The Killing Game

by J. A. Kerley

  Conscience, therefore, was a fiction designed to keep the majority of the moron species happy in the bucket with the other morons. Ema would have a conscience. A fat one.

  The mailman passed by on the sidewalk. He glanced toward Gregory’s house and saw the face in the window. The postman puffed his lips and pulled on his shirt to indicate, Hot again today, sure hope we get a break soon. Gregory nodded and mimicked wiping his brow, drawing a smile from the moron, who moved past, oblivious to the fact Gregory had moments ago, in one sizzling intellectual concatenation, solved a major puzzle in his life: Why the vast majority of people acted contrary to their own interests.

  It was the Lie of Conscience.

  Gregory turned from the window and stared at the new books on his coffee table. What further revelations waited within?

  Wilbert Pendel was prone on the couch of his apartment, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The room was furnished with a lounge chair, a wooden cable spool for a table, a rack for CDs and DVDs, a chipboard entertainment center with a sound system and television. In one corner was a stack of free weights. The carpet was a patchwork of stains.

  The shades were open and there was a porn DVD playing on Pendel’s television, a heavily tattooed muscle-builder type screwing a wild-haired woman with basketball breasts and scarlet shoes, the six-inch heels as thin as ice picks. The woman was digging at the guy’s cannonball shoulders with nails an inch past her fingertips, purring, Fuck me that’s right fuck that pussy don’t stop push hard baby fuck that hot pussy…

  Pendel was masturbating, his eyes closed, his police academy T-shirt pulled up and his jeans bunched at his knees. Inside his eyelids he was seeing Wendy Holliday, her long legs wrapped around his waist as her wet mouth howled Fuck me Willy that’s right fuck that pussy don’t stop push hard Willy baby fuck that hot pussy…

  He knew the show-off bitch had the hots for him. Holliday played up to Ryder, but all hot bitches used the promise of pussy to get good grades or drinks or supper. She pretended to not care, but he’d seen her looking at him from the corner of her eye. It was that kind of look.

  Fuck me Willy that’s right fuck that.

  The phone trilled, its ringtone identifying the caller. Pendel pulled up his pants, snatched the remote from the floor and switched off the video. The phone was on the table beside him, flanking a can of cheap beer and a greasy box holding half a pizza.

  He grabbed the phone. “Hi, Ma. What’s going on?”

  “Are you all right, Will? You sound winded.”

  “I was lifting weights. What you need, Mama?”

  “Just checking on my boy. Your father and I haven’t heard from you for a week.”

  Pendel brushed sweat-matted hair from his eyes. He’d been fucking Holliday for half an hour. “Jeez, Ma, I’m twenty-four.”

  “You know how moms are, Willy. We like to hear from our sons.”

  Pendel laughed.

  “What’s funny, Willy?”

  He looked out the window. Rain was falling.

  “I dunno.”

  A pause. “How are you doing in your academy classes? Everything going along fine?”

  Pendel felt a piece of food stuck in his tooth, spat it on the floor.

  “Willy?” his mother said. “How are your classes?”

  Pendel reached for the beer, took a sip and grimaced. Warm.

  “Classes, Willy?”

  “The people are ignorant. But whenever I get something right in class they look at me like I’m some kind of retard.”

  “We’ve talked about that a lot, Willy. Perception. A lot of it’s in how you treat people. You’re treating them with respect, right?”

  “Hell yes. I wish they do the same thing back.” Pendel stood and walked to the bathroom with the phone to his face. The toilet was clogged and he didn’t want to deal with it. He pulled out his penis and urinated in the bathtub.

  “Willy? Are you still there? What’s that sound?”

  Pendel grinned. “It’s raining here, Ma.”

  “I talked to Dr Szekely yesterday, Willy. She hasn’t seen you at group sessions for quite a while.”

  “I hate that shit. Group. It’s not like I have to go.”

  “Sometimes people with difficult childhoods need to hear from people with the same experiences. It’s a way of knowing you’re not alone and that you always have a place to go and people to talk to.”

  Pendel zipped up and returned to the living room. “It’s not talk, Ma, it’s a bunch of assholes yelling and whining. They’re sick, a lot of them. I’m not sick.”

