Game of Death

by David Hosp

  My words come out in a rush. ‘Paul, it’s not Gunta – at least not alone. It’s someone else!’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because we just found Taylor Westerbrooke.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Neither Yvette nor I speak on the ride to Roxbury. A couple of times I start to say something, but when I play it in my mind before it comes out, it seems inappropriate. I finally settle for putting a hand on her shoulder when we’re stopped at a light. She looks over and again I have the impulse to say something – anything to let her know that it’s alright; that we did everything we could have done. But I know it’s not alright, and I’m not convinced that we – that I – did everything that could have been done.

  We pull up outside the building off Melnea Cass Boulevard in Roxbury, a rundown area of the city that’s wedged between the fashionable South End and suburban Brookline. We’re only a few miles from where Taylor Westerbrooke grew up, but I feel certain that she never spent any time in this neighborhood when she was younger.

  There are several police cars parked haphazardly near the building, cutting traffic down from four lanes to two. Fortunately it’s late enough that the pile-up seems to be causing minimal inconvenience to drivers. The locals who are awake and observing the process from a distance seem accustomed to the invasion of the law.

  I park the car a half a block up the street, just past the last police car. We get out and walk back toward the building. A string of police tape stretches waist-high across the sidewalk, one end tied to a tree, the other to a car door handle. A young cop stands there, keeping the curious at bay. We walk up to the tape and I call out to him. ‘Officer?’ At first he pretends not to hear me, so I raise the volume. ‘Officer!’

  He looks at me, annoyed. ‘Stay back, sir!’ he barks.

  ‘Detective Killkenny called. We’ve been helping with the investigation. He asked us to come.’

  He looks at me suspiciously. ‘You cops? Where’s your badges?’

  I shake my head. ‘We’re not cops. Just ask for Paul Killkenny. Tell him Nick Caldwell is here.’

  ‘Caldwell?’

  ‘Caldwell. Whatever, just tell him.’

  The officer calls over another uniformed cop and talks to him, sending him inside. He turns and keeps his eye on us. It takes around three minutes before Killkenny pokes his head out of the building’s front door. He shouts to the cop watching the small crowd, ‘They’re good!’ and ducks his head back inside. The cop gives us a grudging look, but lifts the tape to let us through.

  Killkenny is waiting for us just inside. The building is a six-story box structure with all the personality that early 1960s utilitarian architecture had to offer. The hallways are tiled, and the floors are some sort of industrial linoleum that looks like it was designed to be easily cleaned. ‘It’s a flophouse,’ Killkenny says. ‘Rentals can be anywhere from nightly to monthly. I talked to the manager, and the efficiency apartment Taylor’s in was rented for three nights.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Yvette demands.

  ‘Third floor,’ Killkenny says. ‘I’ll take you up.’

  We walk across the entryway and get into an elevator that creaks as it closes. The lights are dim, and even with just the three of us it’s cramped. The pulleys grind and groan as we make the three-story climb. The buzzer sounds, letting us know we are at our floor, and the doors labor to open.

  We step out, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. The light in the elevator is dim, but at least there is some. The hallway lights on the third floor are out, and the hallway is crowded with cops. They bustle back and forth, some serious, others cracking macabre jokes. They quieten down when they see Killkenny. He leads us down the hallway toward the doorway that seems to be the focal point of the activity. He pauses ten feet from the apartment. ‘It’s not pleasant in there,’ he says. He looks at Yvette. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

  She gives him a hard look. ‘Yes, I do.’

  He nods, and leads us to the door. There are two cops in the doorway, just staring at the scene, blocking our way. Killkenny taps them on the shoulder and they part, clearing the way for us.

  The vision is awful to behold. Taylor is undressed, hanging from the ceiling, a chain running from the back of her neck to a metal bolt above her. Her head is slumped forward, her tangled thicket of red hair hiding her face, her neck stretched, taking her weight. There are leather straps around her wrists, and they are secured to hooks in the ceiling so that her arms hang loosely out to her sides, like a marionette awaiting the puppet show. Her ankles are tied with straps that run to hooks in the floor, her legs spread.

