Game of Death

by David Hosp

  When I get to the corner I plaster myself against the building, just out of sight from the alleyway. I stand there for a moment, listening. The silence is so overwhelming that it starts to wear on me, so I take a deep breath and stick my head around the corner, looking down the narrow passage. At the far end, I see a movement – running – and, without thinking, I take off after it.

  There’s a bend in the alley twenty yards down, and by the time I reach it, whoever is fleeing from me has reached the far end of the alley and has disappeared. I sprint to the end of the alley and stand on the intersecting street, looking both ways, searching for any movement, but there is nothing. The shadows are still, and the night is quiet again. I have no idea for how long I stand there, wondering whether I’m letting my imagination get the better of me. The images of the dead girls from the autopsy photos run through my head, and there is a buzzing in my ears as it dawns on me that this is no longer a game.

  An explosion sends my heart nearly through my chest. It is a thunderous crash – a popping sound combined with a sprinkling of broken glass, coming from back up the alley in the other direction. I am frozen for a moment, unsure whether to follow the sound or to run in the other direction. Then a second explosion sounds, louder than the first, coming from the same direction, and I am moving back up the alley. It’s not in my nature to flee.

  I reach the far end of the alley, and everything is still and silent again. I look around, searching for any indication of where the explosion came from. It takes a moment, but then I see my car and I can tell something is wrong.

  I walk over slowly, looking around me with each step, waiting for someone to emerge from a darkened doorway, or from behind another car, or from out of the sewer. Nothing happens, though, and as I come closer to my car I can see where the noises came from. My rear windshield and back passenger window have been smashed. The shards of glass are spread across the street and cover the back seat, sparkling blue-green at the edges in the moonlight, looking like rough diamonds or polished crystal meth.

  ‘Shit,’ I mutter to myself. The fear I had a few moments before is gone at this point – I’m angry now. I turn to the empty street. ‘Who are you?’ I shout. I wait a moment, almost as though I’m expecting a response. ‘Who are you?’ I shout again. In the distance, a woken dog barks an alarm.

  I stand there for another few moments, looking around. I have the feeling that I am being watched by someone very close by. ‘We’re coming for you!’ I yell out. ‘We will find you!’

  I think I hear some rustling, like a phantom shrinking back into the night, but I can’t get a fix on the direction from which it is coming.

  At last I open the driver’s side door to the car and climb in. There is some glass on my seat, but I don’t even bother to wipe it away. I turn the starter and put the car in gear, taking one last look around before I pull away.

  ‘We’re coming for you,’ I say quietly again.

  I step on the gas and head toward home.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The next morning I pull up in front of Killkenny’s apartment building. It’s a renovated brownstone in an upscale section of the South End, close in toward the Back Bay. It’s quarter after seven. I’m early, but that’s just because I had trouble sleeping. My mind is in turmoil and I feel lost, but there’s little I can do about it at this point.

  I sit in my car as a warm morning breeze blows through my shattered car windows. The area is just starting to come to life, with people leaving early for work or heading out for a run before breakfast. Posh coffee shops and bistros dot the storefronts along the neighborhood. The residents are a combination of younger professionals and wealthy retirees, from the look of the people on the street. I know that apartments in the area start at seven figures, and I wonder how someone can afford to live in this area on a cop’s salary.

  Killkenny’s SS is parked in front of a hydrant near his building, and I’m not surprised that there is no ticket on the windshield. I’m sure that the police department’s parking cop for this area has been warned off messing with that particular car.

  The detective emerges from his building at seven thirty-five, stands on his stoop and looks around. I climb out of my car and he sees me, comes my way. ‘You ready for this?’ he asks.

  ‘Yeah,’ I answer with more confidence than I feel.

  He looks at my car windows. ‘You had some work done, I see.’

  ‘Cheaper than air conditioning.’

  ‘What happened?’

  I shrug. ‘Not sure. Happened on the street last night.’ For some reason I’m not eager to relay the entire story to him at the moment. Perhaps later, but not now.

  ‘That’s two bad nights for you in a row,’ he comments.

  ‘Bad luck.’

