The Dying Game

by Beverly Barton

  The wind howled mercilessly, and although the sun kept peeking out from behind the clouds, rain threatened. Lindsay glimpsed at Judd, not wanting him to catch her doing it because he’d realize she was concerned about him. Although he was shaving every day now, he still needed a haircut. But at least this morning he had combed his thick, jaw-length mane of honey brown hair back out of his face and behind his ears. He wore dark slacks and a tan turtleneck sweater under his leather coat. Just looking at him, no one would ever believe that he was one of the richest men in the South.

  Lindsay saw the pain in Judd’s golden eyes, noted the tightness in his features, and knew he was remembering Jenny’s funeral. Why had he come here with them today? Why put himself through this torment?

  The heart-rending strains of the violin music rose up and away on the winter wind, the tune one she remembered from her own mother’s funeral: “In the Sweet By-and-By.” The soprano’s voice carried through the cemetery, a mournful promise that loved ones would be together again in the distant, heavenly future.

  Tears sprang instantly to Lindsay’s eyes. Damn it, why that song, of all songs? Swallowing hard, she blinked away her tears and took a deep breath. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Judd grasped her hand and squeezed. Startled by his actions, she whipped her head around and stared at him. Dry-eyed and somber, he looked at her as he squeezed her hand again. Unaccustomed to any kindness from him, she didn’t know what to think or how to feel. Telling herself not to overreact, she glanced away, back at the scene below. But she clung to his hand as they stood there and watched while the song ended and the minister quoted the Twenty-third Psalm.

  Griff hated funerals. In the past few years, he had been to far too many, almost all of them for victims of the Beauty Queen Killer. He always wondered if the murderer was there at the service, mixing and mingling with the mourners. Pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Keeping a low profile. As he glanced across the closed casket and past the minister, Griff saw Nic Baxter standing in the second row of the crowd on the other side from the canopied tent where he sat with Barbara Jean.

  What was Nic thinking right now? Was she remembering her husband’s funeral six years ago? Remembering how he’d died? Feeling guilty, possibly blaming herself? Or was she thinking as he was that maybe the killer was here today, getting some kind of perverse pleasure out of attending the funeral of the woman he had hacked to death.

  Barbara Jean wept softly, her slender shoulders trembling. She held Sanders’s hand discreetly between their side-by-side thighs, their shoulders and hips almost touching. It had been a long time since he had seen Sanders show deep feelings of any kind. Griff understood. A man does what he must do to survive, in order not to lose his mind. The closest Sanders had come to expressing emotions in recent years had been his concern for Lindsay’s welfare. But Griff suspected that his old friend was beginning to care about the soft-spoken, gentle Barbara Jean. Of all the women in the world, why this one? But then again, why not? Griff was not an expert on love. Far from it. He’d thought himself in love a couple of times when he’d been much younger, back in college. But both relationships, based mainly on sex, had fizzled out rather quickly.

  Was Sanders worried about Barbara Jean’s safety? Probably. The man was a worrier. A silent worrier, one who kept his concerns mostly to himself.

  If the murderer was somewhere in the crowd of mourners—at least a hundred and fifty or more—Griff doubted that the man was stupid enough to try to kill Barbara Jean here and now. A man smart enough to commit nearly thirty murders and not get caught wasn’t the kind of man to take foolish chances. But then again, after so many successful kills, he might be getting cocky, might be feeling a little too self-assured.

  If the killer was here and if he tried anything, he’d be surrounded within seconds. Not only were there five extra Powell agents, other than Angie and Lindsay, in attendance, but there were a number of police officers and FBI agents here, too. Nic hadn’t shared that information with him, but he didn’t need her input to know what was going on.

  Scanning the cemetery beyond where he sat, Griff surveyed the crowd, then looked up toward the knoll where Lindsay and Judd stood, at least a dozen other people near them, including Chief of Police Mahoney.

