The Killing Game

by J. A. Kerley

  I explained the scenario to a forensics tech, then walked to the street where Harry and Tom were talking to a trim, fiftyish woman in a white uniform. A card on her breast gave her name and title, JENNY WILKES – DAY SUPERVISOR. Her face was puffy from crying.

  “We called as soon as we missed Harriet,” the woman said.

  “You let a patient with Alzheimer’s wander alone?” Tom asked.

  “Harriet always visited the same places. You can see everywhere from the building. The entire property is fenced. And it was early. Harriet was usually more clear-headed in the morning.”

  Harry said, “The last anyone saw her was…”

  “Right after breakfast. She was going to take a walk and be back before nine, like always, as regular as a clock. When no one saw Harriet at nine, we sent the staff out. When we couldn’t find her we called the police.”

  I pointed to the bench beneath the trees. “Ms Ralway liked to sit there in the morning?”

  “Every day the weather allowed.”

  I jogged a couple hundred feet, stopping short of the building. The area preferred by the victim was at a slight incline. Harry was beside the bench, but I couldn’t see below his calves, the effect of the incline. I ran back.

  “Look at the building from the ground,” I told Harry.

  Harry lowered to his hands and knees. His head was shaking as he stood.

  “On the ground is out of sight.”

  “The perp used the fishing line to pull her across the grass and into the woods.”

  “Fishing line could handle it?”

  I’d spear-fished reefs in the Caribbean, knew the gear. “Five-hundred-pound test is a fairly standard line,” I said. “You can get big-game lines that handle a couple thousand pounds.”

  We heard a sound like a human siren powered by grief and turned to a stout blonde woman in the distance, screaming, held back by a pair of cops and a paramedic.

  “Next of kin, I figure,” Harry said.

  34

  I met with Tom and Harry after they’d taken statements from facility personnel. The pair were heading to the DA’s office to discuss a court case and I said I’d take the cruiser downtown. The Medical Examiner and forensics workers were still swarming the woods and grounds.

  There was no report of the penny yet, but I knew it would appear.

  The recruits were being led from the woods by Captain Alvin Leighton, the academy’s director. They broke into small groups and swung wide of the official vehicles, wandering toward the blue bus. I saw Holliday alone in the street, eyes vacuuming every detail, studying while others relaxed.

  I walked over. “Hello future-officer Holliday. I heard you were getting in a little SAR without the R.”

  “We were at the jail studying intake procedures. Captain Leighton loaded us onto a bus and we were here fifteen minutes later.”

  If I’d been teaching intake procedures I wouldn’t have the class on a weekday morning but around midnight on a Friday, when payday coincided with the arrival of government checks. Shrieking whores, puking drunks, blood-soaked fistfight participants, people babbling on a cornucopia of drugs … If you’re teaching religion, it’s best to provide a vision of Hell before you open Sunday school.

  “So I guess it’s back to jail?” I said.

  She nodded at the battered old bus, torn and creaky seats and D-rings in the floor for prisoner transport. It rode like a cattle truck. Wilbert Pendel was hanging out the window of the bus and shooting a classmate the finger. Holliday moaned.

  “You really don’t care for Pendel, do you?” I said.

  “It makes me feel guilty, but I don’t. There’s the maturation issue. Plus it’s like he’s … I don’t know, watching you through some weird crack in space-time. You can see him, but you can’t make contact.”

  “Sounds creepy.”

  “It’s not so much creepy as sad, somehow.”

  “I’m heading downtown,” I said. “The ride isn’t a whole lot softer, but the company’s a step up.”

  She was delighted to escape the dilapidated bus and we wove slowly through three cruisers, forensics van, command van, ambulance, and the door-open Ford Fiesta I figured belonged to the screaming woman.

  I pulled past the Fiesta as the bagged body emerged from the woods, Clair walking behind with her kit in her hand. She looked up and saw Holliday and me. I kept facing forward. When I glanced into the rearview mirror she was beside the forensics van with her head turned our way.

