The Killing Game (Carson Ryder, Book 9)

by J. A. Kerley

  I began stuffing material in my briefcase, then heard metallic clicks and saw an anxious Holliday approaching. “Why are you clicking?” I asked, looking at blue shoes crisscrossed with zippy white detailing.

  “I’m wearing cleats. Bike shoes. I forgot my regular shoes. You wanted to see me, Detective Ryder?”

  “Your comments on affect and emotion were phrased to sound like errant facts grazed somewhere,” I said, leaning against the lectern and looking her in the eye. “But later remarks suggest you know the lingo, perhaps through study. How am I doing?”

  Embarrassment colored her long neck. “Psychology was my major, along with law enforcement.”

  Two majors. I closed my eyes. “All right. See you at the next class.”

  She turned and hustled toward the door. “Holliday?” I said to her back.

  She turned. “Yes, Detective Ryder?”

  “Don’t pretend uncertainty in my classroom, kid. If you know something for a fact, say it. And be goddamn proud you took the time to learn it.”

  She nodded and left the room. I left seconds later. Leaning against the hall wall was a familiar man in a puce shirt, lavender slacks and blue running shoes. All he seemed to lack were purple socks, which I noted when he stepped from the wall.

  I hadn’t told Harry I’d been hijacked into servitude, but police departments held few secrets. A regular academy instructor, Harry had been trying to wrangle me into a classroom stint for years. “I heard the great Carson Ryder finally deigned to teach,” he grinned. “You enjoying the experience?”

  I shrugged, no big deal.

  Harry laughed and clasped my shoulder. “Bullshit, Cars. You love it. Where else are guys like us gonna find a roomful of people to hang on our every word? Let’s go grab a beer and—”

  My cell trilled. The screen showed C. Peltier.

  “What’s up, Clair?” I asked, seeing motion outside the window, Holliday blowing past on a bicycle, hair trailing from an orange helmet.

  Clair said, “I finished that extracurricular project of yours.”

  The cats. “What’d you find?”

  A pause. “I’ve been in the morgue for fourteen straight hours. How about you buy me a cocktail at Tango?”

  Chapter 8

  The Sex Itch commandeered Gregory’s head. He’d been making discoveries with his new cat, but when the Itch got this strong nothing was a distraction; he needed to empty into a woman. It was Ladies Night at a lot of local bars, desperate women everywhere, and Gregory knew if he wasn’t choosy, he could be in and out of one in a couple of hours.

  Gregory shaved and showered and tried a new moisturizer he’d created from olive oil, honey, retinol and a dab of Preparation H. The oil smoothed, the honey nourished, the retinol restored, and Preparation H drew out the tiny crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes, a flaw in the smooth perfection of his face.

  He wore the concoction as a mask, saturating his flesh as he selected his wardrobe: blue oxford shirt sans tie, a russet linen sport jacket, chestnut-brown slacks and cordovan loafers. Gregory washed off the moisturizer while peering in the magnifying mirror, noting how small and delicate his pores were. He stared into his eyes, pleased at the subtlety of hue, and winked. He started to turn away, but realized his wink had gone unacknowledged, so he returned his wink for closure.

  Gregory and Me, he thought. Us.

  Just before opening the front door, he reviewed his condition. Stomach calm. Breath relaxed. Bladder empty. Gregory moved his consciousness to his groin and found a problem: He was semi-tumescent with the prospect of releasing his fluids inside a human body. He unzipped his fly and, staring at the ceiling, gave himself an orgasm in under a minute, careful to ejaculate on the mat by the door. This would make later sex last longer.

  Gregory stepped into a blue dusk, turning to see his elderly neighbor watering tall red things in her front yard. Millard, Agnes. Seventy-seven years of age, retired CPA for Austal Inc. Husband Lyle Graham Millard, former insurance actuary, died three years ago, heart attack on a plane in Mexico (Idiot; who would visit Mexico, much less board a plane there?). Sister Carla, brother James, sixty-nine and eighty, respectively. James in Birmingham, retired optometrist …

  The data streamed through a lower channel of Gregory’s consciousness, accessible in case the wrinkly old bitch wandered to the fence to blather. Millard, thankfully, continued sprinkling the lawn, flicking a wave. Gregory climbed into his car and made a check of all systems: fuel, oil pressure, water level, doors closed, seat belt engaged, gasoline level of seven-tenths. His odometer read 6,235.2. Plus his intestines were calm and he’d ejaculated.

