The Killing Game

by J. A. Kerley

  “It’s all right, buddy,” he said. “Happens to the best of us. Think you’re gonna be OK?”

  “I think so—”

  “Tell you what, my partner and I will follow you home, make sure you get there in good shape. That cool?”

  “Thank you,” the man said. “Thank you so much.”

  Harry and I watched as the man pulled away, Austin and Mailey on his bumper. We heard a final line from Austin, a threatening rumble: “You tell anyone about me babysitting a guy home, Mailey, you and me are gonna tangle ass.”

  The cruiser-cam went dead.

  “Nothing bad there,” Harry said, pulling the zip drive. “A dead end, like Mailey said.”

  “Zilch,” I agreed. “But we had to check.”

  48

  We returned to HQ and parked in the garage as a black Dodge Ram pulled in a half-dozen slots away, Horse Austin, late as usual for his shift. “I can’t help it,” I said, jumping from the cruiser. “I gotta find out.”

  Harry and I were there when Austin’s black boots hit the pavement. “Well, look who’s here.” Austin tipped back his Braves ball cap. “You better get a TV-union card, Ryder, you’re spending so much time on the screen. Guess this is the last I’ll see you at HQ, though.”

  I smiled. “Took us some doing to find the traffic stop,” I said for Mailey’s benefit. “But luck was on our side.”

  Austin’s jaw muscles clenched. He knew we’d seen the tape.

  “Jeez … You cut a guy slack, Horse. Not only that, you escorted him home. I’m gonna get the recording played at roll call as a testimony to quality police work.”

  “You’ll wind up in the ER,” Austin snarled, raising a knuckle-heavy fist.

  “I just want to know why you let the guy off, Horse,” Harry prodded. “You ticket people when you don’t like their haircuts.”

  “The guy had a problem, Nautilus.” Austin slapped his lower belly. “His guts were all tangled up and he couldn’t hold it back. I’ll say it slow so even you can understand: he–couldn’t–fucking–help–himself.”

  Austin started to juke past us toward the elevator. I replayed the recording in my head – happens to the best of us – and before I knew it my lips said, “I know what happened, Horse.”

  “You don’t know anything, Ryder.”

  “You’ve been there before, Horse. Is that it?”

  “Get outta my face, Ryder, or I swear I’ll…”

  “We won’t hold it against you, Horse,” I said. “And I’ll make double sure the recording gets buried.”

  Austin looked between us. He sighed, pulled off the cap and dry-washed his face in his palms. “You two assholes ever hear of something called IBS?”

  “Irritable bowel syndrome,” Harry said. “My aunt’s got it. When she goes on a long trip she marks maps with every rest stop.”

  “You never know what’s coming next,” Austin sighed. “Cramps, constipation, diarrhea. You fart a lot. My IBS is better controlled since I started eating freakin’ yogurt two meals a day. Still, I gotta brown-bag a big goddamn bottle of Imodium while I’m working.” He shook his head and stared at his boots. “A couple months back I was driving up to Montgomery and cramps slammed my guts. I ended up shitting my pants like a baby, the worst fucking day of my life. I guess I let the goof in the Avalon go because I knew what he was going through.”

  Austin gave us the tight eye. “This story goes nowhere, right?”

  Harry and I simultaneously held up our hands in the I swear motion. Austin nodded and turned toward the door.

  “You know why Horse doesn’t want anyone to know he gave the guy a pass, don’t you?” I said. “He doesn’t want to tarnish his hardass image.”

  “Be that as it may,” Harry said, “Horse Austin was sensitive to someone else’s misery. It must be the delayed dawning of the Age of Aquarius.”

  Harry stared at Austin’s back as if waiting for it to turn into a mirage. When it didn’t, he grabbed his briefcase and started toward the door, checking his watch. “I figure it’ll be a half-hour or so until I’m back out,” he called over his shoulder. “We can keep working and stay off Baggs’s radar. You waiting here?”

  “I’m gonna wander over to the Square,” I said. “Come by when you get free.”

  I walked toward Bienville Square, the block-sized park forming the heart of downtown Mobile, taking a bench beneath a live oak by the fountain. Street people wandered the area, young and old, many bleary-eyed with last night’s intoxicants. My mind returned to last night’s class, and my question about random killings.

