,” Paul muttered.

  He went to the door and pulled it wide to see a bald man in full-length black tights like a dancer. His feet were in tennis shoes, but for some reason the fronts had been slit to let his toes poke out two inches. The toes appeared to be in plastic wrap. He wore surgical gloves.

  But it was the man’s head that dropped Paul’s mouth open: The guy was wearing diver’s goggles. His covered hand was holding a long-handled hammer. No, not a hammer, a goddamn tomahawk, or something similar.

  “What the fu—”

  “Woo woo woo,” said the mouth beneath the mask.

  “Do you think the killings are connected?” Tom Mason asked. He’d pulled us into a meeting room after reviewing our files. He seemed upset at the lack of progress, which wasn’t making us very happy either.

  “We haven’t found anything tying the Ballard girl and the Brink boy,” I said.

  “But you think it’s the same killer.”

  I shrugged. “No idea.”

  “Not what I need to hear,” Tom said.

  “Two different weapons,” Harry said, stepping in. “Both blind attacks, well-planned and executed – pardon my choice of word. But the vics were from two different worlds.”

  “The Chief’s wanting something quick here, guys,” Tom said. “The college community’s spooked that a coed was killed minutes from campus.”

  “I imagine the folks in Tommy Brink’s neighborhood are worried as well,” I said, looking up.

  Tom sighed. “They have less weight than college administrators. The female students are withdrawing from night classes, afraid they’ll be next.”

  “We’re at a dead-end, Tom,” I confessed. “There’s nothing resembling a motive. Nothing at scenes but cigarette butts, coins, trash, the usual detritus. No prints on anything.”

  “The goddamn pistol crossbow or whatever?”

  “Seven sold at local outlets this year. We checked the buyers, nothing there.”

  The phone on the table rang and I picked up. “Carson?” the desk man asked. “There’s a man here, says you told him to stop by if he was in the area, a Mr Ballard?”

  Kayla’s father. My heart dropped. “Tell him I’ll be right down.”

  I took the stairs, opening into the lobby. Mr Ballard was slumping in a chair and stood when I entered.

  “Hello, Mr Ballard. Why don’t you step over here and we can talk in quiet.”

  He didn’t move. “Have you been able to find my little girl’s murderer?”

  “No, sir, not yet. There’s a lot to look at.”

  He pushed himself from the chair and we stood eye to eye. “But isn’t this what you do, find bad people?”

  “It’s been seven days, sir. It takes time.”

  “Eight days,” he corrected.

  “Of course.”

  “Tyler’s about torn up. He left school. I don’t think he’ll go back.”

  “I’m sorry,” I frowned. “Who?”

  “Tyler Charles, Kayla’s boyfriend. He was in school in England. I told you all about him. Didn’t you listen?”

  Tyler Charles, five time zones away, had been dismissed as a suspect from the first day and the name hadn’t stuck in my forebrain, which was busy juggling a hundred facts that might have been pertinent. There was no way to convey that distinction to someone not in law enforcement.

  “Yes, sir, we listen very carefully.”

  He stared into my eyes. “Kayla wasn’t from here. That wouldn’t make a difference, would it?”

  “Kayla was the victim of a horrible crime in Mobile, Mr Ballard. That’s my jurisdiction. Where she lives is of no consequence.”

  “Where she used to live,” Mr Ballard corrected. “My girl’s dead, remember?”

  “I meant that—”

  “Carson,” the desk man said. “You’re wanted upstairs. It’s important.”

  “Just a second—”

  “They said to get up there, pronto.”

  “You better go, Detective Ryder,” Ballard said. “Someone important needs you.”

  I ran upstairs to the detectives’ room. The meeting room had cleared and Harry was pulling on his shoulder rig. “We’ve got another, Carson. A killing on the south side by the bay.”

  We raced to a small house on an isolated strip of worn asphalt, one of those places where industrial mixed with residential and the houses were coming down so more industry could go up.

  Inside the house was the typical investigative action, chaotic to casual bystanders, but tightly controlled to an insider’s eyes, choreographed movement to put the Rockettes to shame. Uniformed cops kept the onlookers at bay, the photographers had captured the position of the body before the pathology folks – led by Clair – moved in. Evidence techs worked everywhere.

  I went to Elmore Baskin, who had been coordinating the scene until Harry and I arrived. “Who found the deceased, El?” I asked.

  “Meter reader said the front door was open, he saw blood on the floor, called 911. That was…” he checked his watch, “twenty-seven minutes ago.”