  Everything as it should be.

  Gregory wound toward the hotel bars in the Airport Road area, shadowy bunkers with an ever-changing cast of locals, transient businesspeople and pianists no one listened to. He picked one and sat on a barstool, ordering a glass of wine, more prop than libation. Too much alcohol made his faces inexact and increased the likelihood of mistranslations.

  Gregory noticed a woman at the far end of the bar: fortyish, spray-lacquered blonde hair, a button nose and eyebrows penciled in swooping arcs. Her chin was doubling. She wore a red dress showing more leg than the legs were worth. The woman was talking with wide gestures and an overloud voice and Gregory judged her to meet his three criteria for prompt sex: Ageing, Homely, and Buzzed.

  “I’d like to buy the lady a drink,” Gregory said to the bartender, watching its delivery. The woman smiled broadly and lifted the glass his way, Thanks. A connection made, Gregory shot the woman faces as he sipped his wine, starting with It Feels Good to Relax and inching up to I’ve Got a Secret Just for You.

  Ten minutes later she was leaving her stool to walk to him (one of Gregory’s rules: never go to them). A half-hour later she was walking out the door after him, squeezing his arm. The woman followed Gregory home in her own vehicle; another rule: Gregory wasn’t a taxi service.

  Clair lived in Mobile’s Spring Hill neighborhood, a beautiful and wooded enclave of historic homes. Tango, an upscale bar-restaurant at the edge of Spring Hill, offered a quiet walnut-and-brass ambience preferred by the wealthy denizens of the community. I’d been to the joint three times and never saw anyone tangoing.

  Harry and I entered and saw Clair in a back booth. The dinner crowd had been replaced by inebriated businessmen. One, a fortyish investment banker-type in a black suit with wide pinstripes, stood beside Clair’s table with a lascivious grin below a hundred-buck haircut. He was tall and relaxed and had the look of a man who specialized in bored housewives.

  “Come on,” he was saying. “Let me buy a pretty lady a drink.”

  “No, thank you, I’m waiting for friends.”

  “If they’re as pretty as you,” the Scotch-fueled lothario winked, “I’ll buy them drinks, too.”

  Harry tiptoed to Pinstripes. “Sounds good, buddy. I’ll take a Sam Adams. Carson?”

  I slipped past Pinstripes and sat across from Clair. “Same.”

  “Two Sammys, then,” Harry said, big hand squeezing the man’s shoulder like he was an old friend. The guy was paler by two shades, staring three inches up into Harry’s eyes. “I, uh, I really didn’t mean that I was going to, uh, buy you—”

  Harry’s smiling eyes tightened toward scowl. “Are you saying I’m not pretty?”

  I tugged the guy’s sleeve. “Tread lightly,” I cautioned. “My friend is hurt he wasn’t chosen as Junior Miss again this year.”

  “Guys …” Clair admonished. But her eyes were having fun.

  Pinstripes glanced toward four similarly dressed men at the bar, his colleagues. They’d probably been betting on his success with Clair, but had turned away when Casanova stepped in it. “Bartender!” Pinstripes barked with a frozen smile. “Two Sam Adams over here.”

  “Thanks, brotha,” Harry said, releasing his grip on the guy’s shoulder. “Nice to know I still got it.”

  Pinstripes backpedaled like a sprinter in reverse, banged his ass on a tabl
e, spun and disappeared from our day.

  “Get many drinks like that?” Clair said as Harry sat.

  “Not nearly enough.”

  Clair’s smile faded as she removed a file from her briefcase and studied it as if reluctant to flap it open, a Pandora’s box of manila. “And now, on to your latest project, Carson …” She pulled out pages, put on reading glasses, and detailed her findings in detached and clinical verbiage. I winced at the repetition of the word “vivisection”.

  When she closed the file no one spoke.

  Gregory was laying in bed and stroking himself. “Come back to bed,” he said. “We’re just getting started.”

