The Killing Game

by J. A. Kerley

  The three of us did introductions, Harry and I meeting Dr Sonia Szekely, a psychologist and friend of Pendel and his family.

  “I was one of Wilbert’s instructors at the police academy,” I said.

  Szekely couldn’t hide a frown. “You were going to turn Will into a policeman?”

  “Never would have happened, Doctor. To be frank, I’m not quite sure how he got into the academy in the first place.”

  “Willy can be persuasive at times. And he isn’t stupid.”

  I saw a chance to discover more about Pendel and his family, said, “How about we go to the cafeteria for a cup of coffee, Doctor?”

  A knowing twinkle in the woman’s eyes. “How about we step outside for your questions, gentlemen? I need a cigarette break.”

  We reconvened at a picnic table beside the hospital, a place for employees to have lunch or just hang out and enjoy air free from disinfectant and disease. The area was landscaped with azaleas, myrtle and bougainvillea, here and there a magnolia tree. Birds tittered from nearby branches.

  “What was your relationship to Ms Pendel, Doctor Szekely?” I asked after the doc fired up a Marlboro light.

  “We met in the EEOSA group almost a dozen years ago.”

  “Excuse me?” Harry said.

  “Sorry. The Eastern European Orphans Support Alliance, a support group, mainly for Romanian orphans. It’s for children and parents, each has their own group. We work on a host of issues.”

  “Wilbert was adopted from one of these orphanages?” I asked.

  She nodded, pushing gray hair behind one ear. “Willy was one of the lucky ones.”

  Her answer explained Pendel’s strange comments and the foreign name he claimed, Bomblescu or whatever. It also hinted at the social estrangement he seemed to project.

  “Why the geographic specialization, Doctor?” Harry asked.

  “You’ve heard of Nicolae Ceaușescu?” Szekely’s nose wrinkled when she said the name.

  Harry nodded. “The former president or whatever of Romania?”

  “An evil, brutal man. In 1966 he decided to enlarge the country’s workforce by increasing the birth rate. He made contraception and abortion illegal and encouraged huge families. Unfortunately, Romania was a desperately poor country. Children couldn’t be fed or supported, so they were abandoned. Six hundred state orphanages were built to hold the cast-off children.”

  “I’m not seeing a pretty picture,” Harry said.

  “Think of chicken coops for babies. Vast rows of cribs holding children fed with cheap, tasteless slop a couple times a day. They aged in their boxes, no nurturing, no interaction with others, no emotional bonding. They existed – lived is too strong a word – in filth and squalor, isolated from feeling, from discovery, from joy. The first reformers into the institutions reported children with faces incapable of projecting emotion.”

  Harry closed his eyes. “My God.”

  “That’s just the surface. Get below and you find what has always plagued institutions where adults control innocents.”

  I said, “Pedophilia.”

  “Perversion of every persuasion, Detective. Physical and mental abuse. Sex parties. This is not to say all caregivers were bad, but they were uneducated, poorly paid and overwhelmed by the volume of children. Record-keeping was poor, many children unaccounted for and easily sold into the sex trade.”

  “When did it stop?” Harry asked.

  “The horror began to abate in the early 1990s. But many orphanages continued with elements of the old ways deep into the decade.”

  “It’s gotta be hard to enter normal society,” I said, “when you have no concept of normal.”

  Szekely puffed on her Marlboro, legs crossed. “Many adoptees have RAD, or reactive detachment disorder, affecting their ability to express normal emotion. Others have fetal alcohol syndrome. AIDS is a problem. Anger issues are common … frustration at not fitting in and never quite knowing why, anger at authority figures or self-directed anger. As one might expect from barren and loveless childhoods, there are elevated levels of sociopathy.”

  “Why is this such an issue for you, Doctor?” Harry said.

  “I’m Romanian. My parents brought me to the US in 1976 and I took a degree in child psychology. When I heard of the orphans I started EEOSA.”

  “I take it Willy had problems in the group?” I said, recalling his scream, I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK TO GROUP!