  I stand there, unable to move, unable to speak. Yvette described the scene from her GhostWalk, so I knew roughly what I was likely to see when I walked through the door, and I’ve had my own experience GhostWalking De Sade’s LifeScenes myself, but nothing prepared me for this. As perfect as we like to view the technology at NextLife to be – as close to real life as it is – it cannot capture the brutality of a scene like this. NextLife is pristine, a sanitized version of reality that leaves out the sting of the real world. The walls of the tiny apartment are streaked with water stains from past years, and the place carries the stench of desperation and fear. In short, there is nothing erotic about the scene before us. It is raw and dirty and obscene.

  There is a crime-scene investigator who is working the body inch by inch, taking photographs with a large camera with an oversized flash that illuminates Taylor Westerbrooke’s flesh like lightning in a horror film. As he moves up, he comes to her head and he takes several shots before he reaches up and grabs her by the hair, tilting her head back so that we can see her face.

  Her cheeks are streaked with mascara, her lipstick smeared. For the first time, now, I can see the metal collar, a spiked monstrosity two inches thick, the joints digging into her skin far enough to draw tiny rivulets of blood down like a spider web toward her breasts. The worst, though, are her eyes. They are open, and they stare out at us with a profound agony, begging for the release that has already come.

  Yvette takes a step forward, her expression set, tears running down her face. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispers to the corpse suspended before her. ‘I should have stopped this.’ She stands there for just a moment, and then turns and walks out without another word.

  ‘I talked to her mother,’ Killkenny says out in the hallway. We’ve moved away from the apartment doorway and stand toward the end of the hallway. A swarm of cops clot the dark, narrow passageway, like flies around meat that’s been left out for too long. I can feel them looking over at us, no doubt wondering who we are. ‘Apparently, she didn’t take our advice. She went out with the cute boy she met at the bar a week ago. The coroner says she’s been dead less than four hours, and Gunta’s been locked up at the station house. Besides, no one’s gonna mistake Gunta for a matinee idol, so that clears him. At least for this one. You said you think you know who did this?’

  ‘We think we do,’ I say.

  ‘We know we do,’ Yvette corrects me. There is venom in her voice.

  ‘You waiting for my birthday to surprise me?’

  ‘It’s Michael François,’ I say. ‘He’s one of Gunta’s chief assistant programmers.’

  ‘Okay,’ Killkenny says. ‘You wanna tell me how you know this for sure?’

  ‘He’s got the same last name as the Marquis de Sade,’ Yvette says.

  ‘That it?’ Killkenny demands. ‘’Cause that won’t even get me a warrant, much less a conviction.’

  ‘No, that’s not it,’ I say. ‘He was part of Gunta’s experiments with prisoners using the NextLife platform. Gunta cleared him as a non-risk, and he was released in part on that basis.’

  ‘He was a convict?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What was he in for?’

  ‘Multiple arrests and two convictions for sexual assault. He’s also a programming genius, so he has the skill to create the intricat
e LifeScenes De Sade used to practice the murders.’

  ‘Okay, I’m sold,’ Killkenny says. ‘That’ll get me the warrant, at least. The coroner says there’s semen still in the girl, so if we find this guy, it’s a simple test to prove whether or not he did this. God bless DNA.’

  ‘How long will it take to get the warrant?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m phoning it in now. I need you two to come down to the station house to look over the affidavit before I sign it, but there’s a Superior Court judge on call. We should be able to have it within an hour or so.’ He pauses for a moment, thinking. ‘So, you think this guy is actually a descendant of the Marquis de Sade?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Yvette says. ‘Who knows? It’s clear that he feels a bond with him. Maybe he just has the same last name, or maybe he changed his name at some point because he wanted to be like him. In the end it doesn’t really matter, does it? All that matters is making sure he doesn’t do anything like this to another girl.’

  ‘Speaking of the other girls, should we warn them again? Be clearer this time?’ I ask. I can feel Yvette’s eyes on me, bearing down.

  ‘I was pretty fuckin’ clear the first time,’ Killkenny says defensively.