  “I’m not in the mood,” the woman said, pulling on her panties.

  The woman had been a poor choice, Gregory thought. First off, she had more native caution than he’d judged, always a problem. Secondly, she was a Kisser, Gregory enduring ten minutes of lips slopping over his, biting, tugging, running her tongue over his teeth as if feeling for a snack.

  When Gregory’d finally tugged her clothes off – did the bitch ever stop talking? – he needed oral sex, but the woman only used her hand. When he pushed her head toward his groin she’d grumbled he was messing up her hair. When he’d given up on a blowjob, he mounted her and put her legs over his shoulders. He was rubbing her anus with the tip of his penis when she nixed that one. So he’d settled for pussy and was finding his rhythm when the woman complained the position was cutting off her breath.

  And now the bitch was standing up and putting on her dress.

  “Come on,” Gregory said.

  “Not gonna happen.” The woman stepped into her shoes. “I’m not there.”

  “There? Where the hell is there?”

  “Like I said, in the mood.” She spelled it out, “m-o-o-d”, as if talking to a third-grader. Gregory felt his jaw clench in anger, both at her condescension and because he wasn’t sure what she was saying.

  “A mood is happy or sad,” he explained. “We were fucking.”

  “OK, then,” the woman said. “I’m happy we stopped fucking. How about that?”

  Gregory let his face go slack, no need to waste any more energy. He could at least learn something. “Just what is it you want?” he asked.

  She frowned. “Want?”

  “You hang around bars to meet men who want to fuck. If you don’t want to fuck, what do you want? You’re not attractive, you’re not young, you’re not smart. You can’t want much, because you don’t have anything to trade.”

  The woman picked up her purse and left the bedroom. Gregory stood at the top of the stairs and watched her descend the steps to the front door. She put her hand on the knob, then turned to him.

  “You fart while you screw, you know that? Little ones that leak out. What’s that about?”

  “Get out of my house.”

  “You should see a doctor. Maybe get a cork put in.”

  “GET OUT!”

  “And not only do you leak stinky farts, buddy …” she said, a smile crossing her lips, “you fuck like a fifteen-year-old.”

  She walked out. Gregory’s red-faced anger turned to cramps in his intestines. He doubled over in pain and ran to the bathroom, leaking gas with every step.

  I arrived home at midnight and checked my e-mail. Clair sometimes followed late-night conversations with thoughts on the topic, using e-mail in case I’d gone to bed.

  I sat on the couch with my laptop. Nothing from Clair, just the usual spam assuming I was a lonely man with erectile dysfunction who needed pictures from hot Russian women, a fifteen-inch penis, and a Rolex knock-off. I was deleting the crap when I noted a post from Wholliday, the subject line a simple Sorry.

  Detective Ryder,

  There was a girl in my high school history class named Nancy Sullivan. When the teacher asked a question, Ms Sullivan not only answered it, but added everything she’d ever learned about anything. She was a bore and no one liked her.

  I think I was afraid of becoming Nancy Sullivan if I kept referring to things I’d learned in my Psych classes. I’m sorry, and in the future I’ll always chime in when I can. I will also be proud that I took the time to learn it, which hadn’t occurred to me before.

  Your class is my favorite, and I think the favorite of most of my colleagues.

  Thank you,

  Nancy Sul … I mean Wendy Holliday

  (Student in your Overview of Investigative Techniques class)

  I laughed at the sign-off and re-read the letter. My mind presented me with a picture of Holliday snapped at the last class: exiting after our talk, her high, round hips ticking side to side and metered by precise clicks, the cleats of her bike shoes tapping on the hard floor.

  It was a delightful picture and I studied it for several gratifying moments. Then I closed down the computer and went to the deck to sit in the dark, trying to understand a mind that would find pleasure in mutilating helpless animals.

  Chapter 9

  Gregory was driving to the quiet and expensive whorehouse he sometimes patronized. It had taken an hour for his anger at the woman to subside. He had almost followed the pig out the door and to her home, thinking of wiring the slut to her goddamn bed, slicing her open and running his fingers through her guts while she watched.