  Interrupted by Baggs, we’d not made much progress, not that I’d expected anything: it was a Hail Mary pass.

  Motion caught my eye. Twenty paces distant I saw a slender young man stumble to one knee, then push to standing. His brown hair hung over his eyes and his clothes were disheveled. I watched his stomach shudder in dry heaves and his hand came to his mouth, vomit spraying into his palm. He fell again and I jogged over. It wasn’t unusual to find druggies sleeping off excesses in the square.

  He was face-down and I grabbed his arm. “Come on, partner, roll over and let’s take a look at you.”

  “Fuuugyew,” he said, trying to slap my hand away and missing by a foot.

  “Right,” I said, rolling him over to check his carotid for heart rate. He tumbled and his unfocused eyes stared past mine.

  Terry McGuiness. His eyes were dilated, his skin as white as lard. I put my fingers to his neck and couldn’t count fast enough. I pulled my cell and called for medics. He started dry heaving again.

  “What’d you take, Terry?” I said, pushing him to sitting so he wouldn’t aspirate vomit.

  He batted at my face with his hands. “Go ’way an’ lemme die.”

  “Hang on, Terry.” I heard a siren in the distance, we were just blocks from a firehouse.

  “I’M A WHORE. LET ME DIE!”

  I held him sitting as passers-by gave us sidelong glances and moved away quickly, fearful of the human drama playing out at the edge of their worlds. The ambulance approached. I put my knees behind McGuiness’s back to keep him upright and waved frantically until the medics raced in with gurney in hand.

  “He’s OD-ing,” I said. “Pulse has to be over 160.”

  “EVERYTHING’S GONE,” McGuiness pleaded. “LEMME DIE!’

  Within a minute Terry McGuiness was heading to the hospital. I leaned against a tree and wiped my brow with my bandana, Terry McGuiness’s pleas still ringing in my head.

  “EVERYTHING’S GONE, LEMME DIE.”

  Then an echo of the words, almost, but in a different voice…

  “KILL ME INSTEAD. PLEASE KILL ME!” It was the voice of Francine Minear, Tommy Brink’s aunt the day of the funeral, when all she had in the world was taken away. Minear’s voice was replaced by the voice of Silas Ballard…

  “I’d gotten to looking out over the land and seeing the future … Now all I’m ever gonna see is dirt. It’s all over.”

  Patricia Ralway speaking of her beloved mother: “It hurts worse than anything.”

  And finally, Clair on the rain-gray day Silas Ballard slumped from the morgue after identifying Kayla’s body.

  “Everything in that poor man’s life is gone, Carson. It’s like the killer got him, too.”

  I heard the sound of angry car horns, then realized I was running down the middle of the street, sprinting toward the department.

  49

  A circle of police administrators were smoking by the entrance, Frank Willpot sucking the tip of a wet cigar. At first they just stared, then Willpot stepped into my path, hands out.

  “Hold the fuck up, Ryder, you’re not allowed in—”

  I tried to juke past the blowhard but forward momentum slammed my shoulder into his outstretched arm, spinning him to the ground. I ran in the door with loud cursing at my back, the guy at the desk wide-eyed as I sprinted to the stairwell, taking steps two and three at a time.

  I got to my cubicle, scrabbl
ing for my list of telephone numbers. I spun the chair beneath my ass and put the list in front of me. Footsteps crossed the floor behind me. I turned to see Baggs puffing my way.

  “Get out of here, Ryder!” he yelled. “You’re suspended. You’re going down.”

  “I need to make some calls.”

  Tom Mason appeared at the door of his office. Baggs heeled up a dozen feet from me, jabbing a finger my way. “Lieutenant Mason, get this man out of this room by any means you feel necessary. That’s an order.”

  I looked at Tom, my eyes pleading. “I need to make some—”

  “Get him gone,” Baggs hissed, retreating to the sanctity of his framed doohickies. I looked at Tom Mason.

  “Tom…”

  He shook his head. “Chief says you can’t be in this room, Carson.”