  Harry and I entered. Two couches made an L-shape against the far wall, tables at both ends. An overstuffed lounger was in a corner, as was a five-foot lady palm. But our eyes didn’t linger on the furniture, it was the pale yellow carpet that caught our attention. Outside
of three dime-sized dots of red a couple meters past the threshold, the center of the rug had a concentration of blood spatter, a ragged circle with fewer droplets at the periphery. The blood had been stepped in repeatedly, the footprints aiming every direction, as if someone had gone amok with red paste-on dance steps.

  “Weird,” I muttered, seeing only one trail of spatter not contained within the rough circle, leading down a rear hallway. “The body’s back there, I take it?” I asked Elmore.

  “Bedroom on the left. Doc P’s in there.”

  The body was on the floor in a pool of blood, Clair kneeling beside it, her gloved hands making gentle discoveries. “Blunt-force trauma,” she said. “The victim – male, late twenties I’d guess – took a series of blows to the head and body.”

  The body looked as though it had run a gauntlet. Light flashed as final photos were taken. The victim was lifted to a gurney and rolled from the house. I found Hembree in the kitchen, fingerprinting the refrigerator handle.

  “You finished in the living room, Bree?”

  He nodded without looking up, too busy brushing on powder. “Do what you need.”

  Harry was tearing the bedroom apart. I stepped into the living room. Clair was studying the scene with quiet intensity. “What’s your take?” I asked her. “What does the floor say to you?”

  She said, “I listen to bodies. What’s it telling you?”

  “Lampson is on the couch,” I said. “He’s kicked off his slippers, at ease. The killer knocks, rings the bell, whatever. Lampson opens the door. I figure he received a blow to the head, took several steps backward and fell to the floor, but got up.”

  “What makes you think he got up?”

  I pointed to three red circles three yards inside the door. “These dots of blood could be fingertips. He’s pushing himself to standing.”

  “But there’s so much blood.”

  “Because I think our killer was doing something like this,” I said, raising an invisible truncheon and acting as if I was keeping the bleeding Lampson centered in the room, stepping in his way when he tried for the front door or the rear.

  “Jesus,” Clair said, tracking my motion against the blood and footprints. “You think the killer was corralling Lampson? Keeping him in the center of the floor?”

  “Cat and mouse,” I nodded. “Playing with his food.”

  Shaking her head, Clair headed back to the ME’s offices. John Lippincott was in a corner on a mobile phone. I heard him say, “Can you let me talk to anyone else who worked with him?” John was a new-made dick, thirty-seven, getting his investigative feet under him. He wasn’t great on a scene yet, but knew how to dig up background. He snapped his phone shut and slipped it in his suit jacket.

  “I found pay stubs on the bedside table, Carson. Mobile Memorial Hospital. Lampson was a floor nurse there the last four years. I talked to his supervisor and two nurses who worked with him on a regular basis. Good work history. A couple arguments with supervisors over hours and assignments, no big deal. All three said he cared about his patients.”

  “Threats?”

  “Not that anyone knew of. He’d work someone else’s shift if they needed, which made him a friend to all.”

  “Relationship?”

  “He’s been in a relationship for several months, a guy named Terry.”

  “Terry who, Terry where?”

  “Not known. More nurses come on shift in an hour. They know Lampson better.”

  Harry entered the room waving papers. “Found a Verizon bill for one Terry McGuiness. I’ll call the number, tell him there’s a problem.”

  Harry made the call, speaking, hanging up. “Damn phone’s off. I left a message.”

  The window was open to vent the murder-scene smell of the victim’s released bowels and I heard tires screech out on the street, followed by a metallic whump. We sprinted out the door, seeing a slender man in dark slacks and white shirt leaping from a battered gray Corolla, the nose of the car against the crumpled trunk of a cop cruiser. He’d driven in too fast, misjudged braking distance. The man’s eyes were wild and he ran straight into two uniformed cops who, unsure of what was happening, grabbed him and put him on the ground.

  “PAUL!” he screamed toward the house. “PAULIE!”

  “Calm down!” one of the uniforms was yelling, trying to pinion the man’s clambering arms.

  I was there in two heartbeats. “Terry?” I said. “Are you Terry?”

  “Where’s Paul? What’s going on? LET ME UP!”

  “If you stay here and let me talk to you. That OK?”

  “WHERE’S PAUL? WHAT’S WRONG?”

  “Listen to me, Terry. There’s been a problem.”

  “WHAT PROBLEM? WHERE’S PAUL?”

  “It’s bad, Terry. Paul’s dead.”

  “NO! NO! NO!”

  The man was decompensating fast. He was restrained and put into a gurney, then sped to the hospital, his screams carrying down the street. There would be no interviewing Terry McGuiness today.