  “I’m not saying you are, Willy. But the sessions help you to better relate to people, to work on control issues.”

  Pendel ejected the disk, Max and Yolanda’s Afternoon Delight, from the DVD player and replaced it with Buttfest III. “I don’t need to work on control issues.”

  “Remember when you hit that fellow in the group? That was—”

  “He insulted me, Ma, said I was a moron.”

  “That was his fault. Yours was slapping him and calling him names back. But that was a year ago and you’re beyond that kind of behavior, Willy. Why? Because of going to the group every week. I’m sure the other fellow is doing better, too.”

  “He doesn’t go to group any more. He got to leave.”

  “Probably because he showed he could control himself, Willy. That’s what group sessions are for. To discuss your feelings, get control of them, and live a happy life doing what you want to do.”

  “I’m doing that now, Ma. I’m gonna be a cop. Can we talk about something else?”

  A pause. “What’s your favorite class so far?”

  Pendel’s face brightened. He did a karate chop with his hand. “Street tactics. The self-defense stuff. Yesterday we went to the gym all day. The first thing we learned was the straight-arm bar takedown. How it works is you grab a guy by his wrist and put your forearm above his elbow. Then you push down and step back and the guy goes down, bang! right on his fuckin’ face as you—”

  “Language, Willy.”

  “Sorry Ma. Then we learned three types of wrist locks. It was really cool. In the first kind you grab a guy’s wrist and twist it so he falls down and…”

  30

  “Incredible,” Harry said, watching my YouTube moment on the meeting-room computer. “And scary as hell.”

  “You’re sure this is a connection, Carson?” Tom Mason said. “Not coincidence?”

  I was pacing a tight circle, too agitated to sit. “I reviewed the forensics,” I said, holding up three fingers, closing them down as I made the points. “One, the pennies at the Ballard and Brink scenes were atop the ground and clean of dust or debris, meaning recent placement. Two, the coins were within a meter of the body, easily planted when the attack occurred. Three, the Ballard and Brink coins were mint condition.”

  “The Lampson coin?”

  “Stomach acid discolored the coin, but I expect it was as bright as the others when he was forced to swallow it.”

  “Each penny represents a killing?” Tom asked.

  I shrugged. “Unknown. In my example they were only a symbol of randomness.”

  “You’re saying we’ve got a guy out there killing at random because of a class you taught?”

  My hand slapped the table, hard. “He’s not killing because of the class!” I closed my eyes, breathed out. Lowered my voice. “He’s killing for his own reasons, Tom, and there’s no way to tell if it’s random. But yes, he’s patterning at least part of his murder system on my penny analogy.”

  Tom stared at me. “This is gonna fry the Chief’s hat. Any idea why the perp picked you, Carson?”

  “None. Nada.”

  “But you’re going to review every case where you pissed someone off, right? Not only perps you sent to prison, but people you just irritated in passing.”

  “That could be hundreds of people, Tom,” I said.

  He slapped his knees and stood, meeting over.

  “Then you bes
t get started.”

  Gregory’s new books continued to provide revelation and expert guidance. He’d moved from his research on conscience to the book on famous killers, taking notes as he went, fascinated by the process of killing. Many of the noteworthy characters in the books were drooling half-wits like Ottis Toole and Henry Lucas. Yet, Gregory noted to his satisfaction, these lumps of barely sentient protoplasm had eluded the Blue Tribe for years, demonstrating the intelligence level of the cops was actually below the dull throbbings of Toole and Lucas.

  Some, like Ed Gein, were what Gregory termed “hobbyists”, killing without cause or philosophy. Others were clearly insane, yowling about God or demons or talking dogs, like the Jew-boy nutcase David Berkowitz…

  He paused and frowned. Ryder didn’t consider him in either of those categories, hobbyist or madman, did he? That would be a serious mistake on Ryder’s part. Though a warrior, Ryder was also a cop, thus not overly bright. It was actually conceivable that Ryder might be seeing Gregory as a Toole or Lucas, a Gein or a Berkowitz. And what if they’d missed finding the penny?