  He raises an eyebrow. ‘I try to stay away from people with bad luck,’ he says. ‘Maybe you shouldn’t come today.’

  ‘It only seems to come out at night,’ I point out. ‘We should be fine.’

  He nods. ‘Okay, but we’re taking my car.’

  ‘I don’t have a parking sticker for this neighborhood,’ I say.

  ‘Good thing you know a cop who can take care of any parking tickets then,’ he says with a crooked smile.

  ‘I guess.’ I look over my car, hesitating.

  ‘What, are you worried it’ll get stolen?’

  ‘There are no windows,’ I say. ‘I can’t lock it very effectively.’

  He laughs. ‘Trust me, no one’s gonna steal that car. And if they did, I’m guessing you’ll be better off. Insurance’ll probably pay off more than it’s worth.’

  Sadly, he’s probably right about that, but I’ve had the car for a long time, so I still feel like I’m leaving a wounded comrade to die on the battlefield.

  ‘It’s a good neighborhood,’ he says, clearly sensing my hesitation. ‘Not like Chucktown. It’ll still be here when we get back.’

  I nod. ‘Okay.’ We walk over and get into his SS. It has a black leather interior and every extra feature you can imagine: rearview camera, Internet connectivity, Bluetooth, tricked-out stereo with satellite . . . the works. ‘Nice,’ I say.

  ‘I told you, people judge a man by his car,’ Killkenny says.

  ‘You’ve done well for yourself.’ I wonder whether he’ll catch the implication in my voice, and regret having made the comment as the words tumble from my mouth. Fortunately Killkenny isn’t self-aware enough to catch my drift. Either that, or he chooses to ignore it.

  ‘Not as well as you’ll do for yourself, when your company goes public,’ he says simply. ‘I just like to show it a bit.’

  I leave it there; there’s no point in pursuing it any further. He turns the ignition and the car roars into life. A few of the people on the street turn to look as Killkenny revs the engine. ‘Where to first?’ I ask.

  Killkenny takes out a folder that contains the photos and information printouts of the seven models we’ve identified as having been the prototypes for De Sade’s LifeScenes. He flips it open. ‘Jennifer Quincy,’ he says. ‘She lives relatively nearby.’

  ‘South End?’

  ‘Washington Street. Out by Mass. Ave.’

  ‘That’s still South End.’

  He snorts. ‘Barely.’

  We pull up to the apartment at the address in Jennifer Quincy’s file, on Worcester Square, just off Washington Street. It’s three-story brick bow-front, probably built in the first half of the twentieth century. All of the buildings around the square are identical, facing out on a tiny patch of grass in the center that divides the traffic that flows to the northwest on one side and the southeast on the other. It’s a mixed lower-middle class neighborhood a block from City Hospital. There are some young professionals trying to save money who have moved in, but the area hasn’t given in to gentrification yet, and the people on the street stare at Killkenny’s car with distrust as it glides to the curb in a no-parking zone.

  I look back and forth between the photo in the file on my lap and
the second-floor windows, which, from the address in the file, likely look out from Jennifer Quincy’s apartment. Closing the file, I open the door and get out. Killkenny climbs out as well. We walk up the steps of the stoop and look at the list of names by the series of buzzers next to the front door. Killkenny reaches out and presses the button next to the names ‘Quincy/Kimball’ identified as living in Apartment 2A. We stand there for a while waiting. Nothing happens and Killkenny reaches out and presses the button again.

  It takes twenty seconds or so, but eventually a woman’s voice comes over the intercom. ‘Yeah?’ She sounds annoyed.

  ‘Is this Jennifer Quincy?’ Killkenny says, pressing the intercom button and speaking into the grille.

  ‘Yeah. Who’s this?’

  At least we know she’s still alive,’ Killkenny says to me. He presses the intercom button again. ‘This is Detective Paul Killkenny, Boston Police Department. Do you have a moment to talk?’

  There’s a long pause before the voice comes back. ‘Talk about what?’

  ‘I’d rather talk in person, if possible,’ Killkenny responds.