  “It could be important, Tom. Can I just—”

  “Though he didn’t say anything about that room over there.” Tom pointed to his office, the blinds drawn. I shot a thumbs up and ran inside, locking the door. My first call went to Silas Ballard, no answer, probably out in the fields. I tried Arletta Brink and got her voicemail. My third call made it through.

  “Ralway residence.”

  “Miz Ralway, this is Detective Ryder. I need to know if anyone has threatened you, either recently or perhaps even in the past. It’s important.”

  Long seconds passed as her nails ticked on something. “No,” she finally said. “I’ve had other girls threaten to pull my hair out, stuff like that. But that was in high school, forever ago.”

  “How about any situations where someone might have come away feeling insulted or humiliated?”

  She paused. “Well … there was that thing I mentioned to Miss Holliday. The man with issues? We, uh, met at a bar, the Oasis Lounge by the airport a couple weeks ago and I … followed him to his home.”

  “What happened?”

  “Um, it’s rather personal.”

  “Frankly, ma’am, brief, uh, romances are not unfamiliar to me. I sort of understand the dance.”

  Another pause, then a chuckle. “All right. The guy seemed nice enough at first, but got progressively stranger. When we were intimate, he seemed odd and inept. Almost mechanical. When I put the brakes on, he became extremely rude. I kept my cool until getting to the front door, then said some things that could be construed as insulting. Hell, they were insulting.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bill Sieves.”

  “Where does Sieves live?”

  “I had a few drinks at the bar and followed his taillights. I got lost when I left his place, but found Dawes Road after a few minutes.”

  There were stretches of Dawes surrounded by subdivisions. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of homes. “Where on Dawes?” I asked.

  “It’s fuzzy. I’m sorry.”

  “What does Sieves look like?”

  “Short brown hair, brown eyes. Sort of angular face with thin lips. He’s well built. Not bodybuilder mass, ropey muscles. He’s pretty strong.”

  “He never mentioned anything violent?”

  “No. But when I told him he, um, fucked like a fifteen-year-old I could see hate in his eyes. He started yelling and I left.”

  I told Ralway to keep trying to recall the location of Sieves’s home then found a William T. Sieves in the license-bureau database. Mr Sieves was seventy-three, six-four, and bald. Was Bill Sieves a fake name? Maybe, maybe not. Bill Sieves might be a recent arrival to the area. I tried Ballard again, nothing.

  The office doorknob turned and I froze.

  “Carson, it’s me,” Harry whispered. “Open up.”

  I glanced into the detectives’ room as I let Harry in. A half-dozen of my colleagues were at their desks, not one of them looking our way, pretending we weren’t there.

  “No one’s gonna snitch to Baggs,” Harry said. “They’re beginning to think this thing smells political. Tom says you told him you were onto something.”

  I nodded. “Terry McGuiness … Lampson’s partner? He was in the square, wasted. I think he fell into old ways, got the guilts, ate every pill he could grab. He started screaming about letting him die.”

  “And?”

  “It’s how Tommy’s aunt was screaming, remember? The sound of complete loss.”

  Harry stared at the wall, but I knew the inside of his head was racing. “You’re thinking pain is the bottom line, Cars?”

  “The infliction of pain. And what greater pain…” I let it hang.

  “Than the death of a loved one,” Harry finished.

  “A couple weeks before her mom’s murder, Patricia Ralway told a guy named Bill Sieves he fucked like a fifteen-year-old. He didn’t much care for it.”

  “We have to find out if Sieves touches the other cases.”

  “I can’t get Silas Ballard or Mama Brink yet.”

  “So we go to the hospital.”

  Harry drove. I tried to get a call through to Wendy to tell her she had been on the right track the other night: the killer got his satisfaction from pain. Not from the immediate victim, but the person closest to the victim.

  Her cell was shut off, a first. I wondered what she was doing, dropping my phone in my pocket as we reached the hospital.

  Terry McGuiness looked as though he’d been run over by bulldozer. Twice. He’d had his stomach pumped and was receiving hydration. His arms and legs were restrained. When Harry and I entered the room his head turned away.

  “Tough night, bud?” I said, putting my hand on his arm. “Everything came crashing down?”