  But he’d gripped tight to the staircase and run the data: he didn’t know her house, her neighborhood, what he’d do with the body. To kill a human was probably easy if you planned correctly, but he hadn’t planned. One misstep and he’d go to prison, a place where they put you in a box and fed you slop and everyone waited for night to come so they could hurt you.

  He knew how that worked.

  So he’d cursed the filthy slut, made a promise to never visit that rat-trap of a bar again, and set out to find relief in a prostitute. Whores weren’t as satisfying as hunting your own women, but whores did pretty much what you wanted and never asked questions about where you worked and what movies and restaurants you liked and all that ridiculous shit. They sure as hell didn’t insult and lie to you. And they never wanted to kiss.

  The light at the upcoming intersection turned red. Gregory saw no other vehicles near, no reason to stop. He passed a small corner bar, wondering why the bar’s neon lights seemed to fill his vehicle. No, not the bar’s lights, he realized … the blue-and-white flashers of a cop car on his bumper. Gregory pulled beneath a streetlamp, anger curdling in his belly. Goddamn cops … people getting robbed and shot all over Mobile and here they were, bothering him.

  Gregory squinted into the rearview and saw two faces in the flashing lights, the passenger-side face obscured by a brown bag. Was the cop drinking? A cop in his twenties exited the driver’s seat, putting on his cap and walking toward Gregory’s car. The other cop leaned on his open door and watched.

  “I need to see license and registration, sir,” the young cop said.

  “What did I do?” Gregory sighed.

  The cop said, “License and registration.”

  Was the cop a parrot? It was a simple question, so Gregory repeated it, enunciating each word carefully.

  “What – did – I – do?”

  “Hey, asshole,” the older cop barked. “Do like you’re goddamn told.”

  Gregory felt his anger ratchet up a level, but caught himself. It’s a routine traffic stop, he reminded himself. Just one more moronic ritual. Put on the faces of concern.

  “I’m sorry. What’s this about, officer?” Gregory handed over his license as a small crowd gathered to watch, drawn to the flashing lights. Gregory saw three whores plus two bone-skinny guys in outsize white tees and sideways ball caps and two grinning old drunks from the corner bar. More gawkers were pushing out the door.

  The young cop shone his flashlight in Gregory’s eyes, blinding him. The world turned white, like a sea of snow. The whiteness condensed into a ball that tolled back and forth like a bell. Gregory could actually hear the flashlight.

  “What is the light, Grigor?” the cop said.

  Gre
gory’s mouth fell open. His heart turned to ice. It seemed as if time stopped.

  “Uh, what did you say?”

  “What are you doing here this time of night?” the cop said.

  Gregory blinked. The young cop was staring from behind the flashlight, now scanning the rear of the car. The light returned to his face.

  “I asked you a question, sir,” the cop repeated. “Why are you here this time of night?”

  “I couldn’t sleep, officer,” Gregory replied quietly, though his jaw was tight with anger. “I was driving to relax.”

  “Get him outta the car, Mailey,” the older cop bayed. “I wanna look at him.”

  “Step out of the car please,” the young cop said, pulling the door open as though Gregory was some kind of criminal.

  “Is there a reason why I—”

  Again the sound of the damned light. Gregory winced.

  “GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE GODDAMN CAR!” the older cop yelled. Gregory exited his vehicle and stood with his hands at his side. The audience on the sidewalk started laughing as though this was a show they’d seen before. The older cop walked toward Gregory, the younger several steps behind. Gregory felt a rumble in his belly. For one strange and breathless second, the cops seemed to split into two pairs, one team walking left, the other walking right.

  Behind him, someone said, “What happened next?” Gregory turned and saw only the giggling whores. When he turned back, the big cop had reappeared a foot from Gregory’s face. His uniform seemed to pulse and shimmer in the soft light, like it was woven from dreams.

  “Breeeep,” the older cop said.

  “What?” Gregory said, frowning.

  Gregory felt a sharp poke in his side, looked down to see a shining black nightstick.

  “Breathe, dammit. Like I just told you.”

  Gregory heard gas bubbling in his intestines. A voice in his head said, Your guts are upset, Grigor; be careful. He exhaled. The cop stuck his nose in the outflow, made a big deal out of grimacing. The onlookers giggled. They had moved closer.