  ‘Taylor Westerbrooke didn’t get the message,’ Yvette points out.

  ‘I’m guessing that girl wouldn’t have taken my advice no matter what I said to her.’ Killkenny sounds sure of himself, but he looks at the wall as he’s talking, and I think I can see the doubt in his eyes. ‘We’ll call them,’ he says. ‘Not at two-thirty in the morning, though. We’ll wait until the sun is up.’ Yvette and I say nothing. ‘I don’t want to create panic unnecessarily,’ he adds. ‘The morning should be fine.’

  ‘If it was your daughter, would you want the cops to wait till morning to tell you this?’ Yvette asks.

  He sighs heavily. ‘We can call them from the station house while we’re waiting for the warrant. Happy?’

  ‘No,’ Yvette says. ‘I’m definitely not happy.’

  The detectives’ squad room at the police station is virtually empty. Other than us, there’s one young detective there, clearly the low man on the totem pole, who drew the graveyard shift. He’s sitting in his chair, feet up on his desk, sound asleep when we walk in. He opens one eye briefly, shifts his position and goes back to sleep.

  ‘I’ll have the affidavit ready in about ten minutes. I’ll leave some blanks that you can fill in once you’ve looked at it, okay?’ Killkenny says. We nod, and he picks up the files with the pictures and backgrounds on the models we’ve identified as the subjects of De Sade’s LifeScenes. ‘There are phones on the desks. Dial nine to get an outside line. The phone numbers are in there. Tell them you’re working with me.’

  ‘What if they ask if we’re police officers?’ Yvette asks.

  ‘Lie, if necessary,’ Killkenny says. Yvette and I look at each other. ‘What?’ he asks. ‘It’s for their own good, right?’ He walks over to a computer to start on his affidavit.

  ‘You take three and I’ll take three,’ I say to Yvette.

  ‘Deal.’ She pulls off three files and hands them to me. I notice that she’s included Kendra Madison in my pile, and I wonder whether that was intentional.

  My first call is to one of the women Killkenny interviewed alone. I’m staring at her picture as I dial, so that I can put a face to the voice. It takes three rings for her to answer, and I relay the information, including the fact that the police have identified at least two suspects, one of whom has not been arrested and appears to be active. There is little more than sleep and confusion in the voice coming back at me, but I give a brief description of Michael François, and she assures me that she will call the police if she sees anyone who matches that description. I tell her to be very careful until she is notified that the second suspect is in custody, and hang up. My second call goes just as smoothly.

  My third call is to Kendra. Her image from the file is in front of me on the desk, but I don’t need it to conjure her face. The image is burned into my brain. At times I can’t tell whether it comes from the LifeScene or from my time meeting her, but I suppose it doesn’t matter; it’s the same image in either case.

  I’m expecting several rings before the phone is answered, and the same sleep-confused voice to come over the line. She picks up midway through the second ring, though, and her voice is clear and alert. ‘Yes?’ she says.

  ‘Kendra?’

  ‘Nick.’

  ‘You’re awake.’

  ‘It’s early yet.’

  I look at my watch and see that it’s two forty-one in the morning. I register her meaning, and a tiny part of my heart dies. ‘I wanted to let you know that it looks like you were right,’ I say, putting my feelings aside. ‘It may not have been Santar Gunta who committed the murders. Or, if it was him, it looks like he didn’t act alone.’

  ‘Josh?’

  ‘No. His assistant programmer.’

  ‘Michael.’

  ‘Yes, Michael.’ I feel like there is so much I want to say, but I can’t even bring myself to force the words out of my mouth. ‘That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘I can see that,’ she says after a moment. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Not one hundred percent, but ninety-nine.’ I look across the room and see that Yvette is looking at me, still on the phone. ‘Kendra, he killed another girl, and the police don’t have him in custody yet.’

  ‘Do they know where he is?’

  ‘No.’ I start to say something and then stop, trying to phrase it right. I realize there is no appropriate way to say it, so I give up on phrasing it perfectly. ‘Kendra, I’m concerned you could be in danger.’