  The pause again. ‘Fine. Just give me a couple minutes, okay?’ For the first time I can hear the thick Boston accent.

  We stand on the stoop, looking out at the neighborhood. Those who pass us look up with scowls. ‘We’re not popular here. They know I’m a cop,’ Killkenny comments.

  ‘What do you think gives it away?’ I ask deadpan, looking at him. Everything about him – the aggressive stance, the sense of entitlement – screams ‘cop’; he could be nothing else.

  ‘You’re my silent partner up there, right?’ he says.

  ‘Whatever you say, boss.’

  ‘I’m serious about that. You’re only here so I can avoid the hassle of a subpoena and dealing with your company’s lawyers to get the information I need. If Welker knew I allowed you to tag along on this, he’d have my ass in a sling. If you or your girlfriend step out of line, we’re done with this, and I’ll consider bringing charges.’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

  That draws a smirk from Killkenny, and I realize he was baiting me. ‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘I just want to know that you’re gonna keep your mouth shut.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll let you do the talking,’ I agree.

  The front door opens, and a guy who looks like he’s in his early twenties comes out. He’s attractive, with dark hair and a brooding, unshaven look that women tend to like. His hair is disheveled, and he’s tucking his shirt, which is inside-out, into his pants. He’s carrying his socks and his wallet and his head is bowed, looking down at the ground. ‘Excuse me,’ he says as he sidesteps us on the stoop.

  Killkenny and I turn and watch him walk away, down the street, as the intercom cracks and Jennifer Quincy’s voice says, ‘Okay, you can come up if you want.’

  Killkenny smiles at the man walking down the street and chuckles. ‘This should be interesting.’

  ‘What’s this all about?’

  Jennifer Quincy is standing in the living room/dining room/kitchen of her 900-square-foot apartment, her arms crossed in front of a loose-fitting T-shirt with the logo of a band that I don’t recognize emblazoned on the front. She is wearing striped leggings, and she’s tried to pull her blonde hair back into some reasonable shape, but it’s too unruly to be tamed without a great deal more effort. The apartment is small for two people, but relatively neat. The furniture is low-end IKEA, and there are candles lined up on the mantel above a non-working fireplace. Killkenny walks over to the mantel and examines the candles. They have burned down, and the wax has spilled out unevenly onto the mantel’s white paint. It looks like they were probably burning the night before, likely to help set the mood with the guy who shouldered past us on the stoop. I look at Jennifer, standing there like a post-coital wreck, and it’s hard not to notice how striking she is, with her tanned skin and light hair. Even her angry stance makes her seem all the more sexual. I feel a distinct pang of jealousy toward the man we saw leaving.

  ‘The door outside says Quincy/Kimball,’ Killkenny says. ‘You have a roommate?’

  ‘She’s away on business.’

  ‘What kind of business?’

  ‘Commercial real estate. She’s an intern. Is this about her?’

  ‘I just wanted to know whether there was anyone else here.’ Killkenny is walking around the room, looking things over. He picks up a picture of Quincy and a group of friends smiling broadly at the camera, all holding drinks raised in cheer. It looks like it was probably taken on some spring break within the past few years.

  ‘There’s no one else here,’ she says.

  ‘Not anymore.’ Killkenny looks over his shoulder at her and gives her a smile that borders on lecherous.

  ‘Am I in trouble?’

  Killkenny puts the picture down. ‘No, you’re not. We’re in the middle of an investigation, and we’re here to ask you a few questions about a modeling job you did around four and a half years ago.’

  She’s looking blankly at him. ‘A modeling job I did four and a half years ago?’

  ‘Yeah. You were a model, right?’

  She shrugs, and I see the shadow of disappointed expectations cross her face. ‘I did some modeling,’ she says. ‘I don’t know that it was ever steady enough to say I was a model. It’s a tough business.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Killkenny says. ‘Lots of pretty girls out there.’ She says nothing, but recrosses her arms, waiting. ‘We wanted to talk to you about a job you did for a company called NextLife. Do you remember that one?’

  Her arms fall to her sides as she exhales and her face goes sour. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I remember that one.’ She sits on the faux-modern orange couch against the wall. ‘That was the one that got me out of the business.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘What are you investigating?’