  What was it like for Judd being here today? Griff had been as surprised as Lindsay when Judd had asked to come to Kentucky with them to attend the funeral. The more he thought about Judd’s request, the more he wondered if this was a good sign, maybe a healthy sign of recovery. It couldn’t be easy for him. He had to be thinking about Jenny. Remembering her funeral.

  Griff thought about Judd’s wife every time he attended a victim’s funeral. And with each new murder he questioned the existence of a God who would allow such a thing to happen. Twenty years ago, as a recent UT graduate, he had believed in the Almighty, had been thankful for the blessings he had received in his life. It had been easy to have faith back then when every day, every week, every year, his life had gotten better and better. His mother had been a devout Christian and dragged him to church and Sunday school when he was growing up in the little town of Dayton, Tennessee.

  His father had been killed in a logging accident when he was ten, and his mother had died—some said of a broken heart—when Griff had gone missing when he was twenty-two.

  I’m so sorry, Mama. If I could have gotten word to you that I was alive, I would have.

  But if she had known where he was and what was happening to him, would she have been any better off? If there is a God and if there is a heaven, he knew his mother was there, behind the pearly gates, walking on streets paved with gold, listening to the heavenly choir. If anyone ever deserved eternal peace and happiness, it was his mama.

  After the minister ended the graveside service with a prayer, the soloist and violinist joined for a final song. Sanders stood and took charge, wheeling Barbara Jean from underneath the canopy and away from the grave. Angie stayed at her side. The minister came over and offered Barbara Jean his deepest sympathy, as did several of the bystanders, those who had known Gale Ann or knew Barbara Jean. Most of the crowd began to disperse, a few nodding and speaking to one another, others heading directly for their vehicles.

  Griff had noticed several people snapping photos and suspected quite a few were local and national reporters who had slipped in. He figured that the local morning newspaper would display a photo of the grieving sister.

  Griff spoke quietly to Sanders. “Wait here for a few minutes until I contact the others and have them join us, then you can take Barbara Jean to the car. I’ll follow with Lindsay and Judd in a few minutes.”

  Barbara Jean looked up at Griff and lifted her hand. “Thank you. I couldn’t have given Gale Ann a funeral like this without your help. It was everything I wanted for her…and more.” She glanced back at the open grave surrounded by numerous floral arrangements, over half of them provided by the Powell Agency.

  Griff grasped Barbara Jean’s hand. “I’m just glad I could do something.”

  Tears streamed down her face. She dabbed her eyes and cheeks with the handkerchief Sanders had provided for her.

  Griff had never carried a handkerchief before he met Sanders. He had learned everything he knew about being a gentleman from his friend.

  Griff called Rick Carson to inform him that he wanted all the Powell agents to go with Angie when she took Barbara Jean to the limousine. Once that was done, Griff walked through the disbanding crowd and up the hill to where Judd and Lindsay waited.

  Judd didn’t like what was happening to him, but his gut instincts told him that being able to feel again wasn’t a bad thing. It might hurt like hell actually to give a damn, but at least now he knew he was still alive, that there was something left of him other than a revenge-crazed shell of his former self. It wasn’t that he had changed overnight. He hadn’t. And it wasn’t that he’d changed all that much. Six months ago he hadn’t given a damn that he’d hurt Lindsay, that he had ripped her to shreds and sent her running.
r />   That had been what he’d wanted.

  At least that’s what he’d thought at the time. He had convinced himself that she didn’t matter to him, that no one mattered. But there had been a few niggling moments during the past six months when he’d thought of her, wondered what she was doing, who she was with. And in those moments, he had damned her, determined not to care, not to feel.

  Asking to come along today to attend Gale Ann Cain’s funeral had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, not something he’d thought about or agonized over. Two seconds after he’d made the request, he’d wanted to take it back. He could have. Griff hadn’t questioned Judd’s reasoning, though he had been somewhat surprised by the request.

  “You’ll have to stay with Lindsay during the services,” Griff had said. “And if you say or do anything inappropriate, I’ll have your ass hauled away so quick—”

  “I’ll be on my best behavior.”