  “P-pretty much.”

  “I’m not gonna sell you anything, Terry. No lectures. It’s your life.”

  His head rolled to me. “Then why are you here?”

  “I don’t think Paul was killed at random. I think he was killed because you crossed someone. Probably someone you never saw before. I think it was recently.”

  Tears welled in McGuiness’s eyes. “I killed Paulie by pissing someone off?”

  “No. A psychotic killed Paul because he thought it would be an amusing form of vengeance. You know a guy named Bill Sieves?”

  “Never heard the name.”

  “Who have you recently angered, humiliated or insulted? One or all. Who, Terry?”

  A one-shoulder shrug. “I used to piss people off all the time, the old me. Now I just serve food and…” He froze, eyes flicking back and forth as they scanned memories. “There was this couple at the restaurant. The guy had it in for me from the start. I was walking by with a full tray for table seventeen, a six-top. He put his leg in my path on purpose. Everything went flying.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He called me a moron. I went to put on a fresh uniform and grab a smoke. When I came back they were gone.”

  “You never said a thing to the guy?”

  McGuiness looked between Harry and me. “I’d seen the asshole pull into the parking lot so I ran outside and hawked a fat one on his windshield. Maybe he saw me do it.”

  “What was he driving?” I asked.

  “An Avalon, I think. White.”

  “Jesus,” Harry whispered.

  “You ever see the guy before that day, Terry?” I said. “Or since?”

  McGuiness shook his head. “He’s not memorable. Brown hair and eyes, kind of a round face. A tight, pissed-off little mouth like this…” McGuiness pursed his lips. “The guy was in his mid-twenties.”

  We milked every bit of information from Terry McGuiness, then headed up one floor to Pendel’s room, surprised to see Dr Szekely sitting by a sleeping Pendel and reading a book.

  “They gave him an opioid,” she said. “I don’t expect he’ll be around for several hours. His father went to make funeral arrangements. When he returns I have to leave to give a lecture in Atlanta.”

  “For EEOSA?”

  She nodded. “We’re starting a chapter there.” Szekely looked at Pendel with concerned eyes, the kid motionless, his mouth open. She reached out and patted his
leg. “Sleep is the best thing for Will now. The waters of Lethe.”

  “The peace of oblivion,” Harry said.

  “I wish I could dispense such water selectively, Detective Nautilus. If I could wash away the memories of the orphanages … Are you here to check Will’s progress?”

  “We came to check a theory with Wilbert. That his mother’s death was reprisal for something Wilbert did. An insult, perhaps.”

  A raised eyebrow. “That could be hard to narrow down. Any interaction with Will could result in an insult. Have you tested your theory, Detective Ryder?”

  “We have a vehicle similarity, two incidences of someone being insulted, and the name Bill Sieves.”

  “Sieves? That’s with an S?”

  “From what we know.”

  Szekely frowned. “I mentioned the math whiz? The one who didn’t get along with Will?”

  “Too much alike, you said.”

  “Will used to make fun of Gregory’s emotional issues, including Gregory’s difficulties in expressing himself. In return Gregory would make disparaging remarks about Will’s intellect. It turned physical, Will slapping Gregory in the face and telling him to make it readable.”

  “This Gregory isn’t named Sieves, is he?” I asked.

  Szekely looked anxious. “It’s Nieves, with an N. That’s really pretty close, isn’t it?”

  50

  Harry called Sally Hargreaves, his girlfriend and a detective in the Missing Persons unit, for a quick search. She reported a Gregory Nieves in the listing. He lived in West Mobile, not far from Dawes Road.

  “We’re not in the cruiser, girl,” Harry said. “No computer. Gimme the guy’s particulars.”

  “Average Joe,” Sal said. “Five nine, one seventy-five, brown and brown. Twenty-five years old. Looks as dangerous as a vanilla milkshake.”

  My phone went off and I turned on the external speakers. “This is Silas Ballard, you wanted me to—”

  “Gregory Nieves,” I blurted, adrenalin taking over. “Know the name?”

  “Jesus … I ain’t heard that name in years. A decade or more.”

  Harry threw a jubilant air punch. We had the tie.