  No matter. An easy fix. He went to his cabinet and withdrew an envelope.

  I was surrounded by files. Desk. Floor. Lap. Cases past, cases present. Some were opened to photos of killers and rapists and general monsters. I hoped the photos might spark memory of a threat.

  Harry walked up, jingling the change in his pocket. “Reunion with old friends?”

  “A lot are in prison,” I said. “Or dead.”

  He reached to the far side of my desk and tapped a photo. “How about Norbert Scaggs?”

  I pulled the file close. Saw a face long and pitted from acne, the left eyebrow broken by a scar. Black hair drizzled down in ringlets that resembled dreadlocks, but were formed by sweat and clotted skin oil. Scaggs’s sneer showed filthy, ragged teeth and I grimaced at the recollection of his breath.

  Scaggs had a rap sheet stretching back to childhood, but he’d always skirted serious prison time, never quite within reach of my rope. When I’d heard he and his biker buddies were running a prostitution ring, I turned a guy who hung at one of Scaggs’s favorite bars into a snitch, or Confidential Informant for the files.

  It was a poor choice of informant, the guy deciding to freelance both sides of the street and telling the bikers he was ready to deal me any misinformation they wanted. When the bikers decided they couldn’t trust the guy, a drugged-up Scaggs beat him to death with a baseball bat.

  It was one of my first cases as a dick and the killing of my CI – though the guy basically committed suicide by trying to double-dip – seriously pissed me off. I went after Scaggs with personal heat, banging on his door in the middle of the night, showing up at his bars, tailing him in broad daylight. I’d haul him into the station for minor infractions like parking tickets. One day I pulled him downtown for a U-turn and was firing questions at his ugly face when he snapped, just as I’d hoped.

  “Yeah I beat your little squealer, Ryder. I busted his brains across the floor.”

  The recorder was running and I had the bastard. The jury nailed it down and Scaggs headed to Holman on a twenty-fiver, no parole.

  Three years later a bottom-sucking mouthpiece named Preston Walls maneuvered the case into appeals court, arguing I’d “relentlessly harassed pitiful, brain-damaged Norbert Scaggs, making him uncertain of what was reality and what wasn’t.” I’d also “elicited a confession in circumstances that would make Don Corleone flinch”.

  The case was re-tried. With a key witness dead under suspicious circumstances and another in the wind, Scaggs not only walked, he sued the state for three million dollars and settled for a quarter mill. He did the same to the MPD and got seventy-five thou. Walls got most of the largesse, his plan all along. “Scaggs would be a prospect,” I admitted. “He blames me for his prison time.”

  “Think he’s bright enough?”

  I held the photo with my nails, not wanting to commit flesh to the touch. “Scaggs actually had native smarts, though Walls portrayed him as retarded.”

  “That’s Walls,” Harry said, looking as if he was smelling week-old fish. “Whatever lie works. Where you think Scaggs is hanging these days?”

  “He’ll be with his biker crew, the Steel Gypsies. They still meet at that hovel by Citronelle, right?”

  We pulled into the lot of the Gypsies clubhouse twenty minutes later, a signless single-story mason-block building suggesting a bunker. The joint was windowless to keep rivals from shooting inside and had a red steel door, the words Private Club painted over it in foot-tall white letters.

  I had the license tag for Scaggs’s Harley and we scanned the line of steel and chrome. “Thar she blows,” I said, pointing to a ponderous black machine resembling a mechanical rhinoceros. “He’s inside.”

  “Into the valley of the shadow of death,” Harry said, pulling his nine, checking it, returning it to the holster.

  We stepped into a room smelling of stale beer, cigarettes, and last-night’s vomit, waiting out a worrisome moment of semi-blindness until our eyes adjusted to the dim light. There were maybe a dozen bodies in attendance, mostly male, a couple women. Most were in booths to the rear, two men clicking pool balls across a table.

  “There’s our boy,” I said, nodding to a leather-covered back hunched over the bar, a shot and a Dixie longneck before him. A red bandana wrapped his skull, greasy strands of hair snaking down his neck. Scaggs was alone, maybe composing Elizabethan sonnets in his mind. I walked over, Harry right behind me.