  I set a course for HQ, Holliday asking questions about the scene as we drove. They were intelligent questions, but then she was the foster daughter of a cop. I was in full lecture mode when my cell rang: Harry.

  “The woman at the scene, next of kin? It was the daughter, Patricia Ralway. Chaplain Burgess transported her home. When he told her to expect a visit from MPD detectives she said, ‘Let’s do it today.’ Tom and I are at the DA’s, trying to postpone some court cases so I can go full time on Penny Man. Can you maybe…”

  Gregory pulled into Ema’s flower-lined drive, knowing she would be out until early afternoon. Today was Hair Day, when Ema and a robot hairdresser named Traci flapped tongues for an hour. His next meal with Ema would be dominated by Traci’s diet-childcare-boyfriend woes.

  After spending fifty bucks for whatever – Ema’s hair never changed – she’d waddle from shop to shop in Fairhope, nattering with shopkeepers and buying ridiculous things like floral potholders. With only two hours gone since breakfast, she’d plop down in a restaurant and eat again. The woman was an eating and shopping machine.

  Gregory wondered if Ema was burning through her inheritance. She made money writing her little news-letters, but enough to cover her eating and shopping tabs? Gregory had studied math and computers at Auburn University. Using natural abilities teachers noted as far back as middle school – “He came from where? When? You’re kidding!” – he excelled. At least until things got a bit difficult.

  Brother and sister shared everything, her idea – the woman had bonding issues or something – so he used her spare remote to pull into the garage. Neighbors saw a white Avalon at least once a month. The couple in the nearest unit were in Wisconsin for the summer anyway, visiting a bunch of squalling grand-brats Ema knew by name.

  Once, while Ema was babbling about the kids, Gregory asked how she could tell them apart. Ema had sung, “Katie is the youngest one, Willy is the oldest son, beneath Willy stands Joanelle, then comes Twyla and Daniel. Three and twelve, eight-six-four.”

  “The numbers being how old they are?” he had asked.

  “Yes,” Ema replied proudly.

  “Don’t the creatures age?”

  “I set it two years ago when I moved here and met the Pedersens. Of course now the children are—”

  “Never mind, Ema, I get it.”

  Gregory opened the door from the garage into Ema’s kitchen. For a moment it seemed he could still smell mamaliga and he froze as a whirlwind of images and words blazed between his synapses.

  … share food with us, Grigor. Isn’t he a pretty one, Petrov … if you jam rubber balls in their mouths … Carnati, piftie, mamaliga and tuica … You stink like a sewage factory, poopy … what happened next…

  Gregory steadied himself against the wall and willed the images from his brain. He felt a sudden weight in his bowels and had to empty them, which meant using Ema’s dreadful bathroom. He entered to a smell of flowery potions so thick the air should have been a gel. It was a large contemporary bathroom with hard white light streaming from the ceiling, as bright as a freaking operating theater. The room was in the center of the house, windowless.

  The counter was white stone and three meters long including the sink. A large Jacuzzi dominated the room and Gregory didn’t dare let himself think of Ema floating in a foaming tub. The toilet wasn’t a standard model but a bidet, probably so Ema didn’t have to reach around her vast bulk to cleanse herself.

  After evacuating – not too bad, a bit of gas – Greg
ory went to the pink-inflected living room with its dolls, stuffed animals, throw pillows, cutesy knickknacks … a child’s room that over-ran the entire house. Then there was the reading material: magazines filled couch-side racks and were spread out on the coffee table, articles and recipes sticky-tabbed. Gregory snatched up a Cooking Light magazine and turned to a blue-tabbed page, seeing a blonde model with a questioning smile under half-closed eyes. She was holding up a plate of wilted lettuce. The article asked Do Your Greens Go Brown Too Soon? and offered suggestions for keeping vegetables fresh, as well as recipes for low-calorie salad meals.

  Gregory tossed the magazine back on the table. He’d never seen Ema eat a salad without a plate of fat and sludge beside it. Then there were the celebrity magazines and true-crime paperbacks, a bookcase of the damn things, the bookcase pink, of course. My Father the Mob Boss rested against Princess Di in Her Own Words. The Killer in the Next Room flanked Madonna: The Myth and the Magic. Gregory shook his head at the waste of mind and money.