  “Willy has manifestations of RAD, including problems relating with others. But he has no mental deficiency, no retardation or physical ailments from his eleven years in an orphanage. Still, he sometimes acted out in group, his insecurities manifesting.”

  “The struggles must seem insurmountable,” Harry said.

  “Many children thrive when given love and care. A woman who had a breakdown in her teens just received her degree in accounting. Others are successes in business, or as educators or healthcare workers. The sky’s the limit. One fellow came here almost mute, with suppressed anger and what I suspected were sexual issues. He discovered a genius-level propensity for math and now makes a good living writing software.”

  “Sounds like a success story.” I’d spent a lot of time around people wounded by their pasts and was fascinated by those who had transcended horrors. “Is the man totally normalized?”

  Szekely thought a long moment.

  “There are still issues. He was never socialized as a child and probably never will be. He has affect problems as well, RAD. I’m not convinced he’s found a way to vent internal rage. He had a breakdown after college and spent several months in an institution. During that time his step-parent passed away, father.”

  “Mother?” I asked, having lost mine at about the same age.

  “She left three years after the children were adopted, too much of a strain. The father was a kind man, determined to see his son succeed. He died before he got the chance, though perhaps the inheritance he left helped.”

  “The son left the institution a wealthy man?”

  “Comfortable wealth, not major. But the son had to demonstrate the competency to manage his own affairs. It was specified in the will.”

  “But basically the guy made it?” I said.

  Szekely nodded. “Due, in large measure, to a sister who stayed by his side. She helped him back to reality, prodded him into finding a job befitting his skills, found him a house in a nearby neighborhood so she could keep an eye on him.”

  “The sister was in the same orphanage?”

  “Yes, though she came through in better shape.”

  “Why the difference?” Harry asked.

  Szekely shrugged. “She doesn’t talk about the orphanage. I suspect she was in a ward where the care was more humane and personal. Or perhaps female children received more nurturing because of gender.”

  “Is the sister another math genius?” I wondered.

  A smile. “Not even close, but she may be the reason for her brother’s stability. Ema makes a point of getting together with her brother on a regular basis, though I know Gregory finds the get-togethers grating.”

  “Grating? That seemed to be Wilbert Pendel’s take on group therapy. He didn’t want to go back.”

  “The more insecure patients sometimes mistake the sessions as judgemental and take them personally. Willy and the other fellow, Gregory, followed that model. They were in group together for several months until I shifted them to different sessions. They never got along and I figured they were probably too much alike.”

  “What’s Wilbert’s prognosis, Doc?” Harry asked.

  “His mother’s death will be a setback, perhaps a major one. He loved her deeply, as everyone in the group could see, but in his own way. Please be gentle in questioning him.”

  I nodded and leaned forward for the question I’d been reserving until the right moment. “Dr Szekely, do you think anyone in your groups could have harmed Muriel Pendel?”

  She stared at the distant traffic, puffing and thinking until
the end of the cigarette was dangerously near her fingers. She shook her head as she stubbed it out.

  “Muriel and Bert have been members for over a decade. But I don’t recall anyone ever making any threats, or showing anger toward either of them. Both she and Bert knew how to talk to the members. To adjust to their … eccentricities.”

  I looked at Harry and hid the sigh. What we had wanted more than anything was for Dr Szekely to say, Why yes, I had a patient who fiercely hated Muriel Pendel. For some reason he hated the police as well, called them a Blue Tribe.

  No luck. “We’ll bid you good-day, Doctor,” I said. “Thanks for your time.”

  We were walking back to the car, neither bringing up the fact that it was nearing five p.m., when my comments to the media would undoubtedly be aired on the local news. “We’ll arrive at that point when we arrive at that point,” Harry had said earlier – his Philosopher mode – and indeed we would.

  My phone rang, no caller identified. Somehow I knew. “Gotta take this,” I said, ducking beneath the portico of the hospital’s entrance.