  “How’s it going, Norb?” I said.

  His head craned around and his red eyes stared. “Ryder? What the fuck are you doing here?”

  I nodded at the pile of beer-soaked change at his elbows, coins and a few sodden bills. “Got some pennies there, Norbert. Anyone in mind?”

  “What?”

  “Like on YouTube, right? Random Nightmares?”

  The eyes tightened to slits. “What the fuck are you talking about, Ryder? Get away from me. You ruined my life.”

  “Three years of prison ruined your life, Norbert? It was the easiest a jerk-off like you ever had it … free food, free bunk, and all the twinks you could poke. Or maybe your life was ruined from the day you slid out of your mama. Probably kept her from turning tricks for an hour.”

  Scaggs’s eyes blazed, but he said nothing. Scaggs’s biker buddies were fine-tuned to us now, standing. The two greasebags at the pool table moved closer, cues in hand. Harry opened his jacket to show an edge of shoulder holster.

  “Private conversation,” he said. “Sit down and tend to your business.”

  I put my hand on the bar and leaned close to Scaggs. “You never liked blacks and gays, Norbert. I got that. But what about the girl, what did you have against her? Getting an education? Was that it? Or maybe she made your pecker hard and you knew she was eighty worlds above you.”

  “Girl? I don’t know nothing ’bout what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do, Norb. We got prints at the house on Blake Road, the Lampson place.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  I wiggled my fingers in his face. “Clear as the stars on a winter night.” Scaggs was a loosely wrapped collection of dirty thoughts and erratic impulses, and I hoped to push any button that would give me a reaction.

  He grinned into my eyes. “Stop busting my balls. You got something on me, show it.”

  I leaned lower, my mouth almost in his ear. “Don’t like cops either, do you, Norb?” I said. “Me in particular? Maybe you’ve been out long enough you figured to take your shot at me. It’s chickenshit, Norbie. You got a problem with me, you come to me. Or does direct action give you the shivers?”

  “I got a lawyer you can talk to,” Scaggs said. He turned away and emptied the beer glass. “But you know that, don’t you?” He fake-yawned, closed his eyes and pretended to fall into a doze. It appeared he’d learned restraint the past few years.

  I felt a tug on my sleeve, saw Harry nodding toward the d
oor, We’re done here. Scaggs chuckled wetly and I felt like bouncing his face off the bar. Instead I said something stupid along the lines, We’re watching you.

  Crossing the lot, we heard jeering laughter from inside. When we got to the car a door opened behind us and I turned to see Scaggs grinning from the shadows.

  “Sounds like someone’s got a personal beef with you, Ryder,” he called.

  “Leave it be, Carson,” Harry said quietly.

  “They digging in your head?” Scaggs continued. “There every time you try and sleep?”

  “Let’s roll,” Harry said. I walked around to the passenger side, slid into the cruiser.

  “But you don’t know how it’s gonna end, do you? Hell, Ryder, you don’t even know who it is, right? Not a clue.”

  Harry put the car in gear, started away. I shot a glance at Scaggs, his hair hanging in filthy ringlets, his middle finger upthrust, a victorious grin on his ugly face.

  “How does it feel to be on the other side, Ryder?” he yelled.

  Harry pulled into the street and looked into the rearview. “Jesus, I think I got plague just from breathing in there. How many more times we gonna have to do this, Carson?”

  I thought of the files stacked on my desk. Even if one in twenty needed to be checked, it was…

  “A lot,” I said, closing my eyes and slumping low in the seat.

  Harriet Ralway was in the air inside a tire. She could smell the warm rubber as her arms hugged the black circle. The ground passed by below her, back and forth, the red clay exposed by thousands of foot-scrapings. The tire hung on a yellow rope from the thick horizontal limb of an old live oak in her front yard. Her daddy had made the tire swing just for Harriet and her sister, Odelia. Odelia was eleven, four years older than Harriet.

  Harriet did the math as she pumped her legs and made the swing push higher into the warm south Georgia sunlight. Harriet was seven years old.