  “You’d better be.”

  Griff was a man of his word. Judd didn’t doubt for a minute that his old friend would follow-through on his threat. Griff had his own set of rules by which he lived, but in Judd’s estimation, Griff was honorable and loyal. Yet at the same time, he was capable of being ruthless and dangerous.

  During the past four years, Judd had both relied on Griff’s friendship and had resented it. He had abused their relationship time and again, which spoke to the depth of Griff’s affection for him. He hadn’t deserved that kind of loyalty. Not from anyone, especially not from Griff. Or from Lindsay.

  He glanced at Lindsay, who stood beside him on the knoll overlooking the cemetery. Apparently her cell phone had vibrated. She flipped it open and spoke so softly that he could barely hear her.

  “We’ll wait here for you,” she said.

  “Griff?” he asked.

  She nodded, but avoided touching Judd or looking at him.

  Lindsay had to know that during the service in the chapel and the one here at the cemetery, he’d been thinking of Jenny. Of her funeral. What little he could remember. Cam and Griff had somehow slipped some prescription medication into him the day of Jenny’s memorial service. He’d been not only numb with grief, but doped to the gills. He recalled bits and pieces of the service, which he’d later learned Cam had arranged. Someday, he’d have to thank Cam for taking over and doing what he’d been unable to do.

  Judd did remember that Cam and Griff hadn’t left him alone for several weeks after Jenny’s murder. One or the other was with him twenty-four-seven. When he’d come out of that initial numbness, he had realized that his two best friends had been afraid he’d kill himself.

  God knew he’d thought about it, but the anger inside wouldn’t let him die. Concentrating on revenge had given him a reason to live. He had been damned by his own hatred, embracing the agony of losing Jenny, wallowing in the mire of unrelenting grief.

  You shouldn’t have died, sweetheart. And neither should any of his other victims. It was wrong. It was unfair.

  How had the families of the other victims dealt with their deaths? How had the men who had loved them survived? Had they drowned in their anger and bitterness, as he had, or had they found other reasons to live?

  If he and Jenny had had a child…

  She had wanted a baby. Someday.

  And he had wanted whatever Jenny wanted.

  “Let’s go,” Lindsay said, bringing Judd out of his melancholy thoughts. “Griff’s ready to leave.”

  Judd glanced at her and then a few feet away where Griff had stopped to speak to a stocky, sandy-haired man in uniform, a high-ranking police officer.

  “Who’s Griff talking to?” Judd asked.

  “Chief Mahoney.”

  Judd watched the interchange between the two men and surmised that the Williamstown chief of police didn’t share Special Agent Baxter’s animosity toward Griff. The two shook hands before the chief walked off and Griff motioned to them.

  When they caught up with Griff halfway to his rental car, he stopped, glanced around and said in a low voice, “Someone else saw our mystery man leaving Gale Ann’s apartment the day she was killed.”

  “What!” Lindsay said a little too loudly.

  “One of the other tenants was taking out his garbage and caught a glimpse of Barbara Jean entering the building and this guy leaving.”

  “When did the witness come forward?” Lindsay asked.

  “Only a few days ago,” Griff said. “It took him awhile to build up his courage and go to the police.”

  “Can he ID the man?”

  “No, not really. His description is less detailed than Barbara Jean’s. But I want to tell her that she’s not the only witness, that someone else saw the guy. That might reduce some of the pressure on her to remember.”

  “But it doesn’t help us, does it?” Judd knew the others understood his comment was rhetorical and required no response.

  “Do we need to stay on in Williamstown and question this witness?” Lindsay asked.

  “We can’t,” Griff replied. “It seems Nic Baxter has him in protective custody.”

  Pinkie had never attended a victim’s funeral. Not until today. He had been unable to resist the overwhelming urge to come back to Kentucky and watch Gale Ann Cain being laid to rest. She’d been a lovely woman. And such an easy kill. He would never forget her, just as he wouldn’t forget any of the others. They were all precious to him, especially the redheads.