  He found his sister’s records in a pink metal case on the floor of her bedroom closet. Gregory carried them into the dining room, opening the case on the table and immediately spotting a folder inscribed in Ema’s wide, childlike handwriting: Financial Stuff, May–June. This year.

  Bingo!

  He pushed aside ceramic candlesticks festooned with smiling cherubs and spread the pages across the glossy oak tabletop: A report from Ema’s accountant, the June statement from her investment fund, similar pages from her SEP-IRA fund. His eyes found the bottom lines and added as he jumped sheet to sheet. One minute later he was putting the paper back in the case.

  Two minutes later, he was on the road, his face one borrowed from a man on an outdoor board he’d passed seconds before.

  How Would You Feel If You Won This Week’s Lottery?

  35

  “Ms Ralway?” I was on the porch of a blue bungalow, trim and fresh and part of a fifties-era suburb not showing its age. “My name is Carson Ryder and I’m—”

  “I know who you are,” she said, pushing open the screen door. “Please come in.”

  Patricia Ralway’s eyes were rimmed with red, her fingers clutching a tissue. She was a plain-faced woman at best, dressed in Levi’s beneath a rumpled T-shirt that said THE BEST DAUGHTER IN THE WORLD. The shirt a gift from her mother, no doubt.

  I said, “We’d like to ask you—”

  “Some questions. I know, I watch a lot of police shows. Please, sit, make yourselves comfortable. Can I get you a glass of sweet tea?”

  Holliday started to decline the offer, but I said, “Thank you. That would be nice, since it’s such a hot day.”

  “Yes,” Ralway said, as if suddenly realizing there was a day going on. “It’s a scorcher, isn’t it?” She went to the kitchen and I heard the refrigerator opening, ice clinking in glasses.

  “I’m sorry,” Holliday whispered. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “In a situation like this I usually accept any offering. Tea, coffee. Cookies. Sometimes a simple human interaction helps break down the wall.”

  “Noted.”

  The libations arrived. I apologized again for the interruption and pulled my notepad from my pocket. “I guess my primary interest is any enemies your mother might have had, Ms Ralway. People angry with her, though she might not have realized it.”

  Patricia Ralway shook her head. “I’ve thought and thought about it. No, none. Oh, there were women she quarreled with now and then, but they were at the home. You don’t suspect anyone there, do you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then she had no one that would wish her harm.”

  “Is your father—”

  “Gone for decades. Dead.”

  “How long was your mother in the home?”

  “Five months. It wasn’t her physical state but her mind. She had Alzheimer’s, as you know. She’d seem fine earlier in the day, but afternoons and evenings she would often have trouble recognizing me, or confuse me with my late aunt. It was g-getting difficult … I’m s-sorry.” Tears fell from her cheeks to her lap. “It hurts,” she apologized. “It hurts worse than anything.”

  “I’ve been there, ma’am,” Holliday said quietly. “Take all the time you need.”

  Ralway nodded her thanks to Holliday and took some deep breaths. A couple of elderly women at the home had pulled Harry aside to whisper in his ear. He’d passed on the info, what I figured was the gossipy meanderings of those with too much time on their hands.

  “I hate to bring this up, ma’am,” I said, “but a couple of the folks at the home said you and your mother fought on occasion.”

  “A bunch of eavesdropping biddies. Mama and me quarreled once a month or so. She was on me to settle down, have children – like that would ever happen. Sometimes she’d gnaw the topic like a dog on a bone and I’d tell her to drop it.”

  “Sounds like typical mother stuff,” Holliday said.

  “She’d get irritated when I said I’d been at a bar. She’d say, ‘Now, Patty, you know full well a barroom’s no place to meet a decent man.’ I’d tell her, ‘Mama, I ain’t lookin’ for a decent man … I want a good one.’”

  I couldn’t help myself and smiled. So did Holliday. “That was how we argued,” Ralway continued, “two hens clucking at one another. Five minutes later I’d be laying beside her as she told stories from her youth. She was spending more and more time in her past. It was sad, but it made her happy and that was a kind of reward.”