  I stayed until everyone else had left, sitting silently on a dead man’s couch and trying to fathom the mindset of a man who had – from our conjectures – wounded his victim with blow, then played with him like a toy. If this was the same guy who’d killed Kayla and Tommy, he was learning to enjoy his time with the victim.

  After a half-hour I pulled my cell and tapped the second number on my speed-dial list.

  “Hello, Carson,” Clair said. “You’re still there, right?”

  “I’m ready to leave. Guess I’ll head on home and stare at the walls.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Alone.”

  “I’m about to call it quits, too. I’ll do the procedure in the morning when I’m awake.” A long pause, a softer voice, almost whispering into my ear. “Why don’t you stop by that Thai place on Dinmont, Carson? Grab some take-out.”

  “You don’t want to go out somewhere?” I asked, knowing what she intended. “A quiet restaurant?”

  “Let’s just close the door and pretend the world went away. At least until tomorrow morning.”

  The black truck chugged past the house for the third time in an hour, twilight dimming the air from yellow to blue. The first two passes revealed sightseers in the street, neighbors hovering like carrion birds. But they’d retreated to the comfort of Inside Edition and Wheel of Fortune, Gregory knew, things they could understand. What had happened here was so far beyond the morons it might have been on a distant planet ruled by mathematics and justice.

  Gregory stopped across the street, beside a FOR SALE board half-hidden in the cane. His video camera was taped to the signpost and peeking just above the metal sign. He’d thought about planting a camera inside the house, but ruled it too risky. The warrior would almost certainly be in attendance, and if anyone could spot a hidden camera, Ryder would.

  Gregory dropped the recording device into the leg pocket of his painter’s pants and congratulated himself on another perfect slap to the face of the Blue Tribe.

  28

  I awoke alone in Clair’s bed, recalling a kiss laid on my cheek in the pre-dawn light. She had risen early to head to the morgue. I had called my dog-sitting neighbor last night to have Mix-up’s needs tended, no need to rush home to fix his morning plate of kibble and grits.

  Through the window the golden light of a new sun blazed over the leaves and limbs of the live oaks in Clair’s deep yard. My shoes were still in the paper booties worn at crime scenes and I now understood the odd looks I’d gotten at the Thai restaurant. I’d kicked my shoes off immediately inside Clair’s door and we’d fallen into an embrace, finding our way to supper an hour later.

  I kept clothes in Clair’s closet and changed into jeans and a beige blazer over a white dress shirt. Clair had tossed the paper inside and I read it with my coffee. A headline below the fold stood out:

  POLICE SILENT ABOUT THIRD STRANGE KILLING

  The subhead read, Won’t Rule Out Random Attacks.

 
; Uh-oh, I thought, three reporters had contributed, meaning the media was smelling something. A quote stood out, Silas Ballard: “They [the MPD] kept drilling me about who Kayla knew and associated with, like trying to lower her reputation, like she did bad things and got killed because of it.”

  I felt irritation, though I couldn’t fault Ballard’s intentions, only his naïveté. All we’d done was ask the same questions we asked day in and day out. Ballard had the rural dweller’s suspicion of the city.

  Asked if the attacks were related, the standard “departmental spokesperson” basically said anything was possible. Asked if the attacks were random, the spokesperson said no relationship had been established between the killings, though that didn’t mean none existed. It was a masterly job of weasel-wording.

  There was also suspicion about the postmortems, Clair’s office specifying results as “preliminary work-ups awaiting toxicology and other tests”. That allowed us to keep them vague for now, but the clock was ticking.

  I was heading to the morgue when a thought hit. I pulled my cell and pressed the newest number on my list.

  “Detective Ryder?” she answered. “I mean, Carson?”

  “It’s Detective Ryder today, Holliday. Business. You think you’re ready for the morgue?”

  There were two distinct categories of answers Wendy Holliday could have given. One was, Do I have to? The other was, I can’t wait.

  She said, “I’m out the door.”

  Holliday was pacing out front when I rolled up. Four men were in the waiting area, one hunched over in a chair as the others made consoling sounds. Terry McGuiness was here to make the official identification of the body, looking far better composed than the last time I’d seen him.

  Holliday followed me down the long and marble-floored hall denoted by a sign saying ADMITTANCE WITH AUTHORIZED ESCORT ONLY. We passed Clair’s office, the door open to a desk topped by a vase brimming with floral pyrotechnics, the product of Clair’s gardening prowess. The chair was empty and we walked to the main autopsy suite, a white room, cold and smelling of disinfectant.