  ‘Aren’t you sweet?’ Her voice is hard, but I press on.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I say. ‘I mean, with what you do, I’m worried that you’re making yourself vulnerable.’

  ‘Oh.’ She says nothing for a moment. ‘A girl’s gotta eat,’ she says at last.

  ‘You said you had some money saved up.’

  ‘I was being metaphorical, Nick.’

  It’s my turn now. ‘Oh. About saving money, or . . . ? Oh.’

  ‘Listen, you may not think so, but you really are sweet. You don’t have to worry about me, though. I’ve always managed to take care of myself.’

  ‘This guy’s crazy.’

  She laughs and it’s filled with knowledge and understanding and sorrow. ‘All guys are crazy.’ The laugh comes again, and I want to reach through the phone line and take hold of her hand, tell her that she’s wrong, that she’s had a bad deal so far. ‘I know what he looks like, Nick. I think I’m pretty safe.’

  ‘Only if you see him coming.’

  ‘A long time ago I decided that life was going to be what it was going to be. I’m too far along to change my stripes now, Nick. Trust me, I’ll be okay.’

  I’m searching my mind desperately for something to say that might convince her otherwise, but nothing comes. I look over, and Killkenny is standing next to Yvette. She has finished her phone calls and is filling in some of Killkenny’s declaration for the warrant. ‘I’ve gotta go’ is all I can manage.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ll call. When all this is over, I’ll call.’

  ‘I hope so. I really hope so.’ She hangs up without saying goodbye, and it’s like a knife to the gut. I hold the phone for a few seconds before I hang up, trying to catch my breath. As soon as the handset is on the cradle, I hear Killkenny’s voice. ‘This is done, and I’m faxing it to the judge,’ he says.

  ‘Will he fax it back?’ Yvette asks.

  ‘No, we have to go pick it up at his apartment. He’s in Fenway. François lives out by Boston College, so it’s on the way.’

  ‘Boston College,’ I say. ‘Isn’t that where one of the early victims was?’

  Killkenny nods. ‘The first was in Cleveland Circle. He started out hunting near his home. That’s the way it starts a lot of the time.’

  ‘This happens often?’ Yvette asks.


  ‘Not exactly like this, necessarily, but are serial killers common? Yeah, it happens more often than anyone would like to think. Some people just get a taste for it, and they can’t stop.’

  ‘You think that’s what happened with Michael François? You think he just got a taste for it?’

  ‘From his record, it looks like he was fairly predisposed. But, yeah, I’m guessing once he started, he found he couldn’t stop.’

  ‘All the more reason we have to find him,’ I say.

  ‘True,’ Killkenny says. He walks to a gun cabinet hanging on the wall, takes out a shotgun. He grabs a box of shells and slides five rounds into the chamber, looks at us. ‘Are you two ready?’ he asks.

  I look at Yvette, and she stands. ‘We’re ready,’ she says.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Killkenny is in the judge’s apartment for less than two minutes before he returns with the warrant. ‘That’s it?’ I ask.

  ‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘It’s a pretty convincing affidavit. Plus, at this time in the morning, judges tend to have fewer questions.’

  We drive on to the Boston College section of Brookline. It’s an area off Commonwealth, ten subway stops out from the center of the city, where the residents are split between students, young professionals and lifetime residents. Michael François’ apartment is in one of the more rundown areas, where the residents appear to be primarily graduate students and twenty-somethings on the bottom of the employment ladder. It doesn’t have the clear evidence of constant partying that accompanies the college set, but it also lacks the substance and permanency of more established residential neighborhoods. It looks transient in every respect.

  François’ building is a townhouse set off from the other residences in the area, with four apartments, each with their own external entrance. The building is dark, not only because the lights are off, but because it has that feeling of neglect that comes with short-time renters.

  We park around the corner and wait for Killkenny’s backup. He’s called in three squad cars to assist in taking down François. ‘You never know whether he’s prepared,’ Killkenny says. ‘He may have been planning for the police from the beginning. If so, he’s likely to be armed, and it’s probably going to get ugly.’