  Tears came to her eyes again.

  “Forgive me if I’m overstepping any boundaries, ma’am,” Holliday said. “But I lost my mama two years ago next month. We were very close.” She reached out for Patricia Ralway’s hand. “The good thing is that my mama’s death was the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

  Patricia Ralway canted her head at Holliday.

  “I don’t understand, miss.”

  “I’ve seen people who barely sniffled when they lost a parent because they didn’t have a good relationship. When I hurt – and that’s every day – it underscores the depth of the love my mother and I had for one another, and how so few people get to experience anything so wonderful. My pain also tells me our love.”

  Ralway’s face twitched. Tears came hard and Holliday stepped to Ralway and held her tight. After a minute they separated, Patricia Ralway’s hand squeezing Holliday’s shoulder.

  “Thank you so much. I know that will be of help.”

  “I’m obliged for your time, ma’am,” I said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

  Mrs Ralway walked beside Holliday as we went to the door. I had become extraneous. We stopped at the threshold. Ms Ralway thanked Holliday again, stepping back to scan her from tip to toes.

  “My, my … I’ll bet a pretty girl like you has your pick of men when you’re out on the town,” she said.

  I waited for Holliday to ignore the comment or offer an embarrassed thank you, but she surprised me yet again by going for sisterhood.

  “We both know how it is,” Holliday said, winking. “The best-looking men are either gay or have more mommy or daddy issues than a decade of Parents Magazine. Or, of course, they’re not really single.” Holliday mimed pulling a wedding ring off and dropping it in a pocket.

  Like a moment of sun breaking through storm clouds, Ms Ralway chuckled. “Isn’t that the God’s truth about men. I met a guy a couple weeks back I swear had both mommy and daddy issues and maybe granny and grampa thrown in as well.”

  We climbed into the cruiser and drove a few miles in silence. I turned to Holliday. “All good-looking single guys have issues? Really?”

  “You weren’t listening, Carson. Not all do.”

  I nodded. “That’s good.”

  “The others are gay.”

  My head spun her way, she was grinning. “On a more serious note,” she said, “there’s something I’d like to talk about, though now’s probably not the time.”

  “Go ahead. I’d—”


  My cell phone rang. I fumbled it from my jacket.

  Clair. She got to the point. “If you’re not too busy, you might want to know I found the penny during the visual exam, tucked in the labial folds. I’m starting the post now. Can I expect to see you and little Miss Christmas at the procedure?”

  “I’ll have to send a sub, I’m too busy.”

  “No Miss Christmas? Damn. I wanted to look at someone the same age as my daughter.”

  “You have no children, Clair.”

  “I’m ageing and childless? Shit.”

  She hung up. I kept my face expressionless and I told Holliday about the penny’s location. “Didn’t you want to talk about something?” I remembered, distracted by the last minute with Clair.

  “It can wait.”

  I dropped her at the jail and proceeded to the office, meeting up with Harry. He’d managed to get six weeks’ continuance on his upcoming trial to allow him full-tilt boogie on the Penny Man case. Neither of us mentioned that, if the killer continued at his current rate, another ten people would be dead by then.

  My next step was to call in Doc K, who had assembled conclusions from our last meeting. The initial cast was the Doc, Harry, Tom, and me. We had just closed the door of the conference room when it pushed open: Baggs. “This is a meeting on the current situation?” he asked. Assured it was, he said, “I’d like to sit in.”

  “Good to have you, sir,” Tom drawled, playing the game that had kept him in charge of the homicide division for over a decade. “We’d enjoy your input.”

  “Somebody’s got to do it,” Baggs said, starting the meeting off on the perfect note.

  We handed the talking ball to Doc Kavanaugh, who gave an overview on the weapons used by the perp. “It seems probable the killer imagines he’s doing battle,” Kavanaugh said. “Given his choice of crossbow, knife, ax or club, spear … I think the weapons have been selected for overall symbolism, not adaptation to any particular manner of killing.”