  “I’ll be in the car,” Harry said, looking away. Somehow he knew, too.

  I opened the line with a tentative, “Hello?”

  “Get to a computer,” Jeremy ordered. “Skype me and we can—”

  “No,” I said, rubbing my forehead with one hand, the other propping the phone to my ear. “I’m not a television show, Jeremy. I’m tired and I need leads on our killer’s psychological make-up.”

  “Rather testy today, Carson,” Jeremy crooned. “Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bimbo?”

  “All I need is—”

  “I’ll drop the Skype request, Carson. But you have to tell me who you’re fucking.”

  “I’m hanging up.”

  “You’ll miss my thoughts on your bad boy down there.”

  “Why do you always need to know about my love life?”

  “We have different ways of dealing with crazy daddy and hide-in-her-room mommy. I now collect money. You’ve always collected love or whatever. It interests me.”

  “I date women, Jeremy. Can we get—”

  “You don’t date women,” he pronounced. “You soak your pain in them.”

  I tried the silent treatment. He gave it back.

  “Her name is Wendy Holliday,” I finally said.

  “Is she as delicious as her name?” He started the lip-smack noises again.

  “Grow up, Jeremy.”

  “We both know that’s impossible,” he snickered. “Do you luuuuuv your new little Holliday?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do love her.”

  A long silence. His voice returned, quietly curious. “You’ve never used the word love before, Carson. It’s always, ‘We’re friends’ or a similar dodge … But love?” A pause. “Have you finally grown up, baby brother?”

  “I answered your question, Jeremy. That’s all you asked. It’s your turn to answer.”

  He cleared his throat and returned to his normal voice, always underpinned with sarcasm. “Your boy’s quite smart but not brilliant, making things up as he goes along. The communication started after the second killing because he didn’t consider it until then. I would have written every note in advance and they would have been far more literate. Think of a love child between Proust and the Zodiac Killer.”

  “Point, please.”

  “I’m not downgrading the fellow, Carson. He’s eluded you, and I have to admit that takes doing. Plus he has irony, a rarity. I loved his posting you via the blind man. Though the ploy has been used before, as you know.”

  My brother had once communicated with me via a sightless man, thinking it a tremendous joke.

  “Is he killing without motive?” I asked. “At random?”

  A laugh. “You really can’t see these things, can you?”

  “I’ve never lived in an insane asylum.”

  “A pity. A decade in a nuthouse would make you a much better detective. The bottom line is your admirer knows something only a man with irony and an analytical mind can see.”

  “What?”

  “A murder is too good a thing to waste, Carson.”

  “That tells me nothing. What do you mean by—”

  “Have a nice day, Carson. Call again when you need big brother to guide you into the deep dark places. Or is your Holliday doing that for you now?”

  45

  I planned to teach tonight. My little media blitz would have been on the evening news, but maybe Baggs wasn’t big on television. Or reading the papers. Or listening to the radio. Anyway, I’d taken on the class, so not showing up wasn’t an option.

  Everyone was in their seats when I arrived, faces brimming with questions though no one spoke a word. I put my hands on the sides of the lectern, eyes catching the date on my watch. It had been less than three weeks since I entered this room for the first time, my impromptu lecture taped and put on YouTube. I looked out over the expectant faces. Whatever you do, I thought, don’t throw pennies.

  “Wilbert Pendel is not with us tonight,” I began. “You all know why, at least to a degree. If you consider Pendel a friend, be one. If you don’t consider him a friend, become one. He needs support.”

  A general bobbing of heads.

  “Tonight I’m asking you to consider a hypothetical case wherein someone is killing in what appears to be a random fashion. No discernible motive, no ties between murders. In this hypothetical case, an expert in criminal psychology looks at the murder books, the case materials, photos, everything … and arrives at a baffling conclusion. He simply says, ‘A murder is too good a thing to waste.’”

  I moved from behind the lectern and folded my arms.

  “My question: What might our expert mean?”