  ‘Murder.’

  That gets her attention. ‘A murder? Of someone I know?’

  Killkenny shakes his head. ‘It’s not likely. But it may have to do with NextLife. It would help if you could tell us about what you did for them.’

  ‘Sure,’ she says absently.

  ‘You said it was the job that got you out of the business. How did it do that?’

  Her eyes are directed toward the floor, but her focus is in the distance, on the past. ‘I’d been trying to break in for a couple years. I got some modeling jobs in my senior year, up in Leominster. Some local-paper stuff for some of the manufacturing companies. That convinced me to come to Boston to see if I could make it a steady thing.’ She takes a deep breath and lets it out. ‘I was naive.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘I had just turned eighteen when I got to Boston.’

  ‘And when you did the job for NextLife?’

  ‘It was right before my twentieth birthday.’

  ‘What happened?’

  She leans back in the couch, crosses her legs and her shoulders seem to draw in upon her body. ‘The first year I was here I got picked up by the Helena Agency. It’s one of the smaller ones, but it had an okay reputation, and who was I to judge, right? Anyway, they got me a job here, a job there – usually catalogue stuff, a few fliers. Nothing that paid any real money. I had to get a job waiting tables to buy food and pay rent. They kept telling me that I could make much more money if I’d be willing to show a little more skin, but I’d always said that I wouldn’t do nudity. I did some underwear stuff for a flier once, but it was pretty tame, and I’d always said that was as far as I’d go.’

  Killkenny sits in an upholstered chair across the coffee table from her. He frowns and reaches underneath him, in the folds of the cushion, and pulls out a black lace bra. He holds it up on one finger. ‘You had your standards, no doubt.’

  She shoots forward, grabs the bra back from him and crumples it into a ball angrily, starts to put it in her pocket, but quickly realizes she has no pockets. She seems defeated and unfolds the bra on her lap, looking at it contempla
tively. ‘I had standards once,’ she says quietly. ‘After a year and a half the people at the agency sat me down and told me they were going to drop me. They thought I had the look, but I wasn’t getting the jobs, and they had other girls they wanted to bring in.’ She looks at Killkenny, her eyes pleading for understanding. ‘You gotta realize, when I left Leominster I said I wouldn’t go back until I was a real success. I didn’t have any skills, I didn’t have any money. So I begged them. I told them I’d do anything to get work.’

  ‘So you started taking your clothes off.’

  She nods. ‘Just a little. No full nudity, but I had a few jobs posing for fliers that the hawkers for the strip-joints out on Route One give out. You know, the teasers? Those six-by-four postcards that offer free admission? They give them out in the city to try to get the business out there. Nothing too bad. Show a little bit of nipple, that sort of thing. And the money was better. The jobs I was doing before were paying a couple hundred dollars for the day, tops. These jobs were paying five, even six hundred dollars. So that was good.’

  ‘How’d you get the job for NextLife?’

  ‘Through the agency. They called and said they had this job that would pay a thousand dollars. They said it was full nudity, but the trick was, it was never going to be used as advertising or anything like that. They said it was just to help some programmers map the female body. So I figured it was low-risk, and no one would ever know. And the agency really wanted me to do it, and it was the best money I’d ever been offered, so I figured: what the hell – you know?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was like I was captured by fucking aliens, that’s what happened,’ she says angrily. ‘Those people were freaks.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, to start with, at most photo shoots there’s a set of some sort, and they have robes, and there are people there who are nice to you and try to make you feel comfortable. There was none of that in this case. There were about ten of us who were being shot all in a row, so we just had to sit there in this sort of laboratory of a place. There was one photographer, who was okay; he seemed to know what he was doing. But then there were these three or four geeks there who were directing the show. When it was my turn, they had me strip down – no prep, no explanation of what we were doing. And then they had me stand in front of this blue backdrop buck-naked, and the photographer took about a hundred pictures. A few of them were full-body shots, but then they had him focus right up close on every part of me.’ She pauses and looks at us both. ‘You get that? Every part of me.’