  Pausing in the midst of the mourners, he watched while the Powell agents descended on Barbara Jean Hughes like a swarm of locusts, surrounding her as Griffin Powell’s man, Sanders, wheeled her away from the graveside.

  Did these fools actually think he would try to kill her today?

  He knew that Griffin had intentionally released the information that Gale Ann’s sister had seen a man who might be the killer.

  It was possible that Griffin had hoped he would be lured in by the information, that he would try to kill Barbara Jean and they could trap him. But after being a part of his and Pudge’s little game for nearly four years now, surely Griffin knew better.

  He has to know I’m too intelligent to fall into a trap. I haven’t been caught yet and I won’t be. Part of the fun is outsmarting not only the local lawmen and the FBI, but in eluding the famous private detective Griffin Powell.

  Pinkie had enjoyed the service at the church and also this graveside farewell. If he had known how entertaining these events were, he would have gone to the previous ones. He could have brought along a small hidden camera and taken pictures and added the photographs to his collection.

  Next time.

  He wouldn’t have to wait long. He had already chosen the next pretty flower. A brunette. Only ten points. But ten points would keep him ahead of Pudge, enough so that he didn’t have to worry the least little bit.

  He supposed he could have continued searching until he found a blonde, but the moment he saw LaShae, he knew she was the one. Her photo on her Web site probably didn’t do her justice. A former Miss Birmingham who went on to model professionally for a few years in her early twenties, LaShae was tall, slender, elegant. At thirty she had her own successful talk show on a local TV station, was happily married to an up-and-coming lawyer with political aspirations, and had a four-year-old son.

  So much to live for. Pinkie sighed.

  But better for someone as lovely as you are, my dear LaShae, to die young and leave behind memories of how beautiful you were. You would hate growing old, losing your looks, becoming withered and wrinkled.

  Pinkie hurried along, keeping himself surrounded by the scattering mourners all the way to the parking area at the nearby Baptist church. Although he wore a disguise, he didn’t want to risk anyone noticing him in particular. And he certainly didn’t want to come face-to-face with Griffin Powell and risk Griff recognizing him.

  Chapter 17

  LaShae Goodloe loved her house in Mountain Brook in a way she loved little else, except her son Martin. This beautiful home represented her succes
s in life, her climb from poverty to riches. She had never been ashamed of her humble beginnings, had in fact used her own life story in the inspirational talks she gave to various organizations in and around Birmingham. The fact that her father had been a school janitor and her mother a cook at another school in her hometown of Bessemer had been a source of pride for her and her brother, Tony, who both now held Master’s degrees from the University of Alabama.

  As LaShae made her way up the staircase to the second floor, she sighed deeply, weary from a long day at the station, and then dinner with her husband to discuss the terms of their legal separation. Rodney had moved out only a week ago, after another of their heated arguments. Neither of them wanted to rush into a divorce. For many reasons, they wanted to try to make their marriage work. Martin being the main reason. They both adored their son. Another reason was because Rodney had plans to run for state senator. He understood that a family would be a benefit for him in any election. And LaShae had her own selfish reasons for wanting to remain Mrs. Rodney Goodloe. Her husband was quite wealthy and she enjoyed the lifestyle they shared. Although her local TV show was fairly popular, she had no false hopes of ever hitting the big time, of becoming the next Oprah Winfrey. No, she was lucky just to be doing local TV in a big city like Birmingham and she knew it.

  As she passed Martin’s open bedroom door, she paused and glanced inside. Her four year old slept soundly in the antique spindle bed that had been his grandfather Goodloe’s. LaShae wasn’t all that fond of antiques, but Rodney loved them. One of their many differences. Differences that seemed unimportant five years ago when they married, but now those tiny molehills had become mountains.

  LaShae tiptoed into her son’s room and paused by his bed. Looking down at him, she smiled. He was such a beautiful child. Long, lean, and sturdy, his body build a great deal like hers. His black hair was thick and coarse like Rodney’s, and his face round, his cheeks full like his father’s.