  A buzzing of voices, folks repeating the question to themselves. Chairs shifting. Terrell Birdly raised a hand.

  “Perhaps the expert means a random murder has no meaning. It is simply a death, the creation of a corpse. It has to have meaning.”

  I nodded. “I’m uncertain what you mean, Terrell. What happens from there?”

  A frown. “I’m thinking.”

  Jason Kellogg tried next. “A corpse has nothing to offer but dead meat,” he said. “Only if there is a meaning can the murder be elevated beyond the creation of dead meat.”

  “What if the killer hates humanity?” I scoffed, Devil’s Advocate. “Is not a dead human the perfect goal to such a person?”

  “But just killing anyone?”

  “If someone hates humanity, killing at random might be a way of saying, ‘I hate you all, it doesn’t matter who you are.’ The goal is simply dead humans.”

  “It’s a goal if the killer is simple-minded,” Amanda Sanchez added, her outsize earrings bobbing in and out of her dark hair. “Hate people, kill people, goal. But in your first class you postulated an intelligent and creative killer. Is that what we’re dealing with here? Hypothetically, of course.”

  “Excellent question,” I said. “And the answer is yes.”

  Deborah Bournet was shaking her head, skeptical. “Simple-minded or intelligent, a sociopathic killer needs to kill. It’s like eating. Whether a meal is planned or unplanned makes no difference when it’s all food.”

  A murmur of assent. Wendy had her hand up and I nodded at her.

  “It’s not satisfying,” she said. “I’ll continue Deb’s analogy. It’s not a thrilling, delicious, meaning-fraught meal.”

  A chuckle through the class. I batted downward with my head, shhhh.

  “Satisfaction, Miss Holliday?” I said. “That’s your premise?”

  “Killing to kill would not satisfy a higher-level mind. A chess-level brain would be bored stiff with checkers. More is demanded from a death than just death.”

  I thought for a long moment. “Maybe the more that is demanded is simply control and pain, Miss Holliday. He kills at random, causing pain. Pain equals goal reached.”

  “Then I would suggest the pain has meaning beyond
its infliction.”

  Something in her answer gave me pause. “What sort of meaning?”

  “Retribution for a wrong, perhaps.”

  I lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “But if the killings are random, Miss Holliday, the killer is incapable of being wronged by the victims because he’s never met them. How can you have retribution without a wrong?”

  I’d thrown a wrench into her concept.

  “Maybe the pain is meant to, uh—”

  The door banged open. Frank Willpot stood in the entrance flanked by two uniformed cops, his cold blue eyes boring into mine. “Class over, Ryder,” he announced, stepping into my space. “Chief’s orders. Pack up and git. You’re suspended for insubordination. That little conversation with the media? I expect that’s the swansong for your career.”

  Confused and angry voices at my back, the recruits out of their desks and demanding answers from Willpot.

  What are you doing? … This is our class … Detective Ryder never put up those tapes … This is crazy … Detective Ryder never said anything wrong … Who said you could do this?

  Willpot hadn’t expected a student protest. His eyes blazed with anger. “This is a departmental matter, and none of you are in the department … yet. If you want to fuck your careers before they’ve even started, then go ahead and question my authority.”

  “Stop being an asshole,” Wendy said.

  Willpot glared at her. “You’re threatening your future, little girl.”

  “It wasn’t a question.”

  Willpot couldn’t find a friendly eye in the room. He waved his arms at the door. “All of you out! Class dismissed. Go home. Detective Shumuchuru will be taking over again next week.”

  46

  “You can fight it, Cars,” Harry said, setting his beer on the hood of my truck. “The insubordination charge…”

  “Three TV stations and two radio outlets have me telling the world what I think about Baggs. Maybe my future’s elsewhere.”

  I’d retreated to the Causeway to lean against my truck, drink beer and consider my future in a department where colleagues could suspect me of a ridiculous action. A department where the Chief of Police hated my guts. Where my best prospect had me busted back into uniform, years of hard work turned to dross. Harry’d figured out